Post the Brussel's entry, we had our "Final" which hardly can be considered that, attended the end-of-semester party, packed our things, cleaned up and left for our european adventure starting in Italia.
- Stayed at Pietro's house in Desenzano where we were guests to amazing food and accommodation; visited Milan, Venice, Verona, and Padova in a quick 4 night stay over then Gretchen and I embarked on our EuroRail journey beginning in :
- BERN, Switzerland was probably the most scenic, quaint, easily likable and walkable cities out of the cities we saw. Visited the main landmarks which are unnamable right now in retrospect (but we have a whole lotta pictures!), hung with the bears at Bear Park right in the city, ate a McDonalds meal (yes, shame on us) for 11CHF which is roughly equivalent to 11USD, discovered that everything is SO expensive there and found ourselves ready for more action by day 2 which brought us to:
- INTERLAKEN, Switzerland. oh my goodness. I need a breath to explain this one because this was also an AMAZING place full of adventure and activities. Instead of taking a train up to the highest point of the alps / highest train station in Europe, Gretchen and I decided to do it big...going Paragliding and then Horseback Riding all in a 6 hr span. No words can explain the feeling of paragliding in the alps-- my "pilot" said we went the 2nd highest that year and I loved every second of it..now I just want to go skydiving next :)!
- ZURICH, Switzerland was our next stop and coming from the adrenaline rush of Interlaken, Zurich was more mellow and subdued. Ended up wandering the city and found a high rope world record setter trying to cross the river on a high rope then we made our way to the zoo because we weren't too keen with the city. The day was long because we decided to take an overnight train to:
- VIENNA, Austria..and overnight trains sitting up in a cart is NOT a good idea. We were draggin in Vienna when we arrived at 7am, luckily our hostel was quite close to the train station. Wandering around Vienna we found the Opera house, the 3 Palaces (favorite was the huge summer palace), and met some strange people in the hostel but since the weather was getting a bit worse we headed for:
- PRAGUE, Czech where it rained most of the time. Although this did put a damper on our travels, we spend 1 full day in the city walking around and taking pictures, visiting the largest castle grounds, and eating (not so great) food. But at the end of the day we went on a Pub Crawl which ended up being pretty decent, met some Dutch guys, Aussie girls, some French guys; lots of fun! But not NEARLY as fun as our FINALE place:
- BUDAPEST, Hungary. It was because of the people and the city was so cute. Our hostel, which deserves a whole shout out of itself; Carpe Noctum, was the best place we stayed at. To be honest, Gretchen and my first impression of the hostel was let's get the **** out of here!!! It felt real sketchy at first in an old beaten down apartment on the top floor (100 steps) and on top, we enter to predominantly guys without shirts on smoking their ciggs, playing guitars and hippied out. We stuck it out though, thanks to our two Michigan friends, Alex and Samip, who had JUST arrived in Budapest that day for their eurotrip. We all toured the city together and climbed Galert Hill, took a walking tour the second day and then went out both nights with the hostel. These people were incredible, totally fun and outgoing and wild. The second day Gretchen and I went Caving underground for the equivalent of 20USD for a whole 2 hours with a group-another fun experience. We met up with Marc Dacanay and Gretchen knew one of his friends--it's a small world afterall?
- All in all, the whole trip was SO Amazing. I couldn't even describe to you some of the encounters we had with people but it was all so much fun ;)
After all of that was done, we had 4 days in London then my parents and grandma flew in for our South Western England Tour with Trafaglar Tours. I couldn't go into detail too much about this because I don't remember where we went exactly but mostly it was in Cornwall and Dover: highlights being Stonehedge, other small towns and old castles.
Hopefully will catch up soon with more meaningful posts not so much about travels but about everyday things and thoughts.
Apologies for no pictures...makes this awful dry and more or less for my own keepsake :)
