Wednesday, April 23, 2008

London

London, our final destination, was gigantic and enticing. We realized we would have difficulty attempting to see the majority of the sights, neighborhoods and tourist attractions due to the sheer quantity, and not to mention London's size as well. Because our Edinburgh walking tour was such an efficient way to see the city, we decided to do the same in London. On the tour we got to see Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and Trafalgar Square. We learned about London's history and also got to experience rain and hail!

We wanted to see a show while we were here, so we got half priced tickets and chose to see Avenue Q--an adult humored Sesame Street musical. It was pretty funny and entertaining, and we were really glad we got the true London Theater experience. We also visited some traditional London pubs, which were pretty fun and seemed to have a very British atmosphere. We ate Indian, and Persian food, as well as some fish and chips in order to have the London eating experience.

Museum wise, we went to the Tate Modern, which had some really excellent modern art exhibits, and varied nicely from the majority of the museums we went to previously on our trip. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to go to London Bridge, but upon walking over it we realized it's pretty much just your average bridge, so we had a short, photoless stay. Afterwards, we went to Harrods--world's largest department store. Their food halls were quite impressive and made our mouth's water. There were tons of seafood, a fromage and charcuterie section, as well as a wine shop, and gigantic chocolate section.

For our very last night in Europe, we decided to find a pub that also specialized in good food, as many English pubs are all about the beer, yet no one tends to dine at them. We found an awesome place, called the Pig's Ear, in a hip area that served us one of our most delicious and memorable meals of the entire trip. They also had a great cider that went really well with our meal. This night was a perfect way to end our trip, that is until we returned to our room at the hostel to find one of our room mates was the loudest snorer in the history of the world, but oh well, we could sleep on the plane!

We hope you all enjoyed our blogs and experiencing our trip through them. We had an incredible 7 weeks and will always have this blog to reminisce about our travels, as well as all of your feedback, so thanks for reading. We are back in LA now and readjusting to normal, boring reality, but secretly planning our next trip! Love, Jenny and Ethan.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Edinburgh

We arrived in Edinburgh yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon and had enough time to briefly see the old and new town as well as grab dinner at Monster Mash-a cute little 50s style cafe known for their bangers and mash, which was excellent...we just cant seem to get enough sausage on this trip. We went out with a couple from our hostel, one of whom was Scotish and knew the city quite well, to a really cool little pub called Sandy Bell's. They had a variety of Scotish beers and whiskeys, as well as nightly live open music sessions played by locals. This was a really nice place to enjoy a drink while listening to traditional Scotish folk tunes. This bar was clearly popular as half of our hostel showed up at different times throughout the evening.

The next day we started with a free 3 hour walking tour of the city, as recommended by our hostel manager. The tour is based on tips only, so it was a great opportunity to see the city without having to spend more than a few pounds each. We were able to tour much of old town as well as see some of new town, and we learned a lot about Scotish literary, geographical and even geological history.

Thanks to a recommendation for, "the best curry we will ever eat," from our Scotish friend from the night before, we got some lunch at a mosque with a kitchen producing Indian/middle eastern food (we aren't exaclty sure the ethnicity, because we were told it was Indian food, but it was served at an Islamic mosque, so...?) It was really delicious, filling and cheap.

After lunch we went to the Scotish National Museum where we enjoyed a brief tour through 2000 years of the history and tradition of Scotland. The highlight of the museum was Dolly the cloned sheep in a display case. Little known fact, Dolly was named after Dolly Parton because the scientists were thinking of breasts at the time of cloning????!?!?! You may want to check my facts. Afterwards we saw the Edinburgh castle from outside the walls and saw a really cool cemetary where a bunch of old Scotish people are buried.

The Highlands were absolutely beautiful, as you can see from pictures. We met Hamish, the Highland cow, who happens to be very famous. We went to Urquart Castle, which is remains of an old castle that was destroyed by rebels, and sailed along Loch Ness. Unfortunately, we did not catch a glimpse of the monster, Nessie. We spent the entire day driving around the Highlands seeing the sights and learning about Scottish history. It was a great experience.

Munich

We spent one night in Munich in order to catch a relatively cheap flight to the UK the following morning. We experienced some fun with a potential hiccup in our travel plans due to yet another strike of the local transportation workers in Budapest. We were forced to walk to the train station, which took us about 45 minutes with our packs, and our train to Munich was not only delayed, but stopped in Vienna. Luckilly we were able to hop on another train from Vienna to Munich and arrived only about 40 minutes late to our destination.

Our hostel was pretty much a huge party. There was a large bar area with a happy hour which we later took part in, but not before visiting the tradtional Bavarian beer halls. We stopped at a place that was known for their good beer selection, as well as their bratwurst. We ordered some Augustiner beers stored in wooden kegs that were both really tasty. We also tried their sausages and yet again sauerkraut, which was also quite good and went well with the beer. They gave us a basket of pretzles which were delicious in their housemade mustards.

Our hostel gave us 2 free beer coupons, so we took advantage of the late night happy hour starting at midnight in the hostel bar for a little while until we went to bed in order to catch our morning flight to Edinburgh.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Budapest

Before arriving in Budapest we were warned about a few things in Eastern Europe, one of which was to make sure that we count our change so as not to get ripped off by a Hungarian establisment. Upon getting off the train from Prague we bought metro tickets to get to our hostel and were given 1000 HUF less than we were owed by the metro ticket counter lady. Ethan immediately double counted and headed back to show her the "mistake" but before he could even get the words out, she handed him the 1000 HUF bill that she had discreetly put aside for herself. Granted, it equals about 4 euro, so like 6 bucks, but the point was we were already getting ripped off and stolen from within our first 5 minutes here. Luckily we knew to watch out for it and caught it before it was too late. We then headed to our hostel, and got some dinner at a really good Turkish buffet nearby. Then we got a beer and went to sleep in the "space room" at our room-themed hostel.

The next day we walked to the Parliament building, which is modeled exactly after London's parliament building, but was pretty cool. We walked a lot, and tried to go to these labyrinths underground in a castle, but they were closed for the season we think. We then strolled along the Danube River until we reached a bridge that led us to Grand Market Hall where we wandered around the stalls of fresh produce, meats and and pastries. We decided to grab a quick lunch from one of the cafeteria stalls for some traditional Hungarian food. Ethan had sauerkraut and sausage with mustard, and I had some white beans and vegetables served with rice mixed with sauerkraut and some kind of pork. Both dishes were excellent, very tasty and interesting. We prefer Hungarian food to Czech food so far. After lunch we perused the market stalls looking at souvenirs and little trinkets and then headed out of the market.

After a long day of walking and sightseeing we headed back to our hostel for a nap and then dinner at another traditional Hungarian restaurant with live gypsy music. This was a really fun experience. There was a live band playing a violin, bass and stringed xylophone thingy. Everyone in the place was dancing and swaying at their tables to the wonderful Jewish sounding music played by the cheerful band of gypsies. The food was pretty good too; it was meat or fish in a sauce with gnocchi type dumplings and then pickled vegetables. We had a really good time, and then went out for a couple Saturday night beers and bed.

Today, Sunday, we walked to Hero Square, an area with a large park, bath houses, museums and scenic walkways. We decided to forego the Museum of Fine Arts, because it was the same paitings we had already seen in every other city, and just walked around a bit. Then we headed to the Jewish synogogue and Museum, but skipped the museum since we had just visited the one in Berlin, and just wandered around the temple area. Then we had lunch and are now at the hostel resting. Tonight we plan on eventually grabbing dinner and getting a good night's sleep to prepare for our 7 hour train to Munich in the am. Also, Sunday in Budapest is not quite happening, and pretty much everything is closed and the city is dead, so it has been challenging to find much to do today. We hope to find a good biergarten in Munich and then its off to the UK for our last week in Europe!

Of course on the day we leave, the public transportation goes on strike. Now we are off on a 45 minute walk to the train station with our HUGE backpacks. Bye.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Prague

We just left Prague on a 7 hour train today, but it was absolutely beautiful. The city was never destroyed in the war, so the sculptures and architecture are mostly all original and really neat to look at. The Charles Bridge was my favorite sight. It is full of street performers and carts of handmade jewelry with vendors. There are these sculptures all over the entire thing from back in the day that give it a sort of gothic feel.

We went to Prague Castle and visited the toy museum which featured a Barbie exhibit, which was amazing. There were toys, dolls, teddy bears and tons of Barbies displayed in glass exhibition cases. Many of the toys were from the late 1800s and looked as though they were used by children of the time and then collected for the museum, it was really ecclectic. Afterwards we did as the Praugueites do and saw a concert in one of their beautiful halls. It was a string concert of a lot of famous peices.

We went to see the Jewish cemetery, but it was really expensive to get in so we just peeked over the fence and were able to see the graves. This cemetery was the only place Jews were allowed to be buried in Prague, so because there were so many people and so little space, the Jews were buried standing up to make room...so there were hundreds of tombstones, almost overlapping one another. It was really interesting, and sort of creepy.

We ate a traditional Czech meal which was kind of heavy but not bad, it was pretty much meat dumplings and sauerkraut. We heard that Czech beer is the best in the world, so we went to this bar that brewed its own beer, they had a sampler with beers that were flavored with coffee, or banana...kinda weird, not very good, but interesting. We drank mostly the pilsner urquell, which was pretty good, but we never found the best beer in the world.

We really enjoyed Prague, it was super touristy, but extremely beautiful and clean. We are now in Budapest for the next 3 nights, and will update the blog as soon as we can. We head next to the UK to Edinburg then London and then we come home. We are sad our trip is nearing its end, but are looking forward to seeing our friends and families again.

Berlin and Dresden

So, upon arriving in Berlin, I (Jenny) got sick and basically could barely do anything except rest the entire time. We went to the Pergamon Museum our first day, which features a lot of ancient Greek and Roman relics, some of which were completely destroyed and then repaired again. The highlight was the Pergamon altar, an ancient Greek altar to the gods originally set atop the Acropolis. It was removed a long long time ago and rebuilt in the museum. It is surrounded by these intricate freezes depicting gods. It was quite amazing and must have took the sculptors forever to complete. The next day Ethan went out and explored the city, while I stayed at the hostel and felt sick, he saw some monuments that he will describe later.

Ethan: I walked from one end of the city to the other. It was quite beautiful. I was hoping to see more remains of communism and east germany, but they pretty much got rid of those. I saw many of the main attractions including this huge radio tower that looks like the seattle space needle, the old commie capital builiding wich was being destroyed and pretty much all that is left is the structural elements of the building, and the reichstag (parliament building) with a great view of the city from the top. Berlin reminds me a lot of paris in its scale. It has very wide streets and none of the buildings are very tall. It seems like a great city that I would want to go back to to really explore.

When the weekend was over, I went to a German doctor with the help of our hostel and was able to get antibiotics to get better. It was amazing how easy the process was. I was walked across the street by one of the hostel employees to a nice doctors office. The took me right away, and 30 minutes and 30 Euro later the visit was over and I had all of my perscription medicine. I wish doctors visits were like that in the states.

The next day we went to the Jewish Museum which was really big. It traced the lives of Jews in Berlin and Germany from like 1000 AD to current. It also had a lot of information on the Holocaust. It was touching, as all Jewish museums are. We also ate at the Kosher restaurant inside.

Our hostel was amazing and took really good care of me which was really nice of them. They had a big flat screen tv and all new release movies in their common room, so it was the best situation for me being sick.

We were able to enjoy one really good German meal at a restaurant recommended by the guy at the hostel. It was a lot of sausages and meat and potatoes, but all really good. Ethan got a pork knuckle. The people in Berlin were super nice and helpful, and I wish I wasnt sick the entire time because i wasnt really able to do too much which sucked.

When we left Berlin we headed to Dresden for one night and this city was really awesome as well. There is the old part and the new part and they are completely different, but both really cool. Sightseeing wise, we went to a church that was destroyed in the war and completely rebuilt within the last 2 years, it had really interesting paint of gold and then pastel, basically it was super tacky, but people love it. We saw the big opera house and walked around a garden. The city is really beautiful, not very touristy and very clean. The new part is where all the young people live and it has these really cool walkways that have a kind of art deco pattern throughout with little shops.

All in all, we really enjoyed what we did in Germany, and it was surprisingly very inexpensive and warm. We would love to go back one day.

Brussels

We spent two nights in Brussels and enjoyed some really good food as well as some belgian beers. We decided that we prefered Dutch beers and wished that we could find more of them in the US, but we had a fun time at Delerium Cafe, owned by Delerium Tremens brewery in Brussels. They have the largest selection of beers in the world? I think over 2000 different kinds. We ate at a southern French restaurant called L'Achepot that I would recommend to anyone visiting Brussels.

We also took a tour of the Cantillon brewery. It is a brewery the specializes in lambic beers; beers that are spontaneously fermented with wild yeasts. Its pretty awesome. It means they pretty much leave the beer in a huge tank and let the yeast in the air collect, and spontaneously ferment the beer. It is a very unique beer with a very sour taste like nothing you've had before. You can find it in the US and I recommend you do.

We didn't really do much tourism activities here because we lacked the information, but we pretty much just hung out and walked around...it was freezing...and played with the dog that lived at our hostel. This post is going to be short but sweet because I cant remember what else we did here.