PRAGUE

I love Prague.  

No really.  Its great.  The train from Vienna was uneventful, the countryside was really pretty and the ticket taker on the train looked exactly like Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter.  We took the metro towards our hostel and walked for 20 minutes in the wrong direction before figuring it out.  Turns out, our hostel is about 30 seconds away from the Old Town Square.  We got settled and ended up chatting with two girls that were sharing our room.  This hostel (and this city) is full of normal people and college guys who came here to party.  We had dinner down the street and we found out two main things: 1) beer is cheaper than water in Prague 2) the translation "cream sauce" means it comes with whipped cream on top.  So, I had a beef dish with "cream sauce" that I scraped off, and dumplings and mer had pork.  All in all, really tasty.  We went out with the girls who were staying in our room and it was so fun!  

We had a low day the next day, gave ourselves a day off, really.  We walked around Old Town Square and the Charles bridge.  The astrological clock in Old Town Square is really cool, we watched the hour change and tried to decipher all the different rings.  We watched a movie in our hostel and met some more nice people.  We had sausage for dinner and went to bed early.  The next morning we woke up super early and learned that nothing (not even starbucks) opens before 9.  Where do people get their coffee?  No clue.  We walked to the castle and toured it as well as the cathedral, basilica, and Golden Lane.  We walked down to the Little quarter and went to the John Lennon wall.  We had a great lunch at Bohemia Bagel (can't eat meat and potatoes for every meal...) and walked back across the Charles bridge.  We toured the Jewish quarter next.  The large majority of the Jewish population was deported and killed by the Nazis, but they didn't destroy the area during the occupation, which makes it a pretty powerful place to visit.  

We fly to Athens tomorrow and weather.com says its going to be super hot!  I wish I had more time to explore Prague, but that just means I will definitely need to come back here.  So far, each city has been getting better and better, so hopefully Athens will continue the trend!

Vienna

The boat from Budapest to Vienna was fun.  It took about 5 hours and wasn't that scenic, but it was nice to be on a boat for a while!  We went through 2 giant locks on the Danube, which was cool.  We took the metro to our hostel, which was easy to find, and settled into our basement room.  Thus far our hostel roommates have been less than satisfactory.  Everyone is just a little weird.  In this particular room there was a canadian guy who was by himself (normal enough) and this foreign couple (not sure where they were from as they didn't speak english, but they spoke french every now and then) that were way too friendly with each other.  We called them the "amorous pair".  

Well, Vienna was just great.  Our hostel was midway between the old town and the Schonbrunn palace.  We had really bad chinese food the first night we were there and went to bed early.  Next day, we walked into the old town and went through the huge museum of Hapsburg art.  We followed Rick's walking tour and saw the opera, the church, and various old things.  We had sausages for lunch in the big square and continued walking around.  There was a random parade that day, so there was a lot of lederhosen and other traditional costumes.  I think it had something to do with Pentecost.  In Europe, everyone takes the Monday after Pentecost Sunday, for some reason, so everything was closed.  No shopping for us!  We ducked into the Hofburg palace to see the treasury, which was a giant museum full of shiny things and huge jewels.  We were so pooped after this day---so much walking!  We did laundry and had take out pizza in our hostel for dinner.  For some reason, the people we room with really liked to go to bed at about 9:30 and turn off all the lights.

We got a later start the next morning and walked to the Schonbrunn palace.  We did the whole tour, which was really cool.  The Hapsburgs are a really interesting family and they really liked to decorate.  It was kind of like Versailles, but in Vienna.  There was a lot of eastern influence in the interior because it was oh so fashionable at the time.  We walked through the garden afterwards and had lunch (salad and sausage) at one of the stands.  Then we headed towards the military museum on the other side of town.  It took forever to find, but we had a nice detour through a great public park.  We found the museum, but the ticket taker informed us they were only open for another hour.  We did the museum super fast, which was fine because there weren't any english translations, and no matter how long I stared at the german, it never made sense.  We did get to see the car that Archduke Ferdinand was sitting in when he got shot.

 Vienna was really different from Budapest.  It was much more like Paris in that it was fancier.  It wasn't bombed as heavily during World War II, so more things are original.  There were people out everywhere and it felt very safe.  All in all, a cool town.

Budapest

My first stop on the next part of the adventure was Budapest.  We flew from Orly airport in Paris, which has the tightest security I have ever been through.  The flight was uneventful and customs in Budapest was nonexistent.  We had arranged a pick-up service with our hostel and after finding the guy holding a sign with our name on it, we followed him to what turned out to be his car.  Our first sights of Budapest left us with less than good feelings about this supposed great city.  We could never tell whether we were in a good part or bad part of town--everything is in the same dirty broken down state.  The guy finally parked his car, got our bags out, and said "follow me".  We were totally convinced that we were going to be sold into white slavery, when we finally say a sign on the door advertising our hostel.  

Our first night, we wandered into the older part of town, had an underwhelming dinner and walked home.  The next day we got up and walked across the Danube to Buda.  We stopped for coffee at Cafe Piaf (can't escape Paris, apparently...) and had lunch at a vegetarian place (yes!).  We tried to poke our head into a church, but turns out, it was not open.  We went up on castle hill and went to the art museum to look at a bunch of Hungarian art.  We then went to the Hungarian History museum and the best part of that was the children's corner, where we spent an hour sitting on bean bags and coloring.  We checked out the rest of the monuments and ended up sitting in the sun and decided to take the tram home.  We had a really great dinner in an underground wine cellar.

Nest day we explored Pest.  We  visited the great market hall and had some streudel and bought fruit.  We abandoned our free breakfast at the hostel, as it only consists of bad cereal, bad coffee, and white bread.  Luckily, Budapest has a billion and five coffee shops, although we only came across 2 pastry shops, which Rick Steves had assured us "lined every street".  We went to the House of Terror museum, which is housed in the Nazi and Soviet headquarters where they ran their operations and tortured and killed many people. This is one of the creepiest and scariest places I have ever been.  The subject matter is creepy enough and the presentation and building as a whole promote that.  Even the people that work there are creepy.  They all speak in monotones, and the guards tend to hide in dark corners, barely moving.  We made a german friend named Phil, who really wanted to hang out with us, but we finally evaded him by going to shop for english books.  We went for Italian food that night and our waiter really liked to give us high fives.  

All in all, Budapest was not what I expected and wasn't my favorite place.  I'm glad that I don't have to like every place that I visit, but I had hoped it would have been cooler.  Pretty much, it was just a big dirty city where everything is under construction, there is nothing really that cool to see, and the food isn't that good.  The redeeming factors were that the people were really nice and we had great weather!

Goodbye for now...

Les Andelys is a small town not far from Paris that sits on the Seine. It is where Nicolas Poussin was born and there is a ruined castle from Richard the Lionhearted. WE climbed around the castle and then tried to find a hotel. The first one was full, the second one was closed for the day (only in France) and the third one had space, in fact i think we were their only guests. It was a funky old building right on the river, which was cool, and it had a great rose garden. We had crepes for dinner and then got to listen to another incredible thunder storm. Our rooms looked right out at the castle, though, which was awesome.

Next morning we had an awkward breakfast (seeing as how we were the only ones in the hotel) and drove towards Paris. We had trouble figuring out where to drop teh car off adn got a lovely tour of the outlying parts of the Charles de Gaulle airport. A nice American gave us a hint and we finally found the Hertz lot. We said our goodbyes and Mer and I headed back into the city.

We stayed at a hostel on teh edge of the 13th and the 5th, called Oops. (hostels have the weirdest names) It also has some fur walls and light displays. We were able to stash our big suitcases at Merś friendś Saras house, which was actually just a short walk away. We hung out in her apartment for a while and had pizza for dinner.

This morning we got up and had a mediocre free breakfast. Then we headed to the airport to catch our plane to Budapest! Pretty much everything that could go wrong at the airport did, but luckily we had shown up really early. Our flight was unventful after the rowdy soccer team fell asleep. So, that was goodbye to France for a while!

Normandy

Right after Mt St Michel, we crossed into Normandy and stopped ion a town called St Mere Eglise. It is a super touristy stop before the Normandy beaches. The story of this town is that during the Normandy invasion one man who was parachuting with the airborne troops got his parachute stuck on the steeple of the church in this town and just hung there for hours hoping that the germans wouldnt shoot him. They have since put up a parachute and fake person that permanently hangs off the side of this church. The stained glass in the church commemorates that day, as well.

We drove down to the American cemetery and got there just in time to watch the flag get retired for the day. The cemetery is beautiful. It is right on the beach and each grave has a French flag and an American flag. This year is teh 65th anniversary and they are planning a big celebration this June. It will probably be the last year where a lot of veterans who fought in the war will be able to come. We drove down to Omaham beach next and walked around. Being in these places is incredible. The beach now just looks like any other beach in the world with people picnicing and laughing and its lined with beach houses. There is so much history there!

We stayed in Bayeux that night, which was the town that was first liberated by the Americans in 1944. We had the worst dinner from the entire trip and we didn sleep that well either, because there was a huge thunder storm! The next morning Mer and I checked out the cathedral and the Bayeux tapestry--which is nearly 1000 years old! We grabbed Dennis and headed out for the day. We went to the German cemetery, which is very different from the American one (for instance it is right off the freeway). We also stopped at Pont du Hoc, where the rangers scaled the cliffs during the invasion.

We drove on to a town called Les Andelys for the night.

Brittany

Nantes is not currently a part of Brittany, but it was in the past, so it is very similar. We left Nantes a day earlier than expected and drove towards St. Malo. When we got to the coast, we stopped and wandered around an adorable fishing town. It felt very much like home to be on the coast! WE spent most of the day driving, through various small towns, trying to figure out where to stay. We ended up in a small town called Dinard, also on the coast.

The first hotel we stopped at was full, but the woman kindly called another and sent us that way. The second one had room for us and when we told her we were American, she threw up her hands and yelled ÿesssssss! She was probably the nicest person I have met in france. She chatted away in french with us, which was very fun. WE had dinner at a creperie and had some more cidre, both traditional foods from Brittany. We stopped for a kir after dinner and watched the people go by,. It was great people watching because there was a motorcycle convention in town, so there were all sorts of characters around!

Next day we drove into St Malo, which is a fortified city on teh coast. We beat the tourist rush and had a fun time wandering the ramparts and the shops. It took all my strength not to buy every anchor I saw, but I did buy a key chain. We drove down the beach a little bit and played in the sand and the sun. I had never seen more people running in my life. People were running on the boardwalk, on the sand, in the water, through the streets, it was incredible, especially for France!

We kept on driving and drove by Mont St Michel, which is a tidal island off the coast that used to be a monastery. IT was super cool to see. We didnt feel much like going inside, so we just kept rolling.

Limousin etc

After leaving the Sarlat area, we drove to a small town called Oradour sur Glane. The entire population of this town was massacred by the Naziś in 1944 and, in memory, the government left the town totally as is. The museum there was really informative and had pretty good english translations. We walked through the town afterwards and it was just eerie. The impact was huge and I am really glad we went there. It is the most visited site in France by the french (or one of them).

We kept driving through the countryside, which, after the Dordogne region, was kind of a let down. Its still quite pretty but, there weren any flowers or castles or ruins anywhere. We ended up staying in a small town called Rochechouart at a great little hotel. The restaurant at the hotel was really tasty and this huge french family was eating next to us and all the kids kept staring. We walked around the town in search of a laundromat, but there wasnt one! This town didn have much going for it except for a chateaux that is now a contemporary art museum and a sports bar that closed by 9pm.

The next day we drove into Nantes, which is the 6th largest town in France. On the way there we discovered that we had left all of our guidebooks in ROchechouart, bummer! Nantes was pretty easy to drive into and we had a lunch on one of the canals/rivers. WE were originally going to stay in Nantes for two days, but as we found out, there isnt very much to do there! We wandered around the city and looked at the cool churches and tried to shop a little. WE had crepes and cidre for dinner (super tasty).

Nantes is a cool city, not only because it is a sister city to Seattle, but because it has a very laid-back northwest kind of feel. It is one of the most livable cities in europe (we read) and I believe it. It seems like a great place to live, but not a great place to visit.