Not Doing Much...

Btw, Alaska? Didn't happen. And now I have a real job, 15 minutes from my parents' house, so I'll be in Cumming, GA indefinitely! And my parents are going on a cruise without me. So i have zero travel opportunities on the horizon until I earn vacation time. Might try to go to Munich for Oktoberfest next year. We'll see. Until then, don't expect much from this blog!

Alaska

My parents were originally wanting us to visit Alaska for 2-3 weeks right after my graduation, but my mom just got a new job and can't take that much time off yet. So, if I can get a summer internship, then we can probably go to Alaska when that's over, and then I can hopefully set up a job to start when I get back from that. So there are still some travel opportunities on the horizon, even though Australia is out. Maybe I'll make this a work/travel blog instead of just a travel blog.

Jobs?

So Australia is officially out. It's tough to get good, accurate international background checks done, so there was just too much risk involved and my parents weren't happy about it. But, I do have one interview tomorrow and am setting up another for next week, both for full-time paid internships. I was kind of thinking I needed to get a paid internship first, since I don't have much work experience in my degree. I'd prefer the one that I'm in the process of setting up an interview for next week, but we'll see how it goes. I'm just happy to have some prospects for after graduation besides Kohl's!

Australia?

So it's been quite a while since I posted on here, but I was just thinking about how this time last year I was in Europe, and I'm kind of missing it. I do have new travel opportunities on the horizon, however, so I thought I'd post about that. Also, I was looking at Ankush's blog and he made a list of where he has been and where he wants to go, so I thought I would make one too! So first off, here is that:


Places I've been to:
United States
Canada
Mexico
Bahamas
Belize
Honduras
Cayman Islands
France
Spain
Portugal
Ireland
Germany
Switzerland
Italy
Vatican City
Croatia
Bosnia
Luxembourg
Belgium
Netherlands
Hungary
Austria

Places I want to go:
Australia
New Zealand
England
Scotland
Wales
Czech Republic
Brazil
Denmark
Greece
Sweden
Norway
Finland
South Africa
Japan
Alaska, Hawaii, & California




Now, about the travel opportunities on the horizon:


So the other day, a friend of mine started talking about the idea of Au Pairing in a foreign country somewhere after graduation. We started researching a bit, and I found a great one in Australia. I would really only have to Au Pair every other week, and have the off weeks to explore/travel. They want someone for a year, though, which is kind of a long time...but I think it would be awesome. I'm trying to convince my parents to let me go, because they really don't like the idea of me being across the world for a year, since 4 1/2 months last year was hard enough on them. But I'm definitely considering it, so I could be living in Australia in May. I'll keep you posted.

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.