More France.

So now we landed in Marseilles at a very late hour.
It was dark, and once again we had no where to go. We arrived, asked the underground people if there was a hostel nearby and through laughs they told us one the ONE hostel, far off. Still not really having an idea of where we were off to, we walked up to a bus stop and asked the people there if they knew how to get to this loner hostel. We were a bit on edge since we had been traveling all day and it was dark, but we accepted the help of these two French guys. They argued with each other quite a bit, but drew us a map of how to get there. They told us to ride with them because we would be getting off at the same stop, we cautiously agreed.

On the bus I suppose we were talking about our stay and directions some more, because once we got off a tall, dark, German man came out of no where(he had gotten off the bus with us apparently) and asked us if we were looking for the hostel(he was also a traveler, he told us, and we could come back with him). We nodded and the guys we were with were happy enough to leave us with him with an "Au Revoir!".

Now from talking with the French boys we knew two things: the name of the hostel and the name of the street it was supposed to be on. By this time it was about 12 am and the streets were completely deserted and here we found ourselves with some stranger. We swapped the usual questions travelers ask each other: "Where are you from?" "How long have you been traveling?" as we started with him down some side street. Baillie was completely freaked out of her mind right off the bat because, as I had seen him on the bus with us, she just thought he had appeared from the darkness and suggested we, clearly lost and confused traveling girls, follow him into the night.

It took me a good 5 minutes until my senses were on high alert too. The things that were making me afraid and were just intensifying Baillie's fear were these:
When we started walking he made sure to keep a good 5 or so paces ahead of us, he walked very slow, his movements were careful and he'd only slightly turn his head to look at us every once in a while- not the most normal and fluid behavior.
It wasn't long until Baillie whispered orders at me to get my pepper spray out of my purse and keep it at the ready. My finger was on the trigger in less than a second. With the pepper spray in a firm grip and tucked up my sleeve I started to question our guide about the hostel and the things we knew.

Us: What was the name of the hostel again?
He: Oh, I can't exactly remember.
Us: Right. And the street, what street was it on?
He: St. Christophers I think.
(Baillie and I exchange horrified glance as that was definitely not the right street name that this one and only hostel was located on.)

After he screwed up the street name I was becoming more and more frightened and Baillie was "certain she was going to die". He turned down a street that the hostel "was on" but when it visibly lead to a dead end with some dumpsters, turned to look at us with an apologetic "Oops, wrong one". That was it. We took his 5 stride lead and turned it into a 15 stride lead.

Once we turned down "the right street"(which was some dark side street) he turned back, noticed the distance we put between him and us and said, "Girls I know this must be a little weird for you, but its right down here. It doesn't look like a hostel though. There are no signs, it looks like a regular house. You go inside and it's up some stairs, but trust me."

Yeah, right, that speech didn't definitely make him sound like a crazy serial murderer. The whole "it looks nothing like a hostel, but come inside anyway" made us think he was luring us into his lair to perform experiments.

We slowly, very slowly, made our way up to the door and looked in some windows to see that, yes, in fact there were a few mattresses on the floor and some young, unharmed girls sitting and chatting on them. Still, we entered with caution(because hey, the South of France does have a reputation). When we got up the narrowest stairs I've ever seen, we were greeted by a French Man, some registration forms, and other healthy backpackers. We turned to Cristoph, our mysterious German, with apologetic eyes and genuine Thank Yous. We had filled up our Bad Experiences in Marseilles quota...so we thought.

Now, since we were very tuckered out we decided to go straight to bed. This was obviously just a house that the owner, a large Frenchman, was using as a hostel. There we mattresses on the floor and you slept an arms length away from the next person, and for us they were two German girls, very nice, but recovering from sickness. Believing in our immune systems we curled up for sleep.

Now, if you ask me what Marseilles is like I will have nothing to tell you about the architecture, the shops, or the ocean, simply because I woke up the next morning sicker than I had been in years. It wasn't a vomiting kind of sick, but the kind where swallowing creates the most pain you've ever felt, your ears throb, a running nose(2 rolls of toilet paper a day) and a lot of crying. It got to the point where I was spitting into Kleenex because that automatic swallow you do every few minutes was making my cry in agony. Thankfully Baillie was there to take super good care of me, sacrificing sight seeing in one of the few places we visited that she hadn't seen before. Another reason it's nice to travel with your best friend :)
We ended staying a few days longer there just because I was unable to travel, a shame.

Because I was so sick, I wasn't able to socialize with many of the other guests, but Baillie did. The day after we arrived, and I slept a bunch, Beef got to know our Cristoph and discuss a little what had happened the night before. She told him just how scared we were, what we were thinking, and that we even got out pepper spray and were on the verge of blasting him.
Cristoph, who turned out to be this hilarious guy with a really great sense of humor, explained to us why he was walking and acting so stiff and bizarre(one of the reasons we became so afraid of him so quickly).

He told us that as soon as he suggested we follow him to the hostel in the middle of the night, he knew how unsafe that must have sounded to us. He said he decided to walk ahead of us because if we decided to run away from him, we'd feel as though we'd have a better chance of escaping since we would already have some distance. He said he was walking so stiffly and didn't turn around to look at us much because he felt that quick or sudden movements would scare us even more. He was doing all of that to try to make us feel safer, when in reality, it made us a whole lot more freaked out.

In the end we all found it pretty hilarious and it turned into a running joke.

A few days into our stay, when I felt a little better and was able to go down stairs to the common area, Cristoph got his guitar out while we were all just sitting(there was another English guy there) and he just started to make up some tunes. Like I said, Cristoph was pretty funny, and ended up with an impromptu song he called "Follow me to the Hostel" and later preformed at a live internet streamed concert. Very honoured.

And if the scary arrival(Baillie said she was so sure she was going to die, she had never been so scared in her life), my painful sickness, and us missing out on the city wasn't enough the owner of the hostel was a complete creep.

The German girls we were bunked with said he was constantly hitting on them and when I was sitting alone with him one night we very awkwardly overheard some people having sex. He instantly went off about how he loved hearing it(eww) and wished that everyone was having sex in all of his rooms all of the time, and then he would be happy(double eww). I would also like to add that while he was saying all of this he was spread eagle in his tiny little french underwear...only underwear(once again, eww). And the next night, when we were sitting eating dinner and Cristoph made up his song, he also looked at the owners personal computer's history and found it to ALL be porn.

Nasty...nasty, nasty, nasty, nasty.

Our last day we had to check out early and walk around a bit we decided I needed to go to the hospital because I was just not getting much better. We found one that looked more like an insane asylum but eventually found an info desk. We asked the ladies there where to go and they told us to go to another wing and ask for the "ORA".

We get to that wing(and this hospital seems totally deserted) and ask a woman we see in an office where the "ORA" is, and she helpfully informs us that SHE doesn't work there. Ummmmm, we try again. The "ORA" we ask. Again, a little more irritated on her part tells us that "ORA" doesn't work in that wing. This time we explain the situation and she tells us to go to a different floor. Great.

We get to that floor, search for signs of life, find a nurse and ask if we can see a doctor. "There are no doctors here" she tells us. Excuse me? What?? No doctors, IN A HOSPITAL?! She tells us to sit and lo! There is one left that might see me before he leaves for the day...before the last doctor leaves for the day...from the hospital...leaving the entire Eyes and Throat section of the hospital void of doctors. That was redundant I know, but seriously. I tell you the hospitals and law enforcement in France became very questionable to us.

The saving grace in that situation was that the doctor was super cute. A young, cute doctor. If there had to be only one....
So after he tried to check me out in one room and realized the EQUIPMENT WAS BROKEN and moved me to another room. I finally left with a prescription, no bill, and a few free pills for the road. A quick visit to a pharmacy and I was popping 9 pills(actually) a day for the next couple of weeks. Glorious.


Finally we got on another night bus bound for Spain, a favorite of mine.



And that, all that, is the tale of Marseilles.

Nice, France.

Our next French stop was Nice, France. We got on the bus and spent about 9 hours getting there. Now, I'm not the type to get car/sea sick in any way- but that road was so twisty and turny that by hour 8 I got pretty sick to my stomach. Not anything serious as in "pull the bus over!" but sick enough to keep me from talking and to keep my head in my knees. I could barely lift my head to take in Nice as it appeared from the hills. I also left my sunglasses in a bathroom because I was rushing and afraid of the bus driver. This was after I lost my camera and absolutely determined to take extra care of the rest of my possessions(while in Nice I also thought that I lost my guidebook and so we spent the rest of our trip without one. I found it tucked into the back of my bag once I got home. Oops.). I failed.
This time we were a little more organized and arrived in Nice with a place to stay. The hostel was right in the middle in the old city, perfect location. We only booked one night in Nice in hopes that a couchsurfer would answer our requests(they never do) and ended up in this awesome little suite a few streets from the main hostel. A nice Canadian guy lead us there and the room had a bunk bed, a mini kitchen, a bathroom and a little dining table. Very impressive! We had bought things for dinner and two cheap bottles of wine since it was a Friday(Saturday?). We had met these American girls who told us where the party was and after we ate we got ready in our room. During the getting ready/eating process we decided to have a few glasses of wine. As the time passed and I tried to get the 2nd bottle open with the cork thing on my Swiss Army knife I ended up getting wine all over the place. All over us, all over the table, all over the walls, on the floor. Since it was our second bottle(and we are light drinkers) we just laughed it off and left it for the morning. We grabbed our key and headed towards Wayne's Bar. Baillie was in high heels, and since she's not used to heels it doesn't take long to hurt her feet. Nice was mostly cobblestone(always funny when combined with drunk girls and heels) so it took us a bit to walk to the bar. When we got to the front of the line Baillie was carded immediately. We had thought it might happen since she's tiny but the American girls said that they had been studying there and knew all the bouncers, so if they vouched for us, we'd be let in. When the vouching time came, we looked at this girl and she just looked at us, kind of smiled and went in with a small "sorry". She got freaked out. So off we went, a little annoyed(Baillie is 21, and the drinking age is 18) we walked back to get her passport.
Luckily for me I have a driver's license that can fit neatly in my bra when I don't bring a wallet but Beef had a passport that only fits neatly in her pantie elastic. She was wearing a very tight skirt so when we finally got back and got up to the bouncer he looked a little confused when she stuck her hand down the front of her skirt and pulled out her ID and then again to get it back in place. We probably would have been a lot more secretive about the whole thing if we were less drunk. When we got in I had to go to the bathroom. Baillie came with me and I dragged her into the stall where she found 20 euro. Could have been mine if I had just let her wait outside. Regrets. Anyway it didn't take long or many more drinks until we hit the dance floor where an American DJ was playing very fun, sing-a-long type tracks. We worked our way to the front of the stage where some girls pulled us up. We spent the rest of the nights dancing up with the DJ and singing with the crowd. Goood times. Once we had enough we went outside and sat on the street(classy, I know) where some French guys approached us and we had a few words with them until it turned kind of hostile and we left. FYI, guys in Nice yell the dirtiest things at you when you walk down the street(maybe they did in all the places, but we could actually understand this). We we quite out of it by that point and Baillie kept on trying, very confidently, to get into random buildings thinking it was ours. Now, normally I have ZERO sense of direction. I mean I never, ever know where I am but I could navigate Nice no problem. It kind of freaked me out. Somehow during our walk we met a stag party on the street and had arranged to go out on their boat with them the next morning. A time, a place was set. Obviously we never showed up. We finally arrived and collapsed, happily, into our little French beds to sleep off the wine to awake perky and ready to face the day.
The second day in Nice it became pretty obvious pretty quick that we were not going to find a couch to surf, so we tried to book another night in our nice little room. We had to wait for the eccentric hostel lady to come back and she ended up letting us both sleep in this single bed in the dorm, since it was all she had(she also had this crazy old dog named Polo who didn't react to anything. Touch, noise, etc. Yet she would yell at this kid for upsetting the dog and you'd look down at the thing and it was just standing there unmoving an looking exactly the same as it did all the time. It was all a bit odd). The kicker was that the suit-place didn't have dish soap so the poor cleaner had to clean our dishes and wine covered room when we didn't get it the second night. In our defense we did ask the front desk for cleaning supplies but they told us just to leave it. Although I've slept better we were pretty excited to only pay half of what we would have and wished we could do that at every hostel we stayed in.
It has been a while but I know we went to the beach where we saw a lot of really old, really magenta, really leathery naked people. We also had to go shopping for new sunglasses for me and a new bag since my third one had broken. We went to Monaco and saw the casino and the palace and the wealth so that was pretty neat-o. Then we got some adequate sleep and moved onto our next destination: Marseilles.

South of France, Grenoble.

After we bid Switzerland adieu we walked over to the train station to be taken to Grenoble. We gave ourselves just enough time to board the train comfortably and I'm sure it would have gone over smoothly if we had actually booked a train and not a bus.
We walked around the train station very confused trying to find our departure, showed a few employees our tickets asking them to help us and couldn't(they thought they could, we followed wrong directions all over that station). We started getting worried when the 20 minute mark until the "train" departure went by, freaking out when the 15, then the 10...We were in a state of panic when, finally, a woman looked at our ticket, looked at us, and asked almost disbelievingly if we knew that this was in fact a bus ticket, and not a train. We could barely laugh at our mistake when we thanked her and ran like idiots(you can't look like anything but an idiot when you're trying to run with a 75 litre backpack on) to the bus part of the station and caught it just in time! We had bought the ticket the day before,not even 24 hours before, and we made such a ridiculous mistake. The only reason we could laugh at our stupidity was because we caught the bus, if we hadn't it would have been a whole different set of emotions.

It was a long bus ride so it's a good thing I could fall asleep with an injection of adrenalin to the heart if I wanted to. I am a great sleeper. When we arrived it was about 10pm, still dark, and yet again we had absolutely no where to stay. So Grenoble isn't a very big city and since we weren't in the centre, it was dead. Across the street from the station we saw a big map, so we walked towards it- and, thankfully, there was a sign on that map for a youth hostel. Not so thankfully it was out of town and the busses had stopped running by that point. We looked around and found the dingiest looking hotel we could and settled in for an interesting night.
Once we walked through the creepiest hotel ever..everything squeaked, the lights in the hall turned on one by one by motion sensors as you walked through them and some not at all.. and got into our room we decided we were hungry and needed food. The front desk guy(who would sit in the dark dinning room) told us about a place called the Indian Bazaar or something that would be open at midnight. So off we went to find an Indian grocery.
We were wandering down some side street that had these dark allies coming off them when we saw and heard an, about, 13 year old girl crying and an older(50?) man in a leather jackets holding tightly onto her wrist. As we walked by another man walked out of the same ally and asked us what was happening..we said we didn't know and all 3 of us started walking towards the scene. That's when we decided it might be some trap to get us into an ally so we told the guy we'd watch from the street. Without his 5"1' and 5"8' teenage backup, the guy got scared and just walked by the two fighting. We got even more freaked out when we could see the girl, still crying, trying to get her wrist free and the man leading her deeper into the ally. That's when I tried to take a picture and then we ran off to find a pay phone.
When we phoned the police, I was on the phone, it was clear pretty soon that the guy could not understand one heavily anglophone/wanna-be-Quebecois accented french word that was coming out of my mouth. The French was okay, it was the accent he didn't get- since Baillie understood every word. After about 10 minutes and he finally understood where we were, and what the situation was ("A 50 or so year old man is dragging a 13-something unwilling, crying girl into an ally...at midnight") he responded with "Well, if we send a car out now maybe they will have left that area by the time we get there." or aka "It's not worth sending a car". We told them we didn't care and they needed to send someone! We were in a state of shock that the Police, THE POLICE, were almost refusing to check out this situation(flash forward, they never came).
We didn't feel comfortable leaving on our food quest so we stood in plain sight a bit away and flagged down men to go check in on things. A few really nice guys stopped and they went to check out what was happening. We were also amazed how many people would stop to look at the girl situation, seem worried, then shake their heads and walk off. Anyway, apparently the girl had been broken up with and had run away from home and creepy jacket man was her dad. The guys left satisfied but we stayed until her grandfather came and she left willingly with him. Then we walked to the grocery store that was actually a restaurant and got greasy rice to eat in our greasy hotel room. End first night in France.
Grenoble round 2 was a distressing day for me. It started out really well(first we sent out a whole bunch of emergency couchsurfing requests so we didn't have to stay in that hotel again). We left our bags in some pub for "storage" that cost us about 12 euro each to leave in the doorway and then we walked the centre of the town to taken the sights. It was nice. We walked around the city, hing out in some nice parks and then I lost my camera. I had decided to keep it on my wrist so I would remember to snap some memories, but then I left it alone to defend for itself somewhere. So we spent the day seeing some sights, and then seeing them again as I frantically looked for my camera. I never found it. It was lost along with almost all of my pictures of Italy..a months worth of pictures. I cried. I cried by the bus station and then I cried on this bench in front of a restaurant in front of all the workers. Then we hit up a a grocery store and got some crackers and tuna and olives and returned to my crying bench and ate like hobos with our grubby hands as the restaurant workers, again, looked on. We were a bit of a mess. At 11 pm the guy who had answered our couchsurfing request came to pick us up and we spent an excellent night at his house. He played us some original music, gave us food and was very nice all around. We were his first ever surfers and his enthusiasm showed through. We, the jaded hosts, knew this kind of enthusiasm wouldn't last and were very grateful to him. He saved our behinds. In the morning he drove us to the bus station and we boarded for our next destination: the French Riviera, Nice.

Switzerland

So I've been home now for about two weeks and no longer have the need to blog... but I have high hopes that one day I will become an old woman and, if I really am my father's daughter, senility will kick in soon after that and I wont be able to remember anything. So here's to hoping I'll still be able to read! Also, since I am unemployed(loving it) and unmotivated(in Calgary!), I have become nocturnal and have to fill the long, cable-less hours doing something. So I type. I type for me.

Switzerland will be a very short blog since we only spent a night there, it was over a month ago, and my memory is questionable(why the whole Alzheimer's thing seems probable).

Before I got to Switzerland, in my mind, I would imagine me near beautiful mountains, people on bicycles, clear blue water, watches, eating chocolate and fondue--now I would imagine me living on a box with a stolen child trying to get the homeless sympathy vote. If you want to go there, you have got to have deep pockets. Switzerland was so crazy expensive we spent our whole afternoon of our first and only day trying to find a cheapish bus to take us to France. I would love, love to go back- but only as a rich widow(I might settle as budget savvy traveler).

I flew into Geneva from Rome and met Baillie at the airport. She had arrived a few hours earlier and supposedly got the lay of the land before she had to meet me...this later proved false as we got lost in the rain for a good while at about midnight.
I arrived, we hugged, loud scene, etc. etc. When all that was over we realized that it was about 10 at night and neither of us had bothered to look up a hostel. So my last month of travel begun.
We got on the bus and decided to head towards a main part of town but got lost in the rain for a bit(as mentioned above). When we arrived in a decent looking area our only course of action was to wander until we found a hostel sign and we eventually did. We went in, got in line, asked about vacancy, were laughed at, discussed how likely it would be to get away with sleeping on the couches, inquired about horse ownerships, and were finally referred to another dwelling. When we arrived there they had a couple beds available and we paid a lot for them- thus beginning the milking of our bank accounts by Switzerland. This was the only time we arrived in a strange city in the middle of the night without a place to stay or knowledge of the area...and I would love that to be true- but we did it many other times and I'm sure we would have done it many more.
In the morning we decided to take in the sights..and once we saw the price tags on things we quickly realized that we couldn't stay the 5 days and see the other cities we had planned on seeing. (At this point Beef was on a 25 euro a day budget. At a later point that went down to 10). After we took the morning to find and book our bus to Grenoble we went down to the water(a turquoise clear blue, so clean for a city, so clean for anywhere) to take in a super underwhelming flower clock that turned out to be a few wild flowers and spinning hands, the big, famous jet stream that was broken or something and neither jet nor streamed, some fountains, and grass lounged. When it was time to eat I was really wanting to try some fondue, but it cost your first born and so we headed to the grocery store. Food is expensive, very, so we got some rice cakes and olives and sat on the curb to enjoy our feast. As we were eating a Roma woman approached us and we gave her a euro or two. As a reward for this selfless deed we got yelled at/lectured by this Swiss guy in a suit(they weed out the poor) about how we just helped devastate the country by giving this woman a couple coins. As if she could do much with them anyway. The game "I'm that crazy Swiss guy" was born.
Later, we looked through the old city, walked these beautiful green paths, took lots of beautiful pictures(that are gone forever) and eventually had to make our way to the bus station. We boarded the bus and headed off to the next city to again arrive in the middle of the night with no place to stay- because not only do we make the same mistake twice, but over and over again.
All in all, Geneva was a beautiful city and I've heard from friends that Switzerland is one of the most beautiful countries. I'm sorry we missed out on it. So I'll be back, Switzerland. I'll be back to make your Roma wealthy, eat carbs, ski off carbs, and enjoy everything you have to offer. And since I have recently decided to win the lotto, hopefully it wont take me too long to do. Ohhh to reminisce!

Rome.

Like I said, Rome was the last stop for the three of us traveling together. As you can imagine, our booking ahead and being preped and responsible kind of started to lose some steam. I'm pretty sure we had somewhere to stay for the first night or so, but for accom. Rome was just as expenisve as Amsterdam. As in Very. On the train ride to Rome we met three older ladies and talked to them basically the whole trip. They were really great and even gave us their addresses so we could come crash with them if ever in the area. Really one of the most pleasent train rides wa had. We also met some American girls who were our age. We shared hostel information but werent staying in the same one.
Once we got off the train, we ventured out in search of our hostel. We had the directions, but it took us forever to find the place. When we finally found a different hostel we just went in to as for directions, turns out we had tekan the wrong name down and spent forever looking for a hostel sign that was way across town. Oops. When we finally got settled, we went into our room and ran into the American girls we had met on the train. It was nice to see them. We then made plans to get food and go out on pub crawls and have lots of fun...we only ended up doing teh first bit. In the same room as us, we met a gril from the UK. She was great! She had done a bunch of her studies on the part of histroy we were going to go explore. She came with us to all the important sights and gave us a great amount of info on each. She was our own personal tour guide. Rome was great! So much to see, so much to learn. The Col was amazing.. trying to imagine the crazy things that went on there.. and thanks to teh movie The Gladiator it was a bit easier to do just that. We were trying to couchsurf in rome so we didnt book all of our hostels at once.we stayed two days in that one and then scrambled to find another. Did I mention how expensive it was? We enede up staying at this other hostel within a hotel and shared two beds for teh 4 of us(Kat had come with us to save some money).That night Ky and i decided to check out what Rome had to offer in teh night scene and went out and left the girls at the hotel. Lynds was feeling sick and Kat just wasnt up for it that night. Ky and I walked through, what we now know is a very bad part of town at night, to this funky little bar. It was weird though, as they didnt play any music..not even background music. You barely notice music in places,but when it isnt there you really, really do. We had a beer, felt a little put off by the whole scene,and called it a night.
The next day when we had to yet again scramble for a hostel, we eventually bit our lip and took the cheaper, bungalow option outside of town. We got there and realized that we really should have been there the whole time. As it was our last night together we decided to get very drunk at the bar and dance like madmen even though the floor was huge and there were about 4 other people there, haha ohh liquid courage. The end started out really well and ended crouched under a bed for cover. It was possibly the creepiest night we had.
With us at the hostel was a military squad(?)from the British Army. There were a bunch of guys but we only ended up really meeting two of them. When they finally closed the bar, Lyndsey and I had an arangement with one of the security guards to let us drive around the grounds with the golf cart. We had arranged to meet him at 3 am in the main area. The two boys decided to stay up with us utnil that time. One was majorly hitting on Lyndsey and we both started to get a little creeped out. When the security guard came to take us out and back to our room-thing,we all said goodnight. When the guard dropped us off, he told us to keep a watch out as someone was following us home. We looked over, and saw british boy crouched hidden tiger style behind a hedge! We told him to back the eff off and scrambled into our room. Once we recovered from shock and got out from under the bed, and told the guy to get lost, but he decided that the best plan of action was to creep back and forth outside our room for about half an hour and try to get in occasionally. We pushed our beds together, kept the pepperspray out and tried to fight off sleep. I, of course, was asleep within a few minutes but thankfully that was the last we saw of him. Kind of shook us up though.
The next morning was a sad one :( The girls left me for Paris. I was really sad to see them go, even though Im a terrible and awkward goodbye-er. A nice hug and a "See you later" is about as much as they got from me :S
To tell the truth I was a bit worried about spending two months with the girls. I for sure thought Lynds and I were going to kill eachother and I didnt know Ky that well at all, nothing more than a few classes together in highschool. Now, though, I really couldnt have asked for two better people. Ky made it so Lynds and I could keep our cool when things could have gotten heated, and we always just ended up laughing it off about 4 minutes later. Senses of humor were very, very similar and that is so essential when you're forced to be with someone 24/7. Seeing humour in the small things is what makes some of the best moments and makes those long, tedious moments go by quicker. I will always consider myself really lucky to have had the opportunity to travel with these grils, and to have gotten to know them so much better in such an amazing way. Thanks for an amazing 2 months :) You are now both a part of my lifes history that I will never forget.
Back in Rome, I thankfully got to meet up with a friends sister who ended up staying at the same camp ground(tiny world!) and roomed with this really, really cool Australian gril.. so I didnt feel all that alone. i spent my two last days in Rome trying to hunt down imaginary Canadian Embassies and other non-important things. Lyndsey found out that 400 dollars was taken from her account by some messed up bank machine. A huge blow to any poor traveler. When my last two days were up, I took a bus down to the airport and got on my flight to Geneva to meet Baillie in Switzerland for our 5 or so days there. That was the plan anyway, Im sure its a very nice place.

Naples, Italy.

So the title may say Naples, but I have almost nothing to say about that city. WE riived in Naples, was showed to our hostel by some homeless guy, and slept here. That's it. Naples is a pretty rough city and so we spent no time there. For most of our stay it was only a base camp.
First day in Naples, after staying the first night in our funky little hostel, was spent at the Almafi Coast. We took the death ride up the coast. The roads were so narrow and the bus driver was crazy and everyone sat there writing their wills. When we got to the coast we hit the beach right away. And I didn't even get burned :) I did however pay way too much for this terrible drink that I didn't touch and then made myself happy by compensating by also buying myself a gelato...and then maybe some lemon candies. But thats what the coast is known for, lemons, so it'd really be a shame if I didn't. After we wandered, thought about buying my dad a giant blowfish light that I knew mum would be horrified by, we swallowed our fears and got back on bus ride of death home.
The next day we decided not to bake ourselves but take in some culture. We went up and visited the ruins of Pompei. Stupidly, we didn't see the booth that was handing out all the info booklets so for the next few hours we just kind of wandered the place not having any idea what we were looking at. It was awesome but it would have been more awesome to have that booklet. It was a long time ago now, but I can only guess we made ourselves feels better with gelato. That night we got all dressed up to have ourselves a good, good night since the music in the club was attached to our hostel was growing loud and we just couldn't fight that feeling. When we got down, the lady at the desk gave us a one over, and told us that No, we wern't allowed to crash that 18 year olds birthday party. We awkwardly walked back up to our room, brushed out our hair, washed off our make up and went to sleep. Total success.
The next day we moved out of Naples and into a funky little camp ground in Sorrento. Sorrento was nice but our camp ground was a bit outside of the area so we only spent one day walking around and seeing the city. We were going to go and try the nightlife there but it was yet another expensive cab ride home to our huts and so we decided against it. Our first day there we went to another beach. It was okay. I probably say this just because I got really, really burnt. My ears, my chest, my eyelids, my shins, my thighs, my neck were all a bright red. I sunscreened a lot, but I probably should have known to apply a lot more often since my fair skin can't even handel a Canadian sun, let alone an Italian one. Lyndesy got stung by a jelly fish. Not bad enough to have to get peed on though. When we got back from teh beach we made ourselves some dinner in the funniest little kitchen bungalow; ate, and were content.
The next day in Sorrento we decided to climb up Mount Vesuvius, the active volcano that has been due to errupt for the past 20 years. It was really cool up there, as teh volcano still smokes and you get a great view of the surrounding area. It is though, a huge money grab. You pay 10 euro to get up to the parking lot, another 6 euro to be able to walk up to the peak and then you only get to walk around half of the peak and if you want to walk the other half, you have to pay 6 euro more. It was amazing when we got to the top. There was rain, and thunder and we were level with the dark storm clouds and right after them was the sunny horizion. We took pictures and rocks from the top. We stayed up for lunch and made our way back down a hour a so later. When we got back to our Camping we found the pool, was entranced by the sight of it, and spent the next day or so there or in Sorrento. It was a nice, relaxing part of the trip. Filled with glato and expensive internet time and sun. After our stay there was over we headed to Rome. It was my last stop with the girls before they left for Paris. It's been a while since they've been home now and I still get sad that they're not here anymore. Couldn't have asked for better travel partners. Travel friends.

Lake Como and Florence.

More Italy.
After we left Bologna we made our way to Lake Como(don't look at a map, it doesn't make sense). I knew very little about Lake Como except that George Cloony has a place there, but Lyndsey, again, found a google image of the place while looking up Itlay and so off we went. And I'm happy we did.
Lake Como is very, very beautiful. We had the worst time getting there since we took a few wrong trains, passed stops, and turned a 3 hour trip into 7 hour trip. All I can say is that tempers were wearing thin. It's amazing, though, how a breathtaking view(and a few glasses of wine) can take the most troubled waters and make them calmly flow under the bridge. Truth be told we wern't actually staying in Lake Como but about a 30 minute bus ride outside in a place called Managgio. We stayed in a very poorly run little hostel right on the water. When we found out what bus to take from Como to Managgio we asked some guy to let us know when to get off. He did, we got off, and after walking about 10 minutes ona road without sidewalks we started to get a little worried about finding our beds. We saw some guys on the side of the road and asked them if they knew teh area. These guys weren't from Como, or spoke a word of English...they were French. I finally, after 2 years, got to test my French. I was shocked. It was terrible. It has gone way down hill since highschool, and even then, it wasn't the best. After they found out what I was asking them, they put the address into their car GPS and informed us that Hostel was 10 km away. We were frozen. There was no way we would make that walk alive, either we would die from the weight of our bags or we would be smashed by a car. So we did the responsible thing under the stress and accepted a ride from them. It was great! A free ride right up to our door. So we took their numbers, promised to call that night for drinks, and never did. Oops. I would now like to take a moment to say that we had every intention to call them, and I will blame the Ozzies that we later met over overpriced Hostel dinner and very reasonably priced red wine for keeping us entertained. Sorry French guys.
When we got to the hostel the people who worked there we really nice, even though they took you for everything and in teh end I would never go back. When we sat down for dinner we each ordered a side salad and brough us out one bowl, then when teh girls ordered a regular salad since the portions were nothing more than a leaf or two each, we got the same bowl. We paid 6 euro and then 3 euro for the same amount of salad. They did this to us later aswell when at at a 10 euro barbeque 7 of us got the exact same portion size and a table of three. It was redicilous. Later when we were playing cards over some wine they said they were tired and wanted to shut down early and "not to insist staying up past 12" and that we had to go to sleep or else we'd be locked out. It was just stupid.
Annnyway(now that Ive ranted) we met these 2 cool guys from Australia while at the place and ended up spending the rest of our days there with them. We took the little ferry around to see the sights, ate, drank and were merry. One sight that we saw in particular was called (dont judge my spelling of this place) Barbienello. Or you might know it as "that villa where Bond hung out in Casino Royale" or, for the nerds amoung you, "the place where Ani Skywalker and Nat Portman kissed in the 2nd Starwars movie". We took a tour of the villa. It was like a museum, but the view was the money. So to sum it up Lake Como = beautiful and we just hung out a lot.
Next stop on the Italian trip was Florence.
We arrived in Florence but decided to stay cheaply outside of town in a place called Tavernelle. It was around one hour on a bus but the views of the Tuscan country made the 2 hour commute per day not unwelcome. The only bummer about staying where we did was that the last bus was at 7:50 and it was a 60 Euro cab ride back, so it killed any opportunities to go out and enjoy the nightlife. The Hostel was pretty cool, looked exactly like your elementary school, and was run by this super awesome woman. She just spewed sweetness. We only stayed two nights and we arrived late. So the first night we headed down to the owners favorite little restaurant and had the best dinner ever and were surrounded by locals(always a good sign). It was the best meal we have had on the trip yet. We ate, and ate, and ate and left feeling almost high with food delight. We slept well that night in what we had originally thought was 4 bed girls dorm, but Lyndsey soon found out mid wardrobe change that it was not. Thankfully the guy was asleep and he survived unscarded.
The next day, since it was our only full day, we had a very strict schedule of the things we wanted to do and see. There was the church and David and then, at the end of the day there was the leather market. This is not at all what happened. We ran into the leather market at the beginning of the day and then was totally consumed by cheap leather and wasted most of our time bardering prices. I spent so much money on a leather jacket for myself and gifts for family that when we took a breather for a kabab, I was shaking. The girls had to talk me out of a full mental breakdown about the money I spent. I feel pretty good about it now though and am totally happy about all purchases- and hopefully family memebers will be happy with them as well. Later, we raced to the church, was robbed of our breath, and missed the museum all together. We had to catch the bus. But we did have great gelato. Seriously, there is no sorrow that gelato can't cure. What we decided when we got back to the hostel was to go to the grocery store for dinner and walk along the country. The lasagna I got from the hot food section was really good too, it's like you can't go wrong there. We met a girl with a name I'm sure on the bus and walked around with her for a bit. It was stunning. We then called it a night and packed for our journey for Naples(or Napal as I kept calling it for some bizarre reason) where we saw nothing but lots of the surrounding area. Very cool.

Italy. Venice and Bologna.

Hey there everyone who isn't in Italy right now, be jealous- very jealous. I write to you with love from Florence, or to be more truthful, a little place called Tavarnelle in the country. I tell you to be jealous because I just had the most yummy dinner ever. In Italy. In Tuscany. But now that I have gloated, I will fill you in (fill you in honestly. Dad...prepare yourself) on our stay in Italy.

Dad stop reading here...
Our Italian leg of the trip started in Venice. In Venice we...dad, really, skip to the next Italian town blog entry part now...
couchsurfed. It was great. We stayed with this really nice guy, who had a really nice flat, and it was really nice not paying anything for accom. He was out at school a lot so we never actually went out with him to see anything but we did all stay up late chatting and all that jazz. He would always leave early in the morning and we would get up late and shower, eat, etc. The first morning we awoke, feeling fresh and wonderful to be in an actual house again, I got ready to take a shower. I got in, got the water to the perfect temperature, did my thing, and stepped out- into 2 inches of water that was now flooding the bathroom floor. Thank gosh the guy was away, because the next 20 or so minutes were dedicated to us frantically mopping up the water with our towels and ringing them out in the sink/tub. It was probably the best way to start our couchsurfing experience. We cleaned it all up and Marco still has no clue. Venice was, of course, beautiful. We went into the mayors palace and a church, went on a romantic ride down the canal(but the dude refused to sing us traditional italian songs and instead just told us about some buildings), Ky and I window shopped while Lynds actually shopped, and just strolled and were model tourists. The second day it rained, so we looked around and then called it a very early night as to not be locked out of the flat while Marco was away teaching math. We had our first Italian pizza there- very yummy, and our first taste of real Italian icecream, or gelato. It was very good, but so was the stuff in Vienna. Other than that, I dont think we did much else in Venise- except take in the sights and eat a lot of carbs.

Dad start reading here...
Our next stop was an important one to me as it was where the family was from, Bologna. I wish I had taken a final look at some old family photos before coming on the trip so I could go match them to the actual sights in the city. We only stayed there two nights. When we got off the train we were very confused with our "take a right, then take a left" directions to the bus stop to get to our hostel. How we've made it from Dublin to, now, Naples I have no idea(actually all this credit goes to Kylene, the map holder). Now that we have become excellent Askers of Directions we asked a woman who turned out to be an American and was heading to the same hostel. Her name was Joanne and instead of going out boozing later that night, after we were all unpacked, we all headed back into town for a nice dinner. Bologna was a beautiful place. It had lots of expensive shopping and all the sidewalks were covered with beautiful arches and we even found a Piazza Marco Biagi! I took the obvious photo opportunity with fake smiles and in between the click of the camera, yelled and got yelled at by Lyndsey. It's okay though, we hugged it out like 5 minutes later.
Now that im on the topic of yelling I would just love to point out that there has actually been none. Haha kind of makes me a liar but we almost never argue. Embarking on this trip I kind of thought that we would be at eachothers throats but I have yet to wish any harm on anyone. I haven't gotten sick of eithers compagny and am almost never annoyed, and if I am it only lasts at most half an hour and were all back to normal again- on my half at least. It's brilliant. I am just loving most minutes of everything!
Okay, back to Bologna. After dinner we went back and got a good little sleep. The next day I was out to fullfill my mission of taking as many photos as I could of anything that might be recognizable to my great aunt Yolanda. We saw the main square where there was a statue with women all bent over sqeezing their boobs and having water squirt of of their nipples in multiple streams heading in multiple directions. Being 19, we took pictures. We also went in the big church there and walked up one of the two historical towers that had the most amazing view of the city. It was beautiful, but do you expect anything less from Italy? After we waundered the city we went home and ordered some of the worst pizza of my life, like worse than 711 Pizza Hut pizza, hurried in the bathroom doing the usual teeth brushing as the WC creeped the hell out of me, went to sleep, and got up the nex day to begin the journey to Lake Como to visit, after being exhausted with invitation after invitation from George Clooney to visit him there. But more on Como and Clooney another day! Allllll my love <3

(Aren't we just getting lamer and lamer? If all my posts from now on are "we walked and saw some sights" I'll start making stories up. You'11 know they are though becasue I probably wont be able to fight the urge of involving unicorns and lake monsters.)

Austria!

We got to Austria via train. Austria. is. so. beautiful. It is a very similar beautiful to a B.C beautiful. We were all in wide-eyed wonder as our trian took us towards the tiny, country town of Hallstatt. (Google it- it was beautiful!). Mountains, and lakes, and trees! We were giddy by the sight and felt close to home there. When we got to the Hallstatt train station (a cabin) we walked down this little path and took a boat over to the small town built right up against a mountain and a lake. Our pictures will never do it justice. We had just kind of showed up in this town without a place to stay or much of a game plan. We walked through the town and found a sign that said Youth Hostel on it. We knocked, the door was unanswered. This is where small town awesomeness comes into play. This town had less than 1000 people living there and so when a man walked by and saw us just sitting on the steps to this place he got out his cell phone, called the owner, and were settled in our hostel beds in less than 20 minutes. What we did in Hallstatt: walked. We stayed there for 2 nights. We walked through the town and up to the top of this mountain where there was a salt mine. Did you know that Hallstatt was the first salt mining place in the world? Now you do, and can use it during trivia games. We also took lots of jumpy photos! That was fun. Jumping is always fun. So let me make a quick correction. What we did in Hallstatt: walked and jumped.

After a relaxing time in Hallstatt we made our way to Vienna. I really liked Vienna. It was lovely. You walked through the old city and it was very nice. It did however make us feel as though we should be more cultured and into the arts. we satyed in, according to my Lets Go book, the best hostel in town so there were instruments and a bar and games! Fun, fun. When we arrived we went to a museum there with lovely paintings and egyptian artifacts, hit up some famouse coffee that I payed waaaay to much for and was almost undrinkable and the first night we just hung out in our neat little hostel. I hit the wine pretty quick as it was cheap and there. Kylene and I played some Scrabble and Lyndsey was off on the computer I think. During our game an 81 yer old man came to observe and then sat with us. We ended up talking to him for most of the night as he helped us with our words. Haha in the end it was him against himself as we demanded him to find words for us. This dude was awesome. He was 81 and every year for the past five the took one month away from his house and his wife to backpack the world and stay in hostels. We enjoyed listening to his stories. When he went to bed another young Australian came to finish the Scrabble game that we had started, and the old man had continued. We almost went out for a drink after with him but, since we are so hip, chose sleep instead.
First full day in Vienna we went to Schloss Schonbrunn, or, the royal palace! My mother has raised me to love, love this kind of stuff. We did a nice audio walking tour of the rooms and then the grounds and the labrynth. We spent a few hours there. After that Lyndsey was feeling a bit ill so Kylene and I went to check out the opera times and tickets then came back to get ready for a night out. We got dressed up and went to this cool, underground bar called Chelsea. At first we felt kind of awkward since there wernt too, too many people there and the people who were were really dressed down but by the end of the night it was so packed it was an expedition to get to the bathroom. Kylene and I danced, Lyndsey sat at the bar and eventually became the target for some Austrian guy. He got so annoying, and the bar got so full(as well as our lungs with cigarette smoke) that we left. It was a very fun time though in a cool little bar.
Next full day we went back to another museum to see Mozart's violin. After seeing that and some other fun things we headed back to the hostel to refresh and have dinner before the opera. Like we do, we got there 5 minutes late and had to wait 45 to get in, so we only ended up seeing the last 2 acts. The opera was Tosca and was well worth our 3 euro standing room tickets. That night we returned to the hostel, played some cards and when the bar closed the bartender mentioned this other place and a bunch of people who werent down for the night to end wandered over there. We had a good old time. I lost 2 shots to Kylene by betting on the wrong pool player, but I got her flaming shots and it was awesome to see. I was though almost made ill by all the smoking. My pure, pink lungs are really not used to all the smoke of Europe and I had to stand outside for a bit or else I think I might have brought back up everything I had taken in(to my stomach). After that closed, the three of us again followed the bartender to this cafe and had some yummy, yummy water. At 0530 we finally found our beds. All the plans for the next days adventures before our train ride to Venice were immediately abandoned. Our check out was 10 and so we slept on their couches until about 2 and then dragged ourselves to the bus where we spent 10 hours until finally arriving in Venice- and that is where I am now, but I'll fill you in on Italia another day since I have been hogging the computer long enough. Ciao!

Germany.. the rest

So I know that it has been a while since my last post and I'll do my best to remember everything. What I have remembered though was what else we did in Cologne! We also went to the Lindt chocolate factory where they told you about all the different steps there are to making delicious Lindt chocolate and then we got to eat some. Yummy, yummy. We also got to walk through this little market stretch and it was very cute. We had some Kababs. Thats about it.

Berlin was fun. We stayed in this funky little hostel. The first day there we umm, just slept and walked around for a bit. That was a travel day. Our first full day in Berlin we went on yet another New Europe walking tour and that was really educational. We learnt all about Berlin's past with the Nazi's, the Berlin wall, the fall of the wall etc. These tours are great, even more so because they are free and you usually see the main sights you plan on seeing anyway but with way more history. We went to Pergamonmuseum, went shopping for some food, got dressed for a pubcrawl. We always agree that we wont do any more of them, but the free drink to admittance pay is always too good to pass up. This one was pretty fun. We met some nice girls from the States, ignored some guys from Poland, met a cute couple from Australia, re-met some Kiwis from our free tour in Amsterdam and Lyndsey almost met her maker. The beer percentage in Germany is a wee bit higher than in Canada so drinking the same amount of beer has very different effects. Lyndsey found this out the hard way- I'm sorry, I meant the hilarious way. It all turned out well in the end though, and nothing at all scandelous to report- just a little Tube dancing and a few "I'm awesome" declarations.
The next day we slept-in for obvious reasons. We visited the Holocaust Memorial, and walked around a nice little tented area with stages for May Day. This story kind of annoys me. So, the woman at our hostel told us that May Day is just a riot day and that it could get pretty ugly down in the centre. As we walked around that day we also saw hords and hords of police men being brought in from the surrounding areas to tame the crowds for later. We were told many times by this woman to get the hell out of town when night fell. So that is exactly what we did. We were kind of bummed that that was the case since we would have loved to see the demonstrations. We have, of course, never seen anything like that before. As I typed away at my last blog around midnight our hostel girl came back... from the demonstrations. She then started to tell me how interesting it all was. She said that everyone was well behaved since they stayed in the main area and she knew it was going to be fine. We were pretty pissed we missed it- and very annoyed that we wouldn't have if she hadn't told us how dangerous it was when it really wasn't. So we ended up missing this big event. Not cool. The next day we found our way to Munich- this was on May 2nd, after being in Europe for exactly 1 month.

We only stayed in Munich for 2 nights, or one travel day and one full day as we see them. This was probably a mistake since it was very beautiful there. Our first day in Munich we walked around the city I'm assuming. We did laundry, used the internet etc. It was more of a getting things done day than a seeing things day.
The next day I'm sure you can guess what we did. Exactly, free walking tour. It was May 3rd that day also making it Lyndsey's 20th birthday. She went to talk to Makana on the computer for a while and Kylene and I went to a science museum and after that went to fetch Lyndsey some cake. We got four different slices and ate them in record time. It was after this when we did the walking tour, not only to learn more about american gthe city but also to walk off so much cake/birthday beer. On this tour we met a nice American girl named Dorothy who ended up spending the rest of the day with us. We visited the largest park in the world. After so much city a little green is always welcome. When we got hungary again we went to a very German restaurant for some very German food. At first we were all pissed because the waitresses acted very different than what we're used to...as in they were very rude. After we got used to this kind of hospitality we actually ended up really liking our waitress and will look back with fond memories. There we met some German guys and chatted for a bit. Good times had by all and I think Lyndsey had a happy birthday indeed. After that we packed our things and got ready for our morning's journy to Austria. End on Germany.

Germany so far

So I last left you in Amsterdam I think. I should probably start reading over my own blogs to make sure I haven`t left anything out. But the internet is expensive, and even when it isn`t, I`m lazy. So I`ll begin in Cologne, our first German stop.

First of all, Germany is very nice filled with very nice people. Everyone here seems to be ready to chat and carry on a conversation, help whenever possible, and switch over to English since the only German word we know is Danka! They are, however, terrible with accents and everyone thinks we are British after they hear us speak- which shocks the crap out of us everytime since, to us, the accents are so different. We were speaking to one German chap on the underground and he said he couldn`t tell them apart at all.. be it North American, British, Australian etc. Weird.

Cologne. It`s been a while since we`ve left and I already forget most of what we did there. We saw an awesome gothic cathedral! But obviously not much else, maybe. The girls are all tucked into their beds meaning I don`t even have them near to refresh my memory. Okay, so more about Cologne in my next post!

Hamburg. Hamburg, I`m sure, is a very nice city. But we were staying on the Reeperbahn(spelling of German names may be an issue, but roll with it- I do.) or aka Hamburg`s red light district, so we just saw a lot of big, neon boobs. Not only was our hostel located on this strip, but right it the dirtiest part. There was our hostel, and on either side a huge strip club and a porn/sex shop. Next to these two classy getaways were more strip clubs and/or porn/sex shops. There were old men situated at the enterances of these strip clubs trying to get people to come inside. We were never invited. I guess our gender, baby faces and Gap t-shirts werent popluar with their regular crowed so they assumed we would be disinterested. That`s not to say we didn`t see more than our share of nudity, but more on that later.
At night, this place freaked us out more than Amsterdam`s red light district- that didn`t freak us out at all really. It seemed grittier. So we didn`t go out at night. One guy on a train even told us not to, that it would a safety risk. So we just didn`t. The COOL part about all this though was, if you know any Beatles history-and maybe by all my blog posts you now know a little more than before- we were almost exactly where they played all those years ago! Back then it was shady, forward to now it still is. And like i`ve said before, everything they`ve touched becomes a pilgrimage point, so they`ve named a square after them and have some neat little metal figures of them playing. This was the beginning. Before the cavern, before most of it. Yay!
Going back to the topic of nudity, I said that we had seen our share without even having to go into a strip club or pay one penny...well except for the euro it cost for the internet. Haha I just read over that sentence and it's not at all how it sounds. I promise. So, last night when Lynds and I were down near our hostel`s reception area finishing our prepaid internet time mindlessly Facebooking( you see where that comes in now?) we were greeted by a young German lad. He spoke to us but since we don`t understand any German it took me a second to realize it was directed at us. What really made me look over was a quick gasp, and erruption of surprised laughter from Lynsdey. I looked over and she was just staring at me, I looked behind her and saw a young guy from the torso up as Lyndsey was blocking the rest of his body with her head. I assumed he was in his underwear, a common sight in a hostel, but the look on her face told me otherwise. "Is he naked?" I asked her wide-eyed. More laughter and a horrified shake of her head revealed all. Like I said, her head was the only thing blocking my view. I looked directly back at the screen.There was this dude, now realizing we spoke English, with his hands on his hips and his Frankfurter hanging all over the place asking us to fetch him when we were done with the internet. I promptly responded without looking over that, not wanting to know why he wanted to go on the internet we were most certainly not going to go get him looking like that. He left, we laughed our shock away and just sat there stunned for a minute or two. I mean, this was a popular sitting and eating area. Then, the idiot came back, this time thankfully fully clothed, with a friend of his to chat us up! He offered us some crackers and we said that we refused to touch anything he has ever touched and we had this back and forth for minute until we just refused to talk to them and they left. We ran back to our room, not wanting them to know what one we were in, and were in too much shock to go to reception and have them kicked out. It was... I don`t even know what it was. Disgusting.
Other than pictures of naked ladies and real life naked men, we got to see the harbour with its nice ships and the town square with the nice town hall. Excuse me for the lack of enthusiasm about more old buildings/churches/halls but we have just seen so many that trying to go on and on about them would be pointless. They are all very, very impressive and some are better than others.
We also went to the concentration camps Neuengamme and Bergen-Belsen.
The first one we went to was Neuengamme. I don`t even know what is appropriate to say about going there. It was strange to be willingly traveling(and we traveled far for both) to a place where so, so many innocent people tried to escape going. Going forward towards somewhere that was built for, and represents such terror and evil. But I still, it's important for people to see these places, see the pictures and hear the stories so it eventually becomes impossible for anything like this happen. We have all learnt about it in history, but to actually be there, to be standing in the roll call square, to be standing in front of mass graves made it more real than it ever would have been otherwise. Neuengamme was still, for the most part, intact. You could walk the grounds, go inside the buildings and slave workshops. Both were so big and when you see how much time, money, thought and organization went into these mass murders you can`t help but feel overwhelming disgust.
Belsen was different from Neuengamme. There were no longer buildings or anything. Nice little paved paths lead you around the camp. It was a medow, and, as wrong as this feels to say, it was beautiful. The beauty of the area felt wrong but also triumphant. Here, is this area, a death camp, where so many people died in the most inhumane ways possible and was supposed to represent the strenght of the Nazi`s was now destroyed, filled with singing birds, wild plants and grass. It was kind of a symbol of how, even when evil is at it`s highest, beauty will still overcome it. There was a great monument in one corner, symbolic gravestones- the most decorated being that of Margot and Ann Frank,the girls who`s anix we were in just days before. They had an exhibit set up there, where they had artifacts and video interviews with survivors who shared their experience of coming back to that place. Some said they found it hard, some said they felt a calling to it, but one woman- who`s words I felt the most- said that she felt happy seeing it. That she saw how beautiful it was and wanted nothing more than to roll in the grass. That it was such a feeling, to come back to a place where you were supposed to die- and to come back with your children. We left with mixed emotions.
We have now just arrived in Berlin. More on the rest of Germany, and Cologne, when it happens/I remember.

Amsterdam..

Post is titled Amsterdam but I missed our last few hours in Bruges. They went as followed:
So after leaving the internet cafe we went one last time to visit, and say our final goodbye, to the butcher. His store was closed, we were sad. To overcome this sadness we decided to distract ourselves with some card playing at the bar where we each ordered a Coke and sat down for a nice, calm night. This is exactly what we would have had if some extremely drunk Canadian guy hadn't sat down with us. After about 5 minutes Lynds ran off to bed and Ky and I stayed to finish the game. Mistake. I spent the next hour cringing away from this guy and all his drunked "Aww fu*king rights man"'s and his extensive use of the word "eh" as if that was supposed to bring us together in our Canadianness. He even asked us if we were doing our country proud and not embarassing the leaf. After our game was over, and becasue this idiot talked..or swore..the whole time it took way longer than it should have, we made our escape. Shudder. I shudder at the thought of this guy.
Now for Amsterdam. Accom in Amsterdam was crazy expensive so we only stayed 2 nights. First day we went to check out teh Red Light District where all the ladies dance it teh windows selling their...services. Haha it was not really what I was expecting as some just sat there and ate or looked really bored. We were all too freaked out to look too long and kept our eyes forward for the most part.
On our walk home later that evening we got followed for like half an hour by some creepy guys singing at us and before that basically got kicked out of a Mexican restaurant. Well, not so much kicked out as told to "really, really enjoy our food" a.k.a "eat, then get the hell out." This made paying a bit awkward when just before we saw the reservation storm out of the place after seeing us at her table and have our waitress chase after her down the road yelling "Johanna! Johanna!". It was almost romantic. I'm going to state, though, that we ate very, very fast and it was their fault for getting our one order out late. And since you only have my word, you're going to believe me.
When we got back to the hostel, our safe haven after creepy following guys, we got all ready for bed. We shared this one little corner of our 20 person dorm with the weirdest old man ever! He just stared at us, without lookign away, even when we caught his eye. He literally just watched us. Lynds and I were side by side on top buncks and stayed awake for like an hour talking becasue we were so freaked out. I think I had accidentally offened him so when I laughed he would mock me from his bunk! I forced Lynds to sleep in my bunk and we were glued most of the night. In the morning, when we could look at the situation in a clearer light, I might have over reacted a wee bit. End first night in Amsterdam.
Begin second day in Amsterdam. We did a walking tour of the area with teh same company as Edinburgh. This time our tour guide was kind of shy and quiet so I didn't get much out of it. Then we went to the Ann Frank Museum, got to go inside her hiding place. It was insane seeing, or being in, that place where we have read in her most famous diary. That night we went on another pub crawl. This one was slightly differnt than teh one in Scotland. There were waaaaay more people, they were always pouring vodka down your throat out of plastic pop bottles, and the guy to girl ratio was kind of off. At one club there were probably 100 people, and there were actually 6 girls including us. For some reason Amsterdam seems to attract the male population. Next morning we left for the train station and took a very expensive ride to Cologne.
In Hamburg now, next stop Berlin!

In Bruges..

So we are now in Bruges, Belgium. You may have heard of this little place from the movie In Bruges. If you have seen this movie let me tell you that our experience here has been just slighlty different.

We arrived here the day before yesterday and are leaving tomorrow. When we first arrived we just took our time walking around the city, got some chocolate, drank a bunch of Leffe and Raspberry beer. The first day I arrived starving and asked a hostel employee where I could get some cheap food- he sent me in the direction of a near butcher. We went and got some food and since then we have returned to our butcher everyday for soup and yummy little dishes. Yesterday we sat with him as he heated up our food and he started giving us samples of super expensive hams. He gave us the thinnest sliver that was worth about 2 Euro. This ham was around 260 euro a kg! Worse than that it was almost all fat and pretty icky but we smiled, held up our fatty meat, cheersed our best butcher friend and swallowed without chewing. Later the first night Kylene was feeling healthy and went for a run while Lynds and I were feeling sober and retired to the bar, played cards and drank Leffe, red wine, and yummy raspberry beer. In the bar we were seated by this tank of an old woman who appeared to be really offended by our card shuffling. When we had first arrived at the hostel around 1:30 pm she was there alone with her beer and then when we came back at 8:00 pm or so she was still in the same spot just people watching. For the short while we spent in the pub we saw her get up and come back at least four times with a huge mug of beer. This old woman totally put me to shame. When we went back yesterday she was there again, but this time with a noticably younger man on her arm. There are things to learn from old Belgin women.

Day two we spent on bicycles since everyone here rides one. We got yelled at a lot in Flemish for not quite understanding the bike rules but since we didn't understand a word it didn't bother us much. We just got lost for a few hours to see all the different parts of this pretty little city, visited our butcher friend and came back to get changed for a fun-filled Tuesday night. Up until then we basically had this 8 bedroom mixed dorm all to ourselves, up until then we have basically had all of our dorms to ourselves, so getting changed in the open has never been an issue for us. Or since I sleep talk a lot, exclaiming "I'm in my panties!!" in the middle of the night is more funny than embarassing. This is why when Kylene was changing her pants and I was lounging in my bed we were caught a little off guard, and in Ky's case-literally with her pants down- when three Welsh boys walked into our room. They were very respectful and shuffled back out when they realized what was happening. I just started laughing but the best reaction was definitly Kylene's, and that was no reaction at all. She didn't even flinch. She looked up, laughed to herself, put on her pants and called them back in. It was beautiful.
When the boys came back in we chatted with them for a bit and said we'd all meet up in the bar later. Armed with a deck of cards we all crammed into a booth and played Cheat for a bit. There were three of them: Dan 1, Dan 2 and Doug. We decided to change bars after a bit,and since Bruges isn't quite bumping on a Tuesday night we wondered until we eventually ended up at a different hostel's bar for some pool. Pool was fun, we each teamed with one of the guys to beat each other but I don't even remember sinking one ball all night. It was more the guys playing against each other but slower than usual because they had to wait a turn for us to hit the white ball randomly around the table. I was regularly distracted by this motorcycle in the room that we now have like 100 pictures pretending to ride. At around 4 am we finally and noisily got into bed and annoyed the one other person in our dorm. One special accomplishment of the night was finally getting Lynsdey properly drunk for basically the first time this whole trip. It was good, innocent fun had by... well us at least. The guys went to Amsterdam today to pave the way.
Right now the three of us are basically the walking dead. We have really been go, go, go since we arrived and yesterday just did me in. I could happily sleep for a good 24 hours straight but the insomniac Kylene likes to be productive. Plus, we needed to visit the Butcher. Now we are trying to find a way to Amsterdam tomorrow and we are growing a little freaked out because it's looking like it's going to be the most expensive stop yet. Hostel prices for weekend dates are high. But it must be done I suppose and I hope to have lots to blog about by the end of our stay! Until next time!

P.S - mind the spelling or if things look a little off. The keyboard here is very different and my brain is taking the day off :)

England.

So I was thinking back and I know that I said I would tell you about the non-Beatles part of Liverpool but the truth is it was a pretty much all Beatles.
Getting to Liverpool was terrible. We had planned to leave Edinburgh sometime in the afternoon but when we arrived and asked the lady at the ticket booth she said that the next bus left at 9:30. We then asked her loads of questions about discounts etc. She said nothing. We left to spend the rest of the day in a park where I got separated from the girls, went to sit in a park and meet them at the bus station at 9 or so. Little did I know the girls were freaking out a bit and spent about half an hour each searching for me. Lynds said she was on the verge of calling the coppers and even worse...my dad. Who would have been on a plane within minutes, I'm sure, armed with a machete and tear gas. As I was lounging by very nice tree I sat up for a moment and heard my name. Turns out the girls were sitting about 50 meters from me and were taking shifts looking for me. I walked over and was greeted by a hard slap from Lyndsey. We are still arguing over who's fault the separation was.
When we arrived at the bus station the ticket booth was closed. We asked one of the workers and he said you had to book the tickets in advance! We were enraged that the woman said nothing. After speaking with one guy he said he knew the driver personally and so they were all making calls to try to get us on the bus. Eventually we did get on but had to change buses at Manchester. After forever on that one bus we got off at Manchester at 4 am and had to wait until 6:15am to get the bus to Liverpool. After asking another worker about tickets and him giving us no information we assumed we just paid the driver like every other time. We then kicked our feet up and tried to sleep. It wasn't long until a worker came over and told us to say it a sitting position... at 4 in the morning. For the next 2 hours we were all very awkwardly hunched over our backpacks trying to keep our feet on the floor and trying to sleep at the same time. When the bus finally arrived we walked up to the bus driver and asked how much he wanted- he then told us that we had to buy a ticket in advance- again! He told us to grab an electronic ticket that took Lynds less than a minute to pay for and as we ran back he was pulling out and telling us with a smile not to worry because there was another bus in two hours. I wanted to cut his tires open. Turns out that only one hour later another bus came to carry us to Liverpool. When we got there a hour later we got on a bus and, since the bus doesn't announce what stop is coming up, we asked the driver if he could let us know when to get off. He answered with a flat "No". It caught us off guard and so we slowly walked into the bus. Since the road signs are placed on the sides of some building and are hard to see we would have been totally and completely lost if a nice old man who overheard us hadn't told us where to get off. This little experience has almost made me lose faith in the transportation workers if it weren't for a few kind people who had gone out of their way to help us.
Understandably we were dead tired and sore when we arrived at the Hostel but unfortunately we couldn't check in until 3. I called Rod who picked us up and had taken us out for a cheap breakfast. He then took us around Liverpool, told us some history, went to the docks, the cavern and then took us home. Then we slept, a lot. The next day I already explained in great detail and now I'm in London.

We arrived in London pretty late and had an adventure getting to our hostel. We had written both the phone number and address down wrong so after walking for about an hour at night decided it didn't exist. We started getting a little snappy at each other and eventually, with hesitation from Kylene and me, caught a cab. After less than a minute in the cab and 3 pounds later we were at the Hostel and went to sleep.
We have been sightseeing the whole time- not much else. First day we started in St. Paul's Cathedral, it was nice. It was at St. Paul's where I learn't that I have slight anxiety about walking up long stretches of spiral staircases. It's like a corner you can never turn! The thought didn't sit well with me. Plus, the passages were so narrow one shoulder would touch one wall and the other the other wall. We saw a nice view of London and the Whispering room and then left with me feeling pretty tense and nauseous. Next was Tate Modern and walked around for a while. Impressed, amused and confused were the three main feelings surrounding Tate. We were pretty hungry by that point so spent less time in there than we should have. Food. Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was our next destination point and that was super cool. It was an exact replica, right down to the way it was built, of the one where Shakespeare first debuted his plays. We would have gone to a performance but the season doesn't start until April 23rd. Standing tickets are only £5- pretty good. Next was a closed London Tower and then home.
Day 2 started at...wait for it, Abby Road!!! Mmmmmm more Beatles.. We walked to the cross walk and got our pictures taken strolling across it just like 20 other people. It was a pretty busy intersection and I felt for the cars that might have to cross it daily with soooo many tourists trying to imitate their favorite Beatle for the camera. Right beside it was Abby Road studio. Everywhere they have touched is now covered with pen markings and messages of love. Got a picture on the steps. The studio is pretty small from the outside, I was kind of surprised. After that we visited Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, St. James Park, Parliament, Big Ben, attended a service at Westminster Abby as public viewing was not open that day, the Eye, then some London wandering and again home(home = wherever our backpack is).
We unfortunately didn't get to see much of Westminster Abby. They shuffled us in and out pretty quickly. We took the long way out and did get to see the Coronation Chair- and the hole where The Stone of Destiny used to be. We were pretty excited since we had just learnt the long history of the stone in Edinburgh. Over our shoulder we saw a tomb that we like to believe belongs to Elizabeth I or Mary Queen of Scots. Would have been cool to see Jane Austin's grave or Shakespeare. Too Bad.
Today we were supposed to leave to Belgium but because of the Volcano incident all of the couches were booked. So today I went inside London Tower and the girls went to Kings Cross to take a picture with half of a grocery cart. London Tower was so cool! Saw the court Yard where Ann Boleyn was beheaded among others, the church where she was buried, the Bloody Tower where those two young boys where murdered, the stairs where they found their remains. I saw all the crown jewels, the old armor of the old kings, the dungeons and torture chamber. I was a little over excited and again spent too long there and so we missed getting to The Royal British Museum. Oops. Had some fish and chips as our last English meal- pretty good. We tried to go out last night to meet up with some people for the Hostel but got lost, so we will try to go out again tonight. Maybe to a comedy show- maybe a bar, maybe a club. Haven't decided yet- but I'll let you know soon! I'll try to keep these shorter in the future, there is just so much happening!

The Beatles

As my title suggests this blog post will be entirely dedicated to my Beatles experience in Liverpool. Our horrendous trip getting to Liverpool and anything else we have done since we have been here will have to wait- The Beatles always come first. The sooner you know this about me, the better we'll get along.
First let me give you my history with The Beatles. I love them. I really, really love them. I love Paul McCartney especially and our tour just enforced that more- so if you've known my love for him before I left, watch out. I think I really started listening to them when I was 13 or 14 and have never looked back. My friends know me as somewhat of a Beatles encyclopedia. Love. Love/obsession.
Okay, now for the story part. We arrived in Liverpool at around 8 am and had planned on just sleeping all day after a long trip. I had arranged with a friend Rod, a Liverpudlian, to pick up a phone that would work over Europe so I could keep in touch with my worried parents. We arrived at our hostel and found out we couldn't get into our room until 3 pm. We were devastated at first but instead of just wasting the day sleeping Rod ended up coming to pick us up and show us around his town. We did some stuff and saw some stuff and ate some stuff but the best was visiting the legendary Cavern Club- where The Beatles found their fame. Bummer is that it isn't the original. It is made from all the original stones and is made to look just like the original, but still- it just isn't. It is a replica, made right next door to the actual Cavern. Literally, right next door. The original entrance it there with a sign letting everyone know where the entrance actually was but they had to close it down for safety reasons. The story is that the building above The Cavern had caught on fire and they were afraid that is would collapse and closed it down for 9 or 10 years. Being one of the most famous clubs in the world, and a huge cash grab, they built a replica and is now open for business. I was much more excited than any normal person should be. We talked the barman into giving us a pen so we could sign the wall. There is was, my name forever written on the stones that housed them. Or for at least two years before they power washed all the writing off the walls to make room for more markings. I got a picture, that will have to do until my next visit.
Sleep.
Day 2 equaled Beatles everything. First we went on a Fab Four Taxi tour. The three of us packed into the back of a black cab and spent the next three hours visiting all the sights. I am a little surprised that I am actually sitting here able to recount all this since I was almost convinced, as were Lyndsey and Kylene, that my heart was going to explode in my chest. We saw the hospital where John was born, the art school John went to, the school of Paul and George, the school and house of Brian Epstein, all of their houses, Strawberry Fields, Penny Lane, the church hall where John and Paul met for the first time, Eleanor Rigby's gravestone and the registry office where John and Cynthia got married. I've read the stories, listened to the lyrics, imagined the scenarios and now have finally seen where it all happened. The whole time I was just trying to picture them walking out of their doors, practicing the guitar in their living rooms, waiting for the bus at the shelter in the roundabout. The whole time knowing I was seeing what they saw, walked where they walked and was in the places that had inspired them to become the greatest band in the history of music. I warned you...obsession.
I thought I knew everything there was to know, but on the tour I got even more of their background. I actually think the cabbie was a little fed up with me volunteering facts while he was trying to tell his tale, I stopped doing this early on. I could sense his satisfaction when I would have to admit I didn't know some of the history he was sharing with us.
We actually got to go inside of Ringo's house that he lived in between the ages of 5 and 23. Our cabbie just walked up, knocked on the door and it was answered by a woman named Margret in her 80's (I'm guessing) who had pictures and pictures of The Beatles all over her living room walls. She told us stories about Ringo, since she had lived in the house two doors down while he was growing up there. The houses of John and my love Paul were only to be seen if you were on a national trust tour, but since Margret now owned this house- she just showed devoted fans the house and shared her stories out of awesomeness. In Penny Lane we saw the shelter, the barbershop, the old bank and just down the street the fire station. We saw Strawberry Fields- not an old Salvation Army orphanage anymore, but more a grown over field.
After those three-and-a-half hours of dream filling we were dropped off at Albert Dock where the girls went to see the cathedrals and I satisfied even more of my Beatles lust by going to the Beatles Story museum. We had arrived at 2:45 and we said that we would meet back at the Hostel shortly after since I thought I would only be an hour or two- 4 hours later when they basically kicked me out (meaning we missed the John Lennon impersonator at the Cavern) I met back up with the girls. The museum was really pretty good! They had built replicas of all the places that were important in their history. For examples you would walk into the recreated street outside The Cavern, proceed into the Cavern, walk into The old Hamburg clubs, Nims Record shop, Abby Road Studios, the Yellow Submarine etc.Very cool.
Later, we again met up with Rod for a quick drink, he went home and we three headed back to The Cavern for more drinks. When we arrived we found out that it was only open late on Thursdays and the weekend and since it was a Wednesday it was closed. I was pretty bummed.
Next day(today) caught the bus to London where I have every intention in the world of going see Abby Road and everything else too.
Can't even begin to describe how amazing it all was. I have to play it down or I don't think my system could handle it. It's how I stay normal. There is so much to tell but I think this sums up the basics. Took loads of pictures so I'll be posting them eventually. I'll write more on other aspects of our trip later but it is time for bed- we are usually pretty tired on travel days. Sweet dreams to all, and remember; all you need is love <3

Scotland!

Let me fill you in on our time in Scotland since I have another 4 hours until we catch our night bus to Liverpool and needed somewhere to stay busy and warm. Internet cafes take in the bruised and tired. Actually, the weather in Scotland has been very sunny and hot- there is absolutely nothing to complain about!
So we arrived in Scotland via ferry/bus. Like I mentioned we paid an extra 30 pounds for the trip across even though we asked every question about how we might be able to get a cheaper price. We found this out from an older couple that we met on the train that had paid half for the same trip. This couple was a Godsend. They are the only reason we made it from Glasgow to Edinburgh. We loved them.
First day in Scotland went like this: We jumped off our shuttle from the hostel we were staying at (nice little converted cottage just outside of town right on the Atlantic Ocean) and walked up Calton Hill where we saw some monuments and "the entrance to the fairy world". But these fairies aren't your typical Tinkerbell fairies, these fairies will kick your ass. When we were there we saw none, I must have intimidated them into their hiding holes. Ariana: 1, Fairies: 0.
Next we went on this walking tour. It was free and super awesome! We learnt a lot about Edinburgh and Scottish history. The guides were all young and very energetic. We saw an old prison that was supposed to be the most haunted place in the world, learnt the story behind Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and other stories about other old locals, Braveheart, the Stone of Destiny etc. If you are ever here I suggest you take it, it's the only one the city offers. Then we went back to that prison because just outside was a graveyard where a lot of the Harry Potter characters got their names. Lyndsey and Kylene are Harry Potter fans. Enough said. We walked up and around Edinburgh Castle, had some curry and called it a night.
Night two in Edinburgh was good. We climbed this mountain and took in a view of the entire city, came down and walked around an Eco festival, went to the Royal Museum of Scotland and went back to hostel to get ready for a pub crawl. The museum was cool, we were so tired at that point though that we just kind of wondered and very briefly looked at stuff, that is until Kylene and I found the dress up station and dressed up like noble women while this older lady watched on. The dresses were obviously made for the 11 to 12 year old girl age group and were a Little short. After we took our curtsy pictures we changed, the old woman thanked us for the show, and we bowed low as she walked away. I've always loved bonding with the elderly over 18th century costumes. Next came short naps and a pub crawl. We bought a 2 euro bottle of wine the day before so started the night off each passing the bottle around our room and trying to finish the thing in 7 or 8 minutes before the shuttle left. With a 2 euro bottle of wine it was harder than it sounds. We caught the shuttle and got to the first pub. In all the pubs we went to, in total, we got one free beer, one free shot of whisky, two other shots, discounted 2 euro jagerbombs, and 1 euro mixed drinks. We sang karaoke and finished the night in a club where we danced with our new friends, two Ozzies mainly. I made particular friends with some Scottish girl in a bathroom where we took up the short lived tradition of asking each other if they were doing okay and then hugging. We took the night bus home and in the morning inspected our new bruises. I can probably attribute mine from butt-sliding down 5 or 6 stairs after coming so close to making a whole day without embarrassing myself in some way.
Today though is going to be the main cause for pain in the morning. Most of the day was spent lounging and people-watching in a field but the beginning of it was spent fulfilling one of Lyndsey's fantasies; horseback riding through the rolling hills of Scotland. I sit here now constantly shifting my weight on this hard wooden chair fearing what kind of new, more intensified pain tomorrow will bring.
Just two more hours now until I can stalk all of Paul McCartney's old hangouts. I'm not 100 percent sure how I'm going to react to this. Probably end up doing something ultra creepy. I've warned Lyndsey and Kylene about this little obsession of mine but I'm not convinced they understand the intensity- oh well, they'll soon find out. I'll be blogging about it for sure. If you think these entries are long- just wait until I start talking about anything Beatles.

More Ireland and a little Scotland

I believe I last left you at our arrival in Galway. It seems to be our trend to like every city better than the previous and declare that we will all buy houses and live there forever. Such was the case with Galway, then Belfast and now Edinburgh.

Galway was very nice. I can't remember if I mentioned that we got there via tour from Dublin and just never got back on the bus to return. We all patted our tired and strained backs for that little trick as we only ended up paying 25 Euro for a 45 Euro tour if you exclude the money that we would have spent just getting a bus straight over. Later that may have caught up with us when we ended up spending 35 pounds more than we had to getting to Edinburgh. Not cool UK transportation system, not cool.

Our first night in Galway was very relaxed. We napped. That's about it. Second day we walked around the streets, took in the sights, averted our eyes from shop windows. Everything is pretty expensive here, except super market food, it's brilliant. We can make a huge dinner for the three of us off 7 or 8 Euros and since Lyndsey is a cook we just let her get creative. That evening we met an American University rugby team at our hostel who were there for a tournament. After chating for a bit we three went to a pub, and when that closed went to a club where we ran into said rugby team and danced the night away. Fact about Ireland and Scotland: the girls wear the smallest outfits and highest heels when out at night. We knew that we were going to look like backpackers during this trip but these girls make us feel like hobos. The next morning we left for Belfast.

Belfast I actually liked better than Galway. First day we got to look around a bit as it was still early. That day we saw Queens University and this beautiful park they have behind it. The next day we took the Black Cab Tour that I really enjoyed. I found it super interesting to learn about their political troubles, the IRA etc. We drove around the Protestant and Catholic areas and saw the huge walls and barbed wire gates that seperated them. In the Protestant area they paint murals on the sides of houses that have to do with their past and hopes for their future. Their is one of a man in a ski-mask with a gun that follows you as you walk by. A friendly reminder to strangers that there were more than just eyes on you(not anymore!). After that we got to write on The Peace Wall(the biggest wall that seperates the two rivals) where I reminded them that All You Need Is Love :) We think this is all in the past but two recent car bombings(2 weeks ago) and some murders by the Real IRA just outside of Belfast let us know just how real this all still is for the Irish living there. We then visited the museum that gave us even greater insite on The Troubles and Belfast's history, Ireland's history and other fun things. If you ever visit Belfast, check it out.

That evening we decided that we had so much fun dancing in Galway that we would go for it again in Belfast. We stayed in our regular clothes but traided our sneakers for some flats. We lined up at the club and 30 seconds later when we got to the front the bouncer mumbled something to me that I couldn't understand( that is common for me with their accents, slang and speed of speech) so I assumed he asked for my ID. I showed it to him and he then opened the rope and let me by. After the three of us had walked past the velvet rope I looked around and noticed that we were on the wrong side. Rejected! Apparently our casual outfits offended them. We had a hearty laugh and walked over to the pub and ordered a Guiness. The whole walk of shame might have hurt more if we hadn't had 2 cheap bottles of wine before leaving the hostel. In the pub, two young Irish lads helped themselves to the empty bench seats at our table. They were with about half the people there and when it was closing they invited us over to a house party. We obliged. We then spent the rest of the night at this party where they were ordering delivery beer. One more time: delivery beer service at 3:30 am. Brilliant. After a short walk home, 4 hours of bad sleep, another afternoon in the museum we were off to Scotland where I am now.

Scotland is beautiful. I had already decided that I had liked it better than Ireland almost as soon as we got on the train and started passing through the country. Big rolling green hills spotted with white sheep and cute little towns tucked away between them. I think I could live here forever. Today we spent the day in beautiful Edinburgh where we took a very excellent, educational, free walking tour for about 3 hours and are off to explore again tomorrow. But more on Scotland another day :)

We have one more full day left before we move onto England but I wish we had more. There is so much to be seen and not nearly enough time. All of a sudden three months is nothing. It's only been days and already I'm trying to figure out when I'll be able to come back and see more. I think it's safe to say that it doesn't take long for a bug to bite.