Scotland & Beyond

I don't really have much to say about my trip to Scotland last weekend. I met up with Siobhan, who I met at the hostel in London, and stayed with her in Clydebank (about a 20-minute train ride from Glasgow's main train station) for the weekend. Her friend Gareth also was visiting last weekend, from Manchester, so I met him and hung out with the both of them. It was a lot of fun. We wandered around downtown a bit, walked along the River Clyde, and even took a drive up to Loch Lomond, which I really wanted to see. We hung around her flat, played with her dog, I cooked dinner one night, and all in all it was a nice, relaxing weekend. And I made a new friend in the process.

Since then, I've just been at the castle packing and doing work. It's been hectic and crazy but I'm just glad to be done with classes and finals now.

Most of my things are packed right now. I've got to leave a few things here, like a towel and some sheets (I hope that's okay mom! It's an old towel and the not-so-great sheets that we just got anyway). Dojna, who works in the Office of Student Activities gives all the things that we donate to her friends in Serbia, where she is originally from. They need it more than we do anyway.

Tonight is our final night in the castle and in about 15 minutes, we have our farewell dinner. The theater majors will sing, the staff will dress up in traditional Dutch clothing for a talent show, and after a last fun night, we'll sleep, for maybe three hours, and wake up at 6:30 tomorrow morning to make it to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam for our 2pm flight back to Boston.

The past three months have been the most terrifying, insane, and amazing months of my life. I literally cannot believe that I'm almost gone. From the castle, from The Netherlands, from Europe.

I'll never forget these days.

In the past three months I've been to over 12 cities in 11 countries.
In the past three months I've learned more about another culture than I ever have before.
In the past three months I've discovered who my true friends are.
In the past three months I've gotten closer with the people who mean more, and let the ones who don't go.
In the past three months I've gone to the pub in town with not only OSA, but my professors.
In the past three months I've truly come to appreciate my family and my home.
In the past three months I've met Aussies in Berlin, London, and Vienna, an Irish couple and a Portuguese girl in Brussels, Californians in Budapest, and Siobhan and Gaz in Scotland.
In the past three months I've fallen in love with places and people.
In the past three months I've (despite how cliche it sounds) made memories that'll last me a lifetime.

I'm ready to go home, but I'm not. I could stay here forever and hate it and love it all at the same time.

I'm going to miss this place more than I'll ever be able to put into words.

Here are some final nostalgic pictures. I don't have any of Scotland really due to my cameralack, but these are ones I love all the same.

Roma, Roma, Roma!

(All pictures in this post courtesy of Nicole and Kendra, for those interested.)

We arrived in Rome Thursday night. Thanksgiving. Our flight was filled with not just the three of us, but other castle dwellers Lewis, Patrick, Mia, Nathan, Ariel K, and Lexi in addition to Braden and his two parents who had come to visit and were going with him to Rome for the weekend before leaving back for the states.

After all parting at the bus station, Nicole, Kendra and I found our way to our ho(s)tel. We booked it on hostelworld.com just like all our other hostels but it was a sort of hostel/hotel hybrid. It was run by this one middle-aged middle eastern dude who was actually really nice. He ended up giving us a free bottle of wine on the second night and upgraded our room since they were overbooked for the type of room we had booked. So we ended up getting a four-person private room with our own bathroom (since the three of us were meeting up with our friend Sebastian there there would be four in the room) instead of a four-person room with a shared bathroom for only a little over 12 euro. Epic bargain, and the room wasn't half-bad.

After some nice ravioli at a restaurant somewhat down the road and finally meeting up with Sebastian, we decided to call it a night so that we could take full advantage of the next full day we had.



We started, as you can see, at the Vatican! The Vatican on Friday midday actually was not nearly as crowded as we thought it would be. The line to get into St. Peters wasn't too long and moved really quickly and it was just nice. Not to mention beautiful. We had been told/read online that it was supposed to rain all weekend but with the exception of a bit of a sprinkle while we were still sleeping on Saturday morning, it was absolutely gorgeous the whole time we were there. It felt like September weather.



Waiting on line to get into St. Peters! I think we only stood on it for about 20 minutes.



As soon as you walk in, directly to your right, there sits the Pieta sculpture. We had no idea it was there and were a little bit blown away when we first saw it.



We spent a WHILE walking around the Basilica. Probably about an hour and a half. It is probably the hugest church I've ever been in, even huger than Notre Dame, and there is so much artwork and so many things to see it totally sucks you in.



We also came across many attractive priests in the Basilica. I know it's probably blasphemous, but Kendra snapped a few pictures.



We, of course, had to pose outside once we left. And after that set off to find some lunch. We ate at a small cafe down a side street just outside the Vatican. We decided to explore some nearby souvenirshops before heading over to the Vatican Museums though, and came across this:



Apparently we are not the only ones to appreciate the attractive priests in Rome.

We walked around basically half of the Vatican to get to the Vatican Museums. By the time we reached the entrance it was just about 4, but we weren't sure which door to go in. After some minor inspection, we discovered it, but just as we were about to walk up to it, it closed. For the day. Apparently the museums don't let people in past 4pm during the week and actually close for the day at 6. We missed it by literally 10 seconds.

Though we were slightly upset, we decided that this wasn't going to stop us or dampen our sight-seeing! We headed back to the metro area and took a bus back over the river into the middle of the city, got off at some piazza (there are so many, I'll never remember all their names) and decided to head for the pantheon.



And here it is. We wandered into a lot of tiny shops on the way because much of Rome consists of winding back alleys and cobbled streets with stores spilling out of them. There was definitely much to be found and we occupied ourselves on the walk. My favorite gift shop was located directly across from it, actually. They sold all of these ancient Roman replicas of coins and tools and things like that, and the guy who was working there was playing Radiohead, and when Kendra and I got excited about the song he put on he saw us singing and turned it up for us. It was cute.



Inside the Pantheon is really weird, because despite the fact that it was created when the Romans still believed in mythology, it's been totally Christianized. Basically, there are Jesus sculptures everywhere. We enjoyed walking around inside though and we took many pictures (most of which are not uploaded yet so I can't post them here) of ourselves standing under the huge hole in the ceiling.

From the Pantheon we walked a short way to Piazza Navona, which is one of Rome's hugest and most well-known piazzas. It has a gorgeous fountain in the middle and they were actually setting up for a carnival, which was really cute. After hanging around there for a while, we walked down to Campo de Fiori, which is another piazza-like place (also really well-known and we were recommended to check it out). We got some awesome Roman-like pizza at this bakery-type place (that we were told to check out by our friend Anna, who had been in Rome the weekend before) and the best part was that they charged us for the pizza by how much it weighed, and I think we ended up getting four nicely-sized slices for about 6 euro total.

From there we took a bus back towards where we'd begun, but a little farther north, and found the Trevi Fountain not too far from there. The Trevi Fountain is Rome's most famous fountain (and trust me, there are fountains EVERYWHERE, both for aesthetic purposes and for convenience - you can actually drink the water in a lot of them). It was designed by Bernini and it's a tradition for all those who go to take turns throwing coins into it and making a wish (we did, and Sebastian caught a picture of it, but again the photo has not yet been uploaded). And actually, the Roman government collects the money and uses it to subsidize a supermarket for Rome's needy.



From the Trevi Fountain we walked to the Spanish Steps, another must-see sight in Rome. I was actually sliiiiiiightly disappointed with them, but only because there was trash all over them. I mean, they were cool and all, but they also weren't even lit up or anything, so they were just kinda...there.



Still cool to say that we got to see them though.

After that, we headed back for the night. We went out for some late-night pizza a little bit later and attempted to find a wine bar, but to no avail. Regardless, we still had fun!

The next day we went back to the Vatican Museums first thing, to be sure we didn't miss them. The only sucky thing about the experience was that the Sistine Chapel is at the very end after you walk through this maze of Renaissance art and things that we honestly didn't really care so much about, and we had to pay 8 euro to get in to see it all even though all we wanted was to see the Sistine Chapel. We walked through a lot of the museum and did see a lot of nifty sculptures though, so it was pretty cool, but mainly stayed on the path to the Sistine Chapel.



And then we found it. It was actually a LOT smaller than I had anticipated, which sort of caught me off guard. It was also packed, and even though there are many signs around asking visitors not to take pictures, everyone was, so we snapped a few quick shots of our own. It was completely surreal. We could not believe that we were standing in this incredible place, this holy, pilgrimaged, revered place. It. Was. So. Cool.

After a late lunch at a husband-and-wife-owned restaurant a few blocks away (the wife was crazy, by the way, we decided that her name was Graziella and it totally suits her) we decided to head towards the coliseum.

We hopped on the same bus we had used the day before, assuming it would take us where we had to go. Sebastian had his GPS on him so he kept track of us so that we'd know when to get off (since Rome does not publish any sort of bus map and most of the busses TV screens don't show their stops like they're supposed to, so you're really not sure where you are at any time). We went allllllll the way to the other side of the city (basically where the coliseum is) and were totally awed as we drove by all of these incredibly huge and massive ruins. We got a bit distracted and a little bit too late realized that we had taken the wrong bus and were not going where we should have been. We hopped off at a stop supposedly near a metro, but couldn't find it, so we went back to where other busses were leaving from and asked one of the drivers of one of them if he was going to the coliseum. I don't think he really understood what we were asking but when he heard the word coliseum he said yes, so we hopped on. After we got on we realized that the bus was half-sized (we later realized so that it could fit through the narrow streets in that part of town that would take us to the coliseum) and that we were the only people on it. The entire way there the driver talked to us in half-Italian half-English about how we have to watch out for lions and tigers in the coliseum, continually apologizing for his bad English. It was really cute.



But we made it there! It was so great. Unfortunately, due to our bus fail we had gotten there after it closed, but there were still tons of people around (and even guys dressed up as Roman warriors that you could pose for pictures with!) and we figured that we could regardless enjoy its awesomeness despite not being able to go inside. And we did. We walked, ran, and sat around it for a while, snapping all sorts of pictures and talking to each other.



Then we wandered not too far away to this massive arc monument that supposedly inspired the Arc du Triomphe in Paris. This is us hanging off of the gate surrounding it, since unlike the Arc in Paris, you can't actually go near this one.



And lastly we decided to explore the ruins. The Roman Forum and all of its ruins are sort of connected to where the coliseum is and it's very easy (in the daytime) to walk tgetting darhrough them (though it would take hours) and still easy (at night) to walk around them, so we did. It was incredible seeing all of the buildings that used to exist but that were barely there. So many HUGE structures are still left too but you can't really tell what they were. You basically just walk all around the perimeter on these overlooking veranda-type things and you can look down into where everything used to be. My favorite bit was this huge half-statue of a boy stuck into the floor to his waist. Everything was all lit up because it was getting dark and it just looked so beautiful.

After we were done, we walked over to Piazza Venezia and to the top of these MASSIVE steps at San Marco that pretty much overlooked the entire section of the city. It was great, but we were WIPED by the end, so we headed back towards our hostel and found a semi-fancy restaurant for dinner to have our one nice meal (it only ended up being about 9 euro each, I think, so it wasn't even that bad), went back to the hostel and our free wine, and hung around with each other before calling it a night.

The next day our flight back was around noon, so we woke up and checked out by 10, got to the bus station, grabbed our bus to the airport, and made it easily, getting us back to the castle in the early afternoon with plenty of time left to do homework (hurray!).

Now it is Thursday night and in between showering, finishing an art history paper, and sorting laundry, I have to pack! I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Glasgow (my last real trip this semester) and I couldn't be more excited. :)

Luck of the Irish

Dublin!

Alright, I know I keep changing what my favorite city was, but after this weekend...Dublin actually is my favorite city and I don't think any other will even remotely be able to top it (even Rome this coming weekend!).

(All photo credit in this post is to Kendra, by the way. Thank God she had her camera since...I am still cameraless.)

Kendra and I went to Dublin on our own. Our flight left at about 6:50am on Friday morning, which meant that we had to be up at about 4:30 to get to the airport on time (it's convenient having an airport 20 minutes away). We got there and onto the plane with no issue, so all was well. Because any flight to Dublin directly from the airport closest (called Weeze, by the way, it's in Germany) was at a horrible time or cost entiiiiiiirely too much money, we had to take a plane from there to London and from London to Dublin. We touched down in London about 20 minutes early, but there was some other plane having some sort of equipment problem on the runway so we were stuck there for about another 10 minutes, and after unloading everything and finally getting off, we only ended up getting there about 5 minutes early. We got into the airport and to passport control (since we were technically going into the UK we had to go through security again and show our passports and all that). However, the guy at the passport gate thing was apparently having a shitty morning, because he gave us a hard time about getting into the country. He didn't believe that we were students when we couldn't produce a Netherlands ID card, even though we showed him our Boston IDs and our International Student ID cards. It wasn't fun. We had to show him all our other plane tickets and he looked at our passports for another 5 minutes and we were practically DYING because by then we only had another 40 minutes to get to our next flight, but he finally (begrudgingly) let us through. We ran through the airport and to security again and manage to get to the gate on time, and luckily enough our next flight was actually a bit delayed, so it worked out well.



We finally got to the Dublin airport at about 11 and took a 30-minute bus ride into the city, walked the 20 minutes to our hostel (which was literally right on the River Liffey, by the way (pictured above)), dropped all our stuff off, and set out.



The Clarence Hotel was also, awesomely enough, RIGHT down the street from our hostel, like a 5-minute walk away, right on the water just like our hostel was, and right near everything.

The Clarence Hotel is owned by U2.

Anyway, we walked a bit found a small cafe down the street and grabbed some food, which was SO GOOD and pretty cheap too, which was really nice. Then headed to the Guinness Storehouse to take a tour!



The Storehouse was set up really awesomely. It was sort of set up like a museum but wasn't stuffy like a normal museum would be, and it wasn't too crowded or anything at all and it was just really nice to walk around and see how beer is made and taste test some of the day's draught and whatnot. The coolest bit of the whole storehouse is that with your ticket you essentially buy a pint of Guinness, which you can get up on the 7th floor of the Storehouse...



Which overlooks all of Dublin. It was incredible, especially since we'd only been there for a few hours at this point. We sat up there drinking and enjoying the view for a while, mostly to let our feet rest since we'd already done a lot of walking, and also to just enjoy he gorgeous view and the beautiful weather outside.



After that, we headed back towards the hostel (passing this sign on the way), but went up a side street to see if we could find this church we'd heard about. The church supposedly has Bram Stoker's grave in it and also the organ that Handel used to compose Messiah. Alas, we couldn't find it. We did find some other suuuuuuuper pretty churches though, and since our hostel was apparently in the middle of everything (and the best hostel in the city too, supposedly - we had been recommended it by another group of people who went there from the castle a month-or-so ago) they were all right near it. We wandered into a huge cathedral and hung around in there for a bit taking pictures and enjoy it, and then headed back to the hostel to nap a bit before dinner since we'd been up for 12 hours already and it was only the late afternoon.



That night we went to Grafton Street to get dinner. Grafton Street is one of the most famous streets in Dublin, with a lot of shopping and restaurants and people and just things to do. They had all the Christmas decorations there too, which was beautiful, and we had been recommended to go check it out by Kim, a girl who Kendra met at our hostel in Brussels who she's kept in contact with and who lives in Dublin. We got some dinner and then just wandered around a bit more, enjoying the weather and the people and the energy of Dublin. We even saw a street band playing Irish music with a guitarist, bassist, drummer basically using a wooden box as his drums, and a flautist.



We passed this while walking and thought it was funny. We wandered a bit more after that, went into the Temple Bar area, went to the Temple Bar Pub, didn't buy anything since things were SO expensive, and just sat for a while and enjoyed the live music (two Irish guys playing a long acoustic set mix between 90s pop-rock and traditional Irish folk songs), checked out a bar recommended by Kim, and called it a night at a decent hour.

The next day we decided to take a tour of the countryside. The tour was about 25 euro each but it was literally 8 hours long, only consisted of 8 other people besides ourselves, and went up into the mountains that you'd otherwise need a car to get to (ie. no huge-ass bus tours were up there with us). So it was worth it.

On the way up into the mountains we drove along the coast, which was so beautiful. We passed Van Morisson, Bono, and Enyas houses too, which was really interesting (Enya lives in a freaking castle, it's huge, I swear).



Our first stop was on this cliff overlooking ...something. We weren't sure what, since the weather was terrible for the first half of the day and being so high up, we were basically in a cloud. We were outside for only about 5/10 minutes and by the time we got back to the van we were DRENCHED. Two girls on the tour actually fell over too, which kind of sucked, and when we did finally make it back Ed (our adorable 65-year-old tour guide/driver/awesome dude who treated us all like his granddaughters by the end of the day since it ended up being an all-girls tour (when he first realized this in the morning his reaction was basically "It's my lucky day!" which was hilarious coming from his white-haired self)) had tea, coffee, and cookies waiting for us.



It rained the entire morning we were in the mountains, but honestly, I wouldn't have had it any other way. The world is so beautiful when it rains and the Irish countryside is no different. We saw so many waterfalls and flowing rivers and streams because of it and it was just...too beautiful for words. Ed stopped whenever we asked him to or didn't when we didn't want him to and basically it was like having our grandpa or crazy uncle drive us around all day. Since the 10 of us were also stuck in the back of the van together all day also we all ended up sort of becoming friends, and I've added a few of them on facebook now. They were all SO nice. The four who I mostly talked to were Missy from California who's studying in London this semester, Annie from West Virginia who's studying in Barcelona this semester, and Maria & Jordan from Copenhagen who didn't speak English fluently but did pretty well for themselves and were continually referred to as the vikings by Ed (and later by me and the other girls on the tour). There were three girls from New York too (two from upstate and one from Babylon, of all places), and another Aussie working in Scotland for the year or something like that.



HOW COOL IS THAT. That valley was so huge, I don't think the picture really does it justice.





For lunch Ed drove us to this adorable tiny-ass town in the mountains called Wicklow, which literally had like...a few restaurants, a hotel, two gift shops, and that was it. Kendra, Missy, Annie and I all got lunch in a little cafe (which consisted of an incredibly tasty sandwich) and spent some time wandering into the shops. I asked the guy behind the counter at one point if he had any disposable cameras since the one I had with me was near done. He said he had some that had expired a little under two years ago and that I could chance using them if I'd like. I said sure, so he gave me two of them for free! I don't know if they'll actually develop properly, but I did take a ton of pictures on them so I sure hope they do!



After Wicklow, Ed drove us to Glendalough, which is Irish for the glen of two lakes (glen da lough, get it?), and used to be this amazing monastery that was attacked by vikings hundreds of years ago (this got many jokes thrown at the two Danish girls). It still has a lot of the old gravestones there and a lot of the old buildings and just was...so beautiful. Ed apparently had at one point in his life (after leaving the navy) studied to join the church, but eventually had abandoned that prospect, so the place seemed to mean a lot to him. He knew tons about its history and about the different kinds of gravestones there from the different time periods in Irish history and it was so cool to hear him talk about it all. We spent some time wandering around and even took a little 20-minute hike through the woods along the two lakes and had Ed meet us at the other side. It was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to in my entire life, if not THE most beautiful place. I just could not believe that I was actually seeing this place. I could not believe that it existed. I could not believe that I was there experiencing it. I just couldn't fathom it.





After that, we drove back into Dublin. We stopped a few more times along the way but I don't want to overwhelm you with pictures and a lot of the other pictures I could post are just green fields and mountains and stuff (we saw a valley where parts of Braveheart were shot!). We got back to our hostel at around 6 and after resting for a bit went out to grab some dinner and went back into the Temple Bar/Grafton Street area to do a bit of last-minute souvenir shopping. We called it a night pretty early since we had to be up at 4 again to make our 7am flight, got to the airport with no issue, and got onto our flight with no problem at all. We flew AerLingus back since it was cheaper than flying RyanAir like we normally do and the flight was not even remotely completely booked, so neither Kendra nor I sat next to anyone and we got into the Dusseldorf Airport about 30 minutes early and the ride was so much smoother than the crappy scary RyanAir flights and...it was so nice. We both slept most of the way. We got to Dusseldorf at around 10am and from the Airport managed to take three trains to get back to Venlo in The Netherlands, took a bus back to the castle, and were back in our room (and napping, might I add) by 2pm.

All in all, this weekend was absolutely incredible. Ireland is easily the most perfect place I've ever been to and I can even imagine myself living there someday. I did not meet a single unpleasant person the whole trip. From our flight attendants to the people working in the hostel to just random people we met on the street who started conversations to people in bars to people in random shops we went into! Every single Irish person we met was just so...happy. And friendly. And nice. I've never met a collectively nicer group of people in my life. If I could be Irish, I would be. I am going back to Ireland someday. I have to.

Viennese Cake & Czech ...Pasta?

I'm going to try to fit my Vienna & Prague posts into one to save room/time, let's see if it works!

Our 11-hour train ride from Berlin to Vienna was...pretty terrible. The three of us were crammed into a 6-person compartment with 2 other people (who were very Austrian, but also very nice, so it wasn't so bad in that respect) and spent 11-or-so hours trying uncomfortable (and unsuccessfully) to sleep. We arrived in the city at about 6:30 in the morning, spent entirely too long looking for our hostel (which was literally right next to the train station, but we weren't used to the city layout yet and took the long way there), and went in to see if we could check in early. The guy working there said that we could, but that we'd have to be put into a 6-person instead of the 4-person room that we'd booked. We said it was fine, because all we wanted was a place to sleep, so we got our keys and went up to our room and when we got there we realized that it was empty. As it turned out, it was a slow week at the hostel or something, so we had the entire room to ourselves the whole time we were there. We each took a quick shower and by 7:30 had crashed. We slept until about noon, got up, and headed out.



First we headed to a street market. It was sorta gross out so it rained on us a bit but we enjoyed it nonetheless. They were selling everything from all sorts of clothing to food and we just wandered around it for a while. We ended up going into this intense Turkish restaurant called Kent for dinner, because we'd been recommended it, and got some aaaaaaawesome Turkish food.



Afterwards we headed back towards the hostel and took a long walk down Mariahilferstraat, which is the street our hostel was on and also one of the main shopping streets in Vienna. We stopped into a famous bakery called Aida and got coffee and cake!



The cake is called Sachertorte and it's a Viennese specialty. Vienna is apparently known for both its coffee and cake. And it was delicious!



Afterwards we continued our walk down Mariahilferstraat and found the museum/palace district, which was lit up gorgeously at night. It was at this point that my camera started to malfunction, which is why all of these pictures look of such high quality (because I've stolen them from Nicole, props Nicole!).

There was a nifty bar in our hostel and Vienna's not so known for it's hopping night scene, so we mostly hung out there at night. They had food there too, which was nice, because since technically all we'd had for dinner was cake/coffee we were starving.

The next day we got up earlyish and decided we were going to wander around the main area of the city. We walked over to where we'd been the night before, past the parliament, past the town hall (or what I think was the town hall, but I'm actually not sure) and found this gorgeous church. I'm still not sure which church it was, but it had all of this renovation going on outside, so we couldn't really get good pictures of the outside. The inside, however, was gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. There's no other word for it.



After that we walked back to the palace and spent a whiiiiiile there taking pictures and just enjoying it. The streets are all so cute and it was just so nice and so fun.







That night we wanted to get some traditional Austrian food. We'd gone to this adorable cafe back on Mariahilferstraat for lunch and gotten some nice sausage (and in my case spinach, potatoes, and eggs - IT WAS SO GOOD), but we wanted a real meal. There was a Mozart-themed restaurant around the corner from us, so we headed there. I got these insane egg dumpling things, Nicole got fried Camenbert, and Kendra got apparently delicious pumpkin soup. It was a good meal.

The next day was the day we were leaving, but we didn't have to leave the hostel until about 4pm so we had the morning/early afternoon to ourselves. I really wanted to attempt to go to the Zentralfriedhof cemetery, where a lot of famous composers are buried, but Kendra and Nicole had homework and things to do, so I decided to go on my own. I took the tram and it took me about 45 minutes to get there and let me tell you, the ride was so worth it.









For one, the cemetery was absolutely gorgeous. Literally the most gorgeous cemetery, and possibly one of the most gorgeous places, I've ever been in. Each of the graves was created so perfectly and so elaborately. Everything was beautiful. I really don't even have enough words to describe it. I saw (pictured above) Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Strauss's graves. I also saw a Mozart monument, but I don't think it was his actual grave since I had read somewhere that he's not buried in the same cemetery as Beethoven. When I was at Beethoven's grave I ran into this woman who started babbling at me in German. When she saw the look on my face, she stopped, I asked "English?" and she started talking in perfect English. Turns out, she and two other men (who were there with her) are making a documentary on Beethoven's 9th symphony. Her name was Isabel from Chile, and the two guys with her were from Edinburgh and somewhere in California. I think the Californian was excited to meet another American.

After I got back to the hostel, the three of us got our things and made it to the train station. We caught our train at around 5:30 and were finally in Prague around 10, got to our hostel shortly thereafter (with the help of a suuuuuuper nice English-speaking concierge at the Hilton on the way), dropped our things off, and went out to find a place to eat. Unfortunately, on a Thursday night in Prague at 11pm there is little open that serves anything but alcohol. Thankfully, we did manage to find a small pizzeria that was near close, sat down, ordered food quick, and downed it because we were starving by then.

After eating, since we hadn't done anything terribly tiring that day, we headed out to walk around a bit. Our hostel was - I kid you not - a two-minute walk from Old Town Square. So, naturally, we headed in that direction. Old Town Square is incredible at night. I know there's really not much around there besides pretty buildings and tourist shops and restaurants, but the dark and the lights combined with the perfect night was...perfect. Since it was a Thursday there weren't very many people in the main square, so it sort of felt like we had the place to ourselves. We walked down past the old Synagogue and to the water and hung over the railing staring over at the Prague Castle and Charles Bridge. It looked like a fairytale land. I truly cannot describe how beautiful that city is. Truly. Before we headed back for the night I stared up at the castle and leaned over the water saying, "Alright Prague, I have to go to sleep now, promise not to go anywhere while I'm gone, okay?"



The next morning we let ourselves sleep in, because since our hostel didn't serve breakfast we had no real incentive to wake up early (plus we'd had to wake up early every single day thus far and wanted a break). We finally got out around noon and wandered around in the labyrinthine streets behind Tyn Church, basically where our hostel was. There are a lot of hidden shops and cafes and bars and restaurants back there, and we found this restaurant with a lunch special where you got soup, an entree, and a dessert all for a fixed price (I think it came out to being about $10 when we converted it), so we went in.



Do you think this looks incredible? Because IT WAS. Best meal I've had since coming to the castle, hands down. Even better than the amazing dinner we had in Paris. So. Good.



Here is a picture of Kendra in front of our hostel! It was under this archway and through this passageway into a courtyard. It was really cute and so close to everything so we loved it. Also very clean, which was a nice plus.



Next we wandered around the main square. There was a market going on there (I think it was a Christmas market) with lots of booths set up with people selling sausage and chicken and fried dough and jewelry and marionettes and mulled wine and everything you could possibly want.



There was even a cute street band playing in the center! We stopped to look for a while and this little kid came wandering up, and the trumpet player started playing at him, but he didn't even notice. So cute.

After that we wandered back towards the water again, just sort of going in and out of touristy shops and stuff like that, trying to see everything that we could. The day was really nice, which was a nice change from the crappy weather we'd had in Vienna.



Next we decided to wander into some shops. We found this store called Brick a Brack which was just basically an epic thrift store, and it was awesome. We spent a while in there, and wandering through its sister store a little bit down the street.



After wandering some more we found this cute outside cafe. Kendra and I ordered coffee and Nicole got water and we sat outside for a while enjoying the weather and sipping on our drinks. Prague is such an easy city to see in only two days, so we let ourselves relax while we were there. We'd been so pressured in Berlin and were still so tired from all the stress of classes/that that we allowed ourselves time to recover. And Prague is one of those cities that you feel like you have to take slow, because it's just...like that.

That night, after doing a bit more wandering in the Jewish area and peering (since it was closed) in to the awesome cemetery there, we found a bar called The Dubliner (ironic that we found an Irish pub in the middle of Prague, no?) and spent most of our night there. They had live music, which was really awesome. A lot of bars that we passed actually had live music. Prague is supposedly one of the bar/club capitals of the world, so we tried to take advantage of it.

The next day we decided that we wanted to see Prague Castle. The castle itself wasn't terribly exciting (and we didn't want to pay to go into it), but the church within it was incredible.



It's weird that I've been to so many churches now (or...I guess I'm in Europe, so it shouldn't be all that weird). In almost every city I've gone to I've gone in one (or in London's case, attempted to go in one). This church reminded me very much of Notre Dame, actually. It wasn't quite that huge, but it was made similarly inside and was just as beautiful.



After we left the church we decided to explore the area some more. We just randomly found ourselves walking down this incline into the town area surrounding the castle and before we knew it, we were on a cliff (basically) overlooking the entire city. We literally just stumbled onto it, totally by chance.



This picture really doesn't do it justice, but unfortunately Nicole's camera died before she could take many good pictures. I had my disposable camera with me though, so when I get those pictures developed (probably when I get home) there will be much more to see! It was beautiful though. Possibly more beautiful than the view in Budapest, which I previously had loved the most out of any view that I'd seen so far.

After leaving the castle we headed back into Old Town Square, got some street food (fried potato pancakes - SO GOOD - and chicken and sausage skewers), and went to the St. Nicholas church to see a string concert! We got an awesome discount of like 7 euro since we're students too, which was nice. The concert was five violins, one violist, one cellist, and one bassist, and occasionally a trumpet player. They were the Prague Radio somethingsomething Orchestra and they were phenomenal. The church was freezing despite the heaters built into the seats but we didn't care. The concert was only an hour but I wished that it had been longer. They played part of Dvorak's New World Symphony too, which is one of my favorite symphonies ever (if not my favorite), so my night was made. It was late by the time we got out and we had an early train to catch the next morning, so after it was over we just headed back to the hostel.

The next morning we had to wake up at 5 to make it to the train station in time. Thankfully, everything went off without a hitch, and we got into Berlin (since we had to take a reserved train to Berlin before taking local trains back to The Netherlands) at about 11am. This was my favorite train ride. Though I was incredibly tired, because it was light out, I could actually see where we were. I've never seen a more beautiful place on earth, hands down. The town at the Czech, and then at the German, border were beyond words. Valleys with sprawling forests and lakes and tiny town settlements with glorious gothic churches. I'll go there someday. We also passed through Dresden on the way back, which was so exciting for me since one of my favorite books (Slaughterhouse Five) takes place there, and one of my favorite bands is called The Dresden Dolls.

At the Berlin station, we grabbed a quick lunch and went looking for a train to take back (since the trains are local we didn't have to reserve them and they also leave relatively often so we didn't have a set one that we were going to take). We found one that was leaving around 11:40 and got on it. As we were looking for seats, I realized that everyone around us had tickets with seat numbers on them, which meant that the train we were on was a train that we actually did have to reserve. I told Nicole and Kendra and headed out of the train. At first I don't think they followed, but eventually they realized that I was right, except that by this time it was too late for them to get off the train because the door had shut and would not open again. The train left, with them on it, and me standing on the platform. Oops.

After a minor freak-out, I went down to the ticket center and asked the woman there (who thankfully spoke English) if she could help me figure out how to get to The Netherlands. She printed out an itinerary for me that didn't require me to have to reserve anything and by 12:08 I was on my way back. I managed to make it back to the castle mostly with no problem (one of my connections was only 3 minutes long due to a late train, but I made it!), and was finally back in my room by 7:30.

Nicole and Kendra walked in about 3 hours later though. Apparently the train they were on had stopped at another Berlin station before leaving for real, and they got off there, took the metro back to the Hauptbanhof, and spent an hour-or-so there looking for me before taking another train back. Then there were all sorts of train delays on trains going to Venlo (apparently I managed to make it back just before the delays began), which pushed them back even farther.

All in all, travel break was awesome. It was very nice, very fun, very relaxing, and very exciting all at the same time. Kendra and I are also leaving tomorrow at 6:50am for Dublin and we could not be more excited!