amsterdam.to.brussles.to.london

Nice. We're in london now which is our last stop. This means no more eurail train trips, and most importantly...no more lugging around our (now) 45 pound backpacks! Amsterdam turned out great. We saw lots of beautiful buildings, and interesting sights. We took the train out to delft one day which was a nice side trip from our normal big city to big city habit. I must say that my main incentive for visiting delft was due to my reading "girl with a pearl earring" years ago. I braced myself for the fact that there was no way that the delft I had pictured from hundreds of years ago was the same delft that exists now a days. Still though...part of me wanted to see the old meat merchants and old clothing! It was a more modern delft than I had pictured, but beautiful none the less. We saw the old and new churches, and I climbed to the top of the new one for an amazing view of the market square, and the city. We took the train back, arriving in amsterdam with plenty of time for dinner. The next day (after buying some jeans and a sweater to survive in this arctic weather) we took an early train to brussels. It was pretty much our nicest hotel so far (excluding my fancy one in chamonix of course) which was a nice way to end our rough trip. We saw the sights, went to a free concert on royal park (super fun!) and saw a light show at the town hall which just happened to be in the most beautiful square in the world (according to victor hugo). Today we took the chunnel to london and made it to my friends house with no problems. It's so nice to be with people who know me, and who speak what I've dubbed as "american english". (ie- no australian or british accent!) I was so happy to see them, and will miss them so much once I'm back in boston and they're still here. At least I'll have a nice place to visit!

amsterdam.day.two

After my grumpy blog entry yesterday, I spent the day (rainy as it was) following the walking tour in my book, and then seeing some extra things I had read about elsewhere. Even though I still felt sick, I had gotten past the worst part of the cold. By the night, I couldn't taste any food (I don't know why this happens to me with most bad colds) but I could at least breathe through my nose again! I don't remember the names of everything I saw again, but I can give a general idea. Here goes: train station to dam square (national monument, city hall thing, old catholic church that was ransacked by those protestants years ago who destroyed most of the beautiful statues and paintings and is now used for exhibitions), to amsterdam historical museum (one of the "best"museums in amsterdam- shows how the land was manipulated around the amstel river to form the city over hundreds of years. Also has tons of paintings, artifacts, movies, etc about amsterdam), to another church, to the flower market (which was a great photo taking area!) to another cool building. I walked back down a street that was similar to downtown crossing, and got some jeans and a sweater at the h+m since the weather I was prepared for was not cold and rainy. I was set for the 100 degree day in southern france, portugal and spain, but not the 60 degree days in northern germany, amsterdam, and probably london. I had to re-pack and throw away some of my stuff to make room! We had dinner at a chinese/japanese place last night where I got vegetable/chicken curry/noodle soup that, while I couldn't taste it, felt good. We were back in time that I could get my toothbrush and earplugs out, and therefore had a great nights sleep. Today's a much better day. We're heading out to delft right now.....

berlin.to.amsteram

I'm sick. I have a cold. One of those colds where your eyes feel super dry, your sinuses are all clogged, and your nose just drips. Fun. More fun is the fact that we're now staying in the flying pig hostel in amsterdam. For those of you who aren't up to speed with hostels, this is a really well known, highly rated hostel. *tm* had wanted to stay here since before we even left. She booked three nights (way more than our normal one or two) quite some time ago, and even then, the only room available was a dorm with 14 beds total. Great. I really did not want to stay here, but obviously since we're traveling together, some compromises need to be made. We went out to dinner with her friend keith and his girlfriend chantel, and then took a stroll through the red light district. That was definitely something interesting to see! We got back to the hostel around 12:30, and there was some kid in my bed. I woke him up, told him he was in my bed, and after some checking in with the office, I slept in the bed he was supposed to be in. There were people coming in and out all night, so I got no sleep- just what I wanted when I'm feeling crappy already. Grrrrr.....I may not make it in this place for two more nights.
On the upside, amsterdam really is beautiful. The leaning buildings, canals, and old palaces, etc are great! If it stops raining today I might even get out to see some of it.

prague.to.berlin

Took the train to berlin today. We´re staying in the largest hostel in germany. It´s called the generator. It´s pretty nice, although again...they cater to younger kids. For example..we have our own room. There´s a door in our room that´s locked, but goes to the next room over. In that next room over are four or five 13 and 14 year old german girls. These girls have decided that I´m to be their new friend. They talk under the door to me and slip through notes about silly little things. I think they´re really just having fun trying to talk in english to me...that and the fact that they are teens who think everything´s funny. I´ve been going along with it so far because I remember being that age. I may have to put a stop to it if it interferes with our sleeping. Sleep´s the most important.

On the more touristy things. While we didn´t have a long time to see berlin, we took full advantage of what time we did have. We split up, and I did a walking tour in one of my books. I saw the tv tower, the berlin dome, the arch, the state house (I don´t have my books with me, so don´t remember all the names), the tiergarten, the place where hitlers bunker was, the surviving parts of the berlin wall, checkpoint charlie, and the place that used to be where the bad guys hung out and now is some sort of memorial with something to do with torture. (I´ll look that up and get back to you on the names). I was most interested in the ex berlin wall. It´s one thing to hear about it and see pictures, but it´s another thing to be there. I really felt what the germans must have gone through for the first time.

back.up.to.munich

I left off mentioning the karaoke night at our hostel. It was pretty funny. We were staying at this hostel called the dizzy daisy. *tm* thinks she picked it for the name since it wasn´t really near anything. It turned out to be the best hostel yet. I´ve found that there are mostly 19 to 21 year olds in hostels...not my favorite age to hang out with. This place had an average age of about 28, so perfect for us. Anyway. When we checked in, they told us about their free beer tasting at 8pm. It was pretty close to that already, but nothing was going on, so we checked email. I checked second, and updated my blog (see what I give up for you guys!) only to find that I´d missed the first 3 of 5 beers! Luckily for me, the last two were the best . We had dinner (nice big bowls of pasta) and came back to watch the karaoke going on in the common room since it was someones birthday. After a while, I leaned up against the wall- very content to just watch- and happened to lean on the light dimmer. Well...the lights were dim to start with, and my lean turned them up as bright as they could go. Nice work me. Everyone groaned and shielded their eyes from the harsh dose of brightness as I laughed and apologized while turning them back down. The guy in charge of the karaoke game announced that since I´d messed with the lights, I should sing. So I had to sing that love song by the beatles. It was pretty pathetic since I couldn't in that range! Everyone was great about it, and we met some fun people; a girl named dallas from minnesota, and a guy named paul from australia. Good times...

munich.to.prague

I'm just going to put it out there...I love prague. Unfortunately for us, we are nearing the end of our adventure, and have booked the rest of our hotels/hostels. So while we'd like to stay here an extra day, we can't- at least not without losing another country. We took an overnight train from munich last night, and got here around 8:15. We love overnight trains...they save us a lot of time, and we sleep surprisingly well on them (except when we were awoken at 4am by two border patrol guys who wanted to see our passports). So this morning we got to prague and were happy to see that while it had rained overnight, the day was looking good. We stopped by the hostel to drop our gear off, and took the tram into town. We split up there with plans to meet by charles bridge at 5pm for dinner. (We want to come home alive you know...it would be sad if I had to take *tm* out because she was driving me crazy.) I went to the prague castle and the beautiful st. vitus cathedral. I know that I've seen a lot of churches by this point in the trip, but I still am so impressed when I see places like this. Oh, and I got to shoot a medieval weapon- like a bow and arrow, but it was on its side, and the "arrow" was really little and didn't have any feathers on the end. I was 25-30 feet away from my target (a paper shield) and I managed to hit it 3/5 times! Just to put it in perspective, the couple who went before me used the same shield, and only hit it once out of ten shots. I have my shield taped into my journal already. That was really the highlight of my day, but I did also go to the old town square and see some more cool buildings, clocks, and churches. I took my sister's friends suggestion and got goulash for dinner. She was right- it looked gross, but tasted great.

Not sure what I wrote about munich, but we had a good time there too. We saw the sights in the morning, and went to a beer garden soon after. Then it started to rain, so we went to the "english language theater" that was noted in our book, and saw "the break up". I liked the movie, but hated the ending.

There are people waiting for the internet now, so I'll talk about our beer tasting and karaoke night at the hostel in another post. Good times.....good times....

venice.to.munich

Alright. So we did all the touristy things in venice except pay 100 euros for a gondola ride. I´d already gone on one, and it would have blown our budget anyway. We went to this really cute place for dinner called trattoria de bapi. It was one of the best meals we´d had there, plus there were two entertaining events that happened while we were there:

1) This family of four (dad, mom, boy and girl) came to eat, but there wasn´t room outside. The host said that they could put there name in and come back in a half hour or so, and the guy goes, "Rooney....I think you´ll recognize it." What?? I hope there was a reasonable explanation to why this guy thought he was so famous.

2) These two older guys had ordered an apparently expensive, nice bottle of red wine, and when it came, they insisted it was warm. So they had the waiter bring out some fancy wine thermometer which got stuck down the neck of the bottle. It was a few degrees warmer than they wanted, so they had the waiter bring out a bucket of ice- like for champagne. It wasn´t like this wine was 90 degrees or anything...just 5 degrees too warm or something!

We left venice this morning, and are now in munich. Strangely, I love germany. I didn´t think I´d dislike it, but the people here are by far the most helpful in terms of train schedules and directions. They seem to genuinely like us, unlike the cranky italian woman who barked at me to go to the information booth to figure out what train to take, and then to come back to her, wait in line, and then she´d book the tickets. Grumpy, grumpy.

So that´s it...oh, except I have another funny *tm* story. It´s short. We were having dinner last night, and had our bottle of sparkling water on the table. She went to pour me some more, but didn´t take the cap off. It wasn´t totally on either, so water poured down the side and onto the table!

chamonix.to.cinque.terre.to.venice

Quick update- internet's 8 euros an hour here!

I had to take five different trains to meet *tm* in cinque terre the other day. On one of them, there were these two german guys who were likely drunk (if not, then I pity them) and had a boom box which was playing some crazy german music about jagermeister. They sang along.

I got the cinque terre at 9:30pm, and *tm* met me at the train station. We found a cheap hotel (without cockroaches, thank you) and got a good nights sleep. The next day we did the hike through the five towns; riomaggiore, manorola, corniglia, vernazza, and monterosso. Rio to man was easy, man to corn a little harder, corn to vern was tons of up an down hiking, and vern to mont almost killed me. *tm* did the first three hikes, but when it became clear that the last one was the worst, and the third was hard, hard, hard, she decided to meet me in monterosso. I made myself do it, but my calves are very angry at me today. All in all, it was 9k, so about 6 miles I guess. Oh, and it was probably 90 degrees with 97 percent humidity. We went swimming in monterosso, had dinner and went to bed.

Today we took two trains to get to venice, where we are now. We met two austrailian girls on our way who took both trains with us. They were nice, and it was nice to be with some english speaking people for a while, especially since they had cool accents. Haven't done much here yet, but will do the tourist things tomorrow.

Also- I called my dad today in between trains from cinque terre to bologna to venice. I only had a minute, but it's his birthday, so I thought he'd appreciate a 5:30am wake-up call from me, his favorite daughter!! Happy birthday dad!

nice.to.chamonix

Yesterday I took some trains to get to chamonix. This was the place I was second most excited about visiting (with cinque terre being the first). I got in around 9:30pm. It's a little town in the alps, so it was pretty dark by then. I had directions to the b+b, but since it was so dark I had a little trouble finding it! I ended up going into a nearby novotel (which the b+b said to look for as a landmark) and the manager helped me look the place up online. Turns out it was right behind us. I get over there, and a light's on, but everything's locked up. Short story- I ended up staying at novotel the first night. Despite it being more expensive than I like, it was exactly what I needed. I had a super luxurious room (at least to the part of me that was used to sleeping in hostels and cockroach hotels). It had a big bed with a nice fluffy comforter, a couch, desk and leather chair, a flat screen tv with cable, and...a bathtub! I spent the first two hours in the bathroom- soaking my soar feet, doing laundry, and plucking my eyebrows. I slept like a baby, woke up in the morning, and swam laps for a half hour. Ahhh. Then I checked out, and checked into my real hotel across the street. It was also super cute and nice, but you know..no bathtub! I walked the two miles into town, and got in line for the aiguille de midi telepherique. I had to wait about 45 minutes, but then got in the cable car with a bunch of other people, and had the most amazing view of my life. We went up to 3842 feet. It was cold and windy (it sounded like there was a roaring river nearby) so I was glad to have worn my warm clothes and to have brought my jacket. It was funny to be wearing tank tops at the bottom in the 70ish temps, and to see people with hats, gloves, winter jackets, etc at the top in the 25-30 degree temps! It was a welcome change from the 95 degree temps of southern france and portugal! The air was thin too, so I kept getting dizzy if I climbed something too fast. I took a ton of photos from the cable cars and from the top. I met some nice people who took some of me in front of mont blanc too. Tomorrow I take some more trains and meet *tm* in cinque terre. Fantastic!

two.funny.stories.and.nice

Two funny stories:

1) We go to drop off our gear at the hotel, and checkin's in a lady's living room. It wasn't a cute little parlor either. It was cluttery and crowded. *tm* had to look up the reservation online, and while she was sitting at the desk, a cockroach crawled over a paper near her. Gross. We had to leave our stuff there for 5 hours until we could get into our room too. When we went back to move our stuff into the room, we had to take two trips since the elevator was so tiny. *tm* went up with a little lady who showed her the room. It was also pretty gross. The bed was really some kind of trundle without legs, which was on top of a twin sized box spring. There was only a fitted sheet on it, and it was dirty. There were two pillows which must have been twenty years old- you know..all clumpy and stained, and they didn't have cases either. The best, is that when the lady showed her the room, she walked in and made a face like something's not right. Then she got the two ratty pillows and put them on the bed, and made a satisfied face.

2) Over the course of the day, we'd drank a lot of water. At dinner *tm* had some wine too. Anyway, we were walking back to the hotel, and she really needed to use the facilities. When it became an emergency, I suggested going into a crowded restaurant like she was eating there, and just go straight for the bathrooms. At first she didn't want to do this, but soon decided there wasn't an option. She booked it through the crowd in the first place we found while I waited outside. When she came out, she told me she'd accidentally gone into the men's room, but didn't realize it until she was in the stall. So she just went there.

**not funny story, but how we spent the 5 hours** Since I was leaving the next day, we wanted to do the tourist stuff right off the bat. So we first went to the chagall museum, which was the best museum I've ever been to. I've always loved chagall's work, and it was amazing to see it all in a environment that he created for it. After spending some time there, we walked to the matisse museum. I'm not the biggest fan, but it was interesting to see how drastically his style changed over the years. From there we walked to st nicholas' cathedral. We didn't go in since we'd have to pay 3 euros and we'd already paid for two museums, but the outside was fantastic. We walked up the anglais avenue, and ate dinner in a little place nearby. Finally, we went to the beach and stuck our feet in. It was the nicest ocean water I've ever felt!