Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Piza

Piza
So piza was awesome fr the 5 hours that I was in it! Haha - but I'm pretty sure people are right - you really only need part of a day to go through it and be done with it.
I got here around 2 and was ready to leave by 7! I basically went to the square that the leaning tower of piza was in asked some fellow Americans to take a photo of me with it and also went in te free cathedial - everything else was obnoxiously priced! Then I grabbed a pizza and this local desert and ate it in the coartyard across the leaning tower. Again the weather was beautiful and I basically stayed in thy coartyard/park for an hour - twas great!

Then I walked around the city - got lost as usual and found my way back to the train station and booked my way to Nice.

Only problem is that I had a transfer in this town 20km from Nice in order to cross te boarder and The first train had a 55minute delay (don't aske me how - I didn't realize a train could be delayed that much) so now I'm on my way to the town that is in the middle of nowhere and I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing tonight - it's either finding a 24 hour cafe and waiting until the train at 545 or finding a hostel or hitchhiking! I'll let you all know in my next post!!

Florence

Florence

So I officially like this whole writig my blog on the train/bus to the next location!
I'm headed on my way to Pisa right now on the train for 5eiro and man this train is nice! There are 3 people in this coach and it's a beautiful view outside! Much more comfortable than the bus

I got into Florence and walked around a bit - grabbed a hostel - took care of some stuff foe the flight back home while cooking pasta - whih btw 2 euro can make you pasta for 3 days! Awesome! And just relaxed and talked this portugese girl the rest of the night.

I think my one complaint with Italy is that is swarming with tourists! Any place you go there are people trying to be Rambo with cameras - it's crazy! Haha - that's actually probably why I'm moving through it so quickly. Otherwise, even in febuary, it's beautiful here! I've barely had to wear my coat so far!

So the day after I got there I spend the walking - and that was a great idea! I got to feel Florence out real well and consideong it's a real small city it wasn't hard to figure out. I found this awesome really little itialian sunday market that I walked through like 3 times I ended up getting this carrotte cake slice and wanted to buy something else but nothing really suited my fancy.
After that I found this awesome garden that I walked around for 2 hours (sorry I'm bad with names - I just didn't catch it - it was near the piazza de pittti. But it felt like a nice fall day with sun and everything - it was a perfect day to be walking through that garden
After that I went to the Stefano caporali which was just an absolutely huge church - no photos allowed - boo!!
I jus walked through the street markets for a bit and just enjoyed the absolutely beatiful day.

After a bit it seemed to wantto rain so I beaded back to the hostel.
Te next day wanst as beautiful so I went to the Musei fiorentini and then decide that I'd go over to pisa for the rest of the day! Now I'm on that train! And it's a beautiful ride! I'll prob get there around 2. And I'll prob drop Off my bag at a luggage place and walk aroud Pisa and go up the leaning tower. Then I'm contemplating staying the night or going to nice tonight - well see.

Venice

Venice
Venice was beautiful and definately a place I wan to revisit...just during the summer. I arrived there an started wondering around and then met some Lost canadians that I helped them find the train staion. They assured methat Venice was a beautiful city - but there wasn't a ton to do. They honestly suggested that I just walked around for awhile. I ended up getting an unlimited day pass for the water taxi - which was a lot of fun- I ended up going to one of the small islands off of Venice called lido which was really cool it had some awesome beaches and just a beautiful land away from the hordes of tourists that were in the city center. I hit up a cafe and chilled out for q bit

I ended up going back to the bus station to see about using my eurolines pass to get to Florence and found out thier office was closed with 3 numbers attached to the door with a few Italian phrases on it - needless to say I was lost I ended up calling all 3 of those numbers (with my luck it was the 3rd one I needed to call) an found out that I not only that I couldn't go to Florence but I couldn't go anywhere with my pass - discouraged I looked into renting a car, apparently they weren't opened past 1230 on the weekend and so I went to the train station and got a ticket from there.
I'm really tempted to rent a car once this eurolines pass runs out - yes it'll e expensive but it'll allow me to travel as I please and by the end of renting the car I'll e really good at driving a stick shift... Just sayn

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Budapest

Budapest

Our bus to budapest was probably the worst bus ride I have ever experienced - i didn't sleep and it left me feeling sick :-(

Budapest want as good as prauge! Haha. It was still cool though. We got to our hostel really early and decided to go to these amazing spas we heard so much about - we went to one which was pretty cool - we really needed a break after that bus ride
We got back to the hostel and took an amazing nap. We then went on a wild google maps goose chace to try finding a tescos - which failed miseraby and on our way back 2 older German women tried getting us to come to a bar with them! Awkward - and besides me and nathan both find the German language completely terrifying! So we left as soon as we could
We then found a gocery store and cooked dinnerand watehed me myself and Irene at the hostel. Nathan went to bed shortly after that but I stayed up and talked/played cards (and eurcre) with 2 aussies (rachael and dan) that were traveling together.

We then spent the next day hanging out with those Aussies. We we to parlement, buda castle a church and climbed up on this hill that overlooked Budapest - really cool sights although I wish I had an tripod so I could have taken better photos. It was pretty late then so we just went back tote hostel and played euchre that night




The next morning we went to book our busses to differnet directions and found out that there was no busses that night so we had to wait until the next day. I just took a chill day and just chilled in the dorm

Nathan left that morning to poland and I basically had the day to myself, which was VERY weird. I ended up finding this island between buda and pest and walking the length of it - which was pretty cool bccsuse it was basically one big park. So it allowed me some time to think and be by myself - Which if you know me - that is definately something i need on a regular basis.
Then I ended up going to this really nice cafe and then spent the rest of my time chilln at the hostels on thier computers. Until I had to take my bus to venice!

Prague

Prauge-

I'm jus going to say - I absolutely love prauge! We got there at 9 at night and found our hostel - which was kind of weird because we went to this one hostel, emm hostel, showed them our reservation, and then the receptionist called someone and 5 minutes later this guy shows up and tells us to follow him- kindof sketch to say the least - we got to this place that looked like an apartment complex that was right on the river and went up- we got in and Checked In - then the guy showed us around and told us all the cool things to do while in prague. We got to our room and found out we had a beautiful view of river and prague castle with No bunk beds!! I was very pleased and for only 6 euro a night!

We didn't really have a ton we could do that night so we just chilled out, cooked pasta for dinner and met to these american girls that were studying abroad.

The next morning I decidedthat I'd get lost for 2.5 hours before finding a grocery store that had some pankake mix. But I ended up finding like the super aldi of Europe - tescos - it was super awesome and super cheap.

Got back and cooked "breakfast" (by that time it was more like lunch) and then Nathan decided to go wonder around prague - since I was tired from the morning excursion I just chilled at the host and watched flight of the Concorde on nathans computer.

That night we went clubbing - my first experience doing that - it was quite interesting. The American girls Invited us that morning. This club had 6 differnt stories each one havig a different theme. Nathan went crazy for a bit before he got really tired and went back to the hostel - I hung out with the girls for a bit longer before we headed home




The next day we went up to Prague castle and saw the changing of the gaurd which was pretty cool and then we went to old towns square and then decided to get lost for awhile. We then went on our walking tour which I wasn't huge on. After that we decided to go to a cafe and tried some sheeshe(sp?) then We went home and made dinner and then hung out with this cool aussie girl named Chloë.

Changing of the Guard


Walking Tour


The next day was probably my favorate day. We went up on top of this hill overlooking prauge city and I went up on a tower to get an even better view.
We then went to this meusum dedicated to this guy who's existance is "questionale" we figured it was all crap and were basicLly laughing at all these inventions this guy made - maybe once I get internet I'll figure the guys name out and post it on here.

We actually bumped into Chloë at that point and basically spent a good majority of the day body sleding down the hill we just walked up. Then once we were thoughly frozen we went to a cafe, then changed, booked our bus for the following day, and then had a few drinks in the hostel that night.

The last day we hung out with chloë again. And basically spentthe day wondering around aimlessly and went to cafe until we had to catch our bus to Budapest


Vienna/wien

Vienna

We got to Vienna at 6am we found a random hostel that we thought we might stay at and dropped of our bags. We then walked by a church, bought an electric hair cutter, rented a bike for 1.5 euro for the day then biked around for a while - which Nathan was so excited about renting the bike it was a little bit scary.

We then decided that we didn't really like Vienna (besides the bikes) hHaha and we booked our bus to prague that night. We then spent the remainer of the day in the hostel stealing the wifi, doing my laundry, and cutting my hair/beard with the trimmers we got - then left (yep were offical bums) and then we were off to prauge!!

Berlin

Berlin-

Wow - to think that it's been almost 2 weeks since I was in Berlin! Crazyness.

So this is my attempt at blogging from my iPod touch. Which probably means that these blogs will be significantly shorter and there will be less photos- sorry!
The reason behind that is because yesterday me and Nathan went different ways - I went to Italy he went to poland. I wanted to have a portion of this trip traveling by myself - just to see what it was like.

So yea - we left Amsterdam and got to Berlin really early in the morning - found a hostel and headed out figure out what to do.
We decided that we would go on the 11am walking tour which was awesome because it really gave us a feel for the history of Berlin and the basic layout of the city. We were able to see where hitlers bunker was - the Berlin wall and the Brandenburg gate. Among many other things. After the tour was done we went to a cafe and chilled for a while before we decided to go back to the hostel. The funny thing is that we got split up on the way home because I got on the wrong train - and considering Nathan was navigating the entire tine and our hostel was out of the city center I wasn't quite sure how to get back. I ended up figuring it out though because I remeber there being a opera near our hostel and there was a stop on the underground that looked like the word opera in German - haha

So we basically just spent the rest of the night relaxing and playing guitar - very relaxing.

The next day was our wondering day - we went up in the parlement building which was pretty cool because on top ofthe building thy give you a free audio tour inside this glass domeshaped roof that if you look down you can see parlement. The audio talked about all the major buildings that you could see while walking up this spiral staircase up the dome. After that we went to the imfamous dunkin douhnuts that my dad told me to goto like 50 times before we left. And then we triedto go to the Jewish momorial - the muesum part of it was closed but we walked throuh the momorial which was cool

The last day we paid to goto a walking tour through the concentration camps that was just north of Berlin

That night we went to the bus station to book our way to Prague but they didn't have a bus for 3 days ...so we went to vienna that night instead




Thursday, February 11, 2010

Amsterdam

Amsterdam was interesting...
Alot of bikes.
We got there at night and basically went to bed.
The next day we had to find a different hostel because the one we were in was full for the next day - so we spent the majority of the morning looking for the hostel.
The rest of the day we relaxed, went to a coffee-shop and wondered aimlessly around the city. (If I had to make a pie chart of what we did while in europe “wondering Aimlessly around a city would be a significant portion” )
We went back to the hostel and fell asleep ridiculously early (7pm - i know crazy right?) and then woke up the next morning - showered, had breakfest - found out that the hostel we were staying in didn’t have vacancies that following night so packed up and left. We locked up our bags in the main train station. Then went on the walking tour - after finding out the walking tour really was not that exciting we left 1/3 of the way into it and went to the Anne Frank house - which honestly looks like more of a tourist attraction than anything else - we were not to impressed with it and decided to keep on moving. We looked around for hostels to no avail and decided that amsterdam really wasnt worth staying in because there really was nothing to exciting happening and booked a bus to Berlin

And now i’m in Berlin Writing this!
Whoo Hoo I”m caught up! and its 12am and still have a light on in this hostel...the 5 other people trying to sleep are probably not to impressed - so I shall go now!
GNIGHT! :-P

Brussels

Gotta be honest - not to impressed with Brussels. Pretty sure all we did there was saw the photo of the little boy pee-ing and walked around aimlessly for awhile. Then went to a coffee shop. We were thinking about going to see the Anatoniam but we were able to see it from a distance and decided that it wouldnt be worth 6 Euros to go see it up close...
And then we left for Amsterdam the next day

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Paris

Paris -
So I’ve been trying to keep up on this blog but it has been obviously failing miserably. For a few reasons.
1) You cant really blog about a city until you have officially left the city
2) The majority of the buses that we are taking do not have outlets in them and considering the age of this computer the battery does not last that long
3) The last few cities we really didn’t stay in that long because - well we didnt necesarily like them that much.

So yes - I’m going to attempt to get Paris, then Brussels and Amsterdam all done while in the lovely city of Berlin right now.

Paris - Yes, hmmm....

Well we went to Paris - Surprise I know :-D
We got to our hostel in paris pretty late, and probably not in the best mood because of the previous day’s bus excursion. So once we got there we basically went straight to bed. The next day I think I was still a bit grumpy so I figured that I’d take a day to myself. It was quite cool because that day I got to see a bunch of cool little sites ... and some of the big ones as well - the Arc de Triumph and the Eiffel tower. I contemplated going up on both attractions at that time - but I thought Nathan might end up wanting to do that as well so I waited. (Unfortunately that was probably the best day to do so because it was probably one of the more beautiful days we had in Paris). But it was definitely a good day to take to relax and have to myself. It was really a beautiful day in Paris and it was nice just to be able to walk around.
The next day we slept in and went on the walking tour (I really enjoyed this one - it allowed us to give us a good base to the history of the Paris and also we got to see the little sights and some fun back stories :-D
Then we went to some coffee shops afterward and Nathan tried to figure out how to rent a bike in Paris from one of the Kiosks. It would have been really cool and only 1.5 Euro / Day - but for some reason it wouldn’t accept an american credit card and we were unable to do so :-( at that point we were pretty tired and decided to go back to the hostel and make some dinner. We made some rice that night and actually met some cool british girls that we had a few beers with.
The next day was spent in the Louvre. Basically all day...haha- oh and the apple store outside of the Louvre. (and took some cool photos of the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triumph







Then the last day we split up and did our own things again. I went to Notre Dam then up in the Arc de Triumph and the Eiffel tower. Then went and grabbed our bus to Brussels