Bohemian Like You

So quite a while ago, I took a trip to Prague.



The quad and I had planned this, our very last trip, at almost the very beginning of the year. We were excited at the prospect of the illustrious Christmas Market, where we could attend the Christmas tree lighting and shop for homemade gifts.





Truth be told, the Christmas tree lighting was a bit horrific (10,000 people in one square is a recipe for disaster) and while the market held some gems, it was overall a bit underwhelming.  That is, of course, aside from trdelniks (tur-dle-nyeeks), the world's most delicious and mitten-friendly rendition of fried dough.

The former capital of Bohemia exuded cool in so many ways other than this Christmassy explosion. Prague held more for me in its delicious vegetarian buffets, absurd variety of cheap beer, beautiful architecture, astrological clocks, informative tour guides, beautiful John Lennon wall, and, most of all, fun time spent with the friends I had to bid adieu to just a week later.











I suppose I have been putting off writing this because, with the publishing of this last travel-related post, it really feels as if my adventure is over. I had more fun than I can ever explain, and I'll always cherish the friendships I made at the castle, whether they be at American Night in Well or getting lost in the winding streets of Montmarte. These are memories I will never forget, and I'm so glad to have had this experience I've dreamed of since I was a child. I return home much poorer, but much wiser, I'd like to think. It's impossible to see so much of the outside world and not change at all. I'd say I'm changed for the better. This piece of wisdom from the John Lennon wall sums it up quite nicely:

Galway Girl

I've been a bit behind because of finals and general insane stress, but a couple of weeks ago, I went to Ireland!



We stayed in a little hostel in Dublin that was a converted Catholic school, including a chapel that served as a dining hall with a stained glass window about backpacking! That wasn't the only church we saw that weekend - we visited the Christ Church cathedral, the oldest (and surely one of the most beautiful) in Dublin -





Which was attached to the Dublinia Museum, a hilarious interactive children's museum about the Viking invasions in Dublin.



(Learning?)

We also got to see the Book of Kells and Trinity College, although the incessant rain made the outdoor tour less fun that it could have been.

The St. James' Gate Brewery, where they used to make Guinness, was a definite highlight. It was one of the most comprehensive museums I've been to (hilariously) and it had the best views of the city! Tragically, it was night time, and I couldn't get a good shot. But here I am toasting to good health.



We also loved our day tour to the Irish countryside, where we got to see the Wicklow Mountains and the Irish sea.



 



 



And we had the most amazing food! Thanksgiving dinner with our Gerard Butler lookalike waiter, delicious burgers at Bobo's, and the most incredible quiche and dessert at Queen of Tarts.



 

The pubs were so much fun I couldn't stand it. We got to see the pub from PS I Love You, which was super fun, but our favorite was the Old Storehouse, where bands played away into the night with fiddles and acoustic guitars. They even played one of my favorite songs, Wagon Wheel, and let Lexie and I sing a chorus. It was pretty magical.

 

Dublin was such a welcome taste of home for me. Everywhere I looked, something was reminding me of Boston. It was the first city we visited that had a little taste of Christmas happening, and we couldn't be happier to celebrate with everyone. I certainly can't wait to go back.

P.S.: Due to the craziness that is Ryan Air and their 7 hour nonsense layovers, this was also the trip that brought me to 4 countries in one day: Ireland, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Our afternoon in Italy was filled with the most beautiful handcrafted ornaments, delicious gelato, syrupy cappuccinos, and breathtaking architecture. That being said, I will not miss Ryan Air one bit.

Bonjour, Paris!

Paris. The city of love, the city of lights, the city I was most excited to see on this trip.



 

Arriving here on a budget-friendly 7 hour overnight bus might not have been the height of glamour, nor was getting lost in Parisian Chinatown finding my hostel, but by God, I made it. We went immediately from the hostel to Disneyland Paris, because who needs sleep when you can have roller coasters?



 

I promptly got these sweet Minnie ears (clearly hoping to distract from the most hopeless bags under my eyes I ever have sported), and we hit the town. Highlights of DLP were the fun Halloween decorations (Europe doesn't go hard during the 2nd most wonderful time of the year, but Disney sure does), some taste-of-home Ben & Jerry's sorbet, finding fun Disneyland Paris secrets (like the sleeping animatronic dragon under the castle!), the Phantom of the Opera-inspired Phantom Manor, the surprisingly intense Space Mountain 2, and the horrifyingly incomprehensible French Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

MEGA highlights included meeting the illustrious tri-lingual Jack Sparrow (I made my poor friends wait in line for like half an hour, BUT IT WAS ALL WORTH IT)



(I don't remember the last time a worse picture of me has been taken, but hey, we're all mermaids)

And the 20th Anniversary light show on Aurora's castle at the end of the day. I have never seen something so technologically impressive in my life. The story is that Peter Pan has lost his shadow, and he needs to chase it throughout various Disney movies. The entire castle was transformed into a movie screen/fireworks foreground/pyrotechnics hub. They made the facade into a waterfall, the city of Paris, and the jungle, among other things. All of my old (Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Jungle Book) and new (Ratatouille, Princess and the Frog, TANGLED!!) faves were represented. Tears may or may not have been had during the lantern scene and rendition of "I See the Light" with the famous kisses montage. I'll never tell.



(Here we are in front of the unlit castle, which was still pretty impressive. Being a giant is rough sometimes).

I caught some flack for deciding to take a day out of Paris to go to Disneyland, but honestly, it was a no brainer for me. If you know anything about me, you know that I'm a big Disney/amusement park fan, and I've never really gotten a proper day at a Disney park. The girls and I have been planning this trip for about a year and, barring some mishaps with the Parisian Metro system (what is it with me and trains? Thanks for the help, kind French mother and flower vendor), it was essentially flawless. I never knew how easy it was for four 20 year olds to conquer Disneyland!

We promptly collapsed, then woke up the next day to find some Parisian bargains. Shopping and a long, lingering lunch at a Parisian cafe was just what we needed to rejuvenate. As a bonus prize, we found a Starbucks serving PUMPKIN SPICE LATTES!! (This is important because pumpkin flavored things in Europe are elusive to the point of not existing anywhere, ever. They are missing out).



(My French name. My second barista got it right, and pronounced it "ah-knee," which is how I now demand everyone pronounce it).

That night, we saw the Eiffel Tower (!!!!) Our lovely hostel employee told us the best stop (not under the Tower, but nearby it), and the sight of it lit up against the night sky hit me like a ton of bricks. I literally had to catch my breath.



 

Also, it sparkles every half hour, if the sight of it alone doesn't do it for you. We had a lovely dinner at a French cafe down the street (I had the most amazing cheese plate...I will be dreaming about camembert forever....) then made our way up to the top. For October, it was unreasonably cold in Paris, and going to the top of an incredibly tall structure didn't help much.



The view, however, was breathtaking. It was like a dream.

The next day, we took a free guided walking tour through the city. Our tour guide was an incredibly friendly and informative expat from NYC with a master's in French history. So we pretty much hit the jackpot as far as free tours go.





 



 

(The Quad and honorary members

declared our eternal love on the Love Lock Bridge)

We learned, we ate.



 

(This is my standard order at every American restaurant, and god do the French do it better. I will be dreaming about this for the rest of my days)

And then we went to Shakespeare and Company! It's one of the most famous bookstores in Europe, started by the brassy Sylvia Beach in the roaring 20's. It's meant to be a haven for Americans in Paris and for starving artists looking for a place to stay. Her original location played home to Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Stein and Man Ray, and the new location on the Left Bank has housed Ginsberg and Burroughs, among others. It's absolutely trembling with history, and as a bunch of writing majors, we knew it was a must-visit.



I got a sweet cover of This Side of Paradise, with the signature stamp. I was a happy camper.

Sunday's schedule included a jaunt to the Louvre (of course!)



 

Where we saw the Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory, and some nice Egyptian art.



And a trip to Europe's largest flea market, which we only saw like 1/10th of because we obviously don't know how to read signs and the neighborhood we were in was, as I described it to my travel writing professor, "the Bronx with a spritz of cheap French Perfume." Still, we got some good deals. A couple of members of the group were tired and wanted to head back to the hostel and chill out, but Lexie, Lindsay and I were off in search of good crepes. We decided to take an impromptu jaunt to a different stop on the Metro that was allegedly Montmartre, and we were so glad we did.



 

We saw the Sacre Couer, we saw an amazing view of the city, and we finally saw honest-to-goodness Midnight in Paris Paris, the Amelie Paris I had been dreaming about, with the winding cobblestone streets and the cafe tables on sidewalks. As my mother had warned me, some parts of Paris are better than others. I blithely ignored her, of course, but I had been underwhelmed by a lot of the neighborhoods we were walking around. But this...this was Paris. It was an amazing way to end the weekend.

I set a very high bar for Paris, and while it wasn't a flawless trips, there are moments I will remember forever. I can't wait to go back and do it right!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What's in her (industrial sized Swiss Army) bag?

I thought I'd give everyone a glimpse into the process of packing for my upcoming trip to Paris/Disneyland Paris.

Step 1 is to panic about how you will manage to appease the discerning French fashionistas while still fitting all of your belongings into a backpack. Oh, and you have to leave room for your purchases, too...

Step 2 is, rejoice! You're taking a bus and not RyanAir, so you can carry home all the bags you want. But still, better keep it to a backpack on the way there so you don't break your back/get mugged.

Step 3 is to try on a million different outfits and keep running back and forth to the full length mirror upstairs. What I wouldn't give to have one in the quad...

And step 4 is to lay it all out!

#1 - Outfit for the bus/Disneyland Paris. Red jeans from Amsterdam and a Mickey Mouse raglan. Comfy enough to sleep in for 7 hours on a bus? Well...is anything that comfy?
#2 - Ann Taylor blouse for my diva outfit change post-Disneyland.
#3 - Blazer. My best accessorizing friend/what will probably serve as my coat for most of the weekend.
#4 - Natural Soul boots. The greatest investment of this trip. I can walk for days in these suckers (and I have).
#5 - PJs. Kind of need these.
#6 - Dresses from AE, the Gap, and Italy, and fun necklaces. Grandma's elephant is a personal favorite, and it's probably the one piece of jewelry that I get complimented on the most.
#7 - Brita water bottle with built-in filter. If you are ever travelling for a long period of time, you owe it to yourself to invest in this. Suddenly, every bathroom has drinkable water. Like magic. (This is extra important because Europe only believes in water in a conceptual way. There is no such thing as free water, anywhere. I think everybody here is dehydrated all the time.)
#8 - Socks n' tights. Bonus fleece-lined leggings: they look like tights, but they're super warm.
#9 - Big purse (camera bag/day bag) and little purse (wallet storage/night bag)
#10 - Banana. (Did I mention the 7 hour bus ride?)
#11 - Makeup bag. I am going to the city of judgmental citizens, oui?
#12 - Flats for nighttime outings
#13 - Diesel Swiss Army backpack courtesy of my mother. This thing fits all of this stuff plus my big honking DSLR into one compartment. C'est magnifique!

Our bus leaves at midnight tomorrow, so wish me luck. Bon voyage!

Welcome to Toverland

(All images borrowed, because who wants to lug a DSLR around Toverland?!)

This weekend, I opted to "SAC it" (what Kasteel students affectionately dub sleeping in the castle). It's a lovely refuge for when you feel so overwhelmed with travelling plans you could explode. For me, this is all the time. So a weekend at the castle was just what the doctor ordered.

Andrew, Caitlyn, David, Sam and I decided to hit what was touted as "Holland's #1 Day Trip Destination!" - the illustrious Toverland. What could very easily be described as a children's theme park turned out to be a wonderful journey into the culture of the Netherlands (and a fun day, to boot).

In the Netherlands, Halloween traditions only started seeping in around the mid-1990's, and they were very heavily borrowed from America. And apparently, every Dutch citizen has major Halloween fever, because Toverland was packed on this (granted, unusually warm) October day for the Halloween festivities. At one point, at least 3/4 of the park gathered around to watch a man in a vampire costume stalk around and occasionally stop to glare menacingly at a passerby. This is entertainment.

The park included "the tallest, fastest wooden roller coaster in the Benelux!" (Des)Troy



We were unfazed looking at this coaster from the ground, but speaking as a serious coaster junkie, this thing packed a punch. It was a steel/wooden hybrid with an alarmingly steep drop and a top speed that didn't let up for the entirety of the ride. We hit this twice, and would have kept riding it all night if we didn't have a bus to catch.

And this crazy contraption



Booster Bike, the strangest roller coaster ever imagined by anyone. Only the Dutch would insist that their amusement park rides include bikes. The method of securing you into this ride can only be likened to placing a clip on top of a potato chip bag to seal in the freshness. It was an experience. A bonus treat was the Backstroke, a flume ride that inexplicably turned around and went down the hill backwards.

Apparently new to the sensation of actors dressed in spooky costumes meandering around amusement parks, the Dutch children (and adults) were having a serious breakdown when they found bloody ghosts and skeletal Trojan soldiers in their gift shops and fun houses. Equally new to me was the fact that the actors could touch you (!) and the way they interacted with children. A ghoul wielding a chainsaw with the chain pulled out let a child rev it up for him, then turned and pretended to hold it up to his neck. Chalk that up on the list of most frightening things I have ever seen, ever. Other fun cultural differences included giant bonfires in the middle of the park, rafts that children could take out on shallow man-made ponds (?), and amusement park pizza places that have their own basil growing next to the cash registers (!!), the latter being the most exciting, of course.

My favorite moment of the night was my encounter with a little Dutch boy wearing a red Scream mask. I gave him an exaggerated gasp when he turned around, and he lost his mind. He tugged on his mother's coat and pointed at me, then jumped back again. I tried to look even more scared for his benefit. He turned the mask around to the back of his head (presumably so I would be perma-scared), and then, when he thought he might have broken me, he took off the mask and pointed at his face, assuring me it was only him under there. It was among the most adorable things that have ever happened to me.

Naturally, with the good comes the bad, and as we headed off to go home later that night, our bus never came. We figured out that you have to call Dutch buses to come for you on off-peak hours (naturally?) and we had missed our window of opportunity. Thankfully, we made it home safely with the help of a taxi driver from Indonesia with a fondness for American music (the highlight of the ride was the great "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred).

It is fascinating to see what traditions are adopted by other cultures to appropriate their own, personalized version of Halloween. No matter how many tiny Justin Biebers we saw, Toverland remained stubbornly, incredibly Dutch, and we loved it for that.

"This is problem for you": Adventures in Italian train strikes.

Cinque Terre is actually the most beautiful, romantic place I’ve ever been to in my life. You couldn’t dream up a place this pretty. I was actively planning my future honeymoon the entire time I was there. I was absolutely in my element. Coming here with no expectations, I fell in love with this place.

If you’ve ever read the children’s book series Strega Nona, I’m 99% sure she lives in Manarola (the 5th town comprising Cinque Terre where our hostel was located).

(Pictured: Strega Nona’s street. IT EVEN SMELLED LIKE SOUP!)

Z and I landed at Pisa Aerporto and enlisted the help of some friendly employees and locals to find our way to Manarola. Except for the last of 3 transfers, where the train ticket was decidedly unhelpful and we threw caution to the wind and hopped a train we were pretty sure was the right one. If you asked me to get on a train and cross my fingers 2 weeks ago, I would have told you you were crazy. This is growing up and becoming a seasoned traveller, guys. We decided that travelling is 30% planning, 60% intuition, and 10% blind luck.

We met friendly couples from Ohio and California who were adopting the same “here goes nothing!” attitude and stood with them in front of the train door, shrugging haplessly at every person who came up and asked us if this was the train going to Cinque Terre. Fortunately, we were dropped off at a picturesque train station in Manarola, and we were absolutely blown away.

Everything was the bluest blue, forever ruining the questionable navy of the Atlantic for me. Between the mountains, the rocks, and the Mediterranean, the entire area was a postcard waiting to happen. We trekked up to the hostel, situated behind the giant church, with our giant bags on our backs. Cinque Terre is a hiking destination, but no one warned us that we would need to hike just to get up the street. It was a system of impossibly steep hills, and I think I got an amazing calf workout just walking back and forth through the town. Which is nice, because I ate roughly half my body weight in food.

We were starving upon arrival, so we hit a charming little cafe outside of the train station. They were selling bruschetta for 6 euro and, expecting Olive Garden-esque tiny toast rounds, we were a little bummed out. But for authentic Italian bruschetta, we were willing to pay the price. I ordered pesto, Z ordered peppers, and we got a Margherita pizza to split. Then, it came to the table.

And it was the size of our heads. The waitress was laughing at us because she couldn’t fit the pizza next to our ginormous tomatoey treats. I think there was an entire garden on there. And I’m pleased to tell you, we finished all of it. It was shockingly fresh. I’ve never tasted anything like it in my life.

The view from our hostel, which was at the very top of the complex series of hills, was breathtaking.

The cornerstone of that church apparently dates back to 1338, making this the oldest part of Cinque Terre. We traipsed down to the “beach” (a series of rocks) in our swimsuits and shorts. In October.

(Cute couples EVERYWHERE. Z and I started to joke that it was our honeymoon because the ratio of couples to non-couples was like 99:1. It’s where adventurers go to swim in the Mediterranean and rock jump and hike and be adorable.)

We got gelato,

(This is actually me with sorbet, but rest assured I also tried 4 flavors of gelato. We ate a lot this weekend.)

Visited the love lock bridge (I had a minor mental breakdown from how cute this was. I’ve always wanted to visit the one in Paris, and this one was a completely welcome surprise)

And watched the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen.

We ended the night with a glass of local wine on the patio of our hostel with a lovely stray cat who we dubbed Ingrid. It was actually the perfect day, easily the best I’ve had while I’ve been here.

We set the alarm for 8 AM on Saturday in the hopes of taking the “easy” (read: not at a 90 degree angle to the ground) hiking trail around to the other towns. To our chagrin, it was closed, so we headed up to the information center to find alternatives. Little did we know, this would be the least of our problems.

A tiny sign in Times New Roman delivered the bad news.

!!! ATTENTION: TREIN ITALIA WILL BE ON STRIKE FROM 9 PM SATURDAY UNTIL 9 PM SUNDAY. NO TRAINS WILL RUN DURING THIS TIME !!!

We figured this had to be a mistake. This area of Italy is literally only reachable by train. How could we have been through 3 train stations and not have heard a word about this until now?

Easily, apparently, according to the woman at the information desk who had a painfully calm attitude about the whole ordeal. She didn’t understand the gravity of our situation until we repeated for the 3rd time that our flight was at 5:30 PM on Sunday.

“Oh…” she said. “This is problem for you.”

She eventually gave us a dubious time of “5:30…15:30…I mean, 17:30” for a train out of La Spezia and into Pisa. Z and I dealt with this major setback like champions, booking a hotel of questionable quality whose display picture was a dingy bed with a bold stamp over it proclaiming “LITERALLY 1 MINUTE FROM THE AIRPORT!” This was all the convincing we needed. Our hostel in Cinque Terre refused us a refund (although they were very aware that there was a train strike and neglected to tell us, despite the fact that we were checking out on Sunday at 10 with literally no way to get anywhere else in Italy. Can you tell I’m still burned by it?) But we decided to make the best of it.

We spent the rest of the day dipping our feet in the Mediterranean (rock jumping and swimming were sadly not an option, as the water was too rough),

And walking around the amazing trails

(This is my favorite picture ever).

And generally lamenting having to leave.

(I was crying on the inside).

We made our way to Pisa Aerporto and the hotel was, as promised, one minute away. Under the highway overpass. The doors were barred shut, the lobby was locked, and the hotel owner wanted nothing to do with us until he was done with his phone call…so he left us outside in the cold with our giant bags. Now that’s service.

At least we were in a private room with one of roughly 3 full length mirrors I’ve seen in all of Europe.

(It was a little squiggly).

The owner lead us to the room, and Z asked him about the sign in his lobby referencing luggage storage. He paused, then said, “Leave your bags in your room and your room unlocked. Leave a note with time you be back. I take into back office.”

Needless to say, our bags never left our sight. It was one of the more frightening places I’ve ever stayed (when one of us went to the bathroom, we locked the other one into the room). We abandoned all hopes of late-night pasta and barricaded ourselves in our twin room to watch Italian Teen Wolf and wonder what in the world was happening outside of our boarded-up windows.

Outer Pisa was even a bit disconcerting in the day time. We did manage to find some delicious pastries, and eventually made our way into the nicer part of town, where we scored fresh pasta with pesto sauce for a paltry 6 euro. Everything we ate was amazing, but we were pleasantly surprised by the abundance of inexpensive fresh fruit juice in every flavor imaginable. ACE was a personal favorite (stands for vitamins A, C, and E, I later learned), which was a mixture of orange, carrot, and lime juice. I will be dreaming about it forever. We found some cute shops, an adorable flea market, and had a grand old time. Hey, worse things have happened than a day in Pisa, and since we kept our wits about us (and put on our best “seasoned traveler” hats) we lived to tell the tale without any major mental breakdowns! Italy, you were great, and I hope you got all the rights you wanted from your strike…but next time, make it on a Tuesday, would you?