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

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

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

Edinburgh

Alright - Edinburgh was interesting

We got there at 7am I believe and we were very tired (Sleeping on the bus is never a fun task). We got there and we were going to meet our first couch-surfing hosts at 3pm so we had some time to kill. We threw our bags into a 24-hour locker and headed out to walk around Edinburgh. It still was quite dark and we wanted to wait until it got a bit lighter out so we found a Costa Coffee and chilled out for a few hours. I personally took a few naps during that period of time.

Once it got light out we started walking around Edinburgh. The town is kinda split up into this Old Town/New town Set up. There really wasn't much of interest in the New town, except some random shops - so we headed over to the Old town. We were basically walking around randomly for awhile, We went up to the Edinburgh Castle - Which had a BEAUTIFUL view!



We then went through a few shops and walked around aimlessly until we spotted the a Tour host for those free Walking tours we went on in Dublin and London. So we Jumped in the middle of that tour saw multiple things including the Grass Market which was named that because they used to sell hay there. but there was a bunch of cool shops are there. There were a lot of bars there that had really interesting names like "The Last Drop" and "Betty Mulligans" Which both had to do with the fact that outside of these bars is where they used to hang people - So the Last drop was the place people would go to get there last drink (or drop) before they went to go get hung and have another (Last drop) Hah - get it?

And there are alot m ore stories, but I dont really feel like posting anymore - so if you're interested I'm sure you can find them on google - if you want.

Then we went up to a cemetery, Discussed some random stories about the people who were buried there and then Greyfriars Bobby - which is a story of a dog who stayed by his masters grave for 14 years then died shortly after. However they ended up making a Pub after this Dog as well as creating a statue of the Dog. Lets just say - I want a dog like that.



So yea - the tour ended with a story of THE STONE OF DESTINY...Which took the tour guide 20 minutes to tell...so if you're interested - again ... google it -hahaha

After that point we met up with our Couchsurfing buddies, got some Coffee/Tea and chilled out watching TV/ Playing video games for the rest of the night

The Next day we went Hiking around Edinburgh - It was fun. I like hiking Here are some photos... (haha - i really don't know what else to say...haha)








The next day we just relaxed at the Flat for a bit - Played Video Games/ Watched a movie and did our laundry...Oh and we decided to buy a crappy guitar for the trip (More of Nathan's decision than mine but Meh - I dont mind having a guitar around)
That night we went and got some drinks with our hosts - I'm starting to realize that casually getting drinks with people in europe is kind just part of the culture out here...its not as much of as going out to get drunk but just to relax and enjoy being with the people here.

Our Bus was the next day... which.was fun, because we missed it.

Side-note - We ended up getting a Eurolines Pass- Which allows us to travel via bus as much as you want to select places around europe for 30 days. However, Eurolines Subcontracts bussing companies in some places like the UK and Ireland. Well in the UK they use National Express. So I gave them a call and asked them to book us to Paris. They do that and we get on a bus later that night at 2200 - So we just spent that day just chilln' in coffee shops until we needed to go to the Bus station.

We get to London, only to realize that National Express really screwed up our tickets and we couldn't get on our bus because it wasn't one of those *selected* places stated on the Eurolines pass. So we had to book another bus to Paris from London. Which this time we were able to book directly through Eurolines and bypass National Express which actually allowed us to get into Paris at 2130 not 2230 even though we had to leave London at 1200 not 700...which is weird - but whatever.

So we finally get to paris and wondered around a bit before finding a hostel (Per usual).