Decompressing

Well Europe Trip 2012 is a wrap everyone. I can’t believe I actually traveled all around Europe and saw so many incredible places. Parts of it don’t seem real, and I can’t wrap my mind around how much ground I traveled in a few weeks time. It also hasn’t really sunk in that I won’t have to pack up and move tomorrow and continue exploring. Which is good and bad, because that means the trip is over. Just craziness that all of it even happened in the first place and that it’s now over.

Settling back into life here at York has been really wonderful. It has truly become my home and flying back into England just affirmed that for me. On the plane I felt so at peace knowing I was going home, to my own little room in N Block surrounded by the ridiculous, adorable, fantastic people who have welcomed me. Being back has just felt good, despite the less than ideal rainy and gloomy weather. However, I still have much to recap from my whirlwind tour of Europe! So onwards to bulleted highlight blurbs!

• Of all of these places I visited, Prague and Florence were my favorite cities, followed by Madrid and Paris. I liked something about all the places I visited to be sure, but these ones felt comforting and surprising at the same time. There was something magical and intoxicating about them, which made me want to spend more time in their lovely streets.
• Me in Florence, on top of the Duomo
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• Me in front of the Prague Castle
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• Me in the Louvre Museum in Paris
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• At the Madrid Zoo and Aquarium in front of the Walt Disney nature statues, celebrating Walt’s love of nature. Or I think that’s what it was for.
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• It’s been raining off and on since I’ve come back and even though campus is starting to get a little flooded in places, I still feel like I can’t really complain. It hasn’t legitimately rained very much so I suppose some spring rains are to be expected.
• My body could not handle the stress of all of that traveling very well. I got sick 3 times on the whole trip, and each time I felt ridiculous. Luckily I didn’t miss much by taking time to recover but it was still frustrating to feel run down and not be able to push through it. Guess my body can’t handle 4 weeks of nonstop traveling. Or maybe it just isn’t used to it yet!
• Wearing the same clothes over and over again for 4 weeks somehow made me want to buy a bunch of new clothes but at the same time continue to be creative with the clothes I did have.
• This big trip definitely gave me the travel bug, more so than I already did. I want to see as much of the world as I can. African savannas, ancient ruins, trees, people, lakes, the rest of the States, glaciers, food I want it all. I want to be greedy with my life experiences, I want to soak them all in.
• American music is everywhere. Does no other country have enough popular music to play?
• I’ve been reading for my classes and listening to music and the rain all day and it’s been so lovely.
• I bought nail polish on a whim in Barcelona for a Euro. Turns out in glows in the dark! So cool!
• I seriously need to do laundry but with the rain and my general laziness, I have yet to actually do it. Soon…
• When we were in Paris we visited the Orangerie Gallery, home to Monet’s ‘Les Nympheas’ or Waterlilies paintings. We couldn’t take pictures, but the gallery was stunningly lovely. (Here’s a video someone took even though we were discouraged from that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw03m1DGkmg to get a taste of it). His paintings are just so pretty and I bought a ton of postcards to function as art.
• I have my window open to listen to the rain better but it might be time to close it soon since the Thursday night party crowd has begun making noise.
• I have begun looking for my flight home, which is bizarre. It’s weird to even think about leaving, I’m not ready to even plan for it.
• My flatmates and I went proper grocery shopping last weekend and I have so much yummy, healthy, filling food now. Wonderful
• In all of my pictures from the trip, my flannel shirt is the most photographed thing. It’s ridiculous.
• To highlight some more delicious food;
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• My rather delicious salad from the cafe in the Louvre
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• Trois fromages sandwich. Simple and delicious.
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• Patatas bravas as a part of my tapas meal one night in Barcelona
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• Scrumptious falafel pita pocket. Probably the best falafel I’ve ever had
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• LADUREE. MACARONS. I have dreamed of tasting these little things and they were SO GOOD. Little bits of happiness. Ugh now I want some again.
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• Crema Catalana from the sweet shop inside San Miguel Mercado in Madrid.
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• Paella and sangria on our last night in Spain, inside the Mercado again. Yum yum yum.
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• Eating chocolate con churros at the world famous San Gines Chocolateria in Madrid. So delicious.
• And finally, the greatest meal I’ve ever eaten. No joke. Our first night in Paris we stopped at a little restaurant up near Sacre Ceour Cathedral that to us looked quintessentially French and also boasted a 3-course meal deal for 18 euro. And then the food was just delicious. My pictures don’t do it justice at all, but ohmygod incredible food. I repeat, best meal I’ve ever had. To put it in perspective, I ate green beans and I loathe green beans. I think they’re vile and smell weird. But I ate them because with the sauce and the fish… ohwow just so good I want to fly back to Paris and eat the whole meal again. 
• First course: tiny homemade cheese ravioli in a simple cheese and herb sauce.
• Second course: the food of angels. ohman this picture does nothing for this food. I was actually overwhelmed by how good it was. Fish on a bed of green beans in a beurre blanc sauce and just omg I want to eat it. 
• And creme brulee to finish it off. Just a fantastic meal.
• I’m too distracted by memories of that epic meal to write much else, so that might have to be it for now.
• Playlist for this post: Ingrid Michaelson’s newest album “Human Again”

More random thoughts

All bulleted highlight blurbs today folks.

• I’m in Paris, and the first meal I had was bread, cheese and wine, naturally. I had a sandwich of perfectly crusty French bread (but like real French bread ya know?) and Cantal cheese, with a small glass of Bordeaux. Perfection honestly.
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• To follow that up, we each bought massive macarons. Like huge.  It was so good. I got the salted caramel flavor and it was scrumptiously gooey and crumbly. 
• Afterthoughts on Berlin: not my favorite. I don’t know what it was. I liked it well enough, but it didn’t feel as… magical? Maybe it’s the buildings too, a lot of the architecture is sort of blocky and standardized making the city feel sort of dull. I don’t know. I feel like that’s somehow bad to not like any of these amazing places, and it’s that I didn’t like it, just not… in love with it. It just didn’t grab hold of me like some other places have.
• However our tour from New Sandeman’s was once again fantastic. We took a tour from this company in Prague too, and they’re wonderful. All of the major tourist essentials on a long walking tour with history and anecdotes along the way. Oh and it’s free. You tip at the end depending which is dependent on how much you felt it was worth so I suppose you could not pay at all, but  I would honestly pay ehh €10 or so for one of them. So worth it. 
• This hostel smells of fresh paint. Odd. But I really like it so far
• Prague Castle was actually more of a bunch of government buildings and lodging and presedential stuff and cathedrals on a hill. Not one castle. Which was confusing. But beautiful nonetheless!
• Prague was magical. It honestly felt like a fairy tale land come to life. The buildings, the windy streets, the terribly uneven cobblestones, everything. So lovely. 
• I need to drink more water
• My rolling duffle bag made it through it’s first big trip! Yay!
• My money’s low again, and since Paris is just plain expensive I’ll have to budget wisely!
• I become more and more convinced that I want to be a flight attendant everyday. I have to be able to see the rest of this world and bring other people with me. 
• While I’m still disappointed I didn’t get to see the Sistine Chapel while in Rome (we went on a Sunday forgetting it was Sunday and that of course it would be closed) but being able to attend mass in St. Peter’s Basilica was unreal. I had tears running down my face nearly the whole time I was inside because it was that overwhelming and awesome.  
• I think we’re taking a bus tour of Paris tonight to get the lay of the land and it will hopefully be beautiful.
• Sometimes I wish we had planned out every day of this trip more.
• I’m slowly turning into my aunts as this trip goes on. I love wine now, with food, on its own, trying new kinds. ohmygod. It makes me laugh every time I remember some random tidbit of wine info said in passing by one of them. 
• Now to get cleaned up and go do some exploring! and eating, of course. 
• Playlist for this post: the random selection of music playing in the hostel kitchen, including acoustic James Blunt, random R&B, and other assorted music. 

Still trekking

I keep trying to find the time to update this, but wandering Europe is more time consuming than I thought. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad thing at all and I’m Definitely not complaining, but it does make it hard to blog. But now to recap I suppose! I’ll try and hit some main points but its hard now because everything is sort of a blur of constant motion and dream-like places. I can’t really believe in the last few weeks I went from living in England to staying in Rome, then Florence, Pula in Croatia, Prague, and now my last night in Berlin. It’s unreal. And there’s still more to come. Tomorrow I’m waking up at the crack of dawn for us to take the barely comprehensible S-Bahn system to fly to Paris. PARIS. Insanity. Now onwards to the bulleted highlight blurbs!

• Rome was crazy. I’d love to go back, because I feel like it’s a city that you need time for. It’s hard to see and do it all in such an old, rich city in just a few short days. At times I felt overwhelmed by the sheer old-ness of everything around me. I mean, Roman ruins are something else. And they’re everywhere. Just sort of scattered throughout the newer parts of the city that sprung up around them before they were discovered and preserved. See? Just stuck in the middle of other stuff! The Colosseum was not disappointing in the least. It was incredible, so huge and to think that people built it thousands of years ago with simple tools and sweat boggles my mind. Me in the Colosseum. So cool. I mean seriously. 
• Italian men are creepy. Wolf whistles, kissy noises, various phrases shouted out, and general staring were the norm for me and my three girl friends. But even worse are the Indian men selling things on the streets. They’re so pushy and basically verbally accost you in some way to try to get you to buy their crap. I’m still baffled as to why anyone thought that would be a good way to do business. No, I Don’t want to buy your wares now that you have succeeded in skeeving me out. Personal favorite quotes from men: “BOOM SHAKA LAKA! wanna buy a rose?!”; ” ey sexies I take your picture?”; “i’ll give you the ex-wife discount!”; “which one of you will be my wife? ahh you will be my wife!”. These are actual things people said to us in hopes that we would then buy something from them. I don’t understand. 
• Florence was so beautiful. There was something about it that I instantly fell in love with. I think it’s because it was the perfect sized city, and still so beautiful and with so much history and gahh I just really fell in love with that city. From the first sunset on Ponte Vecchio                                        to all of the amazing gelato                                              to the fantastic museums where I saw amazing paintings and Michelangelo’s David (which is HUGE by the way. totally not expecting it to be that towering) to the lovely Boboli Gardens (Tracy, Adrianna, Me, and Julia!), everything about Florence was fantastic. I would honestly move there in a heartbeat. 
• The common room that has the only wifi just started playing incredibly loud, bad music. This post may not be as long as originally intended. 
• I’ve realized how much of my father’s daughter I am. I can’t read a map very well because I never orient it right, but once I pass something or take a certain route I remember how to do it again. My hyper-observance and sense of direction of become more heightened on this trip, because I am always somewhere utterly foreign, often with a foreign language all around me. It’s nice to have a sense of where I am in the world. 
• My duffle bag’s shoulder strap broke, probably because my bag is too damn heavy to carry, so today I bought a rolling duffle bag for the second half of the trip. I’m so happy. 
• I really want to go see the Hunger Games but not only will it have subtitles but that seems wrong somehow to waste time watching a movie in any of these amazing cities. 
• British accents remind me of home now. It’s weird. 
• I miss my flatmates from York a lot. They’re so crazy and loveable and I miss being around them!
• I’ve been sick twice on this trip. I know, I’m amazing. Last week on our day of traveling from Florence to Pula I woke up with some sort of 24 hour flu or food poisoning or something, so I spent the excruciatingly long day traveling through various forms of transportation vomiting. Needless to say it was awesome. I spent the next day recovering in our lovely apartment in Pula and luckily felt better and could enjoy the rest of the trip. Then this past Friday I felt like I was getting a cold and after getting caught in the pouring rain in Berlin on Saturday I definitely had one. I spent Sunday reading in bed getting rid of my fever and then bundled up against the cold air after that. I still feel it a little bit but I think that day of rest was infinitely helpful. 
• My camera battery dies a lot. But it’s an old camera so I guess that’s to be expected. Ah well!
• I love buying souvenirs. For myself, for other people, or if I’m unsure if I’ll keep something or end up giving it to someone. So fun!
• Me, Tracy, and Adriana made friends with two guys staying in our hostel here in Berlin and we all went out for drinks at some bars here in Berlin last night. Seriously awesome. One’s from England the other Finland, so it was a lot of fun for all of us to chat and laugh over drinks. Oh and having it all occur at a bar in Berlin? Unreal. 
• I seriously love food. Like omg I love it so much. I want to eat constantly, and I rarely regret spending money on food, especially when its phenomenal. I’m going to post pictures of some standout meals I’ve had, although I have yet to have an actually bad meal. Gnochhi quattro formaggi in Florence.       Me with my smoked salmon ravioli in Rome a few blocks from the Trevi fountain. One of the greatest things I’ve ever eaten. Freaking delicious                        .A deliciously gooey chocolate pastry in Florence. It was like chocolate pudding between layers of puff pastry. YummmmHomemade meal our last night in Pula. Oven grilled fish (fresh fish! that we bought at a Croatian fish market! that Julia beheaded and that I cooked!), mashed potatoes, salad, and roasted garlic for spreading on bread. Spätzle in Prague!         And that’s just my favorites. So much delicious food has been eaten on this trip.
• Well I’m tired and I want to write more but I still have to pack and sleep to wake up and fly to Paris tomorrow. Wish I could write more!
• Playlist for this post: The Weeknd, with general background noise from the people and music in the cafe.