Paris Part 1: Oui Oui!

Okay so I am finally posting this blog about Paris – especially for my mother because she likes to email me every 30 seconds asking about my blog update. HERE YOU GO, LOVE!

First, I would like to say that Paris was more than what I expected it to be. Amazing, breath-taking… they don’t call it the city of love for no reason!!

Getting to Paris was a hassle.  Me and my girl friends had been warned before that it takes about a good month prior to traveling to work out trains to get to paris because they fill up so quickly. About three weeks before we go to paris, we go to the train station in lugano (a 2 minute walk) and figure out arrangements. We were in the train station communicating (I would say “talking” but its hard to “talk” to someone who does not speak English well and my Italian is slightly rusty… go figure) with the person for about an hour until we finally we able to get a cheap, 3 changing train ride to paris!!

Paris is not cheap. Paris is expensive. (obviously… if its not cheap than it has to be expensive). Originally we were going to try and cram 19 people into an 8 person 1 bath apartment. Yeah… you think we are crazy but until you travel on a budget… you MAKE things work. Luckily, we were able to find another apartment near us so we ended up splitting up (thank god… 1 bath for 19 girls? HA!!! That would have been a fun 4 days to blog about…). The apartment I stayed in was very nice, quaint, and cute. 1 bunk bed, 2 futons, and 2 lofts.  We fit 12 people into the 8 person rather comfortably. The only problem that we faced was the shower situation….

[[[[[[I have never actually experienced a “cold shower”. Ohhhh this was more of a FREEZING shower. After 4 nights of staying in this apartment, I was lucky to score 1 semi warm shower. The rest were freezing. ICE. Like, I couldn’t not breathe because I was that cold. I know I talk about having an unusually high temperature that always causes me to sweat profusely in any circumstances… well… this was a different situation. I did not enjoy this shower one bit. Anyway.. that is my ranting on the showers. Other than that, we had free coffee so that was nice, I guess.]]]]]

Okay, now that that venting session is done, I can now start to tell y’all about the best days ever in PARI!! We were very lucky to be traveling with one of the girls on the trip that actually is French and speaks fluent French!! So thankfully we had a native so we did not get too ripped off and taken advantage of because we are just “silly americans”.

SITES: The Louvre, Notre Dam, Eiffel Tower, Versailles, Moulin Rouge

LOUVRE (pronounced: loov)

The Louvre is a really cool, big, musueum filled with a lot of art. The main thing it is known for is, of course, the Mona Lisa. Now, I had heard that the Mona Lisa is one of the most disappointing pieces of art to see, and I had no idea why. Well, let me tell you why.  After standing in line for 30 minutes, luckily getting a free ticket into the museum (its free after 6pm), making our journey all around the Louvre to find this masterpiece, we finally come up the a room filled with people. I suspected we found the Mona Lisa because of the people surrounding this wall. I was confused at why everyone was staring at just a wall… but then as I walked closer… I realized they were not just staring at a blank wall. You see, the Mona Lisa is the size of a sheet of loose leaf paper. It is the smallest, most DISAPPOINTING thing I have seen. Yes yes yes, I saw the Mona Lisa, but not gonna lie…. It looked the same as all the pictures and replicas on the internet…. And that’s all I have to say about that.

When we came out of the Louvre, we came across a rather frightening thing. We witnessed a black male chasing away and hitting at 2 young girls!! We were shocked at what we had just seen because they black man literally was swapping at these 2 girls as if they stole something from him??? We were sooo confused until we experienced something that made us realize why he was chasing and yelling at these young girls… On our walk from the Louvre, 3 girls (about 8-12 yrs old) came up to us with papers in their hands indicating that they were deaf and they wanted donations to this organization.  We soon figured out that this was a very popular scam that is placed around Paris.  Not only did we see these girls approach us at the moment, but we had children come up to us 3 other times with the same scam of being deaf and trying to distract us so that people could pick-pocket us!!! It shocks me how a human being could manipulate children that young to pretend that they have a disability in order to carry out this scam… disgusting.

Anyway, the next cool thing we saw was Notre Dam!!! All I could think about was the movie the Hunch Back of Notre Dam… obviously. Hahah Again.. another disappointing architectural site. Ive seen one church, ive seen them all. It was a very beautiful church: tall ceilings, nice art, cool stuff all around. Again, Notre Dam is just one of those places I went to just to say I went to it.

Onto…. THE EIFFEL TOWER!!! Not going to lie, once we got to the Eiffel Tower… it hit me so hard that we were actually in Paris! What a breathtaking thing to see in real life!! Absolutely amazing. You grow up learning about such a dramatic symbol of Paris… and actually being in the presence is completely gratifying. My favorite part of the entire trip to Paris, was drinking wine underneath of the Eiffel Tower for 2 hours in the park. So many people are in the park (both days we were there) – everyone just sitting and picnicking and listening to the performers… it was perfection.

Versailles was another spectacular place to go it. I do not know necessarily the purpose of this gigantic, beautiful palace… but it was gigantic and it was beautiful.  I think Marie Antoinette lived there at some point??? Anyway, it was about a 45 min train right to Versailles and worth it!! Before you actually get to the palace, you have to walk about ¼ mile up what I like to call their “driveways” at the time. You could see the golden gates approaching –( I wanted to walk faster, but naturally… everyone in Europe thinks building rods made of cobblestone with huge spaces in between is the best thing to walk on and you definitely wont sprain your ankle…) We get to the gates and the palace is MASSIVE!! OH MY. This was something I’ve never imagined before but only really seen palaces like these in like.. Disney animated films or something. We could have paid 15 euros to go into the palace… butttttt I am broke and I had to save some money so I could eat escargot later. We skipped the tour of the palace, but we were able to go to the gardens in the backyard (look at the pictures on facebook, most beautiful acres of land in the entire world).

Moulin Rouge. Well.. there isn’t really any too significant about the Moulin Rouge other than the fact that we love the movie and we just wanted to see the real thing in person. Again, another disappointment from the French… its just a building with a cool miniature ferris wheel type object attached to it. Still, I love the fact that I can say I went to THE Moulin Rouge. “Voulez vuco shea avec moi, ses swa” hahahah…. Dirty.

That's all the main sites for now!! Soon to come: all the juicy cool stuff having to do with paris!! 

• diversity
• they all hate americans
• starbucks incident
• sex shop on every corner
• men calling out rude gestures
• small bars - not a big clu scene
• crepes
• longchamp
• dinners outside
• escargot

the suspense must be killing you.. hehe.

Schnitzel, Spaetzle, Brats, OH MY!

BERLIN!!

Our itinerary for our second 10 day break: Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest

Berlin was the start of our 10 day adventure – german is in my blood so I knew this was going to be a good time! Mind you… we had to take an overnight train to this fantastic place.  For all of you who do not know what an overnight train is… listen up! Basically it is a normal train.  Think harry potter compartments within the trains. In the carts are bunk bed attached to the wall – 3 beds stacked on one side and 3 on the other. Did I mention that the compartments are the size of a normal sized pantry and that there are 6 girls with 6 luggage that need to also be fit in the compartments??? This was what you call a “clusterf*ck”. Ohhhh I do not like traveling with girls. By this time.. it was late, we were all hangry (anger caused by hunger) and lucky for us, we were all sinked up… and by sinked up I mean since we have been traveling all together, apparently this causes girls to start having their periods at the same time. I do not need to farther explain the excitement of traveling to Berlin… but I am very happy it is over.

We get to berlin and we get to our hostel which is quite nice, Wombats. If you recall earlier, we stayed in another Wombats when we went to Munich. This hostel reminded me more of a hotel – very clean and we had our own showers in our room!! (this is called en suite… I think). Since we were there pretty early, we decided to go out and see a couple of things – we were located right in the middle of Berlin so most of the attractions were close by (and by close, I mean that there are only 3 things to see really…)

FOOD

The food in Berlin was amazing. I was so happy to step outside of my comfort zone and order something besides a burger!! There is this thing called schnitzel – I am not quite sure what it is, but its basically like… fried meat. I think the meat is like.. lambbbb orr venison? I have no idea but it was delightful!! The second thing that is super German to eat is spetzle. OMG I love spetzle.  It was the most amazing thing I have eaten in a while. Spetzle is literally… mac n cheese with a german twist. And I love mac n cheese. It was basically fancy mac n cheese with peppers and onions and it was very deliciously awesome. I ate both spetzle and schnitzel at this beer house which I cant remember the name of (of course) but it was located near the train station.

The germans also love their bratwursts.  Brats on brats on brats. Currywurst (brats with curry) bratwurst (hotdogs basically)  There were shops everywhere over berlin selling them, so it was a quick, cheap lunch to get for the few days we were there.

For some reason… Europe does not believe in the art of eating Mexican food.  I have been craving Mexican since the 4^th day I have been in Europe (January 9^th). That is a long time, btw.  It was our mission (and when I say “our” I mean… “my” mission..) to find a sit down legit Mexican restaurant.  And we were successful!! We ate at this amazing Mexican restaurant 3 min walk from our hostel.  Now, It was either because I was craving Mexican, I was starving, or it was just simply delicious… but the food was amazing. I miss queso (cheese) sooooo much. I miss burrioes.  I miss having to unbutton my pants after dinner because I ate too many rice and beans. Thank GOD that the germans have some Mexican flavaah in their blood that they were kind enough to grace me with a meixcan restaurant.  YUM.

PLACES TO SEE!

So the biggest things to see in Berlin are: The Berlin wall (duh), checkpoint Charlie (the place if you wanted to get from west berlin to eat berlin, you had to go through this checkpoint to cross the other side), and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

The berlin wall was awesome. Definitely something I was very fortunate to see!! The part of the wall we saw was the famous place where there is graffiti on the one side (west) and then actual act on the other side (east).  What an experience!!

NIGHTLIFE!

Berlin is known for their crazy nightlife and they like to stay up until 6am because apparently that’s normal. I am known for being crazy but not at night.. and I like to go to bed by 1am if I am going out… berlin and I did not match well together. BUT – the clubs were cool and fun with good music and good company.  I am getting old… I can barely hang with these young people anymore!

Berlin wasn’t as cool at Munich (refer to my time in Munich) but it was still great to be able to eat some of the best food I have yet! Next stop, PRAGUE!

CIAO FOR NOW!

I AMsterdam

AMSTERDAM!

Well, I know what everyone’s perception about Amsterdam probably is – weed and the red light district. Annnddd you are absolutely correct. Hahaha, but really though, Amsterdam was actually a very pretty city.

This is going to be a short post because 1. We were only in Amsterdam for 2 nights 2. There is not much to do in Amsterdam 3. I will be skipping over many details

I know I said previously that London was the coldest city… I was lying. Because AMSTERDAM was FREEZING. The high was 20 and the low was 9. Degrees. Fahrenheit.  Brrrrr. We got to Amsterdam around 3, and we were already exhausted from the previous days in London, so we just chilled in our hostile (which was VERY nice btw. 30 euros a night, Hostel Van Gogh. BEST SHOWER I HAVE HAD SINCE I HAVE BEEN IN EUROPE). We were located in a good spot in Amsterdam, right near some restaurants and fun night life and about a 25 min walk from red light district. We got some dinner a bit later and went out that night. That’s about the most excitement I can blog about at this moment.

The next day, Saturday, we went to the Heineken Museum!! It was very similar to the Guinness Factory but it was BETTER! It was better because it was more interactive, we got more free beer along the way, and I did not mind the taste of the beer either! I definitely would recommend doing the Heineken Beer Tour if you are ever in Amsterdam! After the beer tour, we went to the Van Gogh Museum.  Personally, I thought it was a rip off because 3 of his biggest pieces (starry night, and some other famous ones) were not actually innnn the museum. But I guess it was still cool to see a bunch of Van Gogh art work. Wish I could have posted pictures but you are not allowed to have cameras in the Van Gogh Museum. After the museum we went back to our hostile and got ready again for the night. And we went out and it was fun (hahaha… I know, soo0o detailed).

The red light district is literally an area of roads with nakey women in the windows. There is a main road which I guess all the really good places to go are. You are not allowed to take pictures of the nakey women or else they will chase you down and break your camera or they will through a cup of pee on you. I kid you not. 2 min is all you need for the red light district. Btw they call it the red light district because literally, the windows are lighted by red lights. Clever.

That was Amsterdam – it was cool to say I went there but I don’t really have the urge to go again.

FUN FACTS

There are so many coffee shops. And by coffee shops I mean weed shops. You can buy weed, brownies, cupcakes, space cakes, cake, and other marijuana stuff in these coffee shops. If you want to go to an ACUTAL coffee shop you have to go to a “café”.

The Dutch are the meanest people we have met yet, right ahead of the Germans. The Dutch were rude, non-smiley and had a weird language that was too harsh and I just did not like them. Rude.

They should change the name from "Europe" to "Nothingisfree"

1. There are no free refills...

2. Water is more expensive than wine

3. You have to pay to use the bathroom -- .5-1 euro normally

4. There is no in-between with being starving and full or have-to-pee-so-bad-my-blatter-is-going-to-burst to comfortable. Literally, we are go go go that we dont have time to snack or to pee (apparently) So when we do get "hungry" we are STARVING and when we have to pee... let's just say I need to start packing more underwear with me on these trips...

10 points to USA on these topics -- atleast we got one thing right. free refills and supersized everything!! woo hooo!!

CIAO FOR NOW

Are your from LONDON?!

PART 2 of Hogwarts .. i mean LONDON!

The next day in London was also filled with many many activities to do! This was the actual “cultural” part of the trip and we had to see the BIG things. Like… BIG ben, parliament, the London eye, Westminster abbey, and the British Museum!!

So every major city we go to in Europe, there is a company that does Free Tours of the city we are in. If you have read my other blogs, you can see we have done these Free Tours in Munich and in Dublin. These free tours are walking tours and they take you to popular places around the city you are in, but the down side of these tours… they take FOREVERRRR. Literaly… 4 hour long walking tours. And I am allll for walking and getting that exercise in, but sometimes I just need to sit down and have a chocolate bar and just chill a little bit. SO the girls and I decided we would have our own personal walking tour!

To get around London, the best, easiest, and cheapest way to travel is the Underground! It’s just like the subway or metro in DC. So we got our Oyster cards (they are little cards that are like mini debit cards. You put money on the oyster cards and you swipe them to get through the gate things… like a subway system whatever.) Thank GOD I am travling with directionally functional girls because I literally would be LOST most of the time without them (shoutout to Kira and Katie!! – these girls are like our personal GPS system… but in human form.) SO we started off with traveling to see Big Ben. To my surprise…. Big ben is actually connected to parliament! Who would have thunk it?! Well, Tour Guide Kelly filled us in (my one friend Kelly was travling with us and she brought her Kindle while we were exploring London so every time we got to a new destination, she would Wikipedia the place we were at and then tell us allllll there is to know about that place. That’s why we called her Tour Guide Kelly. AND she talked in a british accent! 10 points for Kelly!) SO big ben parliament and Westminster abbey were all literally in the same square so we did not need to walk far at all (thank you baby jesus). Right around the corner, about 3 streets over, is the London Eye. The London Eye is basically a huge ferriss wheel that is decked out and really big and cool and if you buy tickets (14 pounds – I did not buy tickets because I can just google a bird’s-eye view of London…. And I am on a budget. I’d rather buy an invisibility cloak than spend my money on the London eye). SO next on the stop was the British Museum. Before we hit the British museum, we ate at a restaurant nearby…. Of course it was an Irish pub. I ordered a cheeseburger.

The British museum was large and in charge. And it was a huge building that kind of resembled what it would be like if you were inside of a very large marble. The ceilings were cool looking and it was just large and round. The only great thing about the British museum, beside the fact that it has a lot of cool old things from all over the world, is the Rosetta stone. The RS was a lot smaller than I thought—about the size of a 42 inch plasma tv.  It was nice to say that I visited this museum, but to be honest… we have visited so many museums, they are all starting to cluster together (annnnd we go to ANOTHER museum in Amsterdam… more to come on that later). So we ended with the bristish museum and made our way back to the hostel to get ready for the evening! Unfortunately.. we were in London during the weekdays… so we attempted at going out but there was NOTHING happening. All the “bars” and “clubs” closed early at midnight or 1, but we couldn’t even find these places in the first place so it didn’t really matter. London was not as poppin’ at night time compared to the other places -- that doesn’t matter because I am on these traveling trips for the culture aspect… right?

SO London was a pretty wicked place to be! We had a good time even though it was FREEZING – the coldest place I have been so far!

CIAO FOR NOW!

FUN FACTS

There is NO Mexican restaurants ANYWHERE in Europe. We thought that London would be a good place to find Mexican food and we wasted probably an hour a day walking around trying to find a Mexican restaurant. Even though we couldn’t find a Mexican restaurant, we found out they had CHIPOTLE!!! And of course we ate there… twice.

Pigeons I think where originated in Europe. Specifically LONDON. I swear, I have never seen so many dirty birds in my life. 

Excuse me, where can I find Platform 9 3/4?

ATTENTION: this is just Part 1 of my London blogging. Part 2 in theaters soon. (probably later today)

We finally arrive to the place where Hogwarts exist! And it’s okay to ask where Platform 9 and ¾ is!!! Well… I think so atleast.

After landing in London Gatwick airport, we had to get on a bus ride to take us to our hostel. Of course, the first experience we have on the bus ride is not necessarily a favorite of ours… Us being Americans, and girls, we tend to be quite loud wherever we go. All. The. Time.  So being our normal-volume selves, we are chatting away! This drunken old man in the very back of the bus did not seem to like this. He stumbled his way up to my friend, Kira, and told her that we had to get off the bus because we were too loud. Kira wasn’t havin’ this – she went to the bus driver and complained -- luckily the bus driver was on our side and told the man he needed to pull it together or get off the bus. 10 points for AMERICA! After our interesting 40 minute bus ride, we finally got to our hostel around 930pm. At this point, we were all so tired and hungry and tired and cranky and HANGRY (anger caused by hunger). We walked to a nearby Japanese restaurant and nom’ed our little hearts away. Back to the hostel we went and passed out. (I promise -- the next couple days were more exciting! READ ON!!!)

The next morning we had a big day ahead of us – Changing of the guards, High Tea (tea party), and Wicked! We started off in the morning with breakfast at the hostel before we set out to Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the Guards.

After the 30 minute walk through London, we had to make a couple stops along the way for 2 main reasons. 1. We were lost and had to ask directions from every other person we passed by. I didn’t mind asking for direction because all the British accents are so WICKED AWESOME!! 2. There are Starbucks for dayyyys in London. Literally. Just like ‘murica, there is a Starbucks on every block. Also, they refer to major intersections of roads as “Circus” So we walked through Piccadilly Circus and a lot of other Circuses.. Circus’s… Circi? along the way (I think when they refer to places as “Circus” it is like amurcans referring to places as “Circles”…. Makes sense because every single “Circus” was literally just a circling of roads in a big open area….) Finally, we made it to Buckingham PALACE!! Unfortunately, Prince Harry was out of the country so my proposal to him will be on pause until the next time I visit London.

So, the Changing of the Guards. What is this? It is literally what it says. The guards rotate in and out every other day, and apparently it is really cool. False. It was kind of boring. But in theory… I guess it was nice to see it happen. There was a huuuuge crowd outside of Buckingham Palace just to see the changing of the guards (COG). Buckingham Palace is very beautiful too btw. All big and old looking with gold-rimmed gates. Definitely not Hogwarts but more like a Gringotts (if you do not follow Harry Potter, then stop reading now because I WILL be referencing everything HP from here on out). So all of us girls and guys are standing with the crowd surrounding the gates and roads outside of B-Palace waiting for the COG (changing of the guards, keep up!). Finally we see some horses and a long row of men and women marching in these long navy blue dresses (uniforms, but they look like dresses) and they are swinging their arms all big and they have big, tall, poofy black hats on (think of Marge Simpson with black hair, that’s what the hats looked like). They all walk inside of the gates. From then on, it was kind of hard to see what was happening, but I am guessing they were “changing of the guards” hehe. So thennnn it kind of turned into a little band show (think high school band). Another set of men and women in uniforms marched up the street toward B-Palace and was basically a marching band. They all walked inside the gates and set up their stands and instruments and just started playing music (about 20 band member). The first song they played…. LET IT BE by the Beatles. HAHAH! I was cracking up. They WOULD be playing Beatles songs. But it didn’t stop with that. The next song they played… wait for it… James Bond Theme song. I am NOT making this up. Whhyyy were they playing James Bond Theme song outside of B-Palace? I have no idea, but I liked it nonetheless. So that was B-Palace and the changing of the guards and it was kind of cool but kind of boring at the same time – all in all it was nice to see my future home where I will be getting married to Prince Harry next year. Invitations will be sent out shortly!

After B-Palace we went back to our Hostel to get ready for HIGH TEA!!! High tea is basically a tea party!! And of course me and my girl frands wanted to do this because we were in LONDON! So off to High Tea at 4pm. We got to the place, and it was sooo pretty and nice inside – quiet, clean, modern, fresh and quiet.. and quiet. Remember what I said earlier about us girls being loud… mhmmm. Well it didn’t matter because we were looking really good and tryna have some tea and crumpets! They sat us at our booth and already had the table set up. We had a menu and could choose which tea we could have. I asked the waiter what the most popular tea was and it is the Rosebud tea. I got that one. It was delicious! The way the tea pots are made, they literally put rose buds and other herbs into this small cylinder within the tea pot and then pour hot water over it and it filters through all the herbs and rose petals.  And we had tea! Other girls had peppermint, jasmine, and more rosebud. Right after our tea was poured, they brought out 4 tiered-platters (there were 11 of us girls there). Each platter had 3 tiers: 1^st were tiny sandwhichs (salmon, ham, curry, another meat) 2^nd was biscuits and jam, 3^rd was desserts – macaroons, brownies, and other british treats. We finished the platter in about 5 minutes. We are hungry girls who don’t eat much and when we have the opportunity to eat… we EAT. All this experience only cost 11 pounds! It was fabulous.

So tea time was fabulous and what better way to end our day then to go see Wicked on Broadway! Excuse me.. its not actually on broadway and I made that embarrassing mistake. 10 points from Gina. Because broadway isn’t in London… It’s just called Wicked in London I guess. Specifically Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. I have been to broadway shows before, 3 to be exact, but Wicked has so far been my favorite show yet!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG! AMAZING! We got into the theater, all 20 of us (20 peopl went to London but I was mainly with 6 girls the entire time. One of the people was able to get a group discount for students. 17 pounds per ticket!). Lights went out and the show went on. If you do not know what Wicked is about, google it because it would take me days to write you out the story line.  We ended the night with wicked and made our way back to the hostel – we had a biiiiggg day tomorrow with site seeing!

So that was my first night and first full day in London. More to come soon! But I have to go to class and “learn” now… because that’s what I am supposed to be doing on a STUDY abroad program… right?

PART 2 of LONDON will be posted SHortly!!!!!!!!! 

Fun FACTS!

David Beckham posters are EVERYWHERE. I didn’t complain… he was super sized.. so everything was supersized.

People still think I am Brazilian

Starbucks everywhere

The Dublin Jail...

I just found out is called  Kilmainham Gaol. 

BTW, London and Amsterdam post will take me a while... hopefully should be posted by tomorrow!!!