Schedule

Here are the rest of my weekend plans for the rest of the semester:

Mar 31-Apr 3              Copenhagen Brussels (trains for Copenhagen were all booked)

Apr 7-10                      Italy (Venice & Pisa)

Apr 14-17                    Croatia

Apr 21-26 (Easter)       Budapest & Vienna

Apr 28-May 1              (not sure yet, weekend before finals)

May 4-10                     London & Scotland

So I'm not going to make it to Rome, Greece, or Prague, unfortunately. But I'm going to Hungary, Austria, and Croatia, which is pretty neat. There aren't too many weekends left!

Weekend #11

This weekend (I know its not over yet, but nothing else eventful is going to happen) I decided to take off from traveling. I was planning to go to Nice, Monaco, and Pisa, but I just really needed a break. Thursday night GTL rented out a laser tag place, so we got to play laser tag for 3 hours for just 5 euros. I actually left early after playing 4 games because I was exhausted. It was a lot of fun though, I hadn't played in forever! But Friday morning I woke up with some pretty bad bruises from people running into me with their guns. I kind of look like I've been abused.

Friday we had a big group go to Luxembourg for the night, just for dinner. It was pretty neat, going to a different country just to eat. Dinner was delicious; I had a huge pizza that I have no idea how I was able to finish. We headed back to Metz around 10pm and then stayed downtown for the rest of the night. We went to our favorite bar, but it was pretty crowded so we didn't stay for too long. Then we went to the Latino Bar to dance. It was a lot of fun. And the weather was gorgeous. You can't say that very often in Metz!

I plan to spend the rest of today watching How I Met Your Mother (I'm on season 3!) and laying in bed. Tomorrow will be pretty similar to today. It's a much needed break.

DIET COKE

Oh I forgot to mention - in England/Ireland they have REAL diet coke. And real 2 liters. In the rest of Europe they only have 1.5L bottles, so the 2L seemed huge. So I got a little bit of diet coke to satisfy my craving. But now that I've had it, I have to get used to "cola light" again. Ugh.

In other news, I found this garlic powder stuff that I've been putting on toast and eating nonstop. It's incredible. Thank you Danielle for introducing it to me!

Weekend #10 (aka Spring Break Part II): Ireland and Amsterdam

Last Wednesday I left Metz on my insanely long trip to get to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day. I left around 1:30pm, took a cab, a train, the metro, two more trains, another cab, a plane (then slept in the airport), another plane, a bus, and then walked for half an hour to get to where I was staying, where I finally arrived around 9am Thursday morning. Oh and for one of the trains, we had a 4 minute layover or something, so if our train had been late at all then we would have missed our flights. Luckily everything went right for once! So we were staying with a girl who goes to Tech but is studying abroad in Dublin, so we met all of her friends there and hung out with them. We got ready and went to the parade around noon, but we couldn't really see the actual parade because there were so many people there. But it was a lot of fun seeing everyone dressed up and having a good time. Oh and we ate green ice cream.

After the parade, Kurt and I went to the Guinness Storehouse. It was really cool, and I think they had some extra stuff going on for St. Patrick's Day - bagpipers, guys with flags, caricatures, etc. We went to the store first and I got a bright green Guinness hoodie, which I'm in love with. Then we just walked around for a few hours, tasting samples, meeting people, getting our caricatures, learning to pour the perfect pint -

Afterwards, we headed back to meet up with everyone else, and then we went out. We went to a club that played all 80's/90's music, then checked out the Temple Bar, which I had heard I had to go to. That place was totally packed though; you walk in and instantly just get pushed through the crowd by people trying to move around. There was barely even room to turn around. So we didn't stay there for very long. We just walked around some more and then headed back around 2am.

We were planning on getting up really early to go see the Cliffs of Moher in the morning, but the bus/train schedule didn't work out. We wouldn't have been able to go see the Cliffs and still make it to Kerry to make our flight on time. So instead we just went straight to Kerry and hung out there for a few hours until our flight. We went to Killarney and had lunch at The Country Kitchen, which was nice and homey. Then we walked to go see Ross Castle, which was really pretty.

The Castle was more just ruins, but the whole area was gorgeous. And there were TONS of swans. After that we basically had to sprint back to catch the bus we needed to take to the airport. We made our bus, then flew to Frankfurt. Friday night we spent taking about 5 or 6 trains (each lasting only about 30 minutes to an hour), sleeping for about 20 minutes at a time. But we finally arrived in Amsterdam around 8am Saturday morning.

We found our Hostel, the Flying Pig Downtown (supposedly the #1 hostel in Amsterdam - it was pretty cool) and hung out there until we were allowed into our room. We were staying in a 32 person room, and we had unknowingly booked double beds. We could have switched for single beds, but the double beds were a lot cheaper, so we made it work.

We walked around and explored the city for a little bit until we met up with the other half of our group, who had arrived the night before. Amsterdam is actually a really pretty city; the canals were gorgeous -

And there are bikes everywhere. The bike lanes are almost as wide as the streets themselves. We went and saw the I Amsterdam sign and hung out there for a few hours. Then we had to get to the Anne Frank House early to wait in line to get in. When we did finally get in, it was worth it. It was crazy being in the actual rooms where this incredible story actually happened.

After the Anne Frank House, we walked around and saw the city at night. The canals of course were possibly even more gorgeous -

We also walked through the Red Light District that night, which was...interesting. Sorry, I don't have any pictures from that :P

Sunday we were planning on doing a free walking tour before our train back to Metz, but we didn't really have time, so we just walked around and bought souvenirs. Oh, we did go back to the I Amsterdam sign that morning to take more pictures on it, which was great because there were way less people there on a Sunday morning than on a Saturday afternoon. We actually got the sign to ourselves for a picture -

After all of that, we headed to the train station and went back to Metz (unfortunately). Every weekend we seem less and less thrilled to return to Metz. I'm really glad I was actually able to make it to Dublin for St. Patrick's Day. It was an awesome week!

Canyon jumping

Here is the video of me canyon jumping :)

Weekend #9: Switzerland

This past weekend I went to Geneva and Interlaken. We were only in Geneva Friday for the Geneva Motor Show, the biggest auto show in the world. I don't really know anything about cars, but I still got a half-day pass and it was pretty neat. I definitely had a good time. And now I can say I've been to the Geneva Motor Show! My dad is probably pretty jealous. :)

We left Friday night for Interlaken and arrived around 11pm. We found our hostel, Balmers Herberge, which was an incredible hostel by the way. If you ever go to Interlaken (which I would totally recommend), you have to stay there. It has its own bar/club (basically the only one in the city) and all of the people are really nice (and speak English). We checked out the club Friday night, but we were all pretty tired and were planning a big day for Saturday, so we didn't stay too long. We also met our roommate, a New Zealander named Alex, who was really cool, so we hung out with him a lot all weekend.

We got up Saturday morning pretty early to go book an activity for the day. We were considering paragliding, but the receptionist said it was really windy and that paragliding probably wouldn't be happening that day. Alex had told us he was going canyon jumping that afternoon at 1pm, so we decided to sign up for that. Only three of us decided to go while everyone else just planned on walking around and exploring the city. We had all morning before the canyon jumping, so we walked down the river to a lake, which was gorgeous. I can't even imagine people getting to live there and see that view every day, it's incredible.

We walked back to the hostel in time to get picked up for canyon jumping. There was a group of about 15 or so going, mostly Americans. I met a girl from New York who is studying abroad in Dublin. And there was a group of about 8 from somewhere else up north. It was a 30 minute bus ride to where we were going, and then we had a 15 minute hike up to the jump spot. The hike was pretty rough - very steep, with ice everywhere. Sometimes it was all ice, which was impossible to walk on. But we made it up. And then it hit me that I had signed up to jump off a canyon. But I still had a while before it was my turn, which didn't really help my nerves at all. With canyon jumping, you're attached to a rope by a harness, and you literally just jump off a platform into a canyon. You free fall for about 150 feet, then the rope catches and you swing across the canyon.

About 10 people went before me, so I got to watch the entire process and I was pretty ready to go when it was my turn. One girl knew she wouldn't be able to jump on her own, so she told the guy he was going to have to push her. We didn't know she had told him that, so we just saw him grab her harness and shove her off the platform, which kind of freaked us out. So once you jump off, the free fall is fine for the very beginning. But then you're still falling. My stomach dropped and I could barely breathe. I've jumped off the top of docks into the lake before, which is a pretty long fall, but that was nothing compared to this. And you're jumping straight towards a bunch of rocks. It was the scariest thing I've ever done. The girl studying in Dublin had just been skydiving the day before and she said canyon jumping was scarier. But it was an incredible experience, definitely glad I did it. There are only 3 places in the world where you can canyon jump: Interlaken, New Zealand, and somewhere in Africa. I figured it would be my only chance, so I went for it.

(I can't get the picture to rotate for some reason, but you get the idea)

We got back from canyon jumping around 5pm and met up with the rest of the group. We decided to do a fondue dinner that the hostel was having, but I'm not a big fondue or cheese eater, so I just ordered a burger (which was reallyy good, I miss real burgers). We hit up the hostel's first happy hour before dinner (6-7pm), ate, played some cards, then hit up the second happy hour (9-10pm). We had a pretty big group since we met up with some other GTLers there, and we got in trouble for making too much noise, so we headed down to the club after that. It was a fun night, but we were still in bed by 1am (we did start at 6pm though, so its understandable).

Sunday we got up, ate breakfast, and checked out of the hostel. Most of the group decided to take the noon train back to Metz, but I stayed later with two other people and we took the 4pm train. The three of us took a bus to the other lake that we hadn't seen and had a picnic. It was by far the most scenic picnic I've ever had in my life - 1) sitting by a beautiful lake and 2) the Swiss Alps surrounding it. After that we just walked around for a while, then headed back to the hostel to grab our stuff and go to the train station. We made it back to Metz around 9pm. It was an amazing weekend. Interlaken is definitely one of the coolest and most beautiful places I've been to.

Coming up: I leave in two days for Dublin for St. Patrick's Day and Amsterdam for the weekend!

Coming up...

This weekend I'll be going to Geneva and Interlaken, Switzerland. Not sure what I'm doing in either place yet, but it will probably be expensive. Interlaken has a lot of outdoorsy stuff to do, like canyoning or skiing or bungee jumping. What I do will be determined by how much money I decide I can spend this weekend and by how well I am. I've still got a cough (going on 3 weeks now) but its finally getting a little better.

Then next week I leave on Wednesday for Dublin for St. Patrick's Day and Amsterdam for the weekend! Wednesday I train to northern France, fly to somewhere in England, fly to Dublin, spend Thursday in Dublin, leave Friday morning for the Cliffs of Moher, then fly out Friday evening from Shannon to Frankfurt. Then I'm taking an overnight train Friday night to Amsterdam, spending Saturday and Sunday there, and getting back probably Monday morning.

The weekend after I'm planning to be more chill since I'll be so busy the next two weeks. But I'm actually going to spend St. Patrick's Day in Ireland. I'm pretty excited :)

Weekend #8: Munich

So this past weekend I went to Munich (München in German) with three other people while most people stayed in Metz for the LCC class. We left Thursday on an overnight train (this is becoming a very exhausting trend). Our car was insanely hot since the air wasn't working, and opening the window pretty much created a tornado in our car, so I didn't get a lot of sleep. But we arrived around 8am, found our hostel, which was right by the train station, dropped off our bags, and got breakfast at Burger King.


Our hostel had a free walking tour, so we went on that at 11am. It was alright, our tour guide was cool, but it was freezing and I was really tired. We accidentally walked in on a funeral (and took pictures since we didn't know what was going on) when he took us to see a big church (and told us to take lots of pictures). 

He took us to a big beer hall, the Hofbräuhaus. Apparently its a really touristy place, but it was neat. And we got to see the upstairs, which was apparently used by Hitler and the Nazi Party.

After the tour, we went back to the hostel and napped for a few hours. Our hostel had a bar in it that was hopping every night, so we went to happy hour there, but then I went to sleep since I'm sick, but everyone else went out for a little longer.

Saturday the boys went to the BMW museum (we didn't really do anything while they were gone) and we met up at the train station to go see Neuschwanstein Castle, the castle that Sleeping Beauty's castle is modeled after. We almost missed the train there, but we got on it with about 3 minutes to spare. Then we got to the castle with barely enough time to walk up to it to make the tour. The castle was gorgeous -

The tour probably wasn't worth the 8 euros, but we snuck some pictures inside to make up for it - 

We got back from the castle and went to happy hour at our hostel's bar again. We tried to go out after but we couldn't really find anything else going on, so we called it a night.

Sunday we went to the Dachau concentration camp. We were planning on going on the tour, which was 17 euro including all of the travel, but we were running a little late and we decided our eurail passes would probably save us a good amount of that money. So we ended up only having to buy a bus ticket 2 ways, and we got audio guides there for 2.50 euro each. We spent the entire afternoon there.

Afterwards we went back to our hostel and napped in the bar / lounge and got dinner at Pizza Hut (so good). Then we took an overnight train back to Metz. We almost missed our stop, but luckily I woke up, looked out the window, and saw the sign for Metz. Otherwise we might have woken up in Paris this morning.

Oh and we shared our room at the hostel with an old British dude who was kinda cool, but he was probably in his 60's and he spent most of his time there at the bar downstairs. We got there and he was like "I requested a room on the top floor so it would be quieter, I hope this is a quiet room." And then we woke him up at 4am one morning. But he gave me some eucalyptus for my cough (when he was drunk, so he spilled it everywhere and our room reeked of it the entire weekend). He was really nice, but he probably hated us.

It was a good weekend. I wish I had gone back to a beer hall or seen more of the nightlife, but it was still fun. They have a beer festival starting in a week or two with 700 calorie beer. That might give you quite the beer belly.

Spring Break

I just got back from my weekend in Munich, but I guess I should go ahead and update about Spring Break first.

So we left the night of Thursday, February 17th for Madrid, but missed our change in Barcelona because our train was late, so we were stuck there for a few extra hours on the way. We finally got to Madrid Friday evening and some of the group went to a big club, but I stayed at our hostel and slept since I hadn't slept much on the train.

Saturday it rained pretty much all day so I didn't take any pictures, but we really just walked around all day. We went to a museum or two and had lunch at a neat place with 1 euro mini sandwiches and beer. We left that night for Lisbon. Madrid was definitely my least favorite place we went to over Spring Break, between not really planning what to do there and it raining the whole time.

We got to Lisbon (known there as "Lisboa," much cooler) Sunday morning, dropped off our stuff at our hostel, and walked around for a while. This is the street our hostel was on:

Literally nothing is open on a Sunday morning in Lisbon. Maybe because they party so hard Saturday nights? I think we got there around 7am and we didn't find anything that opened until 10, a museum we went to just to kill some time. We found a restaurant right outside the museum and waited for that to open, and it was pretty good. The highlight of the restaurant was meeting the bartender, who used to work for the local soccer stadium and got us tickets to a game, Sporting vs Benfica. More on that later. After lunch we headed back to our hostel so that four of us could get ready for the Katy Perry concert that night. The concert was awesome. It was actually held inside a bullfighting arena, which was pretty neat. We met some Portuguese girls in line and hung out with them during the concert since they spoke English pretty well. And we were really close to Katy Perry. :)

Monday we took a train to Cascais, where there was a nice beach.

We hung out there for a while and then headed back to get ready for the soccer match. Francisco, the bartender, had told us we'd meet up and get a few drinks together before the game, so we met him around 4pm, after decking out in Sporting shirts and scarfs. We had thought "getting a few drinks" meant going to a bar or something, but we actually ended up tailgating with a ton of Portuguese guys. It was awesome, they were singing and cheering all night, and we tried to learn some of the cheers (not with much luck though, haha). Sporting lost 0-2, but it was still a fun night.

Tuesday we walked around some more and went shopping. Then we left for Valencia that evening. We got to Valencia Wednesday early afternoon and decided to go on a pub crawl that night. We just hung out at the hostel and explored the city a little until the pub crawl, which was pretty cool.

Thursday we didn't have a lot of time before leaving for Barcelona, but we went to a market and then took a bus over to see the outsides of some cool museums.

But we almost didn't make it back. We couldn't figure out the bus back, and we had no time, so we had to get a taxi. We met back up with other people who hadn't come to the museums and rushed to the train station, getting there with very little time to spare.

We got to Barcelona Thursday night, explored the major street our hostel was off of, and got dinner at a really expensive restaurant. I had Paella, which I'd heard you pretty much have to try if you go to Spain. We didn't do much else that night. Friday we took a free walking tour, went shopping, and the guys in our group got haircuts. Some people went to a casino that night, but I'd been sick and was really tired, so I just crashed.

Saturday we rented bikes for the day, which ended up being a really good idea. We biked all over the city and saw Parc de la Ciutadella, La Sagrada Familia (Gaudi's famous unfinished cathedral) and the Castell de Montjuic.

It was a fun day, but it wore everyone out, so we didn't go out Saturday night. Sunday we went to a chocolate museum, walked around a little more, and then caught our train home. We had a 3-hour train, a 1-hour layover, and then a 12-hour train home, getting back at 8:30am Monday morning. It was a really cool trip, and I don't think anyone was happy to go have to leave Spain to go back to France.