Well Kare is currently on a plane to the U S of A! And I am in this werid internet cafe where there are 10 plus Asians on the computers playing video games and yelling at each other. It is quite a scene let me tell you!
Yesterday we got up in the morning and headed into Dublin to our hostel. We checked in and walked into 8 boys in our 10 bedroom dorm. We thought oh great, and our thoughts were right. They were all like 18-20 and babies! They are from London and were in town for the Rugby game. They were ooc, more to come on that later!
So we walked through death getting the train station in Kai's town... Rain and Sleet and Wind and Disaster... So horrible! But we made it, we smelled like wet dogs and looked even worse I am sure.
After we checked into our hostel we headed out for a little shopping but quickly got over it because the weather was nasty. So we went to a bagel place to get some lunch and ran into an interesting conversation. The pair behind us were talking about afairs and judging each other. I don't think it was really coffee shop talk! But Kare and I pretended to be reading the magazines in front of us and continued listening! :)
Then we headed back to our hostel and I took a nap and Kare headed out to go find some souvenir shops. I woke up and she still wasn't home... Not a good sign :) She texted me, BEST SHOPPING EVER. She came back 30 minutes later with some good purchases! And since I was staying for today I decided to take my turn today!
After that we headed back to Kai's to eat dinner and say goodbye to their crew... We missed the train or got confused or something, and so we headed to the grocery store for fun to spend our time til the next train... I made kare smell the awful soap that the box said had a scent of tar... Um, no thanks!!!
Once we caught the train, we somehow entered into a car with drunk people. They were passing around Hennessey... Which the smell practically made me puke, and they were singing songs and this guy was trying to convince people to let him smoke on the train. Idiots!!! :)
We made it to dinner, had a good time with everyone. They are all so nice, and I know Kai is really going to miss them!!!! They are hilarous and everyone can be friends on facebook :)
After dinner we hit the train back to Dublin and decided to get some rest for the night. Our crazy British roommates came back in around midnight and were heading out for the night. We decided just to sleep with our lights on because they would be loud when they came back in... Were they ever!!!!! OMG! They were so out of control. Yelling vajajay as loud as possible. Yelling at each other. Yelling at us for being Americans. They were so ridiculous. One of them asked me if I was the one from Texas or Philadelphia. I said TX and he yelled to one of his friends, which one did you think was the slut? They were such jerks and it took everything in me not to yell at them... They kept us up for a solid hour and then once they fell asleep the snorning was a disaster.
When Kare woke up for her flight one of them was talking about Birthday cards in their sleep and the others were snoring... as kare said, it was a 3 ring circus in there!
It seems like tonight I have the 10 bedroom dorm to myself, which means I won't sleep because I am a baby and get scared. I'll probably just sleep with the lights on! :)
Well that's all from Europe! Next time we talk to you we will be Stateside!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Back to America we go! :)
xoxo
Melanie :o)
Sunday, November 22, 2009
And the winner goes to...
Wow. We are actually leaving. I can't believe all the things we have been able to see in our time here. It's been so great!
Here are the final award winners for our K&M Awards!!!! Some of them are the same from the halfway awards, but some are new... So enjoy!
Best and worst:
Best hostel:
Karin: Huge fan of the Circus hostel in Berlin. Clean, good bar, great ppl and best
pillow EVER!
Melanie: The Circus hostel was pretty cool in Berlin,
we had our own little closets,
and lights above our bed and stools to sit on...!
And the bar was baller and of
course are friends were there! I still have a special place
in my heart for Jagers Hostel in Munich... :)
Worst hostel:
K: Mel will say Paris I guess but
minus the shower (I'll get over being
dirty) and creepy men (out of their
control, bad luck) I liked it okay. I
say worst is Rome my bed made me
want to die, plus Mosquitos!
-I still feel the same, no to Rome!
M: Paris for sure. Although we met
Cameron which was a plus and our
Wolf pack, but also had to meet
Bendy Jody. The opposite of a plus.
-Still the same. I think we made an effort
to make sure we stayed in nice hostels the
second half of the trip!
Best train ride:
K:I think I'd give the train from Berlin to
Amsterdam a nod here... That was a great time.
Danny and I were still slightly intoxicated plus I
don't think the 4 of us have laughed harder!
M: Definitely Berlin to Amsterdam, it was 7 hours!
Danny was yelling at people sitting at the
table made for four and only being one person...
Kare and Danny watched He's Just Not That Into You,
Danny was sticking things up his nose and making us
laugh so hard!!
Worst train ride:
K: hmm... Selling our souls to get to london was not us at our best...
M: Also Paris to Barcelona still wins, but pretending our
Grandfather died was an all-time low...
Here are the final award winners for our K&M Awards!!!! Some of them are the same from the halfway awards, but some are new... So enjoy!
Best and worst:
Best hostel:
Karin: Huge fan of the Circus hostel in Berlin. Clean, good bar, great ppl and best
pillow EVER!
Melanie: The Circus hostel was pretty cool in Berlin,
we had our own little closets,
and lights above our bed and stools to sit on...!
And the bar was baller and of
course are friends were there! I still have a special place
in my heart for Jagers Hostel in Munich... :)
Worst hostel:
K: Mel will say Paris I guess but
minus the shower (I'll get over being
dirty) and creepy men (out of their
control, bad luck) I liked it okay. I
say worst is Rome my bed made me
want to die, plus Mosquitos!
-I still feel the same, no to Rome!
M: Paris for sure. Although we met
Cameron which was a plus and our
Wolf pack, but also had to meet
Bendy Jody. The opposite of a plus.
-Still the same. I think we made an effort
to make sure we stayed in nice hostels the
second half of the trip!
Best train ride:
K:I think I'd give the train from Berlin to
Amsterdam a nod here... That was a great time.
Danny and I were still slightly intoxicated plus I
don't think the 4 of us have laughed harder!
M: Definitely Berlin to Amsterdam, it was 7 hours!
Danny was yelling at people sitting at the
table made for four and only being one person...
Kare and Danny watched He's Just Not That Into You,
Danny was sticking things up his nose and making us
laugh so hard!!
Worst train ride:
K: hmm... Selling our souls to get to london was not us at our best...
M: Also Paris to Barcelona still wins, but pretending our
Grandfather died was an all-time low...
Best view:
K: Cinque Terre
M: Walking the path in Cinque Terre.
I also loved the view of the snow capped
mountains in Venice... Venice itself was a
good view. And not to Kare and I, those
were not the Alps! Haha
Best wine:
K: I liked the wine we drank on the
beach in Nice best. The first one ;)
- I also had some really good wine at our group dinner
in Prague. Cheap, delicious and came with an ikea blanket
M: We had this wine in Rome that I forgot about,
but it was sparkling red, and made with
Strawberries... It was yummy!
Best local beer:
K: Ireland had some really good beer;
I liked the temple ale at the porter house out in temple bar.
M: I suprisingly liked the Guinness beer! I wouldn't
drink it often but it was good to have it in its
birthplace!
Best budget location:
K: Prague! I loved Prague, so cheap, so beautiful,
good food, great people. I want to move there haha.
M: Prague wins this one! Not only was the hostel
€5/night... The drinks and food was good too! Oh
and the bar crawl... :)
Best drink:
K: our pitcher of sex on the beach was delish
K: Cinque Terre
M: Walking the path in Cinque Terre.
I also loved the view of the snow capped
mountains in Venice... Venice itself was a
good view. And not to Kare and I, those
were not the Alps! Haha
Best wine:
K: I liked the wine we drank on the
beach in Nice best. The first one ;)
- I also had some really good wine at our group dinner
in Prague. Cheap, delicious and came with an ikea blanket
M: We had this wine in Rome that I forgot about,
but it was sparkling red, and made with
Strawberries... It was yummy!
Best local beer:
K: Ireland had some really good beer;
I liked the temple ale at the porter house out in temple bar.
M: I suprisingly liked the Guinness beer! I wouldn't
drink it often but it was good to have it in its
birthplace!
Best budget location:
K: Prague! I loved Prague, so cheap, so beautiful,
good food, great people. I want to move there haha.
M: Prague wins this one! Not only was the hostel
€5/night... The drinks and food was good too! Oh
and the bar crawl... :)
Best drink:
K: our pitcher of sex on the beach was delish
in London. Although I don't know how alcoholic
it really was. Non alcoholic I'd say greek frappé
and the tropical fruit fanta I got in Munich.
I have yet to be able to find it again and it was amazing.
M: I think the Greek Frappe drink.
It's just coffee, lots of sugar and
a touch of amazingness! :) definitely
not Sambuca going down or coming
up!
-Same for me!
Best meal:
K: mmm in London I had this egg salad, smoked
salmon sandwich at a place called pret. So good.
I also LOVED the enormous burgers we got post
pub crawl in Amsterdam. So flipping good too.
M: Souvlaki in Greece was so good... But at the time
M: I think the Greek Frappe drink.
It's just coffee, lots of sugar and
a touch of amazingness! :) definitely
not Sambuca going down or coming
up!
-Same for me!
Best meal:
K: mmm in London I had this egg salad, smoked
salmon sandwich at a place called pret. So good.
I also LOVED the enormous burgers we got post
pub crawl in Amsterdam. So flipping good too.
M: Souvlaki in Greece was so good... But at the time
those burgers we ate in Amsterdam tasted like GOLD!
Best dessert:
K: Nutella crepes on Nice. (ooh and
those waffle things, forgot about
them!)
-still the same!
M: So as much as I love crepes, I think
Best dessert:
K: Nutella crepes on Nice. (ooh and
those waffle things, forgot about
them!)
-still the same!
M: So as much as I love crepes, I think
the desert thing we had in Prague wins.
It was light and fluffy and I am sure it
is really good for you! I need to find
that recipe... oh and then learn to cook!
Best quote:
K: that's coots (or vjay jay) is a good one by Danny and the kiss kiss, suck it! from Esa kai'sfinnish friend
M: Do less, Pickle, Do way less! Still wins,
Best quote:
K: that's coots (or vjay jay) is a good one by Danny and the kiss kiss, suck it! from Esa kai'sfinnish friend
M: Do less, Pickle, Do way less! Still wins,
but Jesse telling the story about Danny's
hook up buddy saying... Hey Stranger gets
me everytime!
Best night out:
K: Prague, bar crawl night and Berlin karaoke night.
Best night out:
K: Prague, bar crawl night and Berlin karaoke night.
I also had a blast out in dublin with the maynooth crew.
Though melanie and i's date night in nice holds a dear
part of my heart.
M: I think its a tie between Cinque Terre,
M: I think its a tie between Cinque Terre,
Prague pub crawl and Berlin... Watching Kare
fall down the stairs was epic, and the boys going
on the pub crawl 6 days in a row was ooc!
Best single moment:
K: many... The Kenyan Asian, the drag queen on
Best single moment:
K: many... The Kenyan Asian, the drag queen on
the train in Dublin, walking back from the pub crawl
with mel in Amsterdam... I can't pick just one!
M: I could write a paragraph... But i'd say Kenyan Asian,
M: I could write a paragraph... But i'd say Kenyan Asian,
Sam and Pickle; ALL, and Danny and Jesse's reinactment
of Danny's hook up partner. I have pictures don't worry!
Best weather:
K: Nice.
M: Nice, France. Swimsuit weather.
Cinque Terre was nice too, but a little
chillier!
Worst weather:
K: hmmm Dublin did a good job giving Florence
a run for it's money. Melanie and I were absolutely
soaked and almost blown away getting the train this
last Saturday in Dublin!
M: Well Prague and Berlin were freezing and then
Dublin decided to sleet and blow tornado winds
while we were walking to the train stations. My
glasses were ridiculous and we had to literally wring
our hair out
Best shopping:
K: ahhhh Prague and Dublin! I had to restrain myself
but I couldve done incredible damage if I had really let loose.
M: Dublin was good but we were poor by the end,
but Prague was nice. And London wasn't too bad, until I saw
that $100 equal £58... Yikes!
Best English speakers:
K: is it cheating to say London and Dublin?
M: Well Dublin is much better than London,
less intense accents. But Greece is still pretty high
up there!
Best shower:
K: Ahhh... We were so dirty!
Barcelona because I felt so gross and
it was my first full fledged shower
of the whole trip... Over a week in?
Gross haha.
-still feel the same :)
M: Stefanos. He had a nice bath tub
which I took full advantage of!
Bubbles and all! I've come to appreciate
Showers but nothing compares to a
Bath which i take 2-3 times a day
in the states!
-Still the same
Best public transport:
K: Prague had good transport- we got really
pro at it by the time we left!
M: We are so amazing at public transport.
But Prague was nice and easy, but I think that
Paris still rules.
Worst public transport:
K: Barcelona just because I'm still mad
about that stop saying we could
change metros there but it really
kicks you onto the street. And we got
lost. I wasn't a fan of London either not because
it wasn't a good system but more due to the 4£ they
charged per trip! That's about $8.
M: Barcelona! They had circles and
Stations that looked like they
connected but didn't! Or maybe we
were confused! Either way, worst
Ever!!!
-Still the same. And London is pretty proud of theirs.
Favorite...
Site:
K: Palentine hill. Awesome tour,
unexpected, overlooking the
Colloseum and roman forum...
Amazing.
-Same!
M: Roman Forum in Rome. So grand,
and well preserved. You could really
picture it the way it looked so long
ago. It was breathtaking!
-Sameeeeee
Americans we've met:
K: The Joshi's in Rome. Loved them.
M: Nishan and Meera from LA.
Nishan is so fun!! And Meera.. let's
just say she made us
sound quiet! They were so fun!
Wish we had more time with them!
Oh and the hottie we met at
Oktoberfest from San Fransisco. :)
Foreigners we've met:
K: so many, though they seem to all be
austrailians. Sam, Matty, pickle, Danny, Jesse,
Trent, Steven, Esa... Love them all!
M: Well since we seem to have met 98% boys
that we like I would say.. Aussie-ALL and Jesse and
our 2 person wolfpack from Barcelona.
Food we could eat over and over:
K: mmmm paninis. Bread is good. All sandwich like eating material.
M: I think gelato still wins for me. But i'm a fan of Pizza
with Vinegar!!!
Day so far:
K: Day we saw the colloseum and
everything in Rome & the CT
hike.
- the walking tour in Prague was a really great day as well.
M: I am going to have to say it's a
tie! (idk if this is allowed but
whatev!) historically, I loved our day
in Rome that was filled with the
Colloseum, Palantine hill, and the
Roman Forum... It was epic! But also
the day in CT when we played disc
with our Aussies in 2 cities, learned
Beersbie, Frisbee with a little spice,
Kare borrowing some Italians boat
rope, Sam climbing down to retrieve
his bff Disc aka the frisbee, meeting
Pickle, going to THE bar with
everyone, finishing with a lighter
dance party that none of us will
soon forget! :)
-Same :) I miss those days!
Thing about Europe:
K: Meeting people and seeing
everything! Really makes you
understand different countries;
I love that.
-still the same! I'm going to miss seeing new
places and meeting new ppl all the time!
M: Being with Kare and opening my eyes
to new cultures and experiences!
Thing about the US:
K: Wow our lives are convienent.
Everything at our fingertips,
inexpensive, hot showers, English,
no dubbing tv... Mexican food!
-Same
M: My cell phone and my mom!
-Same!!!! So soon!
Others:
Hottest:
K: hmm aussies are stupid hot but I met a really
hot German too... France had the hottest ppl
in general.
M: Country: London, Cops: Greece,
Person: :) :)--- There are a lot so i'll save you!
Craziest:
K: Aussies are impressively crazy- always.
M: Pickle--- not only did he invent
the lighter party, he stripped naked
to jump in the public pool, booty
danced for everyone then shaved his
head into a mowhawk while really
not sober and woke up this next am
& loved it! :)
-But I think danny is up there too
6 nights of pub crawl in a row, and
then getting kicked off the pub crawl
in Amsterdam and returning
the next night!-- Everybody wants
him-- According to him that is! :)
Nicest people:
K: Irish are very nice!
M: The Irish are helpful
and accomodating!
Rudest people:
K: Stupid Parisians.
M: Okay, so I shouldn't judge
a whole country by some drunk
wankers in our room... But the
British boys we were with were
so rude! They kept talking crap
about America to which Kare and
I ignored them and they wondered
why... Get over it.
Most romantic:
K: Venice was a very romantic city
M: Venice was so cool and romantic definitely
need to find me a boyfriend and go
back there before they shut it off
Would like to live:
K: Prague. I loved it! Obviously the French and Italian
coastline are gorgeous; I wouldn't say no to those either...
M: London... It is very NYCish...
Which is probably why I love it!
Safest:
K: we traveled and spent a lot of time with boys
so it really was nice to never have to worry!
I didn't really ever feel scared at any point on this trip.
M: I would say all... The boys helped!
Strong men... As danny would say, the hunters!
The gatherers...! Haha whatever!
Most unsafe:
K: Paris I think had the biggest issues.
M: I would say Paris was sketch because
of the Parisians hatred towards us... jerks
Most annoying street vendors:
K: ughhhhh still florence.
M: Well they are all annoying! But
the ones with umbrellas especially!
If I am holding an umbrella, I don't
want to buy one! Duh!
-Same
Creepiest guys:
K: Rome. I know one by name, pass
out under a bush lately?
-hahahahaah same.
M: Those Italian stallions or lack
there of! Come on take a hint! And
hold your wine better! Two American
girls schooled you!
-Oh buddy--- You still win!
Biggest thing we have learned about eachother:
K:I know Melanie like the back of my
hand now- idk what I'll do without her!
M: Hmmm I know Kare so well now, if
I didn't before... But I can read her, and we
have the same brain sometimes. I love it!
Most likely to return to:
K: Paris/Rome/Cinque Terre
-Prague, and the above :)
M: The French Riviera and Greece.
We are already planning our next
trip and excuse to put off growing
up! And Paris... But with a lover! :)
And London with my Mom and
the Sisters and MK and the cousins!
And the grand finale:
Favorite city so far:
K: Paris/Rome/Cinque Terre
-Prague! Though the above 3 are still major favs as well.
M: Mmmm. I LOVED Prague! And Cinque Terre and Rome!
K: Nice.
M: Nice, France. Swimsuit weather.
Cinque Terre was nice too, but a little
chillier!
Worst weather:
K: hmmm Dublin did a good job giving Florence
a run for it's money. Melanie and I were absolutely
soaked and almost blown away getting the train this
last Saturday in Dublin!
M: Well Prague and Berlin were freezing and then
Dublin decided to sleet and blow tornado winds
while we were walking to the train stations. My
glasses were ridiculous and we had to literally wring
our hair out
Best shopping:
K: ahhhh Prague and Dublin! I had to restrain myself
but I couldve done incredible damage if I had really let loose.
M: Dublin was good but we were poor by the end,
but Prague was nice. And London wasn't too bad, until I saw
that $100 equal £58... Yikes!
Best English speakers:
K: is it cheating to say London and Dublin?
M: Well Dublin is much better than London,
less intense accents. But Greece is still pretty high
up there!
Best shower:
K: Ahhh... We were so dirty!
Barcelona because I felt so gross and
it was my first full fledged shower
of the whole trip... Over a week in?
Gross haha.
-still feel the same :)
M: Stefanos. He had a nice bath tub
which I took full advantage of!
Bubbles and all! I've come to appreciate
Showers but nothing compares to a
Bath which i take 2-3 times a day
in the states!
-Still the same
Best public transport:
K: Prague had good transport- we got really
pro at it by the time we left!
M: We are so amazing at public transport.
But Prague was nice and easy, but I think that
Paris still rules.
Worst public transport:
K: Barcelona just because I'm still mad
about that stop saying we could
change metros there but it really
kicks you onto the street. And we got
lost. I wasn't a fan of London either not because
it wasn't a good system but more due to the 4£ they
charged per trip! That's about $8.
M: Barcelona! They had circles and
Stations that looked like they
connected but didn't! Or maybe we
were confused! Either way, worst
Ever!!!
-Still the same. And London is pretty proud of theirs.
Favorite...
Site:
K: Palentine hill. Awesome tour,
unexpected, overlooking the
Colloseum and roman forum...
Amazing.
-Same!
M: Roman Forum in Rome. So grand,
and well preserved. You could really
picture it the way it looked so long
ago. It was breathtaking!
-Sameeeeee
Americans we've met:
K: The Joshi's in Rome. Loved them.
M: Nishan and Meera from LA.
Nishan is so fun!! And Meera.. let's
just say she made us
sound quiet! They were so fun!
Wish we had more time with them!
Oh and the hottie we met at
Oktoberfest from San Fransisco. :)
Foreigners we've met:
K: so many, though they seem to all be
austrailians. Sam, Matty, pickle, Danny, Jesse,
Trent, Steven, Esa... Love them all!
M: Well since we seem to have met 98% boys
that we like I would say.. Aussie-ALL and Jesse and
our 2 person wolfpack from Barcelona.
Food we could eat over and over:
K: mmmm paninis. Bread is good. All sandwich like eating material.
M: I think gelato still wins for me. But i'm a fan of Pizza
with Vinegar!!!
Day so far:
K: Day we saw the colloseum and
everything in Rome & the CT
hike.
- the walking tour in Prague was a really great day as well.
M: I am going to have to say it's a
tie! (idk if this is allowed but
whatev!) historically, I loved our day
in Rome that was filled with the
Colloseum, Palantine hill, and the
Roman Forum... It was epic! But also
the day in CT when we played disc
with our Aussies in 2 cities, learned
Beersbie, Frisbee with a little spice,
Kare borrowing some Italians boat
rope, Sam climbing down to retrieve
his bff Disc aka the frisbee, meeting
Pickle, going to THE bar with
everyone, finishing with a lighter
dance party that none of us will
soon forget! :)
-Same :) I miss those days!
Thing about Europe:
K: Meeting people and seeing
everything! Really makes you
understand different countries;
I love that.
-still the same! I'm going to miss seeing new
places and meeting new ppl all the time!
M: Being with Kare and opening my eyes
to new cultures and experiences!
Thing about the US:
K: Wow our lives are convienent.
Everything at our fingertips,
inexpensive, hot showers, English,
no dubbing tv... Mexican food!
-Same
M: My cell phone and my mom!
-Same!!!! So soon!
Others:
Hottest:
K: hmm aussies are stupid hot but I met a really
hot German too... France had the hottest ppl
in general.
M: Country: London, Cops: Greece,
Person: :) :)--- There are a lot so i'll save you!
Craziest:
K: Aussies are impressively crazy- always.
M: Pickle--- not only did he invent
the lighter party, he stripped naked
to jump in the public pool, booty
danced for everyone then shaved his
head into a mowhawk while really
not sober and woke up this next am
& loved it! :)
-But I think danny is up there too
6 nights of pub crawl in a row, and
then getting kicked off the pub crawl
in Amsterdam and returning
the next night!-- Everybody wants
him-- According to him that is! :)
Nicest people:
K: Irish are very nice!
M: The Irish are helpful
and accomodating!
Rudest people:
K: Stupid Parisians.
M: Okay, so I shouldn't judge
a whole country by some drunk
wankers in our room... But the
British boys we were with were
so rude! They kept talking crap
about America to which Kare and
I ignored them and they wondered
why... Get over it.
Most romantic:
K: Venice was a very romantic city
M: Venice was so cool and romantic definitely
need to find me a boyfriend and go
back there before they shut it off
Would like to live:
K: Prague. I loved it! Obviously the French and Italian
coastline are gorgeous; I wouldn't say no to those either...
M: London... It is very NYCish...
Which is probably why I love it!
Safest:
K: we traveled and spent a lot of time with boys
so it really was nice to never have to worry!
I didn't really ever feel scared at any point on this trip.
M: I would say all... The boys helped!
Strong men... As danny would say, the hunters!
The gatherers...! Haha whatever!
Most unsafe:
K: Paris I think had the biggest issues.
M: I would say Paris was sketch because
of the Parisians hatred towards us... jerks
Most annoying street vendors:
K: ughhhhh still florence.
M: Well they are all annoying! But
the ones with umbrellas especially!
If I am holding an umbrella, I don't
want to buy one! Duh!
-Same
Creepiest guys:
K: Rome. I know one by name, pass
out under a bush lately?
-hahahahaah same.
M: Those Italian stallions or lack
there of! Come on take a hint! And
hold your wine better! Two American
girls schooled you!
-Oh buddy--- You still win!
Biggest thing we have learned about eachother:
K:I know Melanie like the back of my
hand now- idk what I'll do without her!
M: Hmmm I know Kare so well now, if
I didn't before... But I can read her, and we
have the same brain sometimes. I love it!
Most likely to return to:
K: Paris/Rome/Cinque Terre
-Prague, and the above :)
M: The French Riviera and Greece.
We are already planning our next
trip and excuse to put off growing
up! And Paris... But with a lover! :)
And London with my Mom and
the Sisters and MK and the cousins!
And the grand finale:
Favorite city so far:
K: Paris/Rome/Cinque Terre
-Prague! Though the above 3 are still major favs as well.
M: Mmmm. I LOVED Prague! And Cinque Terre and Rome!
Well that's all!!!!! Hope you enjoyed it! Kare is heading home right now and i'll be going
that way soon!!!!!
It's really bittersweet. Excited to get going with our lives when we get back, but this has just been the greatest experience ever!
LOVE ALWAYS
M&K
Friday, November 20, 2009
5 modes of transportation all before 8 am!
Okay, so this may or may not be the last one we write before we leave. Hopefully we will write one tomorrow night before we get on the plane on Sunday, but we still have plenty to catch you up on so I wanted to write one now!
Last you knew we were meeting Danny, which we did. He came to our Hostel, (he is staying in the sister hostel across town in Camden) and we ate and had a few drinks. He got the 'Aussie Burger', very fitting and it has Beet Root, Pineapple and Fried Egg on it! Sounds gross to me, but sounded wonderful to Kare! She said her family went through a stage where they were into that alot! The beet root that is! Our roomies from Amsterdam, Ben and ??? forgot his name, came over and sat down to chat too. I headed upstairs for a shower and then kare followed shortly after. The blow dryer at the hostel is money so I made sure to use it as much as possible!
After we both showered we decided to get some sleep for the night or at least attempt to! I called my mom to ask her to call and make sure we were up in the morning, as our alarms were set for 2 am! Ahhhhh!!!
We both kind of slept, the Ireland vs. France Soccer/Futbol game was on so it was pretty loud downstairs. Kare was down there when the first goal was scored and she said her ears are still ringing! They are intense here! Come to later find out that Ireland lost and a controversial handball by France's big player. Being in Dublin now all the papers have slammed him and obviously hate him! The French are not making friends!
Anyways, it was also Karaoke night downstairs so we had a nice little radio to try and sleep with. I fell right asleep and Kare said she didn't get much sleep at all. I think I woke up every half hour or so, needless to say it sucked for both of us! :)
We did wake up to our alarms and mom called to double check, while we were making ourselves some-what presentable in the hostel all the drunk people were coming in for the night and washing their faces while we are just waking up... We got plenty of sweet looks let me tell ya!
So we headed downstairs and asked the front desk to call us a cab. It took a little longer than expected and we had a couple of run-ins with the drunkies outside pressing their faces up against the glass. It was way too early for us to think that was funny!
Once we took the 10 minute taxi ride, we arrived at the bus station. Our bus was already there which was nice but we thought to fare was 9 pounds but it was 14. So I gave Kare 4 to get her to 14 and I had a 10 and sat there counting my money and only had 12.50. So we convinced the bus driver to give us a discount and on we went. Kare took a little nap on our 1 hour and 20 minute journey but I was awake and slightly paranoid due to the strange man across the aisle from me who kept giving the thumbs up sign which made me think he was a terrorist. Yeah I am a little dramatic sometimes!
We arrived at the airport, and headed to check-in. We passed some people sleeping on their bags, which is going to be me if I don't convince someone to get me on an earlier flight on Sunday :) We were there plenty early and had a nice man checking us in. My bag weighed 14.4 and Karin's came in at 15.2. He didn't say a word so we were in the clear!!!!! Kare and I headed to get coffee and then went into the nice sized bookstore and I got an US Weekly and a Cosmo. I am pretty pumped about those!
Once we went through the terminal, we looked in the cute shops and then once our flight was called we headed to the gate. They have a pretty good system there! We had to wait in this long line to get on the flight and we were worried it was going to be super ghetto, but it really wasn't! We fell asleep on the flight and had an interesting landing but it was all good. When we exited the plane we were in a wind tunnel. It was really heavy winds along with some rain and pitch black outside... at 7:35! After exiting the plane, we walked to the terminal and the door was locked so the entire plane was herded in a small area in the rain and wind waiting for someone to unlock the door, a little ghetto fabulous!Not a good sign! Once we got off we got our bags and boarded a bus into the city to the main train station.
Once to the train station we decided we didn't want to see the city today because of the weather and then realized we didn't have Kai's Ireland number. So we got some coffee, found a little internet place and emailed him to tell him to text Kare so we had the number. After about an hour wait we heard from him and boarded the next train to his suburb outside of Dublin. We were putting our makeup on on the train like homeless gypsies. Or call girls. hahaha
Once finally in Maynooth, his town, we saw Kai!!!!!!! Yay! A familiar face! Kai goes to the U of A and so that's how we know him! And him and Custer are bff's! We walked to his apartment in this cute little town but the intense wind and rain had not stopped unfortunately! Once we got to his apartment we headed to Lunch at this cool pub in town. And caught up a little bit!
After we headed home for a nap... We slept for a solid 4 hours. And I probably could have slept through the night! We woke up, changed and headed to meet Kai's friends for dinner! They were all so nice and it was fun meeting people from all over the place. We eventually were fading again and headed home early to go to bed. When we got home, Kai's RA had some friends over so we introduced ourselves. Then they started having a dance party to mmmbop and Everybody by Backstreet Boys. We have decided that Backstreet Boys and Mmmbop are universal! When we were in Cinque Terre with the boys, we put in on while we were hiking and they were loving it! All boys love those songs. Steven the RA and his friends turned the lights off and had the disco ball rolling as well... They went all out!!!
Kare and I slept pretty well last night and woke up this morning to head into Dublin. The sun was shining! Which Kai said is really rare! So we went into the city and headed for the Guiness Brewery. The Brewery has a 9000 year lease which is insane and it was so cool! The tour took us about an hour or so. It was really interactive and they had a lot of the old brewery still intact or at least had pictures and videos of the old brewery which was pretty cool. The building has a giant pint glass structure in it and it can hold 14.2 million pints of Guiness! There are over 3 millions pints served a day! So crazy! It was cool because they had all the old advertising campaigns as well so it was fun to see how they evolved. After the tour we caught the train back to Maynooth and started trying to figure out what to do tonight.
Kare and I are feeling really run down! Our bodies are yelling 'Get home you IDIOTS!' So tomorrow we plan on seeing a few more sights and then shopping :) Especially because it is supposed to rain so we just want to be inside! We are going to check into our hostel and leave our bags until we can check in and then head out for the day and head back in early!
Kares flight leaves at 11 am so we are planning on getting to the airport around 8, so leave around 7. We will try and get our final trip awards typed tomorrow and then we are going to each write something when we get home! Thanks for following this amazing journey with us!!!!!
We have had the greatest trip of our lives and are so thankful that we are able to do this! I can't think of anyone better to travel with but Karin and it's going to be so weird when we go our separate ways in 2 days! I forgot how much I miss my best friend! We were saying tonight that in 15 years we're going to be telling our kids, 'One time Aunt Karin and I went on this trip...' And we have made a pact to go travel with our husbands when we are 63. Sucks for them! They better start saving now :) I think we have decided we can't live too far from each other although she wants to be in Cali and I want to be in Boston... So we'll see! But we are also super at flights now so... :) This has been the greatest 2 months ever! We have learned about so many different cultures and so much about each other and ourselves!
See you soon! USA! USA!
xoxo Melanie <3
Last you knew we were meeting Danny, which we did. He came to our Hostel, (he is staying in the sister hostel across town in Camden) and we ate and had a few drinks. He got the 'Aussie Burger', very fitting and it has Beet Root, Pineapple and Fried Egg on it! Sounds gross to me, but sounded wonderful to Kare! She said her family went through a stage where they were into that alot! The beet root that is! Our roomies from Amsterdam, Ben and ??? forgot his name, came over and sat down to chat too. I headed upstairs for a shower and then kare followed shortly after. The blow dryer at the hostel is money so I made sure to use it as much as possible!
After we both showered we decided to get some sleep for the night or at least attempt to! I called my mom to ask her to call and make sure we were up in the morning, as our alarms were set for 2 am! Ahhhhh!!!
We both kind of slept, the Ireland vs. France Soccer/Futbol game was on so it was pretty loud downstairs. Kare was down there when the first goal was scored and she said her ears are still ringing! They are intense here! Come to later find out that Ireland lost and a controversial handball by France's big player. Being in Dublin now all the papers have slammed him and obviously hate him! The French are not making friends!
Anyways, it was also Karaoke night downstairs so we had a nice little radio to try and sleep with. I fell right asleep and Kare said she didn't get much sleep at all. I think I woke up every half hour or so, needless to say it sucked for both of us! :)
We did wake up to our alarms and mom called to double check, while we were making ourselves some-what presentable in the hostel all the drunk people were coming in for the night and washing their faces while we are just waking up... We got plenty of sweet looks let me tell ya!
So we headed downstairs and asked the front desk to call us a cab. It took a little longer than expected and we had a couple of run-ins with the drunkies outside pressing their faces up against the glass. It was way too early for us to think that was funny!
Once we took the 10 minute taxi ride, we arrived at the bus station. Our bus was already there which was nice but we thought to fare was 9 pounds but it was 14. So I gave Kare 4 to get her to 14 and I had a 10 and sat there counting my money and only had 12.50. So we convinced the bus driver to give us a discount and on we went. Kare took a little nap on our 1 hour and 20 minute journey but I was awake and slightly paranoid due to the strange man across the aisle from me who kept giving the thumbs up sign which made me think he was a terrorist. Yeah I am a little dramatic sometimes!
We arrived at the airport, and headed to check-in. We passed some people sleeping on their bags, which is going to be me if I don't convince someone to get me on an earlier flight on Sunday :) We were there plenty early and had a nice man checking us in. My bag weighed 14.4 and Karin's came in at 15.2. He didn't say a word so we were in the clear!!!!! Kare and I headed to get coffee and then went into the nice sized bookstore and I got an US Weekly and a Cosmo. I am pretty pumped about those!
Once we went through the terminal, we looked in the cute shops and then once our flight was called we headed to the gate. They have a pretty good system there! We had to wait in this long line to get on the flight and we were worried it was going to be super ghetto, but it really wasn't! We fell asleep on the flight and had an interesting landing but it was all good. When we exited the plane we were in a wind tunnel. It was really heavy winds along with some rain and pitch black outside... at 7:35! After exiting the plane, we walked to the terminal and the door was locked so the entire plane was herded in a small area in the rain and wind waiting for someone to unlock the door, a little ghetto fabulous!Not a good sign! Once we got off we got our bags and boarded a bus into the city to the main train station.
Once to the train station we decided we didn't want to see the city today because of the weather and then realized we didn't have Kai's Ireland number. So we got some coffee, found a little internet place and emailed him to tell him to text Kare so we had the number. After about an hour wait we heard from him and boarded the next train to his suburb outside of Dublin. We were putting our makeup on on the train like homeless gypsies. Or call girls. hahaha
Once finally in Maynooth, his town, we saw Kai!!!!!!! Yay! A familiar face! Kai goes to the U of A and so that's how we know him! And him and Custer are bff's! We walked to his apartment in this cute little town but the intense wind and rain had not stopped unfortunately! Once we got to his apartment we headed to Lunch at this cool pub in town. And caught up a little bit!
After we headed home for a nap... We slept for a solid 4 hours. And I probably could have slept through the night! We woke up, changed and headed to meet Kai's friends for dinner! They were all so nice and it was fun meeting people from all over the place. We eventually were fading again and headed home early to go to bed. When we got home, Kai's RA had some friends over so we introduced ourselves. Then they started having a dance party to mmmbop and Everybody by Backstreet Boys. We have decided that Backstreet Boys and Mmmbop are universal! When we were in Cinque Terre with the boys, we put in on while we were hiking and they were loving it! All boys love those songs. Steven the RA and his friends turned the lights off and had the disco ball rolling as well... They went all out!!!
Kare and I slept pretty well last night and woke up this morning to head into Dublin. The sun was shining! Which Kai said is really rare! So we went into the city and headed for the Guiness Brewery. The Brewery has a 9000 year lease which is insane and it was so cool! The tour took us about an hour or so. It was really interactive and they had a lot of the old brewery still intact or at least had pictures and videos of the old brewery which was pretty cool. The building has a giant pint glass structure in it and it can hold 14.2 million pints of Guiness! There are over 3 millions pints served a day! So crazy! It was cool because they had all the old advertising campaigns as well so it was fun to see how they evolved. After the tour we caught the train back to Maynooth and started trying to figure out what to do tonight.
Kare and I are feeling really run down! Our bodies are yelling 'Get home you IDIOTS!' So tomorrow we plan on seeing a few more sights and then shopping :) Especially because it is supposed to rain so we just want to be inside! We are going to check into our hostel and leave our bags until we can check in and then head out for the day and head back in early!
Kares flight leaves at 11 am so we are planning on getting to the airport around 8, so leave around 7. We will try and get our final trip awards typed tomorrow and then we are going to each write something when we get home! Thanks for following this amazing journey with us!!!!!
We have had the greatest trip of our lives and are so thankful that we are able to do this! I can't think of anyone better to travel with but Karin and it's going to be so weird when we go our separate ways in 2 days! I forgot how much I miss my best friend! We were saying tonight that in 15 years we're going to be telling our kids, 'One time Aunt Karin and I went on this trip...' And we have made a pact to go travel with our husbands when we are 63. Sucks for them! They better start saving now :) I think we have decided we can't live too far from each other although she wants to be in Cali and I want to be in Boston... So we'll see! But we are also super at flights now so... :) This has been the greatest 2 months ever! We have learned about so many different cultures and so much about each other and ourselves!
See you soon! USA! USA!
xoxo Melanie <3
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Bloody Hell!
Hey everyone! The title is our attempt at speaking British! They speak so much more proper than we do, and today while riding the tube Kare was mimicking the announcements and trying to emulate the lady's accent. The guy standing next to us started laughing! Well once again we were the only ones talking on the tube! It's pretty standard.
Yesterday after our travel faux pas, we cooled off by sitting in the 'chill out room' of our hostel and reading and figuring out a way to get to the airport for our flight tomorrow. Well after much research we will be waking up at 2:15 tomorrow morning. Which is really going to suck and suck worse for our dormmates :) Haha. Anyways we have to take a cab to the bus station and then take a one hour and 15 minute bus to the airport... Sounds so awesome huh? We need to be at the airport by 4:30ish as our flight is at 6:30. And we are going to raise hell because we didn't get our £40 refund back so they'll be getting a piece of our minds, which who knows how that will turn out at 5 in the morning.
After hanging out we were able the move in to our new room so we went up there and just vegged out some more. I finished Angels and Demons and then had an intense Christian Church song in my head... So funny! Then my sick patient Karin took an intense nap, maybe along the lines of 1-2 hours. I got up and told her I was going to walk around and just stretch my legs, because other than having to frolick down to the other internet cafe to print off our boarding passes, I hadn't be out of the hostel :) We really are losing steam... Hahaha
By the time I came back sleeping beauty was up and we went next door for some Chinese Food. It was decent, definitely wasn't China Buffet in Tucson :)Then Kare and I went back upstairs to do more of nothing. Needless to say we didn't make it to the tower bridge! We had a few new roommates, a girl from Brazil who said she was so excited to hear American English because she can't understand anyone over here, 2 girls from Tennesse, and a guy who is apparently a deaf mute because we only heard him say 2 words the entire time! And who doesn't want to strike up a conversation with us?!
I fell asleep early as usal, I looked at my watch and Kare said it was 10:30 which was acceptable! And Kare read some more, I fell asleep with the lights on :)
(Sidenote--- Two of our roommates from Amsterdam just came and say next to me at the internet place. He goes you look so familiar! Oh you were our rommates! Hahaha small world.)
Kare said she got up to go Skype Lauren and could feel me moving... I am always on the top bunk, but I have lately been having reoccuring nightmares that the bunkbed collapses on her. Only 2 more nights in hostel's so I am hoping it's good to go.
This morning we got up pretty early, and headed to the London Bridge for real this time! :) We walked against the wind which was intense and saw the London Bridge and Tower Bridge. CREW= We sang London Bridge while walking across it in honor of you! :) And then we headed back to Oxford street. I told Kare that she is the best worst friend ever for taking me to that store again! Walked out with a lot more stuff, some really cool presents and kare got some cool presents too. We hit up the souvenir shops and got some nice stuff and postcards! I can't believe we are already going to Dublin tomorrow. After the shopping, we headed back to the hostel, talked to Danny and we have all decided we are over Avenue Q but we are going to grab dinner with him or something, as we have to get up REALLY early!
We organized our lives, which will never actually happen. But we figured out what to pack and where. We are hating RyanAir already because we can only have 15 kilo's on our checked baggage which means we have been spending the better part of the afternoon guessing how much our stuff costs and deciding what we are going to wear by weight of the item. Hahaha it's been an experience.
I went and mailed another package... 5.7 kilo's back to the states set me back a pretty penny but there is a lot of good stuff in there! :) We looked like iditos in the post office but whatever!! Then we headed to get lunch at this cool sandwich place. Karin raved about the amazing sandwich she had... She said it included all the things she loved-- Egg, Smoked Salmon, Capers and of course, BREAD! We headed back and we still struggle really badly with the whole looking in the other direction when crossing the street due to the cars driving on the otherside. I automatically look left, but kare is definitely a lot better at that than me!!! :) I am definitely going to get smushed!
Tonight we are meeting Danny for dinner and stuff and then preparing ourselves for an early wake up call... We'll finally be in Dublin and we're going to explore in the morning and then head up the Kai's! Should be a great way to end our trip.
Oh and we are going to shower tonight! We look like pigsty's! Just call us Pigpen 1 and Pigpen 2! Yes for a shower! Yes Yes Yes! Washing of the hair on then we're good to go until we get to Dublin for one shower and then BATH TIME in the STATES!!! :)
Miss you all, I know you are all anxiously awaiting our arrival and your text inboxes will be full of texts!!! We are going to go crazy once we have full use of our phones! YES!
Love and Hugs
xoxo Melanie
Yesterday after our travel faux pas, we cooled off by sitting in the 'chill out room' of our hostel and reading and figuring out a way to get to the airport for our flight tomorrow. Well after much research we will be waking up at 2:15 tomorrow morning. Which is really going to suck and suck worse for our dormmates :) Haha. Anyways we have to take a cab to the bus station and then take a one hour and 15 minute bus to the airport... Sounds so awesome huh? We need to be at the airport by 4:30ish as our flight is at 6:30. And we are going to raise hell because we didn't get our £40 refund back so they'll be getting a piece of our minds, which who knows how that will turn out at 5 in the morning.
After hanging out we were able the move in to our new room so we went up there and just vegged out some more. I finished Angels and Demons and then had an intense Christian Church song in my head... So funny! Then my sick patient Karin took an intense nap, maybe along the lines of 1-2 hours. I got up and told her I was going to walk around and just stretch my legs, because other than having to frolick down to the other internet cafe to print off our boarding passes, I hadn't be out of the hostel :) We really are losing steam... Hahaha
By the time I came back sleeping beauty was up and we went next door for some Chinese Food. It was decent, definitely wasn't China Buffet in Tucson :)Then Kare and I went back upstairs to do more of nothing. Needless to say we didn't make it to the tower bridge! We had a few new roommates, a girl from Brazil who said she was so excited to hear American English because she can't understand anyone over here, 2 girls from Tennesse, and a guy who is apparently a deaf mute because we only heard him say 2 words the entire time! And who doesn't want to strike up a conversation with us?!
I fell asleep early as usal, I looked at my watch and Kare said it was 10:30 which was acceptable! And Kare read some more, I fell asleep with the lights on :)
(Sidenote--- Two of our roommates from Amsterdam just came and say next to me at the internet place. He goes you look so familiar! Oh you were our rommates! Hahaha small world.)
Kare said she got up to go Skype Lauren and could feel me moving... I am always on the top bunk, but I have lately been having reoccuring nightmares that the bunkbed collapses on her. Only 2 more nights in hostel's so I am hoping it's good to go.
This morning we got up pretty early, and headed to the London Bridge for real this time! :) We walked against the wind which was intense and saw the London Bridge and Tower Bridge. CREW= We sang London Bridge while walking across it in honor of you! :) And then we headed back to Oxford street. I told Kare that she is the best worst friend ever for taking me to that store again! Walked out with a lot more stuff, some really cool presents and kare got some cool presents too. We hit up the souvenir shops and got some nice stuff and postcards! I can't believe we are already going to Dublin tomorrow. After the shopping, we headed back to the hostel, talked to Danny and we have all decided we are over Avenue Q but we are going to grab dinner with him or something, as we have to get up REALLY early!
We organized our lives, which will never actually happen. But we figured out what to pack and where. We are hating RyanAir already because we can only have 15 kilo's on our checked baggage which means we have been spending the better part of the afternoon guessing how much our stuff costs and deciding what we are going to wear by weight of the item. Hahaha it's been an experience.
I went and mailed another package... 5.7 kilo's back to the states set me back a pretty penny but there is a lot of good stuff in there! :) We looked like iditos in the post office but whatever!! Then we headed to get lunch at this cool sandwich place. Karin raved about the amazing sandwich she had... She said it included all the things she loved-- Egg, Smoked Salmon, Capers and of course, BREAD! We headed back and we still struggle really badly with the whole looking in the other direction when crossing the street due to the cars driving on the otherside. I automatically look left, but kare is definitely a lot better at that than me!!! :) I am definitely going to get smushed!
Tonight we are meeting Danny for dinner and stuff and then preparing ourselves for an early wake up call... We'll finally be in Dublin and we're going to explore in the morning and then head up the Kai's! Should be a great way to end our trip.
Oh and we are going to shower tonight! We look like pigsty's! Just call us Pigpen 1 and Pigpen 2! Yes for a shower! Yes Yes Yes! Washing of the hair on then we're good to go until we get to Dublin for one shower and then BATH TIME in the STATES!!! :)
Miss you all, I know you are all anxiously awaiting our arrival and your text inboxes will be full of texts!!! We are going to go crazy once we have full use of our phones! YES!
Love and Hugs
xoxo Melanie
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Planes, Trains and Swine Flu
We are entering our final descent in to America...
We do love London, but our karma and luck may have expired. Yesterday after the shopping, Karin refueled on her medicine cocktail and we headed downstairs for some legit fish and chips. We had the closest thing to nachos so far on the trip as they had actual melted cheese on them! Then we ate our fish and chips which were really good! I have officially been converted to European because I love mayo on my fries now!!! :)
After dinner we decide to tackle our next adventure on how we are getting to and from Scotland. We knew our tickets to Scotland weren't a problem so we both sat at actual computers and figures out ho to change our ryanair flight to work with our new schedule! Well... Turns out our new schedule meant the tickets were ridiculously expensive. So we racked our brains, which didn't take long :) and looked for flights from Glasgow to Dublin instead of Edjnburgh, but that wasn't going to work either. Then we were like we can stay in London and go to Bath and see stonehenge, or go to Exeter to see Cameron, or take a ferry which was only for EU residents, or a bus which was 26 hours. In the end, the fact was nothing was going to be cheap so we called Lauren, Kares Sister and gave her the information so she could book the ryanair flight and get the travel credit (because you have to redeem the travel credit we had over a phone. Which that in itself was so annoying!
We got overwhelmed and headed to the grocery store across the street and got some yummy actual diet coke and stuff along those lines! We headed back to the room and found we had a new roommate which we analyzed by his bag and decided he could no way be hot. Bingo! Haha he was strange and kare tried to scare him away with her swine flu! She really bad a nasty cough going and I jokingly told her to go sleep in the commoN room :) Kare and I read for a while, I skyped my aunt who informed me I am not allowed to take another trip without consulting her first and it must be closer and shorter! Haha so dramatic :) that's the way I like it!
After Kare took another nighttime drug cocktail we went to sleep and made strange faces at the weird dude who made a cave of his bunk with a towel. He probably just wanted to block us out :) which is virtually impossible! This morning I woke up early to shower and we packed up our room since we have to move rooms as we decided to stay in London until Thursday and skip Scotland. We are really sad about it and the guy at the reception saying it's his favorite place in the UK is not helping! So we had booked two more nights here and planned on figuring our way to Dublin this am.
Anyways once we had taken our luggage to the luggage room and packed everything up, we decided we had to find a way to Dublin TODAY! So we called ryanair from the phone at the hostel which cost a bunch of £ and the lady was being a biotch and told kare of would be £200 each for the flight we wanted which was bogus! So kare needed some cooling off and I tackled the problem. We got a flight and really that's what matters because we have to get there! So we plan on resting and seeing the London Bridge and Tower Bridge!
We might go to Avenue Q tonight or tomorrow and Danny is here so he might join us! And we get to see Cameron because he gets back from Rome so we get to see him!
Really in the end it all works out but we are just tired, and sick (kare) and will be excited to see Kai in Dublin and then head home! We decided 2 months is about perfect because we are ready to go home and feel like we have made the absolute most of our time! :)
We loves and miss you all!! :) we will see you all soon!!!
We do love London, but our karma and luck may have expired. Yesterday after the shopping, Karin refueled on her medicine cocktail and we headed downstairs for some legit fish and chips. We had the closest thing to nachos so far on the trip as they had actual melted cheese on them! Then we ate our fish and chips which were really good! I have officially been converted to European because I love mayo on my fries now!!! :)
After dinner we decide to tackle our next adventure on how we are getting to and from Scotland. We knew our tickets to Scotland weren't a problem so we both sat at actual computers and figures out ho to change our ryanair flight to work with our new schedule! Well... Turns out our new schedule meant the tickets were ridiculously expensive. So we racked our brains, which didn't take long :) and looked for flights from Glasgow to Dublin instead of Edjnburgh, but that wasn't going to work either. Then we were like we can stay in London and go to Bath and see stonehenge, or go to Exeter to see Cameron, or take a ferry which was only for EU residents, or a bus which was 26 hours. In the end, the fact was nothing was going to be cheap so we called Lauren, Kares Sister and gave her the information so she could book the ryanair flight and get the travel credit (because you have to redeem the travel credit we had over a phone. Which that in itself was so annoying!
We got overwhelmed and headed to the grocery store across the street and got some yummy actual diet coke and stuff along those lines! We headed back to the room and found we had a new roommate which we analyzed by his bag and decided he could no way be hot. Bingo! Haha he was strange and kare tried to scare him away with her swine flu! She really bad a nasty cough going and I jokingly told her to go sleep in the commoN room :) Kare and I read for a while, I skyped my aunt who informed me I am not allowed to take another trip without consulting her first and it must be closer and shorter! Haha so dramatic :) that's the way I like it!
After Kare took another nighttime drug cocktail we went to sleep and made strange faces at the weird dude who made a cave of his bunk with a towel. He probably just wanted to block us out :) which is virtually impossible! This morning I woke up early to shower and we packed up our room since we have to move rooms as we decided to stay in London until Thursday and skip Scotland. We are really sad about it and the guy at the reception saying it's his favorite place in the UK is not helping! So we had booked two more nights here and planned on figuring our way to Dublin this am.
Anyways once we had taken our luggage to the luggage room and packed everything up, we decided we had to find a way to Dublin TODAY! So we called ryanair from the phone at the hostel which cost a bunch of £ and the lady was being a biotch and told kare of would be £200 each for the flight we wanted which was bogus! So kare needed some cooling off and I tackled the problem. We got a flight and really that's what matters because we have to get there! So we plan on resting and seeing the London Bridge and Tower Bridge!
We might go to Avenue Q tonight or tomorrow and Danny is here so he might join us! And we get to see Cameron because he gets back from Rome so we get to see him!
Really in the end it all works out but we are just tired, and sick (kare) and will be excited to see Kai in Dublin and then head home! We decided 2 months is about perfect because we are ready to go home and feel like we have made the absolute most of our time! :)
We loves and miss you all!! :) we will see you all soon!!!
Monday, November 16, 2009
On to the last week...
So we bailed on the bar crawl. Jesse and Danny were committed but we got over it and walked around the red light district. It was really crazy looking at the girls because a lot of them were pretty cute- I don't know why they decided to slut themselves out like that. It was creepy to watch normal looking guys go up and talk to them and then enter the brothel. Gross. Of course there were the standard skeevy looking old men who you'd see walking out of the doors too but I guess we sort of expected that. It was cool to walk over all the canals at night whether they were lit up by red lights or Xmas decorations (Amsterdam already was decked out for the holidays- we loved it). We grabbed a couple drinks with which they served the juice mixer in a seperate glass bottle or freshly squeezed the oj. It was good juice haha. We went to bed early although we were woken up in our closet of a room by our 2 guy roommates who had moved in that night and although we were clearly all organized, unpacked and in bed, they asked if we wanted to change rooms to another down the hall. Melanie scoffed and I laughed while saying absolutely not. I don't think they even spoke English very well. They then arrived back home durin the night one at 230am and the other at 4am who walked into the trashcan and then some girl kept knocking on the door which they ignored. I was about to tell her to take a hint, but I doubted she spoke english either.
The next morning I slept in while mel did some laundry. We went shopping and met the boys for 'breakfast' ie breakfast food at 1. Danny was a struggle bus and declared himself unable to leave his bed until 3pm, so the other 3 of us ate. We shopped/walked around some more and met back up again later to grab dinner/drinks as it was our last night in Amsterdam. We were all over the coffee shop scene there although the air was potent enough in itself. Danny and Jesse did some good face reinactments of danny's euro kick off and explored a bookstore where mel got some good books to finish out the trip. We decided to all go on the pub crawl since it was our last night together. Mel and I had to powerwalk to change to make it back to the starting bar. We are impressive powerwalkers if I do say so myself. We got to the crawl which was absolute craziness though we got our souvenir tshirts which we really wanted. Danny found out that he had been kicked off the pub crawl the night before (the staff remembered him even though he didn't). Good times. We met up with some guys we had met in Berlin which was random and then by the last bar we decided it was time to head back since we wanted to get up early to go to Brussels and then figure out our Chunnel tickets.
Well we walked in on our new slovakian roommate naked under the sheets doing who knows what to himself- joy- and we grabbed amazing burgers and fell asleep. Unsuccessfully waking up in the morning we barely made it out of the room in time for 10am check out. Maybe the pub crawl wasn't the best planning for the night before haha. We got on our train to Brussels fairly easily and minus the giant pack of boy and girl scouts who took over our train it was uneventful. There was about 50 little kids and 2 troop leaders and the kids behind me got in a fist fight and Melanie got hit in the head by a tin foil ball. Luckily we were too tired to yell at the little buggers.
We had bought Chunnel tickets for our orginial date a week later and we tried to switch them even though they said non exchangable and non refundable on them. The lady told us there was nothing we could do but we could buy a new ticket that day instead. Oh wait, all there is left is full fare passes at 280€ each. heck no woman. We decided to head to the actual euro star desk to try our luck there. We walked up and mel spoke saying we had a family issue and had to change our tickets spontaneously. We asked the guy what our options were. He started grilling us, so I just starting talking about who knows what- something like a death in my family and Melanie couldn't travel alone, my mom was booking us flights out of London so we just had to get there somehow.... He asked us for proof, texts, emails and I though for sure we were going to hell. Or worse, Belgium prison. I top secretly texted Lauren to possibly pretend to be mom and gave her the quick details on what she may need to say to the eurostar man so we weren't arrested. He took our eurail passes that proved we had come from Amsterdam that morning and went to talk to his boss. My oh my how things had escalated quickly. He came back finally and said that he believed us and that he was going to put us on the next train leaving to London. But the tickets were sold out and all was left was first class so he waived the €75 fee each and personally signed off with his boss and gave us tickets. Well it was done, no going back, but we both really felt like someone had died at this point and played the somber travelers until we left so that we didn't catch ourselves up and make a mess.
While we waited we sat next to this man who was talking to his friend about his boyfriend's underwear fetish. I think an exact quote was, 'i don't know why he has this underwear fetish when he spends so much time out of them'. Haha love it.
We had to go through customs where again they intensely questioned us about where we were staying, why we were going, what airport we were flying out of. Again there was fibbing going on because customs was right next to the check in counter of the guy who helped us so the story had to continue. Melanie was on the ball with this one cause I about peed myself with nerves. I don't think I answered any of the questions haha. The trip was quick and easy and we took the tube to London bridge (4£!!) and checked into our hostel. We had all girls in our room who were from Greece and were very nice. We watched some Sunday football downstairs, listened to 80's music from a dj since it was a theme night, and then went to bed.
We got up this morning for the walking tour and one of the girls in our room pressed sleep on her phone alarm over 8 times. I almost stomped on it but was getting up anyway. The tour was good- we had a sunny day in London which was nice- and saw buckingh palace, prince charles's house, the horseback guards, big Ben and westminister abbey among other things. I loved the clock tower and westminister- the gothic architecture was gorgeous. I didn't feel well so mel went shopping and I went to rest. We plan on getting authentic fish and chips tonight :). We need to change our ticket for getting to Scotland tomorrow but I think we might just fly by the seat of our pants and deal with it tomorrow at the station because trying to figure it all out through an iPhone/itouch screen is just more of a hassel then it's worth. These tickets we at least know are transferable!
Home in less then 6 days...
Xoxox Karin
The next morning I slept in while mel did some laundry. We went shopping and met the boys for 'breakfast' ie breakfast food at 1. Danny was a struggle bus and declared himself unable to leave his bed until 3pm, so the other 3 of us ate. We shopped/walked around some more and met back up again later to grab dinner/drinks as it was our last night in Amsterdam. We were all over the coffee shop scene there although the air was potent enough in itself. Danny and Jesse did some good face reinactments of danny's euro kick off and explored a bookstore where mel got some good books to finish out the trip. We decided to all go on the pub crawl since it was our last night together. Mel and I had to powerwalk to change to make it back to the starting bar. We are impressive powerwalkers if I do say so myself. We got to the crawl which was absolute craziness though we got our souvenir tshirts which we really wanted. Danny found out that he had been kicked off the pub crawl the night before (the staff remembered him even though he didn't). Good times. We met up with some guys we had met in Berlin which was random and then by the last bar we decided it was time to head back since we wanted to get up early to go to Brussels and then figure out our Chunnel tickets.
Well we walked in on our new slovakian roommate naked under the sheets doing who knows what to himself- joy- and we grabbed amazing burgers and fell asleep. Unsuccessfully waking up in the morning we barely made it out of the room in time for 10am check out. Maybe the pub crawl wasn't the best planning for the night before haha. We got on our train to Brussels fairly easily and minus the giant pack of boy and girl scouts who took over our train it was uneventful. There was about 50 little kids and 2 troop leaders and the kids behind me got in a fist fight and Melanie got hit in the head by a tin foil ball. Luckily we were too tired to yell at the little buggers.
We had bought Chunnel tickets for our orginial date a week later and we tried to switch them even though they said non exchangable and non refundable on them. The lady told us there was nothing we could do but we could buy a new ticket that day instead. Oh wait, all there is left is full fare passes at 280€ each. heck no woman. We decided to head to the actual euro star desk to try our luck there. We walked up and mel spoke saying we had a family issue and had to change our tickets spontaneously. We asked the guy what our options were. He started grilling us, so I just starting talking about who knows what- something like a death in my family and Melanie couldn't travel alone, my mom was booking us flights out of London so we just had to get there somehow.... He asked us for proof, texts, emails and I though for sure we were going to hell. Or worse, Belgium prison. I top secretly texted Lauren to possibly pretend to be mom and gave her the quick details on what she may need to say to the eurostar man so we weren't arrested. He took our eurail passes that proved we had come from Amsterdam that morning and went to talk to his boss. My oh my how things had escalated quickly. He came back finally and said that he believed us and that he was going to put us on the next train leaving to London. But the tickets were sold out and all was left was first class so he waived the €75 fee each and personally signed off with his boss and gave us tickets. Well it was done, no going back, but we both really felt like someone had died at this point and played the somber travelers until we left so that we didn't catch ourselves up and make a mess.
While we waited we sat next to this man who was talking to his friend about his boyfriend's underwear fetish. I think an exact quote was, 'i don't know why he has this underwear fetish when he spends so much time out of them'. Haha love it.
We had to go through customs where again they intensely questioned us about where we were staying, why we were going, what airport we were flying out of. Again there was fibbing going on because customs was right next to the check in counter of the guy who helped us so the story had to continue. Melanie was on the ball with this one cause I about peed myself with nerves. I don't think I answered any of the questions haha. The trip was quick and easy and we took the tube to London bridge (4£!!) and checked into our hostel. We had all girls in our room who were from Greece and were very nice. We watched some Sunday football downstairs, listened to 80's music from a dj since it was a theme night, and then went to bed.
We got up this morning for the walking tour and one of the girls in our room pressed sleep on her phone alarm over 8 times. I almost stomped on it but was getting up anyway. The tour was good- we had a sunny day in London which was nice- and saw buckingh palace, prince charles's house, the horseback guards, big Ben and westminister abbey among other things. I loved the clock tower and westminister- the gothic architecture was gorgeous. I didn't feel well so mel went shopping and I went to rest. We plan on getting authentic fish and chips tonight :). We need to change our ticket for getting to Scotland tomorrow but I think we might just fly by the seat of our pants and deal with it tomorrow at the station because trying to figure it all out through an iPhone/itouch screen is just more of a hassel then it's worth. These tickets we at least know are transferable!
Home in less then 6 days...
Xoxox Karin
Friday, November 13, 2009
Das Boot and Other Adventures
We are in Amsterdam, which at the beginning of the trip seemed like a lifetime away and now we are here! First off, this place is crazy. We just looked down the redlight district and got scared so we decided to wait for the boys!
Let's finish up Berlin first! We went on the 4 hour walking tour with the boys which means inappropriate comments filled the space in between sights, it was so funny. The tour guide was pretty funny, but a little pushy for tips which was a little annoying. He had to keep telling us to walk faster as it was freezing outside!
On the tour we saw a lot of sights, but most of the stories were about how so much of the city was destroyed during the war. It is so sad that so much history was lost... We saw the worlds largest piece of granite which lookes like an amazingly huge bathtub and right up my alley! Apparently Hitler moved it to make more room for the Nazi's and then the Soviets moved it back and dropped it. So now it is no longer the world's biggest piece of granite... It is more like 2 and a half pieces. We saw this huge beautiful elaborate Lutheran Church, which our tour guide (Espin) pointed out was ironic because the Lutheran's didn't like how the Catholics bragged about their riches yet this church was rich in riches!
We loved on to the site of the largest Book Burning during the Nazi time and there was a cool memorial that was set up. There were 20,000 books burnt and since there have been efforts to replace the books. There was a cool Opera House that had been burnt 4 times. After we headed to Checkpoint Charlie. It was very cool to see and see the line of the wall throughout the city. So sad that this ever happened really...
We then made our way to wall. It was really cool, I mean there is not much still standing so you have to have a good imagination to understand how it actually used to look. Our guide explained how different West and East Germany were. How while one sector thrived the other lost money and just kept getting poorer and poorer.
After the wall we headed to Hitler's bunker. It was bombed 8 times and part of it still remains under the ground. The amount of cement used was outrageous. There were meters upon meters of cement throughout the bunker. We all stomped on the ground, and we all commented how ridiculous it is that he came to have so much power. After he took the drugs and simultaneously shot himself, he wanted to be bunrt to pieces so that he would be unrecognizable and no one could find him. Well, that didn't happen, and they identified him by the remaining 6 teeth he had left, apparently he began to grow crazy (as if he already wasn't crazy enough) and started to eat a lot of chocolate cake and get really fat. They found his body and re-burnt it. He deserved everything he got in my opinion... And Kare's too.
Next we walked to the Jewish memorial which is literally less than a block away from his bunker which is weird. And even more horrible is that the Memorial is not marked at all. Our guide told us it was very expensive and the government has promised to make 20 more memorials for the other groups that were exterminated during the war. Yet, they have only made 4. Really sad. The Memorial was really cool. It is up for interpretation what it represents. It's hard to describe but the pictures will help you understand once you see them. It was really cool until a guy on a bike came zooming by and hit Karin on the back of the leg. It was really rude but luckily she only got a scratch and didn't ruin her tights! JERK!
To finish the tour we went to see the Brandenberg Gate which was where the 20th anniversary festivites took place including speeches from Gordon Brown, Hilary Clinton, other foreign Presidents, along with U2, Bon Jovi and... DAVID HASSELHOFF. They are obsessed with him here! And we saw the hotel that crazy Michael Jackson dangled his baby over the balcony... Wow.
We made the walk back to the hostel, rested up and went to eat Chicken. It was sooo good! Then we decided oh, we're tired and we're going to be on a train tomorrow for 7 hours so maybe we can rest up! Well... That didn't happen! We went down to the bar and sang Karaoke and got Boots... aka 2L of Beer. Actually the boys each got one and Kare and I shared... They were sooooo cool! The boys were a disaster, Kare and I sang Backstreet boys and got a wild round of applause afterwards. We hung out with our new roommates, a girl from ASU and this cute gay guy from CU-Boulder! They were so fun. We taught Sydnie the gymnastics finish and Matt was teaching the boys how to say swear words in French... They are both studying abroad in Paris. Kare then fell down the stairs but totally saved the boot! She did stick the landing too! Perfect 10!!! It was so funny!!!! You can sleep when you're dead right?!
The next morning we got up, figured our lives out and ate breakfast. The boys came down and looked like hot messes. Danny doesn't remember half the night... Typical Aussies. And he was all sorts of confused. Jesse had to keep him from peeing in the corner trash can in the room and Jesse said that Danny went to the bathroom and came back naked and wet. Heaven's only knows... Luckily we were downstairs and didn't have to witness that shenanigans!
We headed to the train station and boarded our 7 hour train to Berlin, that was a struggle! Danny kept burping really loudly on the Metro and it was nasty and people were giving him dirty looks. I don't think he was in the right state of mind. Lets just say at the breakfast table he opened his roll and smelled the middle of it and said mmmm smells so good! Such a weird kid. Once we got on the train we couldn't find seat together at a table... We stumbled upon a few single people sitting at the table to themselves and Danny was so mad and yelling about it. It was ridiculous. We finally went 4 cars down and found one and we all just chilled. Kare and Danny watched He's Just Not That Into You. Jesse took a nap and I read. The 7 hours were intense. Mostly passed by laughing at Danny. He is hilarious. We got told the story about some girl he was hitting on at Oktoberfest who apparently was really ugly and my stomach hurt from laughing so hard. Jesse pointed her out to him the next day and she went, Hey Stranger! Jesse said Danny literally jumped back from her. By their faces that apparently look like her I can only imagine... We were laughing way too hard! Danny whipped out two rolls with Nutella that he stole from breakfast at the hostel and ate those in front of everyone which was rude :) Danny and Jesse had to count their change to find money! They're ooc! We played cards, listened to old school music and Danny provided more laughs!
Once we got off the train we headed to our separate hostels and Kare and I went to get this yummy Chinese food then walked around a little bit. Our hostel is in the perfect location, right by the shopping :) We took a glance at the redlight district and it looked too intense so we are waiting on the boys for that. They said they went down there and it was crazy! This city is crazy! Kare and I headed home to bed and reading, we were so tired. Our other two roommates, from the State came in about 4 am and were being so loud. We were soooo mad. Luckily they are out and hopefully we don't have any roommates tonight! But I doubt it.
This morning we woke up and headed to breakfast, we were greeted by the crazy girl who was singing and yelling and was making us exhausted just by looking at her! Then I went to the post office to mail back some gifts that were really heavy and other stuff I don't need for the remainder of the trip and we went to meet the boys.
Our first stop was the Anne Frank House. It was very heavy and deep. It is her real house and it was so interesting. Kare and I want to re-read the book not that we have seen it. We were going to ride bikes today but decided due to the rain it wasn't a good idea. I am realyl bad at bike riding to begin with as I almost wiped out in front of Tony Romo in our neighborhood and almost embarassed my brother :) We walked through a few more shopping places... We went into the mall and the boys were like, hanging out in the mall with two girls that love to shop... Oh good. :) We didn't stay too long anyways...
Now we are just resting, showering and then off to the pub crawl... This whole town is a little dodgy at night so we're sticking with the boys. Then tomorrow we are going to just chill, maybe check out the Van Gogh museum and call it a day. Amsterdam is pretty cheap so we figure we'll finish up our gift shopping here!
We miss you all so much... Only a few days left. We're sad our time is winding down here but ready to head back to the States, rest up and then come back here again in the summer :) Who's in?!?! :o)
Love and Hugs
xoxo Melanie
Let's finish up Berlin first! We went on the 4 hour walking tour with the boys which means inappropriate comments filled the space in between sights, it was so funny. The tour guide was pretty funny, but a little pushy for tips which was a little annoying. He had to keep telling us to walk faster as it was freezing outside!
On the tour we saw a lot of sights, but most of the stories were about how so much of the city was destroyed during the war. It is so sad that so much history was lost... We saw the worlds largest piece of granite which lookes like an amazingly huge bathtub and right up my alley! Apparently Hitler moved it to make more room for the Nazi's and then the Soviets moved it back and dropped it. So now it is no longer the world's biggest piece of granite... It is more like 2 and a half pieces. We saw this huge beautiful elaborate Lutheran Church, which our tour guide (Espin) pointed out was ironic because the Lutheran's didn't like how the Catholics bragged about their riches yet this church was rich in riches!
We loved on to the site of the largest Book Burning during the Nazi time and there was a cool memorial that was set up. There were 20,000 books burnt and since there have been efforts to replace the books. There was a cool Opera House that had been burnt 4 times. After we headed to Checkpoint Charlie. It was very cool to see and see the line of the wall throughout the city. So sad that this ever happened really...
We then made our way to wall. It was really cool, I mean there is not much still standing so you have to have a good imagination to understand how it actually used to look. Our guide explained how different West and East Germany were. How while one sector thrived the other lost money and just kept getting poorer and poorer.
After the wall we headed to Hitler's bunker. It was bombed 8 times and part of it still remains under the ground. The amount of cement used was outrageous. There were meters upon meters of cement throughout the bunker. We all stomped on the ground, and we all commented how ridiculous it is that he came to have so much power. After he took the drugs and simultaneously shot himself, he wanted to be bunrt to pieces so that he would be unrecognizable and no one could find him. Well, that didn't happen, and they identified him by the remaining 6 teeth he had left, apparently he began to grow crazy (as if he already wasn't crazy enough) and started to eat a lot of chocolate cake and get really fat. They found his body and re-burnt it. He deserved everything he got in my opinion... And Kare's too.
Next we walked to the Jewish memorial which is literally less than a block away from his bunker which is weird. And even more horrible is that the Memorial is not marked at all. Our guide told us it was very expensive and the government has promised to make 20 more memorials for the other groups that were exterminated during the war. Yet, they have only made 4. Really sad. The Memorial was really cool. It is up for interpretation what it represents. It's hard to describe but the pictures will help you understand once you see them. It was really cool until a guy on a bike came zooming by and hit Karin on the back of the leg. It was really rude but luckily she only got a scratch and didn't ruin her tights! JERK!
To finish the tour we went to see the Brandenberg Gate which was where the 20th anniversary festivites took place including speeches from Gordon Brown, Hilary Clinton, other foreign Presidents, along with U2, Bon Jovi and... DAVID HASSELHOFF. They are obsessed with him here! And we saw the hotel that crazy Michael Jackson dangled his baby over the balcony... Wow.
We made the walk back to the hostel, rested up and went to eat Chicken. It was sooo good! Then we decided oh, we're tired and we're going to be on a train tomorrow for 7 hours so maybe we can rest up! Well... That didn't happen! We went down to the bar and sang Karaoke and got Boots... aka 2L of Beer. Actually the boys each got one and Kare and I shared... They were sooooo cool! The boys were a disaster, Kare and I sang Backstreet boys and got a wild round of applause afterwards. We hung out with our new roommates, a girl from ASU and this cute gay guy from CU-Boulder! They were so fun. We taught Sydnie the gymnastics finish and Matt was teaching the boys how to say swear words in French... They are both studying abroad in Paris. Kare then fell down the stairs but totally saved the boot! She did stick the landing too! Perfect 10!!! It was so funny!!!! You can sleep when you're dead right?!
The next morning we got up, figured our lives out and ate breakfast. The boys came down and looked like hot messes. Danny doesn't remember half the night... Typical Aussies. And he was all sorts of confused. Jesse had to keep him from peeing in the corner trash can in the room and Jesse said that Danny went to the bathroom and came back naked and wet. Heaven's only knows... Luckily we were downstairs and didn't have to witness that shenanigans!
We headed to the train station and boarded our 7 hour train to Berlin, that was a struggle! Danny kept burping really loudly on the Metro and it was nasty and people were giving him dirty looks. I don't think he was in the right state of mind. Lets just say at the breakfast table he opened his roll and smelled the middle of it and said mmmm smells so good! Such a weird kid. Once we got on the train we couldn't find seat together at a table... We stumbled upon a few single people sitting at the table to themselves and Danny was so mad and yelling about it. It was ridiculous. We finally went 4 cars down and found one and we all just chilled. Kare and Danny watched He's Just Not That Into You. Jesse took a nap and I read. The 7 hours were intense. Mostly passed by laughing at Danny. He is hilarious. We got told the story about some girl he was hitting on at Oktoberfest who apparently was really ugly and my stomach hurt from laughing so hard. Jesse pointed her out to him the next day and she went, Hey Stranger! Jesse said Danny literally jumped back from her. By their faces that apparently look like her I can only imagine... We were laughing way too hard! Danny whipped out two rolls with Nutella that he stole from breakfast at the hostel and ate those in front of everyone which was rude :) Danny and Jesse had to count their change to find money! They're ooc! We played cards, listened to old school music and Danny provided more laughs!
Once we got off the train we headed to our separate hostels and Kare and I went to get this yummy Chinese food then walked around a little bit. Our hostel is in the perfect location, right by the shopping :) We took a glance at the redlight district and it looked too intense so we are waiting on the boys for that. They said they went down there and it was crazy! This city is crazy! Kare and I headed home to bed and reading, we were so tired. Our other two roommates, from the State came in about 4 am and were being so loud. We were soooo mad. Luckily they are out and hopefully we don't have any roommates tonight! But I doubt it.
This morning we woke up and headed to breakfast, we were greeted by the crazy girl who was singing and yelling and was making us exhausted just by looking at her! Then I went to the post office to mail back some gifts that were really heavy and other stuff I don't need for the remainder of the trip and we went to meet the boys.
Our first stop was the Anne Frank House. It was very heavy and deep. It is her real house and it was so interesting. Kare and I want to re-read the book not that we have seen it. We were going to ride bikes today but decided due to the rain it wasn't a good idea. I am realyl bad at bike riding to begin with as I almost wiped out in front of Tony Romo in our neighborhood and almost embarassed my brother :) We walked through a few more shopping places... We went into the mall and the boys were like, hanging out in the mall with two girls that love to shop... Oh good. :) We didn't stay too long anyways...
Now we are just resting, showering and then off to the pub crawl... This whole town is a little dodgy at night so we're sticking with the boys. Then tomorrow we are going to just chill, maybe check out the Van Gogh museum and call it a day. Amsterdam is pretty cheap so we figure we'll finish up our gift shopping here!
We miss you all so much... Only a few days left. We're sad our time is winding down here but ready to head back to the States, rest up and then come back here again in the summer :) Who's in?!?! :o)
Love and Hugs
xoxo Melanie
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Rollerblading? Check!
Yay we are back in Germany where we at least know how to say hi, bye, thank you and please! That´s a big improvement from Czech!
So, I´m going to finish up Prague and add a few new details we keep forgetting...
The night of our pubcrawl that we created ourselves with the boys we went home on the night train... Well there were a few gypsies who were dancing to Karin´s iPod and apparently were touching the boya trying to get them to take their hands out of their pockets and in turn steal their wallets... We didn´t realize this until after we got off and the boys told us! We are a little naive at times apparently...
Yesterday morning we got up and packed our things and headed into town. We went to the Castle which was really cool, but the lines were long and cost money that we would rather spend on boots so we decided to just take some sweet pictures and keep it moving! Then we headed down to the Jewish Cemetary and the Jewish Museum. There were 77,000 Czech Jews killed in the Holocaust and the Museum has each name written on the walls which is cool. Apparently the Museum was bombed bz Neo-Nazi´s so all the names were gone but luckily someone had kept record of it. The Museum also holds drawings from children at a concentration camp. A woman went underground and asked these children that were extremely depressed to draw pictures of how they are feeling. Remarkably the kids all drew pictures of hope and the lives they wanted to live outside of the camps. Unfortunatley the children and the woman were exterminated at Auschwitz and this is the ONLY record of these children ever existing. It´s a heart wrenching story really. Luckily this woman buried the pictures before they left for Auschwitz and that is why the pictures still exist today.
After visiting both of those places, we headed to Bohemia Bagel which we were obsessed with and wrote our postcards and warmed up before heading out to find shoes for Kare and a Marinett for me for my precious Abigal Leigh Marie Johnston. We stumbled upon these deserts that they were baking in the middle of the town square and they were amazing! We found the perfect Marinet for Abby which I think I am going to have to ship home along with other Christmas presents I have purchased! Then Kare and I walked a while looking for shoes, I tried on a pair that I had to pry my hands off of. Kare told me they were the cutest part of me... hahaha! Unfortunately I didn´t get them, but if I find them in Amsterdam they are purchased. Kare found some amazing ones too! But they were on the higher side of expensive so we both passed. We found this little store that had a cheaper nice pair for her but their customer service was severely lacking. After 10 plus minutes we got the shoes and headed back to get another yummy desert... Okay they are cooked on this round rolling pin over the fire and they have sugar and yummy stuff on them! I cant describe it!
Then we went back to the hostel, checked the internet and headed to the train station. It was perfect! We got on the train after spending the rest of our Crowns... We found this trailmix, chocolate covered nut and dried fruit stand. And just kept adding things so we could get rid of all our change. :)
Once we got on the train we read for a little while and then I passed out. We were both so tired, I even woke up to a little drool on my face and luckily I had my eyes closed while sleeping. I tend to sleep with them open but luckily Kare always closes them for me! I woke up to an empty train and Kare had apparently been messing with my scarf getting a sticker off of it and I didn´t even flinch! haha
We got off the train 4 and a half hours later. We got a little confused and proceeded to got up and down the escalator a few times all the while laughing at ourselves! Then we took the s-bahn to the u-bahn to the hostel and checked in. The hostel is really nice and then we headed to downstairs to the bar. Got a nice drink and met some people.
They are obsessed with David Hasselhoff here, they even have a shrine to him! So great! Then I spotted the Eddie Murphy circa 1990 and Kare cracked up at me because it is Snoop Dogg! Hey! I listen to Country, it was dark in there and I was still tired! We met this character from Jersey who lives in Amsterdam. Quite the character! Then we headed up to bed. It was really nice to sleep in... kind of. There is some sort of construction going on outside our hostel which is really annoying! Just our luck!
We woke up this morning, got some Orange Juice, which is our lifeline... Now we are heading to a 3 hour walking tour with Jesse and Danny. Who are apparently on our train tomorrow to Amsterdam. They loves us :) Of course they were on a bar crawl last night when we got it! hahaha!
Oh and our hostel is really clean, I think it has a lot to do with the Lurch look-a-like that was cleaning our rooms earlier. He has an intense shopper vac attached to him and I think he is doing quite a fine job myself! :)
Well off to the tour, its Karaoke night in the bar downstairs tonight so I think we might have to fulfill our destiny and do it! And we are planning on renting rollerblades for an hour tomorrow just to say we did it! We might have a few scars to prove it too! Two gymnasts on rollerblades? Uh oh!
Loves and Hugs
xoxo Melanie!
So, I´m going to finish up Prague and add a few new details we keep forgetting...
The night of our pubcrawl that we created ourselves with the boys we went home on the night train... Well there were a few gypsies who were dancing to Karin´s iPod and apparently were touching the boya trying to get them to take their hands out of their pockets and in turn steal their wallets... We didn´t realize this until after we got off and the boys told us! We are a little naive at times apparently...
Yesterday morning we got up and packed our things and headed into town. We went to the Castle which was really cool, but the lines were long and cost money that we would rather spend on boots so we decided to just take some sweet pictures and keep it moving! Then we headed down to the Jewish Cemetary and the Jewish Museum. There were 77,000 Czech Jews killed in the Holocaust and the Museum has each name written on the walls which is cool. Apparently the Museum was bombed bz Neo-Nazi´s so all the names were gone but luckily someone had kept record of it. The Museum also holds drawings from children at a concentration camp. A woman went underground and asked these children that were extremely depressed to draw pictures of how they are feeling. Remarkably the kids all drew pictures of hope and the lives they wanted to live outside of the camps. Unfortunatley the children and the woman were exterminated at Auschwitz and this is the ONLY record of these children ever existing. It´s a heart wrenching story really. Luckily this woman buried the pictures before they left for Auschwitz and that is why the pictures still exist today.
After visiting both of those places, we headed to Bohemia Bagel which we were obsessed with and wrote our postcards and warmed up before heading out to find shoes for Kare and a Marinett for me for my precious Abigal Leigh Marie Johnston. We stumbled upon these deserts that they were baking in the middle of the town square and they were amazing! We found the perfect Marinet for Abby which I think I am going to have to ship home along with other Christmas presents I have purchased! Then Kare and I walked a while looking for shoes, I tried on a pair that I had to pry my hands off of. Kare told me they were the cutest part of me... hahaha! Unfortunately I didn´t get them, but if I find them in Amsterdam they are purchased. Kare found some amazing ones too! But they were on the higher side of expensive so we both passed. We found this little store that had a cheaper nice pair for her but their customer service was severely lacking. After 10 plus minutes we got the shoes and headed back to get another yummy desert... Okay they are cooked on this round rolling pin over the fire and they have sugar and yummy stuff on them! I cant describe it!
Then we went back to the hostel, checked the internet and headed to the train station. It was perfect! We got on the train after spending the rest of our Crowns... We found this trailmix, chocolate covered nut and dried fruit stand. And just kept adding things so we could get rid of all our change. :)
Once we got on the train we read for a little while and then I passed out. We were both so tired, I even woke up to a little drool on my face and luckily I had my eyes closed while sleeping. I tend to sleep with them open but luckily Kare always closes them for me! I woke up to an empty train and Kare had apparently been messing with my scarf getting a sticker off of it and I didn´t even flinch! haha
We got off the train 4 and a half hours later. We got a little confused and proceeded to got up and down the escalator a few times all the while laughing at ourselves! Then we took the s-bahn to the u-bahn to the hostel and checked in. The hostel is really nice and then we headed to downstairs to the bar. Got a nice drink and met some people.
They are obsessed with David Hasselhoff here, they even have a shrine to him! So great! Then I spotted the Eddie Murphy circa 1990 and Kare cracked up at me because it is Snoop Dogg! Hey! I listen to Country, it was dark in there and I was still tired! We met this character from Jersey who lives in Amsterdam. Quite the character! Then we headed up to bed. It was really nice to sleep in... kind of. There is some sort of construction going on outside our hostel which is really annoying! Just our luck!
We woke up this morning, got some Orange Juice, which is our lifeline... Now we are heading to a 3 hour walking tour with Jesse and Danny. Who are apparently on our train tomorrow to Amsterdam. They loves us :) Of course they were on a bar crawl last night when we got it! hahaha!
Oh and our hostel is really clean, I think it has a lot to do with the Lurch look-a-like that was cleaning our rooms earlier. He has an intense shopper vac attached to him and I think he is doing quite a fine job myself! :)
Well off to the tour, its Karaoke night in the bar downstairs tonight so I think we might have to fulfill our destiny and do it! And we are planning on renting rollerblades for an hour tomorrow just to say we did it! We might have a few scars to prove it too! Two gymnasts on rollerblades? Uh oh!
Loves and Hugs
xoxo Melanie!
Monday, November 9, 2009
less then 2 weeks left...
so like good little girls we did manage to not go out on saturday
night. im pretty sure i slept like a log- something about 11hrs or so.
so worth it. we woke up the boys- nik danny and jesse because steve
decided it was too early and he couldn't make it- and we headed to the
walking tour in the center of prague. our tour guide was a super peppy
british girl named ruth aka root in czech. she shouted, hopped and
leaped around and the tour was quite good. we saw the famous
astrological clock, the male and female towers in the main square, saw
the jewish cemetary where ppl were buried 12 deep in places,
cathedrals where the virgin mary statue apparently came to life and
grabbed a theif's hand and they had to cut his arm off to get him out
(the arm which they now have mummified inside the church) among many
other things. there was also a really interesting story about how when
the germans invaded the czechs banded together and tore down all the
road signs as well as started calling every city the same name to
confuse troops. the germans did eventually find prague but it took
them almost a week due to being so lost. pretty ingenious.
it was absolutely freezing outside; it may have even flurried a bit.
jesse, danny's canadian friend, hadn't brought a coat and was
absolutely shivering his life away. i cant believe he survived haha.
after the tour the boys went back to the hostel to warm up and use the
sauna while we shopped around a little more and got some good gifts!
melanie even finally found her dream jacket which she was pumped
about. we headed back to the tram being sure to buy tickets-
apparently the czech police are super hardcore about "czech"ing for
them and they are NOT lookers like our foxy ones from greece.
we changed and headed out to dinner with the whole crew of me mel
danny steve jesse and nik. we ate in this really cute local restaurant
which was a closed in garage and they gave us ikea blankets to keep
warm if we needed it. mel had some delish pizza (with vinegar of
course) and i tried traditional goulash which was super good. the
group of us went out to a couple pubs and got drinks and around 10pm
danny and jesse took off for their 12am-5am bus to berlin. we weren't
too sad because we are staying with them in the circus hostel once we
arrive there as well :) we met up with trent and did a bit of pub
hopping resulting in a great night. at one point i convinced a group
of guys that i was czech but i spoke fluent english with a british
accent. idk how this worked out because my accent is way dodgey. the
best part was that the one guy said, "oh wow, youre the second czech
girl i met who speaks british english" hahah what a wanker.
bedtime then it was. the next morning nik and us headed to the bone
church which was about a hour train ride away. despite the amazing
hairdos mel and i sported (ill tell a quick story about that at the
end) and the compartment in the train a man tried to suffocate us out
of with phx style heating we made it to kunta mora. the church was
really eerie covered in parts of human bodies that had been exhumed
when the plagued killed more people then there was graveyard space
for. they took out about 40,000 old bodies and a blind monk put them
in his church. they are now in pyramids, giant chalices, wall
decorations all using bits and pieces of the skeleton. a huge
chandelier was a focus point because it contained at least 1 of each
bone of the entire body. the jaw bone linked decor was a bit much so
after disturbing ourselves enough we headed home.
we had planned to meet steve and trent for a opera at 7 but the only
thing playing on a monday was an orchestra concert. steve and his
friend had to go to a work meeting for the hard rock and the rest of
us manned up for the main event. the performers were a quartet quite amazing. nik thinks he might have even seen melanie cry. its was super quiet during the songs so you could hear a pin drop- but then as soon as there was a break it was a hacking cough fest. funny to listen to because we did not know what to expect. i asked melanie if another band was coming on which she cracked up about. she knew what i meant, whatever. we asked an old man to take our picture as we left (at what mightve been intermission, we couldn't read the pamphlet) and we think it mightve been the first digital camera he had ever seen. he put his face against the screen and couldn't find the button to make it work. it was quite interesting but it turned out to be a good shot. we stopped at trents favorite bar by his hostel called P.U.B. where there are taps at each table and it keeps track of how many liters you drink so you don't need to go to the bar at all. it was a really cool place-melanie thinks rudy should open one in the states :)
we were tired and headed back to get some stuff put together for our last night before we leave for berlin tomorrow. we are being extra cautious about our stuff because trent told us how a man followed him into his hostel room and he thought it was a new roommate. he left and went to get food and when he got back the man had drilled out all the locks from the lockers, gone through everyones stuff and stole his one roommates entire bag. he was really lucky and all his stuff was in random pockets that the theif didn't get to but still...scary for sure.
we are planning on doing our own little castle tour tomorrow morning and then grabbing postcards, lunch take away and picking up the beer crawl tshirts we still have yet to get. nik might be joining us on this stuff and our train to berlin. we enjoy our girl travel time but always nice to have one more i suppose. as for our scary hair this morning, mel and i were talking about how gross it is traveling in europe. our standards for "clean" have drastically dropped. we counted and with only 2 laundry trip and a running total of 9-11 showers for the whole trip so far we are definitely dirty girls. cant say how much i appreciate a house with your own shower...that doesn't flood (the one here does), has hot water, isn't dirty and isn't shared by 1million other dirty travelers.
we are excited that arizona football is doing so well and hope everyone had a crazy homecoming- we saw some pictures that looked like a good time. we will be there to throw down next year. the eagles lost to the cowboys who are terrible which is lame but i guess the phillies being in the world series ill take what i can get. going to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall tomorrow since the official day was yesterday. the boys have almost our same travel plans (ending in london though) so we may never get rid of them ;) new roomie tonight...45yr old welsh man...has a mullet and a stutter. excellent.
miss you all and love from prague
Karin
night. im pretty sure i slept like a log- something about 11hrs or so.
so worth it. we woke up the boys- nik danny and jesse because steve
decided it was too early and he couldn't make it- and we headed to the
walking tour in the center of prague. our tour guide was a super peppy
british girl named ruth aka root in czech. she shouted, hopped and
leaped around and the tour was quite good. we saw the famous
astrological clock, the male and female towers in the main square, saw
the jewish cemetary where ppl were buried 12 deep in places,
cathedrals where the virgin mary statue apparently came to life and
grabbed a theif's hand and they had to cut his arm off to get him out
(the arm which they now have mummified inside the church) among many
other things. there was also a really interesting story about how when
the germans invaded the czechs banded together and tore down all the
road signs as well as started calling every city the same name to
confuse troops. the germans did eventually find prague but it took
them almost a week due to being so lost. pretty ingenious.
it was absolutely freezing outside; it may have even flurried a bit.
jesse, danny's canadian friend, hadn't brought a coat and was
absolutely shivering his life away. i cant believe he survived haha.
after the tour the boys went back to the hostel to warm up and use the
sauna while we shopped around a little more and got some good gifts!
melanie even finally found her dream jacket which she was pumped
about. we headed back to the tram being sure to buy tickets-
apparently the czech police are super hardcore about "czech"ing for
them and they are NOT lookers like our foxy ones from greece.
we changed and headed out to dinner with the whole crew of me mel
danny steve jesse and nik. we ate in this really cute local restaurant
which was a closed in garage and they gave us ikea blankets to keep
warm if we needed it. mel had some delish pizza (with vinegar of
course) and i tried traditional goulash which was super good. the
group of us went out to a couple pubs and got drinks and around 10pm
danny and jesse took off for their 12am-5am bus to berlin. we weren't
too sad because we are staying with them in the circus hostel once we
arrive there as well :) we met up with trent and did a bit of pub
hopping resulting in a great night. at one point i convinced a group
of guys that i was czech but i spoke fluent english with a british
accent. idk how this worked out because my accent is way dodgey. the
best part was that the one guy said, "oh wow, youre the second czech
girl i met who speaks british english" hahah what a wanker.
bedtime then it was. the next morning nik and us headed to the bone
church which was about a hour train ride away. despite the amazing
hairdos mel and i sported (ill tell a quick story about that at the
end) and the compartment in the train a man tried to suffocate us out
of with phx style heating we made it to kunta mora. the church was
really eerie covered in parts of human bodies that had been exhumed
when the plagued killed more people then there was graveyard space
for. they took out about 40,000 old bodies and a blind monk put them
in his church. they are now in pyramids, giant chalices, wall
decorations all using bits and pieces of the skeleton. a huge
chandelier was a focus point because it contained at least 1 of each
bone of the entire body. the jaw bone linked decor was a bit much so
after disturbing ourselves enough we headed home.
we had planned to meet steve and trent for a opera at 7 but the only
thing playing on a monday was an orchestra concert. steve and his
friend had to go to a work meeting for the hard rock and the rest of
us manned up for the main event. the performers were a quartet quite amazing. nik thinks he might have even seen melanie cry. its was super quiet during the songs so you could hear a pin drop- but then as soon as there was a break it was a hacking cough fest. funny to listen to because we did not know what to expect. i asked melanie if another band was coming on which she cracked up about. she knew what i meant, whatever. we asked an old man to take our picture as we left (at what mightve been intermission, we couldn't read the pamphlet) and we think it mightve been the first digital camera he had ever seen. he put his face against the screen and couldn't find the button to make it work. it was quite interesting but it turned out to be a good shot. we stopped at trents favorite bar by his hostel called P.U.B. where there are taps at each table and it keeps track of how many liters you drink so you don't need to go to the bar at all. it was a really cool place-melanie thinks rudy should open one in the states :)
we were tired and headed back to get some stuff put together for our last night before we leave for berlin tomorrow. we are being extra cautious about our stuff because trent told us how a man followed him into his hostel room and he thought it was a new roommate. he left and went to get food and when he got back the man had drilled out all the locks from the lockers, gone through everyones stuff and stole his one roommates entire bag. he was really lucky and all his stuff was in random pockets that the theif didn't get to but still...scary for sure.
we are planning on doing our own little castle tour tomorrow morning and then grabbing postcards, lunch take away and picking up the beer crawl tshirts we still have yet to get. nik might be joining us on this stuff and our train to berlin. we enjoy our girl travel time but always nice to have one more i suppose. as for our scary hair this morning, mel and i were talking about how gross it is traveling in europe. our standards for "clean" have drastically dropped. we counted and with only 2 laundry trip and a running total of 9-11 showers for the whole trip so far we are definitely dirty girls. cant say how much i appreciate a house with your own shower...that doesn't flood (the one here does), has hot water, isn't dirty and isn't shared by 1million other dirty travelers.
we are excited that arizona football is doing so well and hope everyone had a crazy homecoming- we saw some pictures that looked like a good time. we will be there to throw down next year. the eagles lost to the cowboys who are terrible which is lame but i guess the phillies being in the world series ill take what i can get. going to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall tomorrow since the official day was yesterday. the boys have almost our same travel plans (ending in london though) so we may never get rid of them ;) new roomie tonight...45yr old welsh man...has a mullet and a stutter. excellent.
miss you all and love from prague
Karin
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Cold Mexican food is better than no Mexican food!!!
Hey! So first off, Prague is amazing. It is chilly but really not too bad. But I want to finish up on Vienna...
We went and ate sushi at the place the hostel recommended. But being the brillant travelers that we are we forgot a map and really had no idea about the directions except that we needed to take the Metro. It was quite an experience getting there. After asking a few German speakers, we asked the train operaters and they pointed it out to us. After getting off at the stop we asked again about where to go and some nice man pointed us in the right direction and away we went. Of course we didn't listen to the directions well enough and walked about 20 minutes out of our way. It was quite entertaining. Once we finally got to the restaurant we order the Sushi Special for 2 and one of their special rolls... The waiter made the comment that we must be hungry... Always hungry for sushi! So we enjoyed every bite of it and the special roll had crushed up hazelnuts in the sushi. It was very.... Interesting to say the least. It was good, just a little bit of crushed up hazelnut with raw fish goes a long way... :)
We headed back to our hostel and checked the internet a bit more and settled in for a night of reading and our new Asian roommates came back and lets just say I had to pretend having a coughing attack to cover up my laughter. One of the girls after washing her face was literally slapping her face with lotion. And not one or two times... More like one or two hundred times. It was the most ridiculous thing I have seen!!!!! Karin and I both almost lost it. We went to bed and were so tired so we wanted to sleep in a little bit. Well that went out the window when they were going through all their bags, and unzipping every zipper at 7 am. They also were special olympics with the door and it would make the absolute MOST noise as possible! It was so obnoxious... We were really angry and it really put our day off to a bad start. Next we headed to the train station and got on a train headed towards Prague! There was a stag party aka a bachelors party that was on our train and were skulling or chugging their beers at 10 am. It was awesome!
Once we found our seats on the ghetto fabulous train we were on I realized I left my necklace hanging on the bed post at the hostel, which really helped the mood I was in. I called my mom and the my bestest Courtney and Court took care of it! Thank goodness. We had to sit on our train listening to the snoring man ahead of us that we alsmost threw a shoe at, and finally arrived in Prague, a mere 4 hours and 2 headaches later!
We were greated with beautiful churches and equally as beautiful Australian men :) After the Asian fiasco combined with our crazy Kenyan story and adding in our always hot roommates we decided that we were not going to stay in an all girls dorm and rather stay in the mixed dorm. Boys are way more fun and they sleep in so we don't have to be worried about being woken up in the morning!
Once we met our new Australian roommates we all sat around and talked which lead to us talking about Matty, Sam and Pickle. Nik, one of our new Aussie roomies, goes omg, Pickles? They are out of control! He said they got in a knife fight at this hostel the other night and their blood splatter remains. We were like, yep that's our boys! Hahaha, they are disasters. Danny, Steve and Nik talked us into doing a bar crawl which they had done the last 4 nights. Hahaha so intense.
We decided if we were bar crawling we needed to go do a little more shopping. We litterally caught the metro to the shopping area, went in 3 stores in a matter of 35 minutes and came away with a new sweater for kare and a pair of boots for me. We felt VERY european holding our C&A and Marks and Spencer bags. Which are big deals here and in all the british books we have been reading through the book exchange at hostels. We made it back to our hostel dressed in our European outfits and headed to meet the boys that were waiting for us. Nik, was working on the pub crawl which means nothing except that he drinks for free and gets to hang out :) Sounds like a legit travelers job.
Kare and I met the boys by the Astronomical Clock and the scene was amazing! We didnt have time for pictures but we plan on going back there for dinner tomorrow night. We met the boys and headed to the first bar which was full I mean FULL of people. Apparently there were 60 American girls that had reserved ahead but I don't think I knew which ones they were, or really cared! :) We went to a few more bars, one was Vegas-esque. It was SO HOT in there! The boys bought this ridiculous tub of run with 10 straws hanging out which was a sight to see. It was so funny! Don't worry we have pictures!
We met these two girls who Kare became friends with and they told her I was giving them dirty looks, they were interupting my conversation with the cute Aussie, and Kare told them I just have that look that looks mean even if its not! hahaha! And then in front of them she said I told them you aren't a bitch and they are like no no we didn't say that... It was funny. They were nice girls though!
It was a great night! So much fun and definitely love the Aussies, they are like American boys but hotter, more fun and not as arrogant. Of course I pick the most arrogant ones! Haahahaha Oh and we also met this kid from ASU who of course we had to talk smack to about everything. Bottom line: ASU sucks. He was annoying in true Scum Devil fashion!!!! And we met a cutie named Trent--- which we have decided is a hot name and we plan on seeing him and his friends tomorrow at some point.
Today we hung out, ate the free breakfast at the hostel or hostels :) Inside joke... And then we headed to get more post card stamps and do some more shopping. We have a running list of things we need of course. We found a cool Prague gift store and got some good Christmas gifts! Then I found another pair of boots, Kare got the coat she has been dying for and few other necessitys like Purple and Navy leggins for me and some gray leggings for Kare!
When we got back to our rooms the boys were still sleeping and we had yet to find Nik. (Don't worry I just saw him playing pool.) Kare and I headed to this Mexican food restaurant that we had had our eye on! We were sooooo excited!We got an appetizer of chips and salsa... It was a spoonful of decent salsa and a spoon of cold nacho cheese, but tasted perfect to us! We also ordered the burrito each which was good, cold, which made us to believe it was originally frozen... Hahaha! Funny. Anyways it ended up being only 12 Euro for a big entree, an appetizer, 2 waters and an apple juice! Prague is so cheap!
It seems like the boys are heading to the pub crawl again... I think Kare and I will sit this one out. We were trying to figure out how they can drink all night til 10 am... Yes 10 is the approximate time of arrival back at the hostel. But since they sleep all day that is why! We are taking the walking tour tomorrow, to which Danny said "Oh yeah, I wanted to do that. I feel like such a failure, I've been in Prague for 10 days and havent seen the Castle, done the tour, or gone to the Bone Church." But as he pointed out, he has seen ALL the clubs here! Haha oh boys.
We called the girls at Homecoming tonight... It was so good to hear their voices and the news of Schellys engagement!!! CONGRATS! Bill rushed us off the phone, i'm not sure he realized it was us, but oh well! We talked to Rach, Eea, Lex of course, and Schelly! To all of you we missed, we love and miss you all!
I am watching the live updates of the K-State/KU game.... EMAW!!! and we're going to keep tabs on the U of A game! Tomorrow is the walking tour, reuniting with Trent and then who knows! We get a free shirt for our pub crawl which is super awesome! Out clothes have seen better days, but we have decided that since we are wearing them all day and sometimes to bed, we have gotten our goody out of most of them. The sweater that Karin dyed Seafoam Green has been tossed and I am sure more stuff will continue to go by the wayside! A shirt of mine that was originally bright yellow, turned an odd shad of green after the first wash then I passed it to Karin and then when the blue washing shenanigans happened it brightened it to a new color! Hahahaha. Oh the joys of traveling!
We love and miss everyone so much! I can't believe we are going to be in Berlin for the 20th Anniversary. Cool beans!!!I also can't believe that we are 2 weeks from being home, and we have 5 more cities to see! Whew we are going to be tired!!
Loves and Hugs!
Melanie
We went and ate sushi at the place the hostel recommended. But being the brillant travelers that we are we forgot a map and really had no idea about the directions except that we needed to take the Metro. It was quite an experience getting there. After asking a few German speakers, we asked the train operaters and they pointed it out to us. After getting off at the stop we asked again about where to go and some nice man pointed us in the right direction and away we went. Of course we didn't listen to the directions well enough and walked about 20 minutes out of our way. It was quite entertaining. Once we finally got to the restaurant we order the Sushi Special for 2 and one of their special rolls... The waiter made the comment that we must be hungry... Always hungry for sushi! So we enjoyed every bite of it and the special roll had crushed up hazelnuts in the sushi. It was very.... Interesting to say the least. It was good, just a little bit of crushed up hazelnut with raw fish goes a long way... :)
We headed back to our hostel and checked the internet a bit more and settled in for a night of reading and our new Asian roommates came back and lets just say I had to pretend having a coughing attack to cover up my laughter. One of the girls after washing her face was literally slapping her face with lotion. And not one or two times... More like one or two hundred times. It was the most ridiculous thing I have seen!!!!! Karin and I both almost lost it. We went to bed and were so tired so we wanted to sleep in a little bit. Well that went out the window when they were going through all their bags, and unzipping every zipper at 7 am. They also were special olympics with the door and it would make the absolute MOST noise as possible! It was so obnoxious... We were really angry and it really put our day off to a bad start. Next we headed to the train station and got on a train headed towards Prague! There was a stag party aka a bachelors party that was on our train and were skulling or chugging their beers at 10 am. It was awesome!
Once we found our seats on the ghetto fabulous train we were on I realized I left my necklace hanging on the bed post at the hostel, which really helped the mood I was in. I called my mom and the my bestest Courtney and Court took care of it! Thank goodness. We had to sit on our train listening to the snoring man ahead of us that we alsmost threw a shoe at, and finally arrived in Prague, a mere 4 hours and 2 headaches later!
We were greated with beautiful churches and equally as beautiful Australian men :) After the Asian fiasco combined with our crazy Kenyan story and adding in our always hot roommates we decided that we were not going to stay in an all girls dorm and rather stay in the mixed dorm. Boys are way more fun and they sleep in so we don't have to be worried about being woken up in the morning!
Once we met our new Australian roommates we all sat around and talked which lead to us talking about Matty, Sam and Pickle. Nik, one of our new Aussie roomies, goes omg, Pickles? They are out of control! He said they got in a knife fight at this hostel the other night and their blood splatter remains. We were like, yep that's our boys! Hahaha, they are disasters. Danny, Steve and Nik talked us into doing a bar crawl which they had done the last 4 nights. Hahaha so intense.
We decided if we were bar crawling we needed to go do a little more shopping. We litterally caught the metro to the shopping area, went in 3 stores in a matter of 35 minutes and came away with a new sweater for kare and a pair of boots for me. We felt VERY european holding our C&A and Marks and Spencer bags. Which are big deals here and in all the british books we have been reading through the book exchange at hostels. We made it back to our hostel dressed in our European outfits and headed to meet the boys that were waiting for us. Nik, was working on the pub crawl which means nothing except that he drinks for free and gets to hang out :) Sounds like a legit travelers job.
Kare and I met the boys by the Astronomical Clock and the scene was amazing! We didnt have time for pictures but we plan on going back there for dinner tomorrow night. We met the boys and headed to the first bar which was full I mean FULL of people. Apparently there were 60 American girls that had reserved ahead but I don't think I knew which ones they were, or really cared! :) We went to a few more bars, one was Vegas-esque. It was SO HOT in there! The boys bought this ridiculous tub of run with 10 straws hanging out which was a sight to see. It was so funny! Don't worry we have pictures!
We met these two girls who Kare became friends with and they told her I was giving them dirty looks, they were interupting my conversation with the cute Aussie, and Kare told them I just have that look that looks mean even if its not! hahaha! And then in front of them she said I told them you aren't a bitch and they are like no no we didn't say that... It was funny. They were nice girls though!
It was a great night! So much fun and definitely love the Aussies, they are like American boys but hotter, more fun and not as arrogant. Of course I pick the most arrogant ones! Haahahaha Oh and we also met this kid from ASU who of course we had to talk smack to about everything. Bottom line: ASU sucks. He was annoying in true Scum Devil fashion!!!! And we met a cutie named Trent--- which we have decided is a hot name and we plan on seeing him and his friends tomorrow at some point.
Today we hung out, ate the free breakfast at the hostel or hostels :) Inside joke... And then we headed to get more post card stamps and do some more shopping. We have a running list of things we need of course. We found a cool Prague gift store and got some good Christmas gifts! Then I found another pair of boots, Kare got the coat she has been dying for and few other necessitys like Purple and Navy leggins for me and some gray leggings for Kare!
When we got back to our rooms the boys were still sleeping and we had yet to find Nik. (Don't worry I just saw him playing pool.) Kare and I headed to this Mexican food restaurant that we had had our eye on! We were sooooo excited!We got an appetizer of chips and salsa... It was a spoonful of decent salsa and a spoon of cold nacho cheese, but tasted perfect to us! We also ordered the burrito each which was good, cold, which made us to believe it was originally frozen... Hahaha! Funny. Anyways it ended up being only 12 Euro for a big entree, an appetizer, 2 waters and an apple juice! Prague is so cheap!
It seems like the boys are heading to the pub crawl again... I think Kare and I will sit this one out. We were trying to figure out how they can drink all night til 10 am... Yes 10 is the approximate time of arrival back at the hostel. But since they sleep all day that is why! We are taking the walking tour tomorrow, to which Danny said "Oh yeah, I wanted to do that. I feel like such a failure, I've been in Prague for 10 days and havent seen the Castle, done the tour, or gone to the Bone Church." But as he pointed out, he has seen ALL the clubs here! Haha oh boys.
We called the girls at Homecoming tonight... It was so good to hear their voices and the news of Schellys engagement!!! CONGRATS! Bill rushed us off the phone, i'm not sure he realized it was us, but oh well! We talked to Rach, Eea, Lex of course, and Schelly! To all of you we missed, we love and miss you all!
I am watching the live updates of the K-State/KU game.... EMAW!!! and we're going to keep tabs on the U of A game! Tomorrow is the walking tour, reuniting with Trent and then who knows! We get a free shirt for our pub crawl which is super awesome! Out clothes have seen better days, but we have decided that since we are wearing them all day and sometimes to bed, we have gotten our goody out of most of them. The sweater that Karin dyed Seafoam Green has been tossed and I am sure more stuff will continue to go by the wayside! A shirt of mine that was originally bright yellow, turned an odd shad of green after the first wash then I passed it to Karin and then when the blue washing shenanigans happened it brightened it to a new color! Hahahaha. Oh the joys of traveling!
We love and miss everyone so much! I can't believe we are going to be in Berlin for the 20th Anniversary. Cool beans!!!I also can't believe that we are 2 weeks from being home, and we have 5 more cities to see! Whew we are going to be tired!!
Loves and Hugs!
Melanie
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Cold weather= new sweater purchases!
Well after our lovely 7 hour train ride we arrived looking um, not our regal best and illegally rode a train as in we had no ticket and got to the hostel. It was hoppin so we dropped our bags, met our one roommate from washington state who proceeded to ask the world series of what when we told her we were heading to a bar to catch the game. It's so unamerican to ask the world series of what! No wonder the Mariners suck!!
We headed to this Australian bar down the street and it was crazy in there! Crazy amounts of drunk people. It was entertaining to say the least!! We met some people from our hostel and the guys were laughing because we were the ones who couldn't peel our eyes off the sports, what a switch! Hahaha! We were there until 7 am watching the game! Oh and staring at the hot bartenders... All 3 mmmmm!
This morning we showered finally and headed to explore, headache and fatigue was high! We wentto the main city which was beautiful! Went in an awesome church filled with lots of color and a crazy big organ! We sat down to get soup and cappuccino which was good and warmed us up! I only had a light jacket on, which was dumb! We then took a tour of h&m!!! A few sweaters and purchases later we were al set!!! I got 3 sweaters and a sweater dress and some leggings!! Which also means I through out a few ratty shirts and sweater. Kare got a few things to but we are looking forward to Prague shopping too!
We are heading out to sushi, and then to find some Americas. We walked by a heap of them on the street and they said oh americans... I yelled yeah America! Kare was like no wonder they love us here!!! :)
Well were off to our hot date of sushi which we have been dying for!!! Prague tomorrow sometime :) crazy how time has flown by lately! Oh and kares bump is better probably because she isn't picking it :) :)
Love and hugs--- Melanie
We headed to this Australian bar down the street and it was crazy in there! Crazy amounts of drunk people. It was entertaining to say the least!! We met some people from our hostel and the guys were laughing because we were the ones who couldn't peel our eyes off the sports, what a switch! Hahaha! We were there until 7 am watching the game! Oh and staring at the hot bartenders... All 3 mmmmm!
This morning we showered finally and headed to explore, headache and fatigue was high! We wentto the main city which was beautiful! Went in an awesome church filled with lots of color and a crazy big organ! We sat down to get soup and cappuccino which was good and warmed us up! I only had a light jacket on, which was dumb! We then took a tour of h&m!!! A few sweaters and purchases later we were al set!!! I got 3 sweaters and a sweater dress and some leggings!! Which also means I through out a few ratty shirts and sweater. Kare got a few things to but we are looking forward to Prague shopping too!
We are heading out to sushi, and then to find some Americas. We walked by a heap of them on the street and they said oh americans... I yelled yeah America! Kare was like no wonder they love us here!!! :)
Well were off to our hot date of sushi which we have been dying for!!! Prague tomorrow sometime :) crazy how time has flown by lately! Oh and kares bump is better probably because she isn't picking it :) :)
Love and hugs--- Melanie
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Snow!
After walking around Venice all day yesterday we had a short nap in our hostel. There were only 4 of us left for the night, all girls. After we were rested we went to mcdonald's for free wifi and to catch up with American life. The internet and cell phone plans are definitely under appreciated in the states. It's a major bummer not to be able to be in touch whenever you want to or to google whatever whenever. Our hostel was supposed to have wifi but apparently some drunk austrailians had cut the cord for who knows what reason. The hot water also randomly stopped working so that eliminated any hope of a shower. Lucas, our hostel host from argentina, let us all into his attached house for dinner and we all helped out in cutting up veggies Tibet cooked with spicy and making caprese panini's for dinner. The 5 of us chatted for a while about who knows what- concentration camps in Europe, favorite locations (kracow Poland and others) as well as the girl who believed zombies were going to come take over at the end of the Mayan calendar 12.12.12.
We were all exhausted probably from walking around all day and headed to bed (all but one haha). I forget if we mentioned it before but I had a cut on my head and it's a disaster mess now so mel has banned me from touching it (it's an extremely hard task, how can I check on it without touching it?) an I also discovered a really cool lump on the back side of my neck as well. Though most likely a knot from sleeping oddly, I guessed the worst and we are keeping an eye on it. WebMD gets me everytime... So many issues to diagnosis yourself with. Melanie hadn't been able to sleep the night before and once she took care of me-good ole travel neosporin- she said she fell asleep before the 1st song on her iPod was over.
The next morning we had all agreed to push back hostel breakfast from 9 to 10 so we could sleep in. It ended up being around 11 but who can complain with free food. Lucas made us scrambled eggs with ham and cinnamon. Cinnamon you might ask? Odd we all thought at first but delicious. Mel and I both are planning on carrying it on once we arrive back home. After a quick grocery stop, Internet and a slight bit of shopping we got on our train to Vienna. A nice long 7hrs ahead of us. We are about 4hrs in as I write and there is snow everywhere outside! Beautiful, but doesn't bode well for our warmth the last 2.5weeks of the trip!
Crazily we've been over here for 5weeks already today. Time has flown! Still so much ahead of us- Vienna, Prague, new addition re added Berlin, amsterdam, London, Scotland and Dublin. We might have a clothes burning celebration at the end of this trip; we both hate everything we have after having to wear it everyday for 35days! Pumped for a taste of a bit of eastern Europe...
...whelp I'm adding to this 3hrs later... Still on the train. We have this little German family next to us whose daughter fell asleep, apparently had a nightmare and woke up yelling 'nein! Nein!' very intense ha. Plus Melanie reinspected my head and reapplied spray neosporin which our surrounding train mates found quite funny. 30mins to go
<3, Karin
Haha Austria is funny. All the German signs and the word weiner is everywhere. Hahaha so tired.
We were all exhausted probably from walking around all day and headed to bed (all but one haha). I forget if we mentioned it before but I had a cut on my head and it's a disaster mess now so mel has banned me from touching it (it's an extremely hard task, how can I check on it without touching it?) an I also discovered a really cool lump on the back side of my neck as well. Though most likely a knot from sleeping oddly, I guessed the worst and we are keeping an eye on it. WebMD gets me everytime... So many issues to diagnosis yourself with. Melanie hadn't been able to sleep the night before and once she took care of me-good ole travel neosporin- she said she fell asleep before the 1st song on her iPod was over.
The next morning we had all agreed to push back hostel breakfast from 9 to 10 so we could sleep in. It ended up being around 11 but who can complain with free food. Lucas made us scrambled eggs with ham and cinnamon. Cinnamon you might ask? Odd we all thought at first but delicious. Mel and I both are planning on carrying it on once we arrive back home. After a quick grocery stop, Internet and a slight bit of shopping we got on our train to Vienna. A nice long 7hrs ahead of us. We are about 4hrs in as I write and there is snow everywhere outside! Beautiful, but doesn't bode well for our warmth the last 2.5weeks of the trip!
Crazily we've been over here for 5weeks already today. Time has flown! Still so much ahead of us- Vienna, Prague, new addition re added Berlin, amsterdam, London, Scotland and Dublin. We might have a clothes burning celebration at the end of this trip; we both hate everything we have after having to wear it everyday for 35days! Pumped for a taste of a bit of eastern Europe...
...whelp I'm adding to this 3hrs later... Still on the train. We have this little German family next to us whose daughter fell asleep, apparently had a nightmare and woke up yelling 'nein! Nein!' very intense ha. Plus Melanie reinspected my head and reapplied spray neosporin which our surrounding train mates found quite funny. 30mins to go
<3, Karin
Haha Austria is funny. All the German signs and the word weiner is everywhere. Hahaha so tired.
Halfway Point Awards
So to switch it up we are going to do a mid-trip awards list... Keep in mind this is only the winners so far... We still have 3 weeks ish left! We also filled these out separately hoping to get different answers :) So here goes!
Best and worst:
Best hostel:
Karin: Jager Hostel... Oh Oktoberfest!
Melanie: Jager Hostel in Munich :)
Worst hostel:
K: Mel will say Paris I guess but
minus the shower (I'll get over being
dirty) and creepy men (out of their
control, bad luck) I liked it okay. I
say worst is Rome my bed made me
want to die, plus Mosquitos!
M: Paris for sure. Although we met
Cameron which was a plus and our
Wolf pack, but also had to meet
bendy Jody. The opposite of a plus.
Best train ride:
K: Hands down overnighter to
Barcelona from Paris. Who can't call
kicked out of the bar trolley a good
time?!
M: Paris to Barcelona overnighter!
We got kicked out of the food/bev
train because we were too loud! Me
too loud? Never! :)
Worst train ride:
K: Cinque Terre to Florence. I barely
remember it in my tired, drunken
stupor. It was a hassel plus we missed
the first one, silly Bar Centrale, you
ruin my life! And we got off at the
wrong stop. Not a good travel day
for us.
M: Also Paris to Barcelona... Threw up
on the train. That's a first! Definitely
had nothing to do with the beverage
train we got kicked out of!
Best view:
K: Cinque Terre
M: Walking the path in Cinque Terre.
The color of the water looked fake, it
was so amazing. I mean the pictures
& postcards don't even begin to do it
justice. It's hard to even find the
right words...
Best wine:
K: I liked the wine we drank on the
beach in Nice best. The first one ;)
M: 3€ for a bottle the size of my
head? Yes please!
Best local beer:
K: what did we drink in cinque terre
during beersbee? Melanie might
remember. I pick that. Oktoberfest
stein beer is a close 2nd. Compared
back to back Munichs might win
actually-- it was just too long ago
to remember perfectly ha!
M: mmm... Peroni, native to Italy.
Brings back memories of my first
trip to Italy! And of course beersbie!
Best budget location:
K: Munich. I'm not sure if it's true
but, free wifi and minus the high
Hostel cost, everything we ate
& drank was pretty cheap.
M: Cinque Terre; did I mention the 3€
bottle of wine the size of my head?
Best drink:
K: well whatever the opposite of that
nasty martini crap we drank in
France or sambucca. In all seriousness
I'd say the sangria in Barcelona we
got when we went out to dinner (And
I didn't realize that non alcoholic
drinks count).
M: I think the Greek Frappe drink.
It's just coffee, lots of sugar and
a touch of amazingness! :) definitely
not Sambuca going down or coming
up!
Best meal:
K: Pasta at the nice restaurant our
1st night in Florence.
M: Souvlaki in Greece. Yum slum! And
I ate plenty of it for sure! I don't
think I'll be able to find that in TX!
Best dessert:
K: Nutella crepes on Nice. (ooh and
those waffle things, forgot about
them!)
M: Toss up between nutella crepes
& Belgium waffles with nutella... But
I think the winner has to be crepes!!!
Best quote:
K: Do less, Pickle, Do way less!-
Lighter rave night.
M: Do less, Pickle, Do way less! ---
Sam, of our australian boyfriends,
yelled this to Pickle during his
Lighter party around 3 am!
Best night out:
K: Cinque Terre. All.
M: Drinking wine with Kare on the
beach in Nice. We talked about life!
It's funny that we haven't run out
of things to talk about! And I mean
honestly she knows everything about
me already! And knows all the stories
from college! And we've yet to shut
up! :)
Best single moment:
K: when we were in Florence and out
of nowhere the crazy Aussies had
found us again in an entirely different
city. Still think they were probably
stalking us...
M: I laughed so hard I cried when the
Kenyan/Asian had stomach issues &
told us she needed to use cream. I
mean what in the world!!
Best weather:
K: Nice.
M: Nice, France. Swimsuit weather.
Cinque Terre was nice too, but a little
chillier!
Worst weather:
K: Florence.
M: For sure Florence. Didn't help that
I had the swine flu there and kept
telling kare that I felt my fever break!
Best shopping:
K: Greece
M: Well my vote is anywhere with a
Louis Vuitton! In Nice I had beautiful
dreams about all my future purchases
because our hotel was above a store!
Best English speakers:
K: Oktoberfest or Greece. Its a toss up
M: Greece hands down. Oktoberfest
was filled with Aussies and Yanks but
everyone in Greece starts learning
English in 3rd grade which is helpful!
Best shower:
K: Ahhh... We were so dirty!
Barcelona because I felt so gross and
it was my first full fledged shower
of the whole trip... Over a week in?
Gross haha.
M: Stefanos. He had a nice bath tub
which I took full advantage of!
Bubbles and all! I've come to appreciate
Showers but nothing compares to a
Bath which i take 2-3 times a day
in the states!
Best public transport:
K: Paris. So easy.
M: Paris. Lots of lines for the
Metro... We did pretty well there!
May have even surprised ourselves!
Worst public transport:
K: Barcelona jut because I'm still mad
about that stop saying we could
change metros there but it really
kicks you onto the street. And we got
lost.
M: Barcelona! They had circles and
Stations that looked like they
connected but didn't! Or maybe we
were confused! Either way, worst
Ever!!!
Favorite...
Site:
K: Palentine hill. Awesome tour,
unexpected, overlooking the
Colloseum and roman forum...
Amazing.
M: Roman Forum in Rome. So grand,
& well preserved. You could really
picture it the way it looked so long
ago. It was breathtaking!
Americans we've met:
K: The Joshi's in Rome. Loved them.
M: Nishan and Meera from LA.
Nishan is so fun!! And Meera.. let's
just say she made us
sound quiet! They were so fun!
Wish we had more time with them!
Oh and the hottie we met at
Oktoberfest from San Fransisco. :)
Foreigners we've met:
K: Our crazy Aussie friends
M: if we are talking about natives,
it would have to be matt and andrew,
our Passport to Paris dates. But if you
consider our Aussie boyfriends as
foreign, they win!
They make us more fun, or more
tired...! They're great guys and so
Crazy!
Food we could eat over and over:
K: Paninis. I love bread.
M: Whoa this is a hard one! Hmmm.
I think I might say gelato! There are
a lot of choices so it's hard to get sick
of, and we have convinced ourselves
that everything we are eating here
is lowfat and calorie free! :)
Day so far:
K: Day we saw the colloseum and
everything in Rome & the CT
hike.
M: I am going to have to say it's a
tie! (idk if this is allowed but
whatev!) historically, I loved our day
in Rome that was filled with the
Colloseum, Palantine hill, and the
Roman Forum... It was epic! But also
the day in CT when we played disc
with our Aussies in 2 cities, learned
Beersbie, Frisbee with a little spice,
Kare borrowing some Italians boat
rope, Sam climbing down to retrieve
his bff Disc aka the frisbee, meeting
Pickle, going to THE bar with
everyone, finishing with a lighter
dance party that none of us will
soon forget! :)
Thing about Europe:
K: Meeting people and seeing
everything! Really makes you
understand different countries;
I love that.
M: The train system! So much better
than airplanes and security blah blah
blah!
Thing about the US:
K: Wow our lives are convienent.
Everything at our fingertips,
inexpensive, hot showers, English,
no dubbing tv... Mexican food!"
M: My cell phone and my mom!
Others:
Hottest:
K: People? Australians. Every one
we've met. Idk what's in the water
down there...
M: Country: France, Cops: Greece,
Person: :)
Craziest:
K: See above.
M: Pickle--- not only did he invent
the lighter party, he stripped naked
to jump in the public pool, booty
danced for everyone then shaved his
head into a mowhawk while really
not sober and woke up this next am
& loved it! :)
Nicest people:
K: Greeks and drunk people at
Oktoberfest
M: hmmm the Romans were very
helpful!
Rudest people:
K: Stupid Parisians.
M: I will refrain from saying the
French, but more the residents of
Paris... We must have american
girls written across our forehead.
Most romantic:
K: Nice. Melanie and I already had a
hot date on the beach, I can only
imagine if we had boys there too.
M: Paris. The shopping and Eiffle
Tower... Anyone that can afford to
take me shopping there wins :)
Would like to live:
K: Nice or Rome. Rome because there
is so much to do and Nice because it
is very beautiful and liveable.
M: French Riviera. I think St. Tropez
or Monaco is just the place for me!!
Safest:
K: Rome/Greece/Munich
M: Nice! So safe... Except the
wandering eyes of the men! Take
a picture, it lasts longer!
Most unsafe:
K: Paris, maybe Barcelona. Helped
that we had our wolfpack with us.
M: Paris around the ghetto train
station we got off at a 9am, groggy
from Oktoberfest and the overnight
train. Not to mention we were
very lost. We learned our lesson,
always have directions to hostel
from the train station!
Most annoying street vendors:
K: Mother of God, Florence!
M: Well they are all annoying! But
the ones with umbrellas especially!
If I am holding an umbrella, I don't
want to buy one! Duh!
Creepiest guys:
K: Rome. I know one by name, pass
out under a bush lately?
M: Those Italian stallions or lack
there of! Come on take a hint! And
hold your wine better! Two American
girls schooled you!
Biggest thing we have learned about eachother:
K: Melanie incessantly cracks her
knuckles and everything else.
M: without me, she would have a
stack of postcards still in her bag
waiting to be sent. And she self
diagnosis herself with cancer and
other crazy ideas!
Most likely to return to:
K: Paris/Rome/Cinque Terre
M: The French Riviera and Greece.
We are already planning our next
trip and excuse to put off growing
up! And Paris... But with a lover! :)
And the grand finale:
Favorite city so far:
K: Paris/Rome/Cinque Terre
M: Rome! And it was my second
time! Can't beat the history and it's
so well preserved!
Well there you have it! Funny that some of our answers are the same and some aren't! We are PERFECT traveling buddies, Kare makes me less paranoid and I make kare more organized :)
Everyone tells us they can't belive we have yet to fight or shut up. We just ignore each other when we're in one of our moods!
Reminder this list only includes Munich, Paris, Barcelona, Nice, Cinque Terre (CT), Florence, Rome and Athens!
Love and hugs...
Melanie
Best and worst:
Best hostel:
Karin: Jager Hostel... Oh Oktoberfest!
Melanie: Jager Hostel in Munich :)
Worst hostel:
K: Mel will say Paris I guess but
minus the shower (I'll get over being
dirty) and creepy men (out of their
control, bad luck) I liked it okay. I
say worst is Rome my bed made me
want to die, plus Mosquitos!
M: Paris for sure. Although we met
Cameron which was a plus and our
Wolf pack, but also had to meet
bendy Jody. The opposite of a plus.
Best train ride:
K: Hands down overnighter to
Barcelona from Paris. Who can't call
kicked out of the bar trolley a good
time?!
M: Paris to Barcelona overnighter!
We got kicked out of the food/bev
train because we were too loud! Me
too loud? Never! :)
Worst train ride:
K: Cinque Terre to Florence. I barely
remember it in my tired, drunken
stupor. It was a hassel plus we missed
the first one, silly Bar Centrale, you
ruin my life! And we got off at the
wrong stop. Not a good travel day
for us.
M: Also Paris to Barcelona... Threw up
on the train. That's a first! Definitely
had nothing to do with the beverage
train we got kicked out of!
Best view:
K: Cinque Terre
M: Walking the path in Cinque Terre.
The color of the water looked fake, it
was so amazing. I mean the pictures
& postcards don't even begin to do it
justice. It's hard to even find the
right words...
Best wine:
K: I liked the wine we drank on the
beach in Nice best. The first one ;)
M: 3€ for a bottle the size of my
head? Yes please!
Best local beer:
K: what did we drink in cinque terre
during beersbee? Melanie might
remember. I pick that. Oktoberfest
stein beer is a close 2nd. Compared
back to back Munichs might win
actually-- it was just too long ago
to remember perfectly ha!
M: mmm... Peroni, native to Italy.
Brings back memories of my first
trip to Italy! And of course beersbie!
Best budget location:
K: Munich. I'm not sure if it's true
but, free wifi and minus the high
Hostel cost, everything we ate
& drank was pretty cheap.
M: Cinque Terre; did I mention the 3€
bottle of wine the size of my head?
Best drink:
K: well whatever the opposite of that
nasty martini crap we drank in
France or sambucca. In all seriousness
I'd say the sangria in Barcelona we
got when we went out to dinner (And
I didn't realize that non alcoholic
drinks count).
M: I think the Greek Frappe drink.
It's just coffee, lots of sugar and
a touch of amazingness! :) definitely
not Sambuca going down or coming
up!
Best meal:
K: Pasta at the nice restaurant our
1st night in Florence.
M: Souvlaki in Greece. Yum slum! And
I ate plenty of it for sure! I don't
think I'll be able to find that in TX!
Best dessert:
K: Nutella crepes on Nice. (ooh and
those waffle things, forgot about
them!)
M: Toss up between nutella crepes
& Belgium waffles with nutella... But
I think the winner has to be crepes!!!
Best quote:
K: Do less, Pickle, Do way less!-
Lighter rave night.
M: Do less, Pickle, Do way less! ---
Sam, of our australian boyfriends,
yelled this to Pickle during his
Lighter party around 3 am!
Best night out:
K: Cinque Terre. All.
M: Drinking wine with Kare on the
beach in Nice. We talked about life!
It's funny that we haven't run out
of things to talk about! And I mean
honestly she knows everything about
me already! And knows all the stories
from college! And we've yet to shut
up! :)
Best single moment:
K: when we were in Florence and out
of nowhere the crazy Aussies had
found us again in an entirely different
city. Still think they were probably
stalking us...
M: I laughed so hard I cried when the
Kenyan/Asian had stomach issues &
told us she needed to use cream. I
mean what in the world!!
Best weather:
K: Nice.
M: Nice, France. Swimsuit weather.
Cinque Terre was nice too, but a little
chillier!
Worst weather:
K: Florence.
M: For sure Florence. Didn't help that
I had the swine flu there and kept
telling kare that I felt my fever break!
Best shopping:
K: Greece
M: Well my vote is anywhere with a
Louis Vuitton! In Nice I had beautiful
dreams about all my future purchases
because our hotel was above a store!
Best English speakers:
K: Oktoberfest or Greece. Its a toss up
M: Greece hands down. Oktoberfest
was filled with Aussies and Yanks but
everyone in Greece starts learning
English in 3rd grade which is helpful!
Best shower:
K: Ahhh... We were so dirty!
Barcelona because I felt so gross and
it was my first full fledged shower
of the whole trip... Over a week in?
Gross haha.
M: Stefanos. He had a nice bath tub
which I took full advantage of!
Bubbles and all! I've come to appreciate
Showers but nothing compares to a
Bath which i take 2-3 times a day
in the states!
Best public transport:
K: Paris. So easy.
M: Paris. Lots of lines for the
Metro... We did pretty well there!
May have even surprised ourselves!
Worst public transport:
K: Barcelona jut because I'm still mad
about that stop saying we could
change metros there but it really
kicks you onto the street. And we got
lost.
M: Barcelona! They had circles and
Stations that looked like they
connected but didn't! Or maybe we
were confused! Either way, worst
Ever!!!
Favorite...
Site:
K: Palentine hill. Awesome tour,
unexpected, overlooking the
Colloseum and roman forum...
Amazing.
M: Roman Forum in Rome. So grand,
& well preserved. You could really
picture it the way it looked so long
ago. It was breathtaking!
Americans we've met:
K: The Joshi's in Rome. Loved them.
M: Nishan and Meera from LA.
Nishan is so fun!! And Meera.. let's
just say she made us
sound quiet! They were so fun!
Wish we had more time with them!
Oh and the hottie we met at
Oktoberfest from San Fransisco. :)
Foreigners we've met:
K: Our crazy Aussie friends
M: if we are talking about natives,
it would have to be matt and andrew,
our Passport to Paris dates. But if you
consider our Aussie boyfriends as
foreign, they win!
They make us more fun, or more
tired...! They're great guys and so
Crazy!
Food we could eat over and over:
K: Paninis. I love bread.
M: Whoa this is a hard one! Hmmm.
I think I might say gelato! There are
a lot of choices so it's hard to get sick
of, and we have convinced ourselves
that everything we are eating here
is lowfat and calorie free! :)
Day so far:
K: Day we saw the colloseum and
everything in Rome & the CT
hike.
M: I am going to have to say it's a
tie! (idk if this is allowed but
whatev!) historically, I loved our day
in Rome that was filled with the
Colloseum, Palantine hill, and the
Roman Forum... It was epic! But also
the day in CT when we played disc
with our Aussies in 2 cities, learned
Beersbie, Frisbee with a little spice,
Kare borrowing some Italians boat
rope, Sam climbing down to retrieve
his bff Disc aka the frisbee, meeting
Pickle, going to THE bar with
everyone, finishing with a lighter
dance party that none of us will
soon forget! :)
Thing about Europe:
K: Meeting people and seeing
everything! Really makes you
understand different countries;
I love that.
M: The train system! So much better
than airplanes and security blah blah
blah!
Thing about the US:
K: Wow our lives are convienent.
Everything at our fingertips,
inexpensive, hot showers, English,
no dubbing tv... Mexican food!"
M: My cell phone and my mom!
Others:
Hottest:
K: People? Australians. Every one
we've met. Idk what's in the water
down there...
M: Country: France, Cops: Greece,
Person: :)
Craziest:
K: See above.
M: Pickle--- not only did he invent
the lighter party, he stripped naked
to jump in the public pool, booty
danced for everyone then shaved his
head into a mowhawk while really
not sober and woke up this next am
& loved it! :)
Nicest people:
K: Greeks and drunk people at
Oktoberfest
M: hmmm the Romans were very
helpful!
Rudest people:
K: Stupid Parisians.
M: I will refrain from saying the
French, but more the residents of
Paris... We must have american
girls written across our forehead.
Most romantic:
K: Nice. Melanie and I already had a
hot date on the beach, I can only
imagine if we had boys there too.
M: Paris. The shopping and Eiffle
Tower... Anyone that can afford to
take me shopping there wins :)
Would like to live:
K: Nice or Rome. Rome because there
is so much to do and Nice because it
is very beautiful and liveable.
M: French Riviera. I think St. Tropez
or Monaco is just the place for me!!
Safest:
K: Rome/Greece/Munich
M: Nice! So safe... Except the
wandering eyes of the men! Take
a picture, it lasts longer!
Most unsafe:
K: Paris, maybe Barcelona. Helped
that we had our wolfpack with us.
M: Paris around the ghetto train
station we got off at a 9am, groggy
from Oktoberfest and the overnight
train. Not to mention we were
very lost. We learned our lesson,
always have directions to hostel
from the train station!
Most annoying street vendors:
K: Mother of God, Florence!
M: Well they are all annoying! But
the ones with umbrellas especially!
If I am holding an umbrella, I don't
want to buy one! Duh!
Creepiest guys:
K: Rome. I know one by name, pass
out under a bush lately?
M: Those Italian stallions or lack
there of! Come on take a hint! And
hold your wine better! Two American
girls schooled you!
Biggest thing we have learned about eachother:
K: Melanie incessantly cracks her
knuckles and everything else.
M: without me, she would have a
stack of postcards still in her bag
waiting to be sent. And she self
diagnosis herself with cancer and
other crazy ideas!
Most likely to return to:
K: Paris/Rome/Cinque Terre
M: The French Riviera and Greece.
We are already planning our next
trip and excuse to put off growing
up! And Paris... But with a lover! :)
And the grand finale:
Favorite city so far:
K: Paris/Rome/Cinque Terre
M: Rome! And it was my second
time! Can't beat the history and it's
so well preserved!
Well there you have it! Funny that some of our answers are the same and some aren't! We are PERFECT traveling buddies, Kare makes me less paranoid and I make kare more organized :)
Everyone tells us they can't belive we have yet to fight or shut up. We just ignore each other when we're in one of our moods!
Reminder this list only includes Munich, Paris, Barcelona, Nice, Cinque Terre (CT), Florence, Rome and Athens!
Love and hugs...
Melanie
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
A Venice Fish
Perfect timing... The city is flooded.
Once we got off our train after hours of travel and frustration we exited the train station to high winds and pouring rain. Cool right? When we stepped out we thought omg! The city is completely flooded, when we realized it was a canal we knew we were crazy and exhauated!Well it was 10 pm and we were worried we would be scared walking but there were heaps of people out! Side note: I just used the word heals... Our Aussies would be proud!
Anyway, we trecked trough the rain umbrellas in hand flying away like Mary Poppins and crossed two bridges, through one square to the left, had to walk on these bleacher like things to avoid the water and we finally arrived at our hostel. Everyone and I mean all 8 of them were in the kitchen having drinks and we unloaded our stuff paid for the night, put on some flip flops and off we went.
We were greeted by this 18 year old child from la, and made the comment, Arizona? Hears that's not hard to get into. Kare and I did all we could to keep our mouths closed. By the way, she attends Pasadena City College. We will go toe to toe with her anyday. She later yelled at me for being republican when it was karin asking her about why she like Barack Obama, her answer was 'I believe in everything he believes in and has done so much.' Kare and I let it be but also remembered there is no way she was old enough to vote. 2 points us.
So we stayed and hung out, I went back to the room and then watched ever video I had on my iPod since I couldn't sleep. Oh and the wireless doesn't work becuase some drunk Aussie cut the cord the other weekend. We have a feeling it may have been our Aussie boyfriends that we will see in Vienna or prague.
We woke up this morning, and headed to see the city. It is so amazing! We have heard mixed reviews, my aunt and cousin loved it but we hve heard it's not exactly a backpackers budget!
We walked around with Jack from Ohio that I thought was a hottie. We walked along the canals which have spilled into the streets and shops! Everyone has rainboots on! Perfect place for them!
We saw the cool churches and just kind of walked the city. We decided to take the scenic route home... Little did we know that meant that we got an amazing view of the snow capped alps. It was unbelievable! So goregeous!!! We took lots of pictures and enjoyed everything! So cool!
Tomorrow we are going to head to the Glass island via water taxi. Second best to 70€ gondola ride!! Then we jump on a 7 hour train to Vienna for a night or two.
We can't believe our trip is winding down! Tomorrow I will post our Eurotrip Halfway Point Awards! They're so hilarious! Get excited!
Cheers!
Melanie
Once we got off our train after hours of travel and frustration we exited the train station to high winds and pouring rain. Cool right? When we stepped out we thought omg! The city is completely flooded, when we realized it was a canal we knew we were crazy and exhauated!Well it was 10 pm and we were worried we would be scared walking but there were heaps of people out! Side note: I just used the word heals... Our Aussies would be proud!
Anyway, we trecked trough the rain umbrellas in hand flying away like Mary Poppins and crossed two bridges, through one square to the left, had to walk on these bleacher like things to avoid the water and we finally arrived at our hostel. Everyone and I mean all 8 of them were in the kitchen having drinks and we unloaded our stuff paid for the night, put on some flip flops and off we went.
We were greeted by this 18 year old child from la, and made the comment, Arizona? Hears that's not hard to get into. Kare and I did all we could to keep our mouths closed. By the way, she attends Pasadena City College. We will go toe to toe with her anyday. She later yelled at me for being republican when it was karin asking her about why she like Barack Obama, her answer was 'I believe in everything he believes in and has done so much.' Kare and I let it be but also remembered there is no way she was old enough to vote. 2 points us.
So we stayed and hung out, I went back to the room and then watched ever video I had on my iPod since I couldn't sleep. Oh and the wireless doesn't work becuase some drunk Aussie cut the cord the other weekend. We have a feeling it may have been our Aussie boyfriends that we will see in Vienna or prague.
We woke up this morning, and headed to see the city. It is so amazing! We have heard mixed reviews, my aunt and cousin loved it but we hve heard it's not exactly a backpackers budget!
We walked around with Jack from Ohio that I thought was a hottie. We walked along the canals which have spilled into the streets and shops! Everyone has rainboots on! Perfect place for them!
We saw the cool churches and just kind of walked the city. We decided to take the scenic route home... Little did we know that meant that we got an amazing view of the snow capped alps. It was unbelievable! So goregeous!!! We took lots of pictures and enjoyed everything! So cool!
Tomorrow we are going to head to the Glass island via water taxi. Second best to 70€ gondola ride!! Then we jump on a 7 hour train to Vienna for a night or two.
We can't believe our trip is winding down! Tomorrow I will post our Eurotrip Halfway Point Awards! They're so hilarious! Get excited!
Cheers!
Melanie
Malakas and vismas
We made a delicious meal again in Greece- really Joanna did. We had spaghetti with homemade sauce, these potatoes with bacon and cheese baked in the oven and then a Greek sweet roll type deal for dessert. So delicious. We rested and read (mel and I have gone through 3 books each while in Greece- none less then 500pages) then got ready to meet stelios' friend Akis out for coffee at a cafeteria. Akis was super outgoing and a lot of fun. We grabbed sandwiches after at a really great place called everest where you build your own panini. Akis outdid us all by packing a mixture of bacon, turkey, meat patty, hot dog, egg, ketchup, mayo and who knows what else into one. We weren't even mad; it was amazing.
Ps- the Indian man who yelled at us? Well turns out he's Greek. Just an odd English accent I suppose. Stelios and Joanna got a kick out of us thinking that and called him 'the indian' for the res of our stay. Also another side note was our gas station fiasco which happened the othe night which we forgot to mention where a man drove away next to us with the pump still in resulting in major honking, yelling and all around mayhem as the hose popped out of his car into the air to the ground. The owner of the station flipped on the as pumper lady (Greece is full service gas) and a clean up crew had to come out. And interesting gas stop for sure.
We got up this morning, packed up and headed to kifissia with stelios to catch our bus to the airport. My mom had text updated me that the phillies had lost again causing me to be in a slightly off color mood. I better be able to watch at least ONE game of the series. Hopefully when we are in venice.
And so our day adventure began. We boarded our bus to the airport around noon and rode for 40mins there. We hung out at the airport for 2 hours before boarding... A super cool ozzy osbourne slash white snake wannbe kid sporting bleached white curly hair, aviators, a bright purple sparkley shirt was part of our in gate entertainment due to his wardrobe and fashion choices. I tried to take a top secret picture of him on my phone which I will put on facebook but I don't think it does him justice.
We got on our plane in a big cluster- by got on our plane I mean stood with a giant group of ppl trying to pack on to the bus that drove us to our plane. All was fine once we boarded and the attendents told us to listen for the 'Brace Brace!' shout in case of emergency. We get a kick out of that safety call haha. We flew for 2.5hrs and on our descent ran into a thunderstorm causing the whole plane to drop, be severely thrown left and right and pretty much try to do everything it could not to fall out of the sky. It was enough that Melanie and I had to 'brace' ourselves on the seat in front of us so we wouldn't be thrown around into each other. We decided it was like space mountain at Disney world but not so dark. Melanie also asked me if they have duty free guns because we were both about to kill ourselves with all the shenanigans. She asked me why we are all so much smarter than everyone aka they cant figure out lines, metal detectors, they are rude and pushy and many other examples of complete idiotic behavior... I said, isnt it obvious, we are smarter because we are Americans haha. This outlook may or may not explain why foreigners arent the biggest fans ofour country, whoops :)
We landed and everyone clapped because they were still alive and we boarded another bus to the luggage claim. And then bought tickets to an hour long bus ride to the train station in Milan. We had to fight our way on to the bus so we wouldn't miss our train to Venice. Melanie sat next to a nosey man who kept trying to read her text messages and played an obnoxious game on his phone. I sat next to what a want to call an Italian mafia man who I swore had a mugshot of a beat up American woman as his background of his phone. I tried to avoid contact as to not become 'next'. Upon arriving at the train station we knew we had to get on the eurostar to make sure we got to Venice in time for our hostel reservation. We had 15mins before it left and had to book our seats first. Savvy travelers that we are, we made it aboard and now are embarking on a 3hr ride to Venice where we will then take the metro to the hostel. This will add up to 8hrs pf travel including 2 buses, one train and a metro. All in a days work.
Note: Greece doesn't know what limes are. Stelios said, you mean unripe lemons? When we asked... our coronas were served with lemons instead as well.... I also managed a lovely laundry feat of dying my white shirt a lovely baby blue and my cream sweater a splendid seafoam... Our standards for cleanliness how dropped dramatically since Greece was only our second time doing laundry in a month... We miss taco bell and are both planning on requesting our rides home in the states to stop for crunchwrap supremes... We also miss the Greek cops... But not smelling like smoke after being inside everywhere (waitresses chain smoke while serving you)... The Asians sitting next to us on the train right now are blatently reading melanie's paper she is writing on (how do you say piss off in Chinese?)... We are about to be freezing for the rest of our trip, it's 9C right now and this will be our southern most spot.
*trains are MUCH easier then airplanes, we prefer them- my corkscrew got taken away from me today, sniff :o( *
Ps- the Indian man who yelled at us? Well turns out he's Greek. Just an odd English accent I suppose. Stelios and Joanna got a kick out of us thinking that and called him 'the indian' for the res of our stay. Also another side note was our gas station fiasco which happened the othe night which we forgot to mention where a man drove away next to us with the pump still in resulting in major honking, yelling and all around mayhem as the hose popped out of his car into the air to the ground. The owner of the station flipped on the as pumper lady (Greece is full service gas) and a clean up crew had to come out. And interesting gas stop for sure.
We got up this morning, packed up and headed to kifissia with stelios to catch our bus to the airport. My mom had text updated me that the phillies had lost again causing me to be in a slightly off color mood. I better be able to watch at least ONE game of the series. Hopefully when we are in venice.
And so our day adventure began. We boarded our bus to the airport around noon and rode for 40mins there. We hung out at the airport for 2 hours before boarding... A super cool ozzy osbourne slash white snake wannbe kid sporting bleached white curly hair, aviators, a bright purple sparkley shirt was part of our in gate entertainment due to his wardrobe and fashion choices. I tried to take a top secret picture of him on my phone which I will put on facebook but I don't think it does him justice.
We got on our plane in a big cluster- by got on our plane I mean stood with a giant group of ppl trying to pack on to the bus that drove us to our plane. All was fine once we boarded and the attendents told us to listen for the 'Brace Brace!' shout in case of emergency. We get a kick out of that safety call haha. We flew for 2.5hrs and on our descent ran into a thunderstorm causing the whole plane to drop, be severely thrown left and right and pretty much try to do everything it could not to fall out of the sky. It was enough that Melanie and I had to 'brace' ourselves on the seat in front of us so we wouldn't be thrown around into each other. We decided it was like space mountain at Disney world but not so dark. Melanie also asked me if they have duty free guns because we were both about to kill ourselves with all the shenanigans. She asked me why we are all so much smarter than everyone aka they cant figure out lines, metal detectors, they are rude and pushy and many other examples of complete idiotic behavior... I said, isnt it obvious, we are smarter because we are Americans haha. This outlook may or may not explain why foreigners arent the biggest fans ofour country, whoops :)
We landed and everyone clapped because they were still alive and we boarded another bus to the luggage claim. And then bought tickets to an hour long bus ride to the train station in Milan. We had to fight our way on to the bus so we wouldn't miss our train to Venice. Melanie sat next to a nosey man who kept trying to read her text messages and played an obnoxious game on his phone. I sat next to what a want to call an Italian mafia man who I swore had a mugshot of a beat up American woman as his background of his phone. I tried to avoid contact as to not become 'next'. Upon arriving at the train station we knew we had to get on the eurostar to make sure we got to Venice in time for our hostel reservation. We had 15mins before it left and had to book our seats first. Savvy travelers that we are, we made it aboard and now are embarking on a 3hr ride to Venice where we will then take the metro to the hostel. This will add up to 8hrs pf travel including 2 buses, one train and a metro. All in a days work.
Note: Greece doesn't know what limes are. Stelios said, you mean unripe lemons? When we asked... our coronas were served with lemons instead as well.... I also managed a lovely laundry feat of dying my white shirt a lovely baby blue and my cream sweater a splendid seafoam... Our standards for cleanliness how dropped dramatically since Greece was only our second time doing laundry in a month... We miss taco bell and are both planning on requesting our rides home in the states to stop for crunchwrap supremes... We also miss the Greek cops... But not smelling like smoke after being inside everywhere (waitresses chain smoke while serving you)... The Asians sitting next to us on the train right now are blatently reading melanie's paper she is writing on (how do you say piss off in Chinese?)... We are about to be freezing for the rest of our trip, it's 9C right now and this will be our southern most spot.
*trains are MUCH easier then airplanes, we prefer them- my corkscrew got taken away from me today, sniff :o( *
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