Bucharest to Milan

Right now I write to you from the comfort of the hotel in Milan. It might not be posted until we're back in California, though. Although it's been a lot of fun traveling through hostels, there is a certain level of comfort that you get a hotel that you can't get at a hostel. The beds aren't creaky, nor are we in a dorm room with 8 other people or sharing a bathroom with the entire hostel. It's nice. I even used my Italian when we were checking into the hotel. Yay!

In any case, today wasn't too eventful. Checkout at our hostel wasn't until 12, so we woke up, had breakfast, cleaned up our stuff, checked out and then kind of hung out using the computers there until 1. I had to part ways with the Old Navy flip flops that have saved me from the ground of many gross overnight trains and many hostels/hostel showers.

The person working at the front desk called a taxi for us. The taxi ride wasn't really too long (maybe 25 minutes) and we got to see some nicer areas of Bucharest. A lot of parks and a triumphal arc I didn't know existed. Okay.

Turns out we got to the airport way too early. We were probably there around 2-ish and they weren't going to check anyone in through Easy Jet until 3:30. So, we had lunch and sat around until they let us through. Checking in was hell. Easy Jet is anything but easy and the woman working at the desk clearly and unjustifiably hated us. So did this random guy who looked like Fred Armisan, who, after we were told to go pay to check in one of our bags at this desk somewhere across the airport and come back, insisted that we had to stand in the giant line to drop the bag back off. Somehow I think standing in the line defeats the purpose of having the easy bag drop off desk, but that's just me. Also, the guy working at the drop off desk later got mad at people trying to cut in from the check in line to the drop off line, so Fred Armisan man was just being stupid.

Getting through security was also fun. The guy at the security gate clearly judged us and the amount of stuff we had in our carry on bag, which backed us up a few minutes. This did give us time to notice the boxes of items that got confiscated from people going through security. There were a LOT of guns in those boxes. Oh Bucharest.

Oh, also, we had purchased a bag of these baked garlic bread chips when we were in Brasov. We were supposed to eat them with the rest of the salami we bought in Brasov, but that plan got destroyed when we discovered our salami stash was covered in Nutella. In any case, we brought it along with us to the airport to eat while we were waiting for the plane, but someone stole our bag of chips. Not our wallets. Not the camera or the tablet or our passports or anything else of consequence. Someone stole our bag of garlic flavored chips. It was heartbreaking, but I guess worse things could have been stolen. We were very sad about this, but when we had to use up our remaining 14 lei and found a vending machine that sold them.

The flight wasn't too eventful. I think Mia sat near crying babies and next to an awkward smelly couple. I really just read and watched Dr. Who.

When we got to Milan, we had to wait around for my bag to come in through baggage claim. This was an adventure. Everyone coming from Bucharest managed to locate their bags except for some older women, Mia's smelly neighbors, and me. We went to lost baggage to go try to resolve the problem and the other two groups had already been stressing about it. Based on my limited Italian, this is how their conversation went:

Passengers: Our bags are missing.
Guy at desk: Where are your tickets? Are you together?
Passengers: No. Why would we be together?
Guy at desk: well I need to deal with one person at a time.
Passengers: Well our bags from Bucharest aren't here. (one woman started going on a rant about how maybe things would be better if they spoke Italian and not English at the Bucharest airport)
Guy desk: Did you check carousel 5?
Passengers: Why? The rest of the bags from Bucharest came from carousel 3.
Guy at desk: Obviously you should have checked carousel 5.

Turns out, the bags were at carousel 5. The other passengers (and Mia) all ran at the bags as if that would have made a difference. I was just happy I got my bag.

We left the baggage claim area and found a bus to take us to the main terminal (I used my Italian to find this bus too). We checked into our hotel (which is literally at the airport), watched some soccer news for a while, and then went out in search of food. The food at the hotel was obscenely expensive, especially coming from a county like Romania, so we ventured into the airport to find food. Most things were closed or looked disgusting.  We ended up getting kebabs. It was that or McDonalds.

We went back to the hotel, used the computers for a while and went back to our rooms.

Bucharest (the post)

We were quite sad to leave Brasov. We really liked it there and we had grown quite attached to the good kebab place that we went to the night before. The check out time at our hostel was noon, which is relatively late by hostel standards. When I had originally planned this trip out, I thought the 10:30 train would be the best bet because it would allow us to get some sightseeing in at Bucharest. Because of the late check out, however, we decided to prolong our departure from Brasov a little.

We woke up around 10 and started cleaning up the room for check out. We had breakfast and Mia ran around unsuccessfully trying to find that Bruce cat she had grown so fond of over the past few days. We couldn't find him. I had seen him earlier when I stopped by the kitchen to grab our bag of sandwich bags, but he was nowhere to be seen after that :( Mia's still upset about this.

After eating, we decided that we'd get some kebabs for the road and went back to the kebab restaurant. We went back, finished packing up our stuff, and went to reception to check out and to ask if they could call a taxi for us. By the time we used the restroom and got our stuff outside  (which really wasn't that long), the taxi driver had been there long enough to want to drive away and leave. We had to run after him to stop him. That made the taxi drive over to the train station kind of awkward. He was also annoyed with me when I asked him what the taxi fare was at the end of the ride. Coincidentally, we also learned that we got hard core ripped off by the taxi driver who took us to the hostel on Wednesday. The guy today charged 6 lei (about 2 dollars). The guy on Wednesday charged 20 (about 6-7 dollars). In the grand scheme of things, it's really not that much, but I was annoyed.

Anyway, we got to the train station, made reservations on the 12:40 train and went upstairs. Just like any other Eastern European train, this one was late. About twenty minutes, which I guess is better than it could have been. Other than that, the train ride back to Bucharest was relatively uneventful. We were in a train compartment with pretty nice people. It wasn't abysmally gross. There weren't old people sitting in our seats that we would feel bad to kick out. The train conductors didn't decide that our tickets were invalid. Not bad at all.

Once we made it to Bucharest, we made our way over to the Metro station to get to the general area of our hostel. The hostel was relatively easy to find because it's between two major streets. Once we were there, we had to wait in the reception for a while for someone to decide to pay attention to us (they were too busy playing around on facebook). We got our stuff down and tried to rearrange our bags for our flight to Milan. Once that was done, we set out for some sightseeing.

So the guidebooks said as much as did our friend James from England, but Bucharest really isn't an exciting city. There's really nothing particularly thrilling about it. It's super urban and loud, but doesn't have any of the charm or personality that other major European cities have.  We walked through one street for a while and took pictures of building that looked like they might be important. Later, while we were eating dinner, I was informed by my Triposo app that we had seen most of the big sites of the city on the walk. Okay. It was kind of a sketchy street too. The only reason we realized it was a big street was because it had all of the upscale designer stores like the Gucci store.

In any case, we stopped for dinner (at Pizza Hut where they do have functional WiFi) and then regrouped and tried to figure out our plan. The big thing to see in Bucharest is the Palace of the Parliament/People's House. It's one of the biggest administrative buildings in the world. We decided to wind around our route a little so we could see one of the city's parks too. The Palace of the Parliament was pretty impressive. It was huge and imposing and almost looked more like the Venetian than the building that Romania's parliament works in. There is a park sitting in front of it, so Mia and I got some ice cream and sat around observing the giant building. I think that was the highlight of Mia's trip to Bucharest. We took Metro back to the hostel from there.

One thing I noticed that was missing from our short tour of Bucharest were stray dogs. Apparently Bucharest has had a problem with stray dogs that run amuck through the city. We had seen a lot on the outskirts of town, including a few that were walking along the train tracks a la Homeward Bound, but we really didn't see many walking around the city as I had expected.

Also, while we were checking our email and facebook on the hostel computers, we happened to be on CNN and notice the news on Hurricane Irene. At first, we didn't mind it too much until we also saw that it was going to hit New York. As in the city we're connecting through to get to SF in a couple of days. This was kind of a problem, so we contacted home to see if they had heard anything about it. Turns out our flight had been canceled (thanks for telling us American Airlines), so Umma rerouted our trip through London for us. Otherwise, I suppose we would have been stranded in Milan as super smelly backpackers.

Anyway, tomorrow it's on to Milan, where we will be staying in airport hotel. I hope the beds are soft. Hostels are more fun, but all of the creaky beds with bad pillows tend to wear you down after a while.

James from England, A Play in One Act

Setting: Anywhere in the world.

Characters: James from England, Anyone else in the world

James from England: Hi! I'm James from England!

Anyone else in the world: Hi James... from England. I'm [name]... from [place].

James from England: That's cool. I'm from South Bristol! I didn't grow up in Bristol, though, I grew up in London. If I'd grown up in Bristol, I'd sound like a farmer, teeheeehee

Anyone else in the world: I'm sorry if this makes me seem ignorant, but what exactly does a British farmer sound like?

James from England: ...

Anyone else in the world: Also, like, doesn't Skins take place in Bristol? They really don't seem farmer-ish to me...

James from England: Hey! Let's play a game!

Anyone else in the world: Uh.. okay... What game?

James from England: Guess how old I am!

Anyone else in the world: Well, this game doesn't really seem that fun, but uh... 24?

James from England: Close!

Anyone else in the world: Do I really have to?

James from England: C'mon!

Anyone else in the world: (sighs) 25?

James from England: Nope, lower!

Anyone else in the world: 23?

James from England: Yup! You got it!!

Anyone else in the world: So... basically... you look more or less exactly your age?

James from England: Yeah, isn't that cool?

Anyone else in the world: ...

James from England: Hey, you know what I really like to do?

Anyone else in the world: Not particularly, but I bet you're going to tell me anyway

James from England: I like to jump from rock to rock on mountains! It makes me feel like I'm seven years old again.

Anyone else in the world: Are you sure you're not originally from Bristol? Because that sounds like a pretty farmer activity to me. Also, did you look like you were exactly seven years old when you were seven years old?

James from England: I'm from London, I swear. Let's talk about something else.

Fin.

Traveling with Alea is a strange and mystical adventure

As our journey is coming to a close, I'd just like to describe what it's like to do a solo trip with Alea.

For starters, she has a tendency to become overwhelmingly attached to inanimate objects. This emotional attachment has been expressed towards $2 flip flops, small pieces of paper, etc. The most baffling is her childlike obsession with a stuffed bee. She becomes genuinely frazzled if you do anything to "insult" or "injure" Hank the bee, who is currently stuffed into a dark corner of my backpack.

Alea is like a bloodhound when it comes to finding something. Give her a map and a location to find and you can bet your HankLongBee she'll find it, regardless of whether or not you're with her at the end of the voyage. One minute you'll be standing next to her in a metro station. You'll casually look at some graffiti on the wall and by the time you look back, Alea is gone. If you're lucky, she's at the top of some flight of stairs, diligently staring at her map. If you're not as lucky, you're forced to frantically look around at a sea of rushed Romanians pushing their way through the subway until you see Alea in a corner. Usually in this scenario, she has already spotted you; however, instead of calling your name like a normal human being, she is staring at you sadly, as if you're doing this to her on purpose to annoy her. And on that note of the Alea sad face, there have been many moments where simple problem-solving could have sorted out a situation, but rather than take that step, she freezes and sits with a sad pout until you can convince her that it's not the end of the world.

Alea also likes to play mime in foreign countries. When buying something, ordering food, or on the rare occasions where asking for directions was a necessity, instead of using words, Alea points at things and makes strange gutteral sounds until the individual at the other end of this exchange ultimately replies in English. Then she smiles and starts formulating baby sentences while still pointing. You'd like to think that the limiting of words is something she does because she is shy and nervous being in an unfamiliar place where she doesn't speak the language. However, she addresses me in a similar manner: she'll bark out orders in strange Alea-speak and walk out of the room, not caring whether you've heard what she's suggested you do. Much like a drill sergeant with a speech impediment she is unaware of.

Now, mind you, Alea is not dumb, and I'm not in any way trying to imply that she is. In fact, our favorite little Juris Doctor is one of the smartest people I know. Aside from being incredibly intelligent, she is really good at taking a really stupid idea and, through some J.D. lawyer voodoo, convincing you it's the greatest idea in the world (i.e. Let's take this bag and fill it with stuff to make it bigger, then shove it in the other bag so it will take up less space). Additionally, she has an impeccable sense of smell, which comes in handy on trains when she gets excited that all she can smell is Nutella. I'm working on a theory though that when her crazy sense of smell kicks in, the rest of her ceases to function and you have to then walk her through logical steps of life ("Mmmm, all I can smell is Nutella." "Alea, isn't there Nutella in our bag?" "Yup. I hope it hasn't opened." "...Maybe you should check?" "OMG LOLZ IT SPILLED!! ROFL").

My blogs are less thorough than Alea's

In Bucharest, there are no children in public. They hide them all in an extravagant playground next to, and presumably modeled after an extravagant building. The building was something important, but I forget what it was. I was too busy enjoying my ice cream and silently weeping at the sight of so many birds. And so many children in one location.

Toodles.

Bucharest

We made it to Bucharest but there is no wireless in the hostel. Its not like we've done much today, but I'll write the post up and it'll be up whenever I next get wifi. We miss Brasov though and the Kismet Dao hostel.

At least we're done with trains. We fly to Milan tomorrow and then home the next day.

Transylvanian Castle Tour

Today we did a tour of some of the castles and a fortress near Brasov. It was one of the tours that you can do through the hostel.   We woke up early so that we could partake in the free breakfast, make our salami sandwiches for the road, and be in the reception for our tour by 9:30. This time around, there were two other people signed up for the tour with us, so they mostly hung out on their own and we didn't have awkward lunch conversations like we did on the Rila Monastery tour. That was good.

The tour today covered three places: the Peles palace in Sinaia, the Bran Castle in Bran (famous for supposedly being Dracula's Castle), and the fortress in Rasnov. The Peles palace was about an hour away, so we the drive over took a while. The Peles palace was probably my favorite of the castles that we saw today. It was very pretty. I took a lot of pictures of the outside, but you had to pay 32 Romanian lei to take pictures inside, so I didn't take any inside. It's a pity too because the inside was really nice. It was decorated with a lot of woodwork, there was a huge weapon room, and then they had a lot of themed rooms. They had a German-themed room where everything was from Germany, there were several Italy-themed rooms with chandeliers made from Murano glass. The coolest was probably the Moorish room. Apart from the themed rooms, walking around the castle also had a slight air of walking through the Haunted Mansion, especially with the big mirrors everywhere. Another cool fact about this castle is that it is like the first building in Europe that used an elevator and had central heating. It was a very nice palace.

Oh fun story from while we were hanging out with the driver. We were waiting for the couple to finish exploring the palace grounds. Our driver pointed to this family who were bickering about something and translated what was going on. One of the kids pulled a dead bird out of the fountain and showed it to his dad saying that it was very beautiful. The parents clearly were unhappy about this and we watched as the dad tried to brush the bird away with a branch and the mom watched disgusted and horrified. Then the kid tried to explain himself to the mom saying "But mommy mommy, it's so cute" and tried to touch the mom, who recoiled and shuddered in disgust. Then, the kid went back to the fountain for a second around and we watched as the dad was trying to pull the kid out. I'm so glad that he translated that scene for us. It was hliariouos.

The next stop took another hour and we were finally on our way to the Bran castle. Mia and I had purchased fake vampire teeth for this occassion so that we could take fun pictures in front of Dracula's castles. One of the things I was most excited about before going there were the cheesy souveniers that I was expecting them to sell all over Bran. Unfortunately, there actually weren't that many. They had cheesy souveniers, but they were not fun cheesy. I was hoping for "wooden stakes" or something like that and they had none of that. It's weird too considering how cheap and easy those would be to make.

In any case, we ate our salami sandwiches that we packed (the Bulgarian sandwich bread we bought was kind of gross) and headed up to the castle. The Bran castle was pretty much just a castle. It was not as cool or pretty as the Peles palace, but it was still a pretty cool castle. We took fun pictures with our vampire teeth and wandered around. There were some really great views of the area from the top of the castle. After exploring the castle, we went back down and met up with our driver.

After Bran, we drove over to Rasnov to see the fortress. This was closer and it only took about 15 minutes to head over. The day had been a pleasant one so far. There had been a nice breeze and it was actually almost cool. It was the first day in a while that I did not feel gross after walking around for 10 minutes outside. At least, that was the case until we got to the fortress.

The fortress is at the top of the hill and, as any other old stone fortress may be, it was incredibly hot there. Our driver left us at the bottom of the hill, and we had to take a rickety tram up to the top to get to the fortress. It took us up most of the way, and then we had to walk up another 5-10 minutes before getting gto the entrance of the fotress. Once inside, we had to walk around uphill even more. Mia, who hates exercise, sweating, heat, and dusty old fortresses was not happy with this place. We explored the fortress for a while and made it to the viewpoint at top before heading back down and getting ice cream. She was happy again. We took the tram down and met up with the driver and headed back to Brasov. On the way back, we talked a little about soccer. Apparently today's a big soccer day for the big Romanian soccer teams.

We got back and took a nap before heading back up. Unfortunately, we got out too late to make it to the free walking tour, so we just explored Brasov a little on our own. We wandered around the major pedestrian street for a while and made our way to the main town hall square and the Black Church (which is the big church in the city). From there, we went to "Rope Street," which is the narrowest street in Southeasteren Europe. I don't know if it should actually count as a street. It was more like a narrow hallway, but whatever. It was kind of fun to walk through it.

By that time, I'm sure there were other tihngs we could see around town, but it was 7 and we were hungry, hot, and tired, so we headed back towards the hostel. We grabbed some food from the supermarket and then got some really good kebabs and ate them by the park. These were really good kebabs. We're probably going to get them for lunch before we leave for Bucharest tomorrow.

Anyway, we've really enjoyed our time here in Brasov. Romania's probably been our favorite stop out of the three that we've been to on this leg of the trip and is probably the country of the three most worth returning to, especially since all of the medieval cities are north of here or something. Tomorrow we head on to Bucharest.

Oh, also, there's this cat at this hostel that Mia wants to kidnap. It acts like Bruce. I think she's renamed it Bruce Cat or something.

Training to Brasov

We spent most of the day on trains today. In true Eastern European train fashion, our train was absurdly late. We were supposed to get in at 6:30 and we got in at almost 10. That means that the 7 am train to Brasov I planned to take and the 8:30 backup train were both shot.  Driving into Bucharest was kind of scary. I hope that a walking tour shows me a bit more of the city's charm, but the train ride into the station felt like that scene from Eurotrip when they first go to Bratislava.

We didn't spend much time in Bucharest because we found a train leaaving to Brasov around 10:50 and almost immediately boarded the train. It was a pretty train ride. It took about three and a half hours to get there and we got to see a lot of the Translyvanian mountains. They kind of reminded me of fhte drive through Oregon. A lot of trees. Pretty trees, but trees.

We got into Brasov around 2:30, got some Romanian lei, bought lunch, and then made our way to the hostel. We hung out at the hostel for a couple of hours before making our way into town. We got some food to make sandwiches with for our Translyvanian castle tour tomorrow. We also got Romanian Chinese food, which was surprisingly good.

That's about all we did today. We were pretty tired from having survived our third and final overnight train and tomorrow we're doing several tours (castle tour and a walking tour of Brasov after we get back). Mia and I uncovered the hostel's stash of Apatow movies so we've been having a bit of a marathon.

What we've seen of Brasov is kind of cute, though. The bits of it we've seen so far remind me of a mountainy Sabaudia.

Sofia Day 2 + Rila Monastery

So now we're safe in Transylvania. We're not armed with wooden stakes. Maybe we should. Maybe.

Anyway, our second day in Bulgaria was spent doing one of the hostel's side trips to the Rila Monastery. The Rila Monastery is a UNESCO World Heritage site is and is this excluded monastery up in the Rila Mountain. The tour basically got us someone to drive us directly to the monastery, which having been there, would have been hellish to do via public transportation. There were three of us signed up for the tour: Mia, me and some guy named James who sounded like Daniel Radcliffe. The drive out to the Rila Monastery took about two hours, but there was a stop over at a gas station.

Before we got to the Rila Monastery, our tour guide stopped us somewhere else in the mountains to go see a cave that St. Ivan used to live in. It was a funny moment because Mia slept for pretty much the entire ride to the monastery and she woke up for a very sweaty uphill hike. She was clearly thrilled. The hike was a lot longer than I initially thought when he said he was taking us to a cave. We pretty much got out of the car and he pointed to this giant hill and said we're climbing up that. It wasn't too bad. The cave was pretty cool too, but there was this tiny hole at some point that we were expected to squeeze through. I declined  as the only image in my head was of Winnie the Pooh.

After climbing back down the hill, he drove us to the Rila Monastery and left us there for a few hours. The monastery is very pretty. It used to house like 300 monks, but according to some tour guide we were listening to there are only like six monks living there. Apparently, those few monks aren't too lonely because they rent out some of the rooms as a hotel.

In any case, there was also a giant church in the middle of the monastery. From the outside, it looks like the rest of the monastery, but it was incredibly ornate on the inside. I'd post pictures, but we weren't allowed to take them inside. Judging from all of the paintings all over the interior, I can understand why.

Even though the monastery was very pretty, we were left there for two and a half hours and there's really only so much of the monastery that you can see in that time. We were all kind of hungry, though, so we got some food. Tried some monastery-style bean soup (good) and some Bulgarian beer (not so good). For dessert, we got Bulgarian donuts that the woman at the hostel had been raving about. That was entertaining because there was a large selection of different syrup flavors to try out.

After eating, we wandereed around the monastery for a little wihle longer, before finding our tour guide and heading back to Sofia. The driver stopped at some point to buy some fruit and gave us some. Other than that, it was a pretty awkward and quiet ride back.

We got back to the hostel around 4:30 and hung out at the hostel for a little while because it was deadly hot. We went out for dinner around 6 before coming back, grabbing our bags and heading to the train station. That was fun. We had like 5 dollars worth of Bulgarian money to spend and nothing to spend it on because we had already gone to the market. I think we got Snickers bars or something.

The overnight train that we took to Bucharest had a final destination in Moscow. That was kind of fun. We had a sleeping compartment and were the only people in the compartment. It wasn't as big or comfortable as the one that we took to Belgrade, but the door also didn't make noises the whole night and I actually managed to sleep. They took our passports for a while, but we eventually got them back.

Sofia

We rolled into Sofia, Bulgaria tired, smelly, and hungry. The train station wasn't welcoming either. We almost got run over by some street cleaner. Our first priority was to make sure that we were indeed in a sleeper for our overnight train tomorrow. We got tossed around from ticketing office to ticketing office until we got to the right one and confirmed that we were in a sleeper. Ideally, we'll luck out and there will only be the two of us again, but who knows. Unlike the Budapest train, this is the only train that goes from Sofia to Bucharest. At least we get beds.

Also, trains in Eastern Europe make Italian trains seem prompt. This one arrived three hours late. While we're training into Bucharest tomorrow, we're ultimately trying to get to Brasov that day. At Budapest, they told us that we didn't have to make reservation for the Brasov train. I was going to do it anyway, but it migth be better that I don't. Who knows when we're going to arrive in Bucharest on Wednesday morning.

Anyway, we got out of the train station and everything smelled like pee. We had to make our way through a million taxi drivers and peole advertising hostels before we made it to the tram. The area of Sofia that we saw on our tram ride reminded us of some of the less touristy areas of Mexico. There were definitely some dirt roads and the streets were not completely done or in disrepair. That might have been fine, but add the rows of communist-era architecture and you'll get our first impression of Sofia.

We finally made it to the hostel. It's a pretty cute hostel, but because we got a private two bed room, we're in an apartment a couple streets away. Thus, we did not get to partake in the free pool table because we did not want to have to wake in the dark Sofia streets more than we had to :(. Anyway, we checked in, but they told us that it'd take a couple of hours for the room to be ready. We had the option of doing an 11 am free walking tour, but we were too tired hungry and gross feeling to do that. Instead, we sat around and hung out in the hostel. We also dug into the bag of mini croissants that we bought in Belgrade. They weren't that good, but we made them better with the packet of knock off Nutella that we also got.

Our room was supposed to be ready at 2, but it ended up being ready at 12. This was great. We showered. They do a laundry service here for 8 lav (equivalent of 4 Euro), so we decided that our train clothes from the past few days either needed to be burned or washed, so we went back to drop that off, pay for our room, and book ourselves in the tour of the Rila Monastery that they put on. Once that was done, we ran back to the room for the much needed sleep.

We were up and out by 5 and decided to do the 6 pm run of the free walking tour that we missed earlier in the day. This was a very tough decision for us. Included in the hostel price, they'll make you pasta for dinner. But that only happens from 7-8. On the other hand, this tour lasted from 6-8:30. We almost tried to do both and were going to leave the tour an hour into it, but we actually ultimately really liked the walking tour. The Sofia we saw on the tour was a lot nicer than what we had seen in the morning. There are a lot of underground Roman ruins in the city, so when our tour guide would take us to the subway area, you'd just see old walls all around. There are a lot of really pretty churches scattered around the city, some of them going back to the 11th century. The biggest church and the one pictured below is the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. It was huge. We saw a palace, the president's building (but just missed the changing of the guard). The tour guide was pretty funny too. 

Oh, another cool thing about Sofia is that they have a lot of mineral springs all over the city. It's completely safe to drink, so we got to fill up with some natural mineral water.

The tour ended around 8:30, right after the dinner. :( All in all, though, we were glad that we did the tour because we saw a lot more of Sofia and did a lot more than we would have otherwise.

Tomorrow we check out and we take an overnight train to Bucharest. Instead of having an awkward day, though, we're doing the hostel's tour of the Rila Monastery which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. We could have taken public transportation to the monastery and it would have been a lot cheaper, but seeing as they only have three trains to and from Rila each day and the trains we've encountered so far have not been particularly reliable, I think the private transport is the safest bet. It's also a pretty long drive to and from the monastery, so we've got a full day ahead of us.

Belgrade Day 2 and Overnight Train from Hell

We are now safely in Sofia, Bulgaria after the overnight train from hell. But, we're safe now...and only have one more of these overnight trains to go. Yay. And we have a sleeper. Anyway, back to Belgrade.

The problem with overnight trains is that for that day that you're in the city, you're stuck in a strange limbo where you can't quite do too much because you're not staying another night in the city. It's harder when you're not in a country that uses the Euro and have to try to use up as much of the remaining currency but not overspend so we have something to eat. Also, while the Eastern European cities that we've been to have been pretty cool, they're not as jam packed with things to do as other European cities are. I guess that's not so much of a problem in Budapest, but that's definitely what happened yesterday in Belgrade.

So, we woke up in the morning, only an hour or so after a crew of BeerFest attendees had stumbled into our hostel. We checked out and had our free breakfast and then made our trek our to the Nikola Tesla Museum. They do free tours of the museum on the hour and we got there around 10:30, so we sat around waiting for the tour. It's really not that big of a museum, but the tour was worth it. They have a lot of models of Tesla's inventions and they do demonstrations. They told stories of Tesla's life. We got electrocuted (kind of). At the end, we got to see Tesla's urn. It was a good museum and one of my favorite parts of our stop in Belgrade for sure. They don't have much of a gift shop though. It was just a set of magnets and books about Tesla. :(

We weren't really sure what to do after that. We wanted to see the St. Sava Cathedral, but we also thought about seeing Zemun, which is supposed to have a cute old town. We learned from someone working at the Tesla Museum that Zemun would have been a long trip that would require multiple transfers in both directions. Instead, we had pizza in the park for lunch, where Mia in the spirit of Nikola Tesla, befriended a pigeon. Then, we decided to watch another movie. This time it was subtitled so we opted for a comedy (Horrible Bosses) and avoided the hot Serbian sun. It was a pretty funny movie. Also, apparently movies in Serbia are like the equivalent of 3 euro. Not bad at all.

The movie let us out around 3 pm, so we walked over to St. Sava Cathedral. It was one of those walks similar to our Paris walk where we saw the Cathedral immediately, but it took us a while to actually make it there. It's huge and looked really cool on the outside, but they are still working on constructing it, so the inside was kind of empty. It was still very pretty on the outside.

Our next goal was to go to some big market. This didn't end too well. The tour industry in Serbia is still growing, so they only have street signs in crylic writing and have not yet added romanic writing. This would be fine, except all tourist maps have everything in romanic writing. Not helpful at all. Anyway by the time we realized we were going to wrong direction, it was after four, which was when the market ended. We then tried to go find the Bohemian alley again. Although this is a pretty big tourist destination, it was not on the map so we ended up not being able to find that either. A lot of fail.

We didn't have much money left and had a lot of time left. Belgrade is also known for its nightlife and we had seen most of the major sights for the day. We ate dinner and then tried to watch another movie, but did not have the money for that. Instead, we went back to our hostel and they let us hang out there for a couple of hours. We watched How to Train your Dragon with some other backpackers and surfed the net until deciding to make it over to thett train station.

The train station in Belgrade isn't really much of a train station. It's pretty much a giant open court yard. Nevertheless, we felt a lot safer there than we did at the Budapest train station, so we were fine. Also, our train was there a lot earlier, so we were able to board the train.

So this train. It wasn't fun. First of all, it smelled like urine. It was gross. Also, we looked into the train compartment that we had booked our seats for and saw the shadiest group of people, as well as a woman who looked like Professor Trelawney if she didn't have teeth. We immediately pretended like we were looking for another compartment and looked with jealousy at all of the other compartments full of backpackers who ended up bonding all night. Fortunately, we were on a train that didn't require reservations, so we ducked into another compartment that had less unsavory looking individuals. They were a bunch of locals who didn't speak any English, but they were all very nice. They spent most of the night talking to each other, but I think it was because they all were arriving at their destinations anywhere from 1-3 am so they had to keep each other awake. Once they were gone, there weren't many in the seated 6 person compartment, so we were able to sprawl out a little more.

Also had fights with the train conductors several time throughout the night. If you get the Eurail Global pass, you cannot train through Serbia. However, you can get a multi-country pass that lets you do so. Our ticket clearly says that we can travel through Serbia, but each time that the conductors made their rounds they insisted that our Eurail passes were invalid even after I spelled it out for them and pointed to where it said Serbia on our ticket. They eventually both relented, except the first one had a second go and insisted that our 2 Adult Eurail Saver Pass was only for one person. Seriously. They were the worst. Mind you, one of these arguments went on at 4 am, right after I had finally foudn a comfortable sleeping position.

When I finally was able to sleep a little, a new group of people joined us. I don't think they had tickets. When the conductor made his round, one of them handed him a few bills and he just nodded and walked away. In any case, between guarding our belongings, finding a comfortable sleeping position, sleeping through loud conversations and 4 am arguments with train conductors, i only got a few hours of sleep.  Needless to say, I was pretty tired by the time that we made it to Sofia.

Belgrade

Our first day in Belgrade was pretty interesting. We spent a long portion of the morning still on the train. The train was supposed to arrive at 6:40, but didn't get in until almost 9. It worked out because it gave us some extra time to sleep. I think there must have been some problems with the train because there were several moments during the night where the train just flat out stopped. Whatever, we made it and we made it safe. I think the Canadian couple next to us were kind of panicked about the delays though. They kept on going in and out of their compartment to ask the conductor how long we'd have until we got there  and each time he told them that we'd be about 2 hours late.

We eventually made it, though and because we did not have any Serbian dinars and the guides specifically recommended against exhanging money at the train station, we just walked to the hostel. It ended up being a lot more of an uphill walk than we had anticipated and we must have looked pretty gross by the time that we found the hostel. We dropped our bags off and then ran off to get some dinars before coming back to check in. Our beds were ready (yay), so we also took the time to shower and get rid of all the train grime that we had accumulated overnight.

We finished just in time to run over to Republic Square for a free walking tour of the city. It was not with the tour company that we like to do our free tours with, but it was still a pretty well done tour and our guide was a lot less awkward than our guide in Copenhagen. The only problem is that on a hot day such as today, our guide did not have a break until almost the end of the tour. There were some points of the tour where we were just so hot that nothing she was saying was sinking in. Mia and I remedied this with ice cream though. A cure all.

The tour was fun. Belgrade's an interesting city where on one corner you will find a building that has not quite yet recovered from recent bombings, in another corner you see the lush "Bohemian Quarter" full of pubs and bars, and another street is the more ritzy pedestrian only shopping mall. The people here have also been very nice and friendly. I think the coolest part of the tour was the big fortress, which is now also a park. You see ruins of this old medieval fortress, a great view, and a lot other goodies.

Oh, also, there is a street here that the locals refer to as "Silicon Valley." Mia and I were initially excited because we thought it'd be a techie little quarter of Belgrade, but it was actually more Orange County than Silicon Valley. It's apparently a street of overpriced bars where rich locals make sure to flaunt their wealth and women with boob jobs try to find rich husbands. Also, apparently those with fancy cars will make sure to park their cars illegally in ways that everyone can see.

We were dying by the time the tour was over because it was so hot. It ended around the touristy pedestrian street, so we ducked into the closest air conditioned restaurant we could find and had lunch. Mia got gnocchi and I got a "burrito," which was more like a quesadilla. i think and Eduardos trip is due when we come home.

Anyway, we made our way back to the hostel. Mia stopped and got red glasses like the ones of her that she broke and had been trying to replace. For old times sake, we walked into a Lush. We made it back to the hostel around 3 and both of us passed out for a while.

We didn't leave again until 6:30-ish, when we decided that we should probably go out and do something else. We decided to go check out the Belgrade Beerfest, which is the big event going on in town right now. Our plan was to get a drink, get dinner and get out. The woman who we asked for directions at the front desk probably thought we were cooler than we actually were. When I asked if we could take a tram back from the event, she looked worried and told us that they'd only run until 11:15. Lol.

Anyway, BeerFest was actually surprisingly fun. We thought it'd be a lot more like Love Fest, but when we had made it there, it was actually a very family friendly event. There were even rides nearby. We tried the Serbian Jelen beer, which kind of tasted like Stella. Mia got some chicken sandwich thing and I got some hot dog like thing. We drank and ate, listened to the band perform, and then made our way out as the crowds started rushing in.

Now we're back at the hostel and I'm being eaten alive by bugs. Time to pull out the bug repellent, I guess. Tomorrow, we do the Nikola Tesla Museum and some other sight seeing. The walking tour covered many of the major sights of the city, but I think there were a couple of other things that are worth seeing. In the evening, we do overnight train #2 to Sofia, Bulgaria where they shake their heads to say yes and nod to say no.

Budapest Day 3 and Overnight Train

So, we've made it to Belgrade and have survived one day here thus far. Yesterday was a pretty long day because everyone left us with 8 hours to kill in Budapest. It was interesting.

We got up pretty late compared to the last few weeks of traveling and we sorted out the laundry that arrived (yay clean clothes). We then had our massive rush to get things together before the check out time and managed to check out our stuff right at 11. Good timing. They let us store our bags in the hotel while we ran around the city to do last-minute sightseeing too, which was convenient.

We stopped by the nearby mall to get some breakfast-ish food for everyone. More like a lunch, really. It was all food court food. Mia, James and I got kebobs and Halmony and Umma split stuff from some Asian restaurant. The mall was actually pretty nice (and air conditioned). We wandered around the H&M for a while too.

Our major sightseeing trip for the day was Memento Park. In retrospect, it might have been better to do that stop the day before, but there are no complaints because everything worked out fine. When Hungary got rid of its communist regime, they got rid of all of the propaganda statues that were scattered around Budapest. Many of them ended up in Memento Park, which is this small park on the outskirts of Budapest. The trip out there was pretty far. It took us a good hour to take various buses out to the park. It was long and there were times that we were concerned that we would not make it back to the hotel by 3 so Umma Halmony and James could get their airport taxi. The park wasn't as big as I thought it would be, but it was still pretty impressive. The statues are enormous and cover a wide range of topics. You have the statues of the major communist dictators (except for Stalin because most of those were apparently destroyed in the 1956 revolt). There are statues of other major communist heroes and then there are statues that represent communist ideals. My major regret is that when we came here on our backpacking trip several years ago, that we didn't take Gianni or Andrew to it. I think they would have enjoyed it a lot.

By the time we made our way back to the hotel area, it was almost three, so our timing was quite perfect. We helped everyone get their stuff up from the storage room and then saw Halmony, James, and Umma off as they were laughing and waving with their taxi driver.

Because our overnight train was at 11:30, we had a long time to kill and were not quite sure where we could use that time. Sure there were plenty of other sights to see, but I handed over my Rick Steves book and felt empty sightseeing Budapest without it. Also, it was incredibly hot, so we didn't really want to stumble around more in the heat. So, we did what we would have done on any obscenely hot day in the states, we went to the movies.

The movie theater near the hotel dubbed the movies, which made things quite inconvenient for us, but we ended up finding a well-timed showing of Green Lantern to go see. It was fun to watch in Hungarian, even if we didn't understand anything. Paralax's voice was also a lot creepier in Hungarian. The theater in general was pretty cool. They had WiFi in the theater, the popcorn was cheaper, and they had assigned seats.

After the movie was over, we went back to the Vaci Utca area and ended up eating at Raday Utca, which is what Rick Steves referred to Budapest's restaurant row. We even found a restaurant that he recommended and finally got our Hungarian goulash. It was so good, but the service was slow. We also tried a pretty interesting pastry dish while we were there.

By the time we were done with our dinner, it was 7:50 and our 24 hour pass ended at 7:56. This left us with not much time to get back to the hotel. Somehow, I dumbly went the wrong way and we blew our last few minutes of our 24 hr pass on a wrong turn and had to buy new single ride passes. It was depressing, but whatever. We picked up our bags and then made our way over to the train station. First, though, we stopped at the convenience store near the hotel to get some snacks for the train. We didn't end up with as much as we thought because we had to spend some of our snack money on extra Metro tickets :(

The wait for the train was a long one, but we stood close enough to the ticket-only area that there weren't too many shady people around us. Eventually, it was littered with other backpackers on their way to Belgrade anyway. The train was a little late, too, so we left around midnight rather than 11:30.

The overnight train was an interesting experience. We splurged and got the sleeping coach, which normally will sleep up to 3 people. It was only the two of us in there, so it worked out well. The train conductor took our ticket and Eurail pass at the beginning of the ride, which put me into quite a panic because that had never happened before. Had it not been for the fact that I later saw the conductor hanging out in the conductor's room, I would have spent the whole night thinking that we had fallen for some elaborate Eastern European train scam. For the record, we got our ticket back.

The train was pretty rickety and the Canadian couple next to us were loud the entire night. Also, we had to clear customs at 2 am and 3 am. That was fun. I think somehow, we managed to get some sleep in though.

Budapest (Day 2)

I must be almost caught up because I'm actually writing about things that went on today. Yay. Exciting.

Anyway, I love Budapest. It's definitely one of my favorite cities, definitely of Europe and possibly in general. I thought returning would be disappointing, but the city is just as cool the second time around and I still have yet to try out one of the famous thermal baths.

Because of our late night last night, we got up relatively late. Rather, James, Mia and I got up late. Halmony always gets up early and Umma had to get up early to give the hotel people our laundry (so glad to have clean clothes again). We didn't leave the hotel until around 11, and then we were hungry. We discovered that there was McDonalds relatively nearby and decided to lunch there.

Now, I will defend overseas McDonalds trips for many reasons. First, the restaurants (for the most part) tend to be significantly nicer than they are in the States. This one had free WiFi. Depending on where you are, you also tend to be eating with more of the locals. You won't get this feeling at the McDonalds near the Spanish Steps, for instance, but when you're in not-so-touristy areas of a city like we were today, you end up hearing more of the local language. Also, McDonalds tends to change its menu when you're abroad. For instance, today I got a Greek sandwich that actually had a bit of that kebob-y taste to it. Anyway, that was kind of a random side tangent, but I always think it's kind of fun to go to McDonalds abroad even though I very rarely eat it at home.

Once we were done with lunch, it was finally time for some sight seeing. Our first stop of the day was the Great Market Hall. This involved some winding around streets as well as dragging Umma away from touristy shops lining the touristy pedestrian street, Vaci Utca. Once we finally got to the market, I think Umma and Halmony were in their happy place. The Great Market Hall is an enormous marketplace in Budapest. It was apparently one of the four built in Budapest in 1896 (which was a big year for the city as it was their millenial year). This one remains as an incredibly large market that caters to both locals and tourists. We circled around the bottom floor for a while, which was more or less a farmers market. We passed a ton of fruit stalls and some meat stands. We even bought some nectarines to eat later.

We then explored the upper level, which really only has an insane amount of tourist stalls and some food stands. I finally got to try langos, which I've heard Rick Steves rave about in his podcasts and in his Eastern Europe guidebook. They kind of tasted like funnel cakes, but the concepts very similar to crepes, where you can order them with both sweet and savory toppings. We got a simple sugar one and were quite happy with it.

I'm pretty sure that we could have stayed around the Grand Market for much longer. We still hadn't even explored the basement floor, where there is even more food. However, we still had much to see, so we went outside and ate nectarines and got our bearings for a while before heading out. We took the tram over to the Chain Bridge and crossed the bridge by foot. If you're unfamiliar with the layout of Budapest, the city once consisted of two separated cities, Buda and Pest.  The Chain Bridge is this massive bridge that crosses the Danube and connects the Buda portion of the city with the Pest side (we'd so far been on the Pest side). It's pretty fun to walk across if you're able to dodge all of the bikes that pass you.

Once we made it across, we took the funicular up the hill to get to the Buda Castle. Apparently, they're doing some major folk art festival up there, so we couldn't actually get into the surrounding palace area without buying a ticket to go to the festival. It's a pity too. You can get some great views of the city from the Buda Castle. We explored the Castle Hill area a little more, visiting St. Matthias Church and some other spots before deciding to head back down.

From there, I had planned to take a tram from the chain bridge to the Metro line that would take us under the Danube and back to the Pest side. Turns out that tram that I wanted to take was out of service until September so we had to walk. It actually went by faster than I thought it would. In any case, we took the Metro to our last sight seeing stop of the day, Heroes Square. I said before that 1896 was a big year of the city and Heroes Square is further evidence of that. It was built as part of the major celebration to commemorate the 1000 years since the Magyars first arrived in Hungary. In that square is the Hungarian War Memorial as well as statues memorializing many of the most famous Hungarian leaders. It's a pretty epic square. We sat around there for a little while, until a cricket bit Umma and we got chased away by a bee. We may or may not have embarassed ourselves in front of many locals and fellow tourists.

By this time, it was running close to dinner time and our big task of the day was to surprise Halmony for her birthday with a Korean dinner. We had used the McDonalds WiFi earlier in the day to locate what Lonely Planet named the best Korean restaurant in Budapest. Unfortunately, it took us on this tour of what Mia said was the Inglewood of Budapest before we could actually find the restaurant. On the upside, we all got a glimpse of what I believe was the soccer stadium of Budapest. That was cool at least.

The Korean restaurant was interesting. The main people serving us there were these two big burly Hungarian men who did not look Korean or speak Korean and looked like they could have belonged to the Hungarian mafia. They were nice, but kind of intimidating. The food was pretty good. A lot more authentic than the place that we had gone to in Prague. It was, however, incredibly spicy. Moreso than normal Korean food. Even the kimchi was painfully but deliciously spicy. We all left utterly defeated by the spiciness of Hungarian Korean food and had to console ourselves with ice cream. At least the walk back wasn't as bad as the walk there.

After our trip to eat Korean food, we made our way back to the hotel and have been getting ready for our next day of travels. Umma, James, and Halmony are flying to Milan tomorrow. Mia and I take and overnight to Belgrade. I'm going to have to get rid of my beloved Rick Steves book because he doesn't cover any of the other stops we'll be going to. It'll be sad not carrying that around in my bag anymore, but at least my bag will be a little lighter. Before everyone leaves, we plan to try to go to Memento Park and eat some goulash. Mia and I will also try to find that Hungarian Mexican restaurant again for dinner.

Long Train Ride and Budapest

Most of this day was spent on a seven hour train from Prague to Budapest. It sounds kind of painful, but it wasn't so bad. We had to wake up around 6:30 to get our stuff together and take the tram over to the train station. We waited a while in the train station trying to figure out what platform we'd be on. Mia and I tried to get our next batch of tickets. We ran into a problem when we were told that the train that we wanted to get from Sofia to Brasov did not exist. Instead of dealing with the nicer person at the train ticket office, I figured I'd save it for Budapest. 

Anyway, like I said, the train wasn't too bad. I think Umma was delirious for a while because she kept on laughing at everything and was making weird faces at James.  I watched some Dr. Who and slept for a while. We were in one of those 6-person compartments, so we had one seat empty. There was a period where Mia was sprawled across both her own seat and the empty one next to her in order to sleep. Got some reading in and some blogging. We went through Bratislava, which delighted Mia as parts of the city that we did see from the train really did look like the Bratislava you see in the movie Eurotrip. We also saw some goats along the road, which also made Mia incredibly happy. Umma also made us pack up all of our stuff and wait around 20 minutes before we got to Budapest. One of the people working on the train laughed at us. Good times.

We arrived in Budapest around 4:45, but we had to exchange money and deal with the whole train issue. We grabbed our tickets for the international train ticket line and Umma went off in search of a way to ATM. While we were waiting, we were approached by a homeless man who was digging through the trash and eating off of scraps of chicken. He started talking to Halmony, so we all pretended we only spoke Korean and ran away. We later felt bad and gave him some bread and leftover salami that he had. That made him pretty happy.

Meanwhile, we should have been foreworn that waiting at the Budapest Keleti train station was hellish as many, many people had written something to the extent of "I hate this place" on the walls. We wait like 30 minutes to get our number called and when we finally did, we ended up with this devil woman who barked different things at us the entire time. When we asked to book trains, she yelled at us and told us to go  back to the Information booth to ask about the times. When we told her that we had the times we wanted, she glared at us, checked our computer and then told us the train from Sofia to Brasov through Bucharest didn't exist. She clearly did not want to answer any of our other questions or help us in anyway, so we eventually took our Information ticket and sat back down. The woman at information confirmed that the only train that we could take from Bucharest was an overnight train. This threw off the carefully planned hostel reserrvations that we had made, but seeing as we're eventually flying to Milan from Bucharest, we didn't really have any other option. So, we took another train ticket number and waited another 30 minutes. This time, the woman we were working for was significantly nicer and we managed to gett from Sofia to Bucharest. She claims that we don't need reservations for any of the other trains we're taking in Romania, but I don't think that's true. I'll double check at another train station. I don't want to deal with the Budapest train station ticketing offices anymore.

Anyway, by the time that hellish process was over, it was 6 and we still had to lug our stuff to the hostel. I made sure to check directions from the Budapest train station to our hotel in Prague, which made life significantly easier for us. Cut down at least some of the random circling that we usually end up doing. Other than the problems we had finding the Metro stop, the trip to the hotel was relatively smooth. The area was significantly nicer than the place in Prague and the room is huge and has a normal shower. It actually kind of reminds us all of a smaller and more European version of the place we stayed in Korea. The Internet's also very fast and we have a flat screen. It's awsome, I know.

We decided to go back out again at almost nine-ish. We were hungry and I thought that if there was any sight that I thought everyone had to see to shed the image of Budapest's kind of shady train station, it'd be a walk along the Danube River at night. There's definitely something magical about that walk, and you can't capture the view of the river on film.

We took the Metro to the Parliament building and walked along the Danube from there. We looked at the Buda Palace and the Fisherman's Bastion across the way and I showed everyone the pretty moving monument of shoes along the river. It's a Holocaust Monument of 50 bronze shoes. It memorializes the Hungarian Jews who were killed by the Nazi's puppet government. They were shot along the river bank, but were forced to remove their shoes so that they could sell them.

We walked further along the Danube and passed the Chain Bridge and decided that it was probably about time that we ate something. We thought about trying out one of the boat restaurants along the way, but at 10:30 at night, there apparently are pretty limited dining options. We ended up at this Thai restaurant. It was pretty good, better than what I expected at least.

By the time that we got out of the restaurant, it was almost 11:30, which was a problem because, according to my guidebook at least, the Metro and other forms of public transportation stop running around. This posed quite a problem, although we did see some random buses running along the street, so maybe the times changed or something (?). In any case, we just decided to walk. The walk from the Parliament building to where we were (around the LIberty Bridge) actually took us about halfway back to the hotel anyway, so it wouldn't be too bad. It actually wasn't. And the streets of Budapest, even at midnight, definitely felt a little safer than the streets we walked around in Prague.

We made it back and I think all of us got to bed fairly late.

Prague Day Two

Our second day in Prague was much, much nicer than our first. We got a pretty late start, after deciding to let James and everyone sleep in until 9 if they wanted. Not all of us did, especially since the rooms were super bright in the morning, but we definitely had to wake James up. We had bought milk and cereal from a local market the night before, so we also had breakfast in our room before heading out.

We bought a day pass for the public transportation. It is a 24-hour pass and it worked out very well because we were able to use it the next morning when we needed to get to the train station for our train to Buapdest. Chris decided that instead of taking the trams into the main part of town, we'd take the metro. This meant that instead of catching one of the buses literally down the street, we walked up this bizarre hill full of mud and slugs before getting to the metro station. It was exhausting, but allowed us to continue our pattern of seeing all of Prague except for the parts that people rave about.

Fortunately, that didn't last long. The metro pretty much dropped us off in the Old Town area and we were finally greeted with the scenic views of Prague that you see on the postcards. We started our tour of Prague in the Old Town Square, where we were greeted with the aroma of all of the different foods cooking in the square. We were like the group of kids from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Even though it had been pretty much an hour since we had gotten our foods, our tails wagged with delight and we ended up having a mini feast in the middle of the square. It was great. We sampled everything from Czech goulash, to this delicious Slovenian gnocchi dish, to Slovankian honey wine (so so good). We were in our heaven.

In fact, we were so engrossed in our food that we missed clock show that happens on the hour. The area around the Astronomical Clock in the town square does this little routine every hour. It's a really short show, one of those blink and you miss it deals. By the time I was able to pry Mia away from her goulash, we had missed it :(

After we finished eating, we made our way to the Charles Bridge. On the way, we stopped through several of the touristy shops, and I had to drag Mia away from a few of the marionette stores that were selling Messi marionettes (along with the rest of Barca). Personally, I think it'd be fun to do my own reenactment of Nsync's Bye Bye Bye video with a set of Barca marionettes. Too bad they would be such a pain to bring back.

It took us a while, but we finally made it to the Charles Bridge. The Charles Bridge is this huge pedestrian bridge that crosses over the Vlatava River. While crossing the bridge, you get a fantastic view of the Prague Castle and the other areas surrounding it. There are giant bronze statues that line the bridge, including one of St. John of Nepomuk, a priest who the Queen at the time confided all of her secrets in. When he refused to tell the king her secrets, the king had him tortured and thrown into the river. They also have a small bronze marking showing where he was thrown into the river and you're supposed to touch it to get your once chance to make a wish. Shouldn't take you too long to figure out I wished for.

All in all, the bridge was pretty impressive (albeit incredibly packed), not just because of the epic views you got of the city and the river, but also because it was built in like the 1300s.

Once on the other side we bought some water and made our way up to the Prague Castle. It would have been a painful walk up, so we took a tram up. Once there, we watched the changing of the guard and watched Mia and Jimmy try to take jumpining pictures next to the guards.

We then made our way through the St. Vitus Cathedral, which was gorgeous both inside and out. We wandered aroudn the castle grounds for a little longer. There are some great views of the city from up there. We also tried Czech sweet bread (really good) before making our way back down to the Little Town area (the area under the castle)

We walked around the Little Town streets for a while to get to our next destination: the Lennon wall. When John Lennon died, locals in the city spontaneously started writing tributes to Lennon all over the wall. Each night, the police would try to remove the graffitti only to find that it would immediatley be redone. According to my Rick Steves book, it eventually became a bit of a symbol of freedom during the communist days and is still covered in Beatles-related graffitti today. It was fun trying to play spot the Beatles song with the lyrics scribbled all over the wall.

From there, we made our way back over the Charles Bridge and back to the Old Square. We were initially going to have dinner in the same style that we had our lunch and dine off of street food, but decided that our tired feet would better appreciate a sit down restaurant. It was some touristy hotel restaurant. There was good goulash so I was happy.

After dinner and dessert on some gelato, we made our way back to the hotel and got back around 6:30. That gave Chris and Jimmy a chance to clean up their stuff and have some down time before the taxi picked them up to take them to their airport hotel. Because they were leaving from Prague so early the next day, Umma thought it would be better for them to spend the night at a hotel by the airport, rather than our rather inconveniently located hotel. It worked out well for them and I think they were happy to be in a shower that was not so awkward.

Once they left, Umma Mia and I went on another laundry adventure. We went to an address given to us by the woman who worked at the reception. In her defense, when I looked up the place online, the address she gave us matched the one online. There are no conveniently located laundromats near where we were, so we took a tram up to the right area. We found what we were pretty sure was the street and got to the correct address. All we found was an old door covered in graffitti and no sign of any laundromat. We confirmed with several people walking by that we were indeed on the right street. There was a comic book store, which would have provided some solace to our failed laundry trip, but it was closed.

We got home and cleaned up our stuff, got some blogging in, and went to bed early in preparation for our early bus ride to Budapest.

Goodbye Luxury. Hello Prague!

The day that we disembarck a cruise ship is always a sad one. You leave the luxurious life where a buffett line is only feet away and go into a world where you suddenly have to pay for water, food and restrooms once again. Such was our day leaving the ship. We had an early disembarkation because we had early plane tickets from Copenhagen to Prague. This meant that we woke up around 5, rushed to try to eat while Oppa was stressing and then loaded up into the bus to get to the airport. I slept most of that ride.

Once we got to the airport, we ran into more issues. We had strategically packed all of our stuff so that the seven of us continuing to Prague would only have to check in one bag total. We were really excited about this and were about to check in until we discovered that we were only allowed one carry on. Total. That screwed things up, so we scrambled to combine some bags so that we wouldn't have to check all of our bags in and then redid everything. Mia and I will have to go through this scramble again on our Easy Jet flight from Bucharest to Milan, but I think we'll be a little better prepared by then.

In any case, the rest of the trip ran relatively smoothly. We said our goodbyes to Oppa and Chabba, only to run into Chabba again past the security gates. The flight was fine. I slept for most of it, but it was a pretty bumpy ride.

We arrived in Prague a little over an hour later and had to run around in search of ATM so that we could get money and a way to get from the Prague Airport to our hotel. We briefly thought about taking a bus, until we realized how hellish that would be with all of our luggage. Thus, we decided to go for the taxi ride. It's probably a good thing that we did, too, because it turned out that it was pouring rain in Prague. The taxi ride seemed wrong and our driver dropped us off in the wrong area. We were really only around the corner, but trying to run from where the taxi driver dropped us off to the hotel was a bit of an adventure. I can only imagine what it would have been like if we had to take public transport with all of our bags in the rain. It wouldn't have ended well.

Our hotel in Prague was kind of  cool because it shared my name. That's actually why Umma chose it. Turns out it wasn't really the greatest location (there were several sex shops in that area and a lot of shady looking folk) and the shower was awkward to use, but it kind of reminded me of a spacier version of my apartment in Florence, so I was happy in that respect. Also, we got to carry around a keychain with my name on it.

After regrouping for a while and drying off a little, we realized how hungry we were. Chris and Jimmy had eaten at the airport in Copenhagen to get rid of their remaining Danish crowns, but none of us had eaten since we were on the cruise ship early that morning and we were so hungry. We also wanted to surprise Halmony and eat at a Korean restaurant. Chris and I had both Googled K-restaurants in Prague and both came up with different ones. Mine was closer so we went with that first.

For some reason, we thought that the walk to the Korean restaurant would be walking distance in the rain. It wasn't. It was a long and very wet walk to the Korean restaurant. We finally got there and after getting whiffs of Korean BBQ, found out that the restaurant was closed until 5 pm. It was 4:15. Despite our imploring looks at the woman working there, we were unable to get in and decided to go to Chris's. His wasn't too far from where we were, but was still a good 10-15 minute tromp in the rain. When we got there, it turns out that the thing he found was not a Korean restaurant, but a Korean market. That wasn't so bad because there was a Korean restaurant around the corner. The woman let us in there as well, thinking that we were part of a tour group from Germany. When she found out that we definitely were not the people she was expecting, she told us that most of the restaurant had been reserved, but said we could sit in this table in the backroom. We barely fit in there and decided to go to the first place.

After the next round of Czech KBBQ ping pong, we made it to the first restaurant and found out that they too were expecting a large tour group. We must have looked pathetic because the guy eventually let us eat there as long as we were gone by six. Our presence really stressed this guy out and he paced around while we struggled to scarf down the food. It wasn't really the best Korean BBQ that I've had, but it was an interesting experience and we were famished. Halmony was happy, though, because it turns out that parts of the drama that she liked that took place in Prague was filmed there. Or something like that.

Since we were in the same general area, we decided to also try to get train tickets from Prague to Budapest at the Prague train station. Turns out that, like many other train stations, it was not an area fill of the sort of people you want to hang around with. It was all sorts of shady and we had to walk under sketchy tunnels to get to the station. The lady at the ticketing office was also kind of rude and scary. But, hey, I'm writing this entry up while in Budapest, so we must have gotten something right.

We decided to try to take the bus back because it would have been a killer walk back and Halmony looked beyond exhausted. We found the bus station but apparently didn't realize that we buy the tickets at kiosks outside of the bus. Instead, we just hopped on with everyone else and, after realizing that we could not pay on the bus, stood around awkwardly on the bus for a couple of stops before stressing and jumping out of the bus. We were really only one stop away anyway, so the rest of the walk wasn't too bad.

We got back around 8/9-ish. Chris and I circled around the general area for the laundry place that we were told was 300 meters from the hotel and were unsucessful. We saw what might have been a laundromat, but whatever it was, it was closed. We called it a night and a lot of us passed out relatively early.

All in all, our first night in Prague was kind of a bust. We spent a lot of it swimming through the less welcoming areas of town and, in retrospect, I think we felt more welcome in Christiana than we did in Prague that first night. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little.

Day at Sea 2 (Cruise Day 9)

Finally, we got our day at sea. Unfortunately, having a day at sea on the last day means that # large portion of the day was spent packing and getting ready to disembark.

I was supposed to spend that morning catching up on blogs, but clearly because I'm writing here on the train to Budapest,  that didn't happen. Instead, I spent my morning sitting outside and freezing while waiting for people to come to our table. Jimmy also introduced me to the chocolate croissants. I'm sad it took me until the last day to discover those, but I generally try to avoid the pastry table.

We did morning trivia and it was crazy hard, so that didn't go too well. We all went to the morning Bingo. They did a raffle for a free cruise and because Chris didn't have any raffle tickets, he unwillingly got volunteered to draw the raffle ticket. He was hilariously awkward up there. He wasn't helpful either. You'd think that if he was drawing the raffle ticket he'd at least try to draw ours, right?

Jimmy would jump back and forth into the Bingo game. He came in a little while into the big jackpot raffle, so I let him use my card while I played with Mia's. Turns out he brought a bit of good luck because that ended up being the winning card and he jumped on stage doing the most entertaining dance.

We followed that bingo game with lunch and then some packing before our evening trivia. The most entertaining part of that game was that one of the questions asked what topographical feature is called gang in Korea. Korean classes apparently failed Mia and me because we had no idea. Halmony walked into the room at the right moment, so we tried to ask her what a "gang" was. This involved some miming but we finally got the right answer. Its a river, for the record.

Dinner was entertaining because Chabba unintentionally flirted with our flamboyantly gay waiter. Chris had given his wine glass back to the waiter and he said thank you in response. Chabba then said "oh, for a thank you, I'll give you my glass too." The waiter giggled flirtatiously as he walked away and Chabba remained entirely oblivious to what just occurred.

After dinner, changed clothes and went to the casino. Mia, Chris and I played a game of craps. Chris had his $50 of previous winnings and Mia and I both put in $10. All three of us came out with much more money than we started with, so we left the casino quite happy. Chris was the clear winner being $150 up. I believe that money will either go to comic books or soccer. We went downstairs and played some Machiavelli for a while before going to bed early so we cpukd get up in time for our 5 am wake up call

Stockholm (Cruise Day 8)

We are leaving tomorrow morning for Budapest. It's going to be a long train ride. I am also currently drinking..or trying to drink...this Czech Beer called Pardal, which is apparently brewed by the people or something. I don't know. Mia got beer with a goat on it yesterday and it was significantly better than this one. Anyway, back to where I last left off, Stockholm Sweden.

Our stay in Stockholm was the only stop we made where we actually got an excursion with NCL. Although we were doing Stockholm on our own (which is coincidentally the name of the excursion we got), the ship ported in Nynansham (or something like that), which is about an hour away from Sweden. We could have trained/bused/drove ourselves like we did in Wernemunde/Berlin, but we felt like it'd just be easier and less stressful to have the chartered bus take us directly to the city. In any case, this meant that in order to get to Stockholm through our excursion, we had to be out by 7 and up by 5:30. It was quite painful, but at least we knew we had a long bus ride to look forward to.

Because we had not docked directly at the port, we also had to take a tender to shore. That was fun. The area that we ported in, from what we saw at least, seemed pretty. Well, everything was nice except for that Chevron factory or refinery or whatever that greeted us as we woke up.

The bus ride was shorter than I thought it would be, but I got a decent nap out of it. It dropped us a little outside of the old town area of Stockholm. The initial plan was that we were going to tour Old Town for a bit, go to the Vasa Museum, and then go to our appointed reservation for the Absolut Ice Bar before heading back to the bus and ship. The person who acted as our "guide" for the 45/50 minute drive told us that whatever we do, we should definitely not go to the Vasa Museum in the morning, so we were also a little hesitant about our itinerary. This led to some disagreements about the decided path for the day, but we eventually decided that the one thing that everyone wanted to see (or was told they wanted to see) was the Vasa Museum, so we should get that out of the way, despite the ominous warnings we got from that guide.

It was a bit of a walk to the Vasa Museum, but it was a pretty scenic one. I wasn't sure what to expect from Stockholm (although we jokingly said that all of Sweden would look like an Ikea), but it looked more like what I had imagined Copenhagen would look like. My image of Copenhagen was more in the lines of that one strip of the Nyhavn Harbor, because that's what you see in all of the pictures, but that was only one very small part of the city. Stockholm, or at least the Stockholm that we saw on the way to the Vasa, was much more like that harbor. We walked by lines of boats, owned by both tour groups and locals.  Unlike the previous two gray days we had, the sun was shining. It was nice to have weather like that for once.

Eventually, we made it to the Vasa Museum and went inside. For those of you unfamiliar with the Vasa Museum, it's a museum dedicated to one very old ship (from the 17th century, I think). It was kind of like an ego booster for the king at the time because he wanted his fleet to compete with other major nations. The Vasa, however, only made it about 20 minutes on its maiden voyage before sinking. Basically, a ship full of fail. Nevertheless, it's one of the cool things to see in Stockholm. It's incredibly well preserved. The details of the designs on the ship were quite impressive. A lot of the original wood is still on the ship and it was quite enormous.

It took us several hours to wander around and take the ship in. We also watched one of the videos on the ship to learn more about the history of it as well as the restoration process. The museum was cool over all, except I think we were just barely missing a lot more of the more interactive features of the museum that they were working on adding to the museum.

One thing to note is that while the woman on the bus warned us not to go to the Vasa Museum in the morning, it was actually relatively empty when we made it there around 10. It wasn't until 12/1-ish, when we were leaving (and also when she recommended we go) that it became packed and every other NCL tour group entered the museum. Vasa style fail? Perhaps. Because we did not have Swedish crowns with us, we also decided to eat in the Vasa Museum's cafeteria, where we knew that we could at least charge our meal on a card. Chris was happy because he could try his Swedish meatballs (which were really good). Mia and I also tried Swedish beer, which while not as boring as the Carlsberg we had in Denmark, wasn't particularly exciting.

After leaving Vasa, we still had about an hour and a half before our reservation at the Ice Bar. This left us with not quite enough time to do a quick tour of old town, but enough time that we would be awkwardly early to the hotel. We walked back along the road that took us to the Vasa Museum and eventually because Mia had to urgently use the restroom, our answer was decided for us. It was a bit of fun trying to figure out how to get to the ice bar. Chabba's app claimed that the ice bar would be a 45 minute walk, so we were going to take the bus until we realized we did not have enough Swedish crowns to make it to the ice bar and back on the bus. Then, after asking someone, we learned that the ice bar was really only 15 minutes away. GPS fail.

After some circling aroung Stockholm, we eventually found where the hotel and ice bar were. The lines of tour buses outside of the pretty nondescript hotel should have cued us into this earlier, but whatever. We were also there like 20 minutes before our reservation, but we didn't mind so much because at least we found a restroom.

The ice bar we were visiting was the first permanent ice bar ever made. Throughout the year, it stays at a steady temperature of 23 F and, being that it is the Absolut Ice Bar, serves Absolut Vodka. It took forever to get into the bar. They weren't quite so organized. They let us in 15 minutes late because the group before us decided not to come out on time or something. And while there was a line when we first got there, there were so many other groups trying to push ahead of us because they were convinced that those of us in line were the only people who were trying to get into this reservation-only bar without our 1:30 reservation, that the area was kind of crazy around 1:45. Ugh. You'd think they'd be more organized.

Anyway, you have to wear giant smelly ponchos and gloves to go into the bar. Even then, it's still ridiculously cold inside. The inside of the bar was pretty cool, but it was a lot smaller than I thought it'd be. We tried to rush to the bar to beat the crowds of people who started taking pictures, but the group of crazy Austrialians in front of us were ordering a lot of drinks. The way admission into the bar works is that the reservation bought your way into the ice bar for 45 minutes and also got you a free vodka or non-alcoholic drink. Mia's drink was really good. Chris and I got ours because it had lingonberry juice in it. James and Jimmy got some non-alcoholic drink that was apparently delicious and while we tried to get something good for Halmony, it ended up being unbelievably sour. Our drinks came in ice cups, which were kind of cool. When people are done with them, they just collect them and slush them up. We drank our drinks and took a few more pictures before leaving with 15 minutes to spare in our reservation. All in all, I'm glad I finally tried it out, but it wasn't really an exciting experience and if you are in Stockholm with limited time, I think the time is better spent exploring the very beautiful city.

Once we got out, we really didn't have much time before some of the last buses back to the ship left. Therefore, we did a very rushed tour around Old Town before hopping onto the ship. I tihnk we also bought one thing of ice cream and shoveled it down to use up the last of the crowns that Chabba had gotten. Old Town was cute, but it wasn't as exciting as Old Town in Tallinn or anything. I actually thought that the more modern parts of Stockholm were a little more charming. The Old Town was just super touristy really. All we saw were crowds and tourist shops. I think that a longer visit might have allowed us to see more of the area. It was nice, but just not as exciting as the rest of the city.

The bus ride back to the ship seemed shorter than the ride there and while there appeared to be a long line for the tenders, it actually moved pretty fast. Once we were back on the ship, we grabbed a quick bite to eat before running around doing our usual routine. We lost at trivia, Played some epic games of hearts as well as some Scrabble. We had dinner up in the buffett area before heading down to watch Chris lose some more money at craps, play some Machievelli, grab some casino cookies and go to bed.

Helsinki (Cruise Day 7)

The problem with this cruise was that it was quite exhausting. After two days in St. Petersburg and a day in Tallinn, we could have all done with a day at sea to recover and get ready for days at Helsinki and Stockholm. We took a little easier in Helsinki for that reason.

Our ship left us in a very industrial-looking port of Helsinki. We were clearly far from the town, so we had to scramble a bit to figure out how to get into the main center of town. This involved a failed attempt to jump onto another cruise line's complimentary shuttle. Eventually, we found the right bus to take and, like a number of our fellow cruise members, squished our way onto one of the local buses. We got most of the way into town, and I think some of our fellow cruise people were frustrating the driver. There apparently was a big group of people who, after they paid, kept on bugging the driver while he was driving to get a discount. Clearly, this upset the driver, because he stopped, pointed us in the direction of Market Square, and kicked us all out. Good times.

It wasn't hard to find our way to Market Square from that point. Market Square is exactly what it sounds like. It's a giant market near the main port of town where the city's big market is. A lot of what we saw was more of a farmer's market, but Mia and my cookie radar went off and we got some delicious Finnish cookies that tasted kind of like a butter cookie, but with added cinnamon. From Market Square, you also have a very nice view of several very beautiful churches that we did not visit as well as the President's house (I think?). Unfortunately it was also raining at the time, so the area kind of looked gloomier than it did later in the day when it wasn't raining.

Our main desintation in Helsinki was the island fortress of Suomelina. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site and sounded all in all, pretty intense. Also, it looked cool in Mini Europe. In any case, to get to Suomelina required us to take a ferry to it. This involved some ping ponging at the port, as we tried to look for the right ferry boat that wasn't a rip off. My Rick Steves guide recommended taking the public transit ferry over, but we couldn't find that and ended up finding one that was comparable to what the price would have been.

As we were waiting to pay, we got to make a fool out of ourselves again. Chris was trying to empty his pockets of trash, but ended up throwing away 5 euro as well. He had to dig through the trash for a while in order to find it again. Fortunately, he, with Halmony and Umma's help, was able to find it. In the process, however, we got glared at by a number of locals. Even the seagulls were judging us.

The ferry eventually came and we all went inside. Chabba, Chris, Jimmy, and I all stayed upstairs for most of the trip. It stopped raining shortly after we left the port and the outside was beautiful. We passed by a series of islands that could only fit small houses. The sun was out. The sky was blue. Everyone else grumpily wanted to stay downstairs, so they missed out.

When we got to Suomelina, we essentially just wandered around and hiked around the island. According to my handy Rick Steves book, Suomelina was built by the Swedish to defend against the increasing Russian presence. Helsinki kind of grew around that fort's presence and eventually became the capital when Russia eventually got Helsinki.

Anyway, our hike around the island was fun and relaxing, although a bit tiring for some, and we got some great views of the Baltic Sea. There were cannons scattered everywhere. We spent a long time just sitting around in one of our contemplation breaks taking in the beautiful scenery. We could even see our ship from there. It was a pretty fun trip. We spent a few hours at Suomelina, which on a normal schedule would have been fine. On a cruise itinerary, however, it meant that we really did not have much additional time to explore the city and Chabba and I had planned out a lot more to see.

Before boarding back onto the ferry, several of us got Finnish soft serve. It was probably the best soft serve that many of had ever had. The vanilla was pretty good, but the chocolate was amazing. If you ever find yourself in Helsinki, go to Suomelina, if anything, for the soft serve. It's so good.

When we got back to the mainland, we had bought some really good sugar peas from the market. It was a lot sunnier at that point, so Helsinki looked a lot less gloomy than it had earlier in the day. Someone discovered wireless while Chris went off on one of his bathroom hunts, so we spent some time pretending to watch some Finnish orchestral group and trying to get the wireless to work.

Most of the group wanted to head back after that, so we split up into group. The majority of the group decided to go get some food, try some Finnish beer and head back to the ship. Chris, Chabba, and I wanted to visit the Temppeliaukio church, which is known as the church in the rock. We took Tram 3T up to the church, which was fun because that specific tram also allowed us to have a quick tour of other parts of Helsinki. Along the way, we saw things like the National Museum and ritzy shopping areas. That was an added bonus. We eventually got to the stop for the church and wandered around aimlessly on top of the church until we found the entrance, only to find that it was closed until 3:30 or something for some private function.

This church is a relatively famous one in Helsinki because it literally is a church in a rock. It was built on the inside of a rock. We only really had to wait around for about 10 minutes, which gave me some time to go get postage stamps that I needed and to ask the local tourist shop how to get back to our ship. When we got into the church, it was quite impressive. It was nice to just take a few moments to sit around, listen to the music they were playing, and to take in the church. What was most impressive about it were the windows that let in some really great natural light. It was a pretty cool stop and I'm glad we chose to skip the Finnish beer stop to see it (although I heard from Mia that the Finnish beer was some of her favorite from the trip so far).

Seeing as we did not have much time left at that point, we only stayed in the church for a short time before leaving. We went to the bus stop, but after waiting for like 10 minutes without seeing our bus, but seeing the 3T tram multiple times, we decided to just walk. It was only about a mile and a half away anyway, and we figured that it'd take just as long on the bus. So we walked and got to see a lot more of Helsinki by foot. After having so much rain in the morning, we got some gorgeous weather for the walk and got a much prettier view of Helsinki than in the morning.

It took us long than we had anticipated and we were very hungry by the time we got back. Unlike everyone else, we didn't have a feast of Finnish meat pies before returning to the trip and eating more. We grabbed some burgers by the pool and ran to our normal trivia event. We lost. I think it was one of our better performances, but we still didnt' win. Oh well.

At 6:30 ish, I decided to try something new and do the slots tournament. That didn't go well. It wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. I thought that I would get like 15 minutes of free slot play for the $15 entrance fee. Unfortunately, I basically just pressed a button for five minutes straight and lost and slots. It wasn't even that fun. Oh well, now i know.

Chris and I went downstairs and played Scrabble and hearts with Chabba and Jimmy for a while. Got massacred at Scrabble by Jimmy.

We had dinner and then, afterwards, went to the casino for a while to watch Chris lose at Craps before going to bed. As we were walking in at around 11 after grabbing our casino cookies, Umma casually informed us that we had to be up by 5:30 for our Stockholm trip the next day. Surprise!