The End

So I realized that I never posted about my trip to Rome, and by now I've forgotten the exact day-by-day events, but I'll still post what I can remember with a few pictures since my blog feels a bit incomplete.

On the way to Rome we had a few hours in Paris, so we had a little picnic by the Eiffel Tower and I finally got to see the tower during the day. Then we spent the night in a parking lot waiting for our bus to the Paris Beauvais airport. We hadn't made hostel reservations because we thought we'd be able to take the bus early and then sleep in the airport, but we couldn't get a bus until 6am, so we were definitely regretting that decision, but every single hostel/hotel was booked. The night was miserable. It was SO cold - we put on pretty much all the clothes we had, and were still freezing. Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep. That would be a trend this week, since we spent another night in a train station and another in a different airport.

I had about 4 full days in Rome, and did pretty much everything I was wanting to do there. When I first arrived I did encounter some problems though. First, it took a while to find our hostel, and when we finally found it, we were told we didn't have reservations. For some reason the reservation didn't go through on hostelworld, and I found out I did in fact not have any booking confirmation in my email. This was the guy's advice for us: "To have no hostel reservation in Rome is suicide." He did let us use his wifi and we found one hostel that had room left, Hostel Peter Pan. So we hastily made the reservation and set out to find it.

The hostel was definitely one of the worse hostels I've stayed at in Europe - probably why it had room available. The main issue was that the people were incredibly loud at all hours of the day. Also, the bathroom shower got water all over the place, so you were always walking through water. But we had a place to sleep, which was good enough.

One really cool thing about Rome is the plethora of free drinking water throughout the city. Any fountain with a spout has clean water, so if you carry a water bottle around with you, you'll have zero problem finding a place to refill it. Throughout the semester one thing we really noticed was the lack of water fountains in Europe, so Rome was definitely a nice change.

The first day we got to Rome, after we got to our hostel, we pretty much crashed right away (seriously it was like 5pm). The next day (Saturday I think) we walked around a bit and then went to the Vatican. We toured the museums, which not only had incredible pieces of artwork but were basically art themselves, since most of the walls were painted directly on and had insane ceilings.

We also saw the Sistine Chapel, which was incredible -

So the Vatican was pretty neat. You can't go in unless your shoulders and knees are covered, so I had to go buy leggings to wear under my shorts and looked pretty silly the entire day. And you have to go through security to get in. I did use the Vatican postal system to mail home a postcard, since its supposed to be one of the best in the world.

Sunday we planned to go see St. Peter's, and we weren't sure if we'd be able to get in since it was Sunday, but we went really early and got in no problem. Normally there is a HUGE line, but apparently 7am is fine. Going on a Sunday was actually really neat - we got to see part of a service going on inside (in English!).

We came back around noon to meet up with friends and it was PACKED with mass going on.

Here's everything else we saw that weekend -
- Piazza del Popolo, where we took a picture with Mickey Mouse

- Spanish Steps (packed)

-St. Peter's Square, which was actually really interesting. There are two places in the square where you can stand and 4 rows of columns in front of you line up and look like 1.

-Vittorio Emanuele II Monument

Oh and right by the momument there was some big event going on, with kids playing volleyball, a bike obstacle course, people skateboarding, and a band. And there were some green/anti-nuclear protesters or something. So we walked around there for a while and even got our first glimpse of the Colosseum.

-The Pantheon

-The Colosseum

-Palatine Hill

-Roman Forum

-Trevi Fountain

-lots of bridges and obelisks and ruins and fountains

And we went to Pompeii on one of the last days. It poured, so we didn't get to spend a whole lot of time there, but it was really neat. So that was Rome! Then we spent the night in the airport in Rome, flew back to Paris, where I trained back to Metz, got my luggage, trained to Zurich, and spent the next night in (and outside of for a few hours when we were kicked out) the Zurich train station waiting for the train to go to the airport to fly home to Atlanta. I'll end this post with a picture of me being homeless in Switzerland:

Oh and did I mention that Rome has the BEST pizza ever? I think I ate it about 5 or 6 times while I was there. Incredible. :)

I know I still need to update with my trip to Rome, but I've been sooo busy since I got home! I kinda owe my parents a good amount of money now, so I've been having to work nonstop. But I'll try to update soon :)

Weekend #15: Budapest and Vienna

Weekend #15: aka BIRTHDAY WEEKEND!

Thursday we actually went downtown in Metz and had some wine by the river. I wish I had been down there before; it definitely made me appreciate Metz a little more. It was so pretty! And there were swans everywhere.

Then we left that night for Budapest. Our goal of this weekend was just to go crazy and have a lot of fun. So we picked out a party hostel, Grandio. Best decision ever. Here was the hostel's weekend itinerary:

Thursday: meter beer challenge to qualify for a higher league in pub golf Friday
Friday: pub golf
Saturday: jager train and Cinetrip rave in a Turkish bath
Sunday: another jager train and open mic night

We missed Thursday and Sunday unfortunately. So we didn't get to qualify for the champion league for pub golf, but it was probably for the best. We got to the hostel and were told we had 45 minutes until pub golf, so we had to go find an ATM to get the right currency and then get back. Pub golf: 9 bars, a drink in each bar, each one has a "par" and you have to try to take less gulps than par. The higher league just meant that they could take extra shots or drinks to lower their score. And each bar had a challenge, just for added fun. Only talk to the person to your left, end each sentence with "in my pants" or "up my bum," maintain physical contact with a team member at all times, etc. The night started at 7pm and we got back around 4am. And everyone there was dressed up in golf attire, which we apparently didn't get the memo for. But it was a lot of fun!

Saturday we got up and walked around the city. Budapest is actually made up of Buda and Pest, divided by the Danube River. Pest is more industrialized, with all the shops and everything, and that's where our hostel was. Buda is more scenic.

That's Buda on the left and Pest on the right. So we walked around all day and then went to a Turkish bath for massages, which were incredible. Then we went in all of the different pools, which are all different temperatures and have different minerals in them. The best pool was the 38 Celsius pool. The worst was the 16 Celsius pool, haha. And there were three saunas that we went in: one was a fairly normal sauna, the "aroma" sauna, which was my favorite. The second was a light sauna, which had big bright lights that changed colors. It was kind of weird. The third sauna was between 80 and 100 degrees Celsius. It was insane! Just walking on the floor made my feet feel like they were burning. They had ice outside the sauna to take in and rub on yourself, which made it a lot better, but it was really intense in there. But it was probably the most relaxing afternoon I've had all semester. If I lived there I would totally get a season pass and go there every single day.

Then we headed back, got dinner at the hostel (a delicious burger, mmm), and were just in time for the jager train! Apparently every Friday night, the hostel does one of these, but for this weekend it was on Saturday because pub golf was Friday. So they lined up 155 jagerbombs and then knocked the shots in like dominoes. It was pretty neat.

Then we all headed out for the rave in another Turkish bath. It was incredible. There were crazy lights, belly dancers, an acrobat, and a fire blower. There were two main pools, one cold and one hot, with people dancing and hitting beach balls around, and a regular dance floor too. It was such a cool experience, never done anything like that before.

Sunday we woke up really wanting to stay in Budapest for the last night, but we couldn't get out of our hostel reservations in Vienna, so we left grudgingly. Vienna was awesome though. It was raining when we got there, so we didn't do much but grab some dinner. Monday we walked around exploring the city. We climbed a tower on Stephansdom for a great view -

Then we went and got chocolate cake and coffee at this fancy little cafe. I'm not big on coffee but this stuff was actually pretty good. Oh and my travel guidebook said something about this cafe/bar, and one line in the book made us go just out of curiosity: "Don't leave without seeing the bathrooms." So we went out of our way to go find this place to see the bathrooms. It was closed when we tried to go the night before, but we found it open on Monday. The bathroom was pretty neat, but it was fun just walking in to see the bathroom.

So the map showed a ferris wheel somewhere in the city, so we went to go see it and it was actually an entire carnival that is permanently there. It was HUGE, and had some pretty bizzare rides. We got lunch there and went on one roller coaster (we had to go on at least one thing while we were there).

After that we metro-ed allll the way across the city to go see Schloß Schönbrunn, a big palace. Over there were a bunch of gardens and a little market going on, where we finally got pretzels. Then we had to leave to get our stuff from the hostel and catch our train to Munich.


We were planning on taking an overnight train from Munich to Metz on Monday night, but our train reservations had been messed up and the train was full, so we had to figure out an alternate route back. We ended up taking a train out of Munich at 12:30am with 3 or 4 different connections, and got back to Metz around 9:30am Tuesday morning.


Since my birthday started at midnight while we were in Munich, we got these cool beers -

It was an awesome weekend! Then we all went out for my birthday dinner on Tuesday at Kefan, the first place I ate at when I got to Metz. :)


I leave for Rome in a week! Home in 13 days.

Weekend #14: Croatia

Last weekend I went to Croatia with four other people and I think it was my favorite trip yet! It was just so different from any other country I've been to, and it was incredibly gorgeous. We rented a car and drove along the Adriatic coast, hitting the cities of Dubrovnik, Split, and Zadar, along with two national parks, Krka and Plitvice Lakes.

The trip there was not the best; we left Thursday night on a train to Luxembourg, waited until 2:30am to catch a bus to Frankfurt Hahn, and waited there for 6 hours until our flight at 10am. It was a lot of waiting, playing cards in an elevator, and sleeping on the floor of the airport. But it was worth it. We flew in to Zadar and rented our car from the airport. I didn't think that having a manual transmission was going to be a problem since two people in our group said they could drive it, but the fact that it took us 15 minutes to get out of the parking spot had me a little worried. We finally figured out the two big problems: 1) to go to reverse on a rental car, you have to lift something up on the stick, so we were actually in first the whole time, and 2) it's a good idea to take off the parking brake. They worked it out and we didn't have any more problems over the weekend. Thank you Kurt for driving :)

First we drove to Krka National Park, about an hour south of Zadar. We spent the afternoon there and it was awesome. We got to eat lunch at a restaurant right by the falls, then we walked all the footpaths through the park. You just walk through and see waterfalls everywhere. One of the lakes you're allowed to swim in, so we got in just because we were able to (well I only waded in a little bit because it was FREEZING). Krka might be the most beautiful place I've ever been.

We left Krka Friday night to drive down to Dubrovnik. It took us a while to find our hostel because the roads are weird; the GPS thought that there were roads places where there were just stairs. But we found the hostel, which was run by a really nice lady who didn't really know any English besides "it's okay!" "sorry" and "super!" But here is the view we woke up to the next morning -

We did go out Friday night, and found the "Old City." It was really weird, we walked down to town and saw a big castle, decided to go in, and it was really just a gateway to the Old City. That's really where we spent most of the next day because it was so neat there. There's a main street with a bunch of little narrow streets off the sides, and right at the intersections each street had a tapestry saying what was down the street (bars, restaurants, etc.), so you don't have to walk down each one to see what's there. We went to a few bars and found one with a live band playing some Croatian music, so we mostly hung out there, and then found a club later.

Saturday morning we got up early and walked back to the Old City. Friday night the streets were pretty empty, but during the day they were packed.

There was a lot going on there - street performers, a live orchestra in one square (I think they were high schoolers), a film festival later that night (we left before it started though). Oh and the pigeons were crazy there!

So we walked around for a while, then went up to the huge wall that surrounds the entire place. It's basically a town within a fort, and you can walk around it and see everything. It was really cool.

It was neat because there was a sign that showed where buildings had been burned down and where places had been hit by bombs during the war in the 90's, and you could still see damage from the bombs. In one of my classes we just had a big discussion about those wars, so reading about it and then seeing it was surreal. And the fact that if actually happened during my lifetime is crazy.

We had dinner in the Old City (I'd been craving lasagna, but everyone else had pizza) and then started the drive to Split. To get to and from Dubrovnik, you either have to drive through Bosnia or take a ferry around it, so we drove through it both ways. On the way to Split we decided to stop in Bosnia for a little bit. We went in a mall-type place there and it was really weird; it's kind of hard to describe. The stores felt kind of like yard sales or something. They just had random stuff, a bunch of appliances, in separate rooms, with one or two ladies looking over all of them. And along the streets there were a bunch of places selling CDs (all copies for really cheap) and porn. We bought a couple of CDs for the car since Croatian radio wasn't quite doing it for us. Bosnia was pretty though. We went through Neum.

And we watched the sunset there, which was gorgeous -

Then we drove the rest of the way to Split and found our hostel (maybe my favorite hostel we've stayed at yet). We met a Norwegian guy at the hostel and all of us went out for food and then to a club. There were some fast food places right down the street and I think that's really all we ate while we were in Split. At the club he just kept buying all of us drinks! He said that it was so cheap there compared to Norway that he couldn't not buy them for us. It was really nice. The club started off with some girls in fancy dresses singing some Croatian music, and we all tried to pretend to sing along, failing miserably, but it was hilarious. Then the room changed into more of a club atmosphere, with a DJ, cool lights, and some American music.

The next morning we got up, went for more fast food down the street, and then walked around the town for a while. We were planning on going on a free walking tour, but we couldn't find the place it met at and we weren't even sure it ran on Sundays. There's a place called the Palace, which was kind of similar to Dubrovnik's "Old City" - it was a bunch of really old architecture in the middle of the more modern buildings. There was a little market inside, and some cool columns/arches/etc.

Then we went back to the hostel to meet up with the manager, this cool lady who offered to take us to the beach and teach us the game all the locals play - "picigin." It's a pretty simple game, you just use a tennis ball core and hit it around in the water. Played properly it involves doing a bunch of belly flops. We hit it around some, then I went back to sit on the beach while the guys stayed in the water for a while.

The beach was nice, but a little chilly. There was this cool trampoline thing along the promenade for 10 kuna for 10 minutes (just over 1 euro), and it looked fun so we decided to do it. The lady actually let us stay on for 20 minutes, and it was awesome. It bounced you sooo high. Then we got ice cream. Mmm.

We had to leave that evening for Zadar. We were actually planning on leaving Split earlier in the day, but we ended up loving it so much that we stayed longer and didn't get to Zadar until it was dark out. We didn't see a whole lot of Zadar, but we walked around a little that night and found the Sea Organ. It was really neat; there were a bunch of holes in the ground and it played different sounds and harmonies each time the waves hit the shore. It was so peaceful, so we just sat there for a while. Then we found some place with crazy lights on the ground like a dance floor, and had some fun with that.

We really didn't do anything else that night because everyone was exhausted.  The next morning we left reallyyy early for Plitvice Lakes National Park. It was really gorgeous, but I think I liked Krka more, even though Plitvice was kind of our entire reason for visiting Croatia. We had seen pictures of Plitvice online and just had to see it. Plitvice did have a really tall waterfall that was cool though -

Oh and we met some girls in the gift shop who were actually from Atlanta! They were teaching English in Italy or something, and were just visiting Croatia for the week. What a small world.

We drove back to the airport, returned our car, and caught a flight back that afternoon. I think Croatia was one of my favorite trips from the semester. It was just so different from any other place I visited, and the entire country was absolutely gorgeous. Plus we drove through Bosnia; who DOES that?? So I would absolutely recommend visiting Croatia at some point in your lifetime. It was incredible.

Weekend #13: Italy

Last weekend I went to Pisa, Florence, and Venice. Florence was kind of an accident; the lady at the train station gave us train reservations for a later train than we were wanting, so we ended up having about an hour and a half in Florence.

We left Thursday night and took a train to Mulhouse, France, where we had a 6 hour layover from midnight to 6am. We were prepared for the layover to be miserable, because any layover during those hours is usually awful, but we were actually able to stay on the train all night. The cleaning guy just said to us "I didn't see you." So we weren't really supposed to be there, but he didn't care.

That meant that we had 6 hours with an entire train to ourselves, so we had some fun with it. We could have slept fairly well, but we ended up playing on the tracks and the rest of the train for a few hours first.

We slept for maybe 2 or 2 1/2 hours, but it was a fun night. Then we took a couple of trains and arrived in Pisa around 4pm Friday. We found our hostel, dropped off our stuff, showered, and then headed out to find the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Then we just took a bunch of silly photos with the tower, and decided to go up it to the top, which was pretty weird walking on slanted stairs.

There were a bunch of guys around on the street selling stuff, like watches, sunglasses, and purses. We ended up buying some stuff from them for pretty cheap, then laid in the grass for about half an hour just soaking up some sun.

Being in Italy, we knew we had to eat pizza, so we found a pizza place and each ordered the 4.50 euro cheese pizza, the cheapest thing on the menu. It was pretty delicious.

We went back to the tower when it was dark, hoping that it would be lit up, but there were just spotlights on it. We did see a bride getting pictures taken by the tower. Over the course of the weekend, we actually saw 3 brides in 3 different Italian cities (Pisa, Florence, Venice) getting pictures done.

After that we just headed back to the hostel, since there isn't much nightlife in Pisa. We met some girls at the hostel and played cards with them for a while, then went to sleep.

Saturday morning we got up early to catch a train to Venice. We ended up with the layover in Florence, though, so we decided to make the most of it and walk around the city. Florence is pretty small; we found a place selling post cards so we could look and see what the big things to see were, and I think we saw all of them while we were there. It was a pretty place, and we saw bride #2 during our exploration.

We left Florence and took our train to Venice. Venice is mainly an island, but we were staying on the mainland to save some money, so we were actually a bus ride away from the real Venice. But we got to stay in a hotel instead of a hostel, so that was nice. We found our hotel and then caught the bus to the island, where we got dropped off right at the Grand Canal. Immediately we hit up a gelato place for our first taste of real Italian gelato, and ate it by the canal. It was pretty incredible. Then we just walked around Venice for the rest of the afternoon, exploring the little narrow streets. We saw the Rialto Bridge and watched the sunset over the canals. 

We actually got lost for a while, and finding your way through those streets is really tough since half of them dead end. We followed a sign to where we wanted to go and thought we went the right way but it dead ended on a dock. But we eventually found our way back to civilization and found a place for dinner. We had already had pizza in Italy, so we went with spaghetti for our second meal. Then of course we had gelato for dessert.

We caught the 11pm bus back to the mainland and went back to the hotel to figure out trains back for the next day and to go to sleep. We were all pretty tired, and again, there wasn't much nightlife in Venice either. But it was nice getting 2 full nights sleep over a weekend.

Sunday we got up and headed back to the island for a little while before our train. We got gelato again (it was so good - mint chocolate chip, chocolate, and chocolate chip - perfect combination) and found a pizza place to get pizza to-go for the train. We actually caught a train from the island instead of going back to the station we arrived at. Then we had about a 7 hour train ride to Munich.

We had a 2 hour layover in Munich, so we went and found Wombats, the hostel we stayed at when we were in Munich. They have this little "zen garden" with couches and hammocks, so we hung out there for a while before catching our overnight train back to Metz. We realized that our train reservation was actually for the next day for some reason, so we were a little worried they'd make us get new reservations, but it was no problem. We just found an empty cart and no one kicked us out. I didn't sleep much on the overnight train, but we got back to Metz around 6:15am Monday morning.

Italy was gorgeous, and it was actually warm, which we were excited about. I wore dresses all weekend since I forgot to bring any shorts to Europe. It was a really relaxing weekend. Hopefully I'll make it to Rome after finals, so I can go back to Italy one more time.

I leave this Thursday night for Croatia! And 2 weeks until my birthday. :)

Schedule

I think that was my longest blog post yet, and it was one of the shortest trips I've taken! Crazy. Anyway, here's the new updated schedule for the rest of the semester:

Apr 7-10
   Italy (Venice & Pisa)

Apr 14-17
   Croatia

Apr 21-26 (Easter)
   Budapest & Vienna & Imst

Apr 28-May 1
   day trip to Versailles

May 4-10
   London & Scotland & Rome

Weekend #12: Salzburg

This weekend I went to Salzburg, Austria. It was kind of a last minute decision. Well, very last minute. We were planning on going to Copenhagen, but we couldn't get train reservations, so Thursday we went to the train station and got reservations for that night to Salzburg. I didn't really know what there was to do there besides see what was in the Sound of Music, but there ended up being more to do than we had time for. It would have been nice to have had another day there, but our 2 days were so busy that I don't know that I could have lasted another.

So we took an overnight train on Thursday night to Munich, where we had an 11 minute layover before we had to catch our train to Salzburg. Our train was actually late, so we thought we were going to miss our next train, but that train ended up being late too, so we made it right before it left. We got to Salzburg around 10am, found our hostel, dropped off our stuff in a locker, and had breakfast. The receptionist told us about the Salzburg Card, which you can buy and then get into a bunch of different attractions for free. We decided to get the 48 hour card for 30 euro, so we walked to the city center to go buy that. On the way we found a euro+ store and bought some silly souvenirs and stuff (including a big American flag for 4 euros). We got our card and went across the street to the Salzburg Museum to start getting some use out of it. They had some pretty neat stuff, but after going to so many museums this semester we've really stopped reading about anything, so we get through them pretty quickly.

After that we found a cemetery, and one of the first graves we saw was Mozart's daughter-in-law I believe. I think the other two plaques are for Mozart's parents, but I'm not sure. Here's the grave -

After the cemetery we walked back to the hostel to shower (we couldn't actually check in and get into our rooms until noon). The Salzburg Card covered a 40-minute cruise down the river, so we went to that at 2pm. They just started doing the cruises again that day, April 1st, because they close it down in the winter, so we were really lucky with that. On the way to the cruise, we walked through Mirabell Palace and Gardens (which we ended up walking through about 6 or 7 times over the weekend), which was gorgeous.

It was actually prettier the next day, when it was sunnier. Then we went on the cruise, which was pretty fun. There was a big group with us who all got pirate bandannas for some reason. And there was a pirate hat and treasure chest.

After the cruise we went to the Stiegl Brewery. The museum was alright, the beginning had a lot of the same stuff I had already seen in the one at Guinness in Dublin though. Then we got to go to the beer hall and try three different types of Stiegl beer, so we did that and got frankfurters for dinner. We even got a free gift, a little Stiegl glass.

Then we were planning on seeing the end of a concert that was going on by the Mirabell gardens, but apparently you couldn't go in after it had already started, so we missed that. And we tried to go to the zoo, fell asleep on the bus, missed our stop and rode it to the end of the line. By the time we finally got to the zoo at 7pm, it had been closed since 5. We played with some goats that were outside while we waited for a bus back.

After that we went back to the hostel for happy hour, where we met a big group of Americans who were also  studying abroad and we hung out with them all night. We mostly just stayed at the hostel bar, then went to a club for a little while until about 1:30am.

Saturday we had a lot of stuff planned, so I woke up at 6am, showered, had breakfast, and we headed out at 8am. First we went to the Mönchsberg lift, which took us up an elevator for an incredible panoramic view of the city. We were the only ones there since we got there right when it opened.

After that we tried to go to the Toy Museum near by, but it was closed for renovations until October :(

After that we went to Mozart's Birthplace, where we stood in the actual room where he was born and saw his first violin. Then we went right across the river to Mozart's Residence, where he lived for a while, but apparently wasn't there tooo much because he traveled a lot.

Then we went to the Hohensalzburg Fortress, which if you go back to this picture -

is the castle in the very middle, on top of the big hill. You can see it pretty much throughout the city. They have cable cars that run up to it that we could have ridden for FREE with our Salzburg Card, but they were (get ready) "closed for renovations!" Ugh. So we walked all the way up, which was a major calf workout. But we made it up, did an audio tour of part of it, and then walked through some museums that were inside. Hohensalzburg is the largest fully-preserved fortress in Europe, built in 1077. The tour took us through a torture chamber (which was apparently never actually used) and to the top of a watch tower, which had another great view of the city.

One of the museums inside was a marionette museum, which was kind of interesting. It just had a bunch of marionettes with different themes, some modeled after the Sound of Music, some from a movie, etc. There was a marionette set up that we were able to play with.

At this point it was only about 1:30pm I think. Like I said, we did a TON of stuff on Saturday. So after we left the fortress, we stopped by a supermarket to get some snacks for the train ride since everything closes really early. We just carried it around for the rest of the day.

Then we took a bus over to Hellbrunn Palace and Trick Fountains. We went on the tour, but it was mostly in German and directed to little kids. We met a girl from Missouri who was studying abroad in the Netherlands; she was just traveling on her own, so we hung out with her while we were there. None of us were super into the tour, and the guide just started the trick fountains out of the blue (well he probably warned everyone in German) so we were at pretty high risk of getting soaked, so we left the tour and just walked the rest on our own. When we got to the end, we realized we were actually locked in to the tour area, and we didn't really want to just wait there since we had other stuff to do, so we hopped the fence and broke out :)

We stayed around there for a while longer and had a little picnic since it was so nice out. It was probably about 75F, and after it being cold all semester, it felt incredible. It was really pretty there too.

We still had one more place to go on Saturday: the zoo. We failed at trying to go Friday night, so we made sure to leave enough time on Saturday. And it was great! I am definitely a fan of the Salzburg Zoo. The whole time you're walking through it you can see the mountains in the distance, and it was just a nice time. We got ice cream cones and walked through, deciphering all the German animal names.

"Kapuzineraffe" aka Capuchin

"Jaguar" aka Jaguar, lol

Oh and there was a really funny looking alpaca -

So overall we did pretty much everything we were planning on doing by 5pm Saturday night. We were completely exhausted, but it was a fun day. After the zoo, we headed back the the hostel, grabbed our stuff, and went to the train station. We ended up taking an earlier train than originally planned, since the original plan only left us with a 12 minute layover in Munich. Since the train on the way to Munich was late, we didn't want to risk missing the one back, and we had plenty of time, so we left a few hours earlier and hung out in Munich for about 2 hours.

We walked around Munich for a little bit, but we were really tired of walking, so we camped out in Burger King the rest of the time. Then we took an overnight train, getting back to Metz around 6:30am Sunday morning. We had set an alarm so we wouldn't miss our stop and it didn't go off for some reason, but someone came by to tell us it was our stop. They do that sometimes but not every time, so we were very lucky they told us this time. We had to make the 35 minute walk back to Lafayette, since buses weren't running yet (Sundays in France, ugh) and there were NO taxis waiting at the train station. There are always taxis, except for the one time we actually need one.

My legs kind of feel like jello now from the insane amount of walking this weekend, but it was a good trip. It was kind of a nice change traveling with just one other person instead of a big group; we were able to get a lot more done and actually meet other people and hang out with them.

Oh so we never actually went out for any real meals in Salzburg besides breakfast both days, and a frankfurter Friday night (well we got another frankfurter Saturday night off a street vendor). We just made extra sandwiches at breakfast, brought them with us, and ate them whenever we got hungry. It was kind of nice only spending about 3 euros for food for the day. And breakfast had apple juice, which I hadn't had since I've been here, and I probably drank about 10 glasses in one morning. It was incredible.

Great weekend, Salzburg surprised me! And whoever wrote this on the hostel wall was obviously entirely wrong -