Prague

Well, before I jump into Prague, let me just give a warning to Matt and Sarah. First it struck Mandy, then it struck us, so don't let it happen to you all. What might I be talking about? Well, we went to catch our plane this morning and everything was going to plan. Got on the plane in Prague, flew to Paris. Navigated the enormous Charles De Gaul airport, and boarded the plane to head to Atlanta. About 2.5 hours later, we finally left the runway in Paris. Well, that little 2.5 hour tour of Paris' runway caused us to miss our connection to louisville, so we got lucky and got the last louisville bound plane of the day at 9:45. So be careful in Dublin, you two are next.

But now to more important things, PRAGUE. Praha (as it's known to the natives) was an absolutely amazing city. Everything from the history, to the architecture, to the cobblestone streets on virtually every street, there is virtually nothing about Prague that was not to like. I take that back, there was something not to like, and that was the weather. It put a damper on our stay there, literally. It rained both days we were there, VERY hard at times. But with the bad come the good, and the good is temperatures. It was like fall here in the states, perfect weather at about low 60's for a high, and those were a welcome change from what we'd been used to.

Some highlights of our time there were we went on another two sandeman's tours (the free walking tour and the paid tour of the castle), and they were both great again. Maybe not as great as the ones in Munich, but still pretty good. We went to a black light theater that Prague is known for and it was interesting to say the least. Especially the end where it turned into a pseudo cabaret show. And on top of all of that, we had some good food. Scratch that, really good food (at least I thought). It was typical Czech food that was heavy, but I really enjoyed it. The beer wasn't as good as germany, but i guess not much is better.

Well, i'm gonna sign off here now and let the Durham's take back over for the last leg of the trip. They're all alone now, so it'll be up to them to keep us updated. We had a blast and even though we wish it could've been longer, this crazy travel day absolutely wore us out and it's good to be sleeping in our own bed. Till next time...

Sunset in our last night in Prague
Our final meal together, a lot of food.
Prague from up above
Old Town
Franz Kafka statue in Jewish Quarter
St. Charles Bridge at night
Close to our hostel

Dachau

Today was a little different as we headed out to a tour (with the same tour group Sandemans, who were just as excellent today if not better) of Dachau, the model concentration camp for the nazi’s. Our guide, Marcin, was actually a tour guide trainer for Dachau, so needless to say, he knew his stuff. He took us through the beginnings of Dachau (which was an ammunition factory for WW1), all the way through the ending in 1945. Although it didn’t have any personal connections, it still was somewhat emotional to go through something that was used for something so terrible. It is unfathomable that mankind can be so cruel and terrifying.

We saw the registration building (which is now the museum), where they were “registered”, which basically meant tortured (a common theme there, both physically and mentally), the bunker with individual cells for the truly unfortunate, the barracks which had upwards of 500 people in a space big enough for about 50, the crematorium and the gas chamber. The crematorium didn’t really bother me that much (because at least they were dead and were through with the suffering), but the gas chamber really got to me. To be standing in a spot where thousands upon thousands of people lost their lives (for no reason at all) really brings it into perspective. If you are ever in Munich (or near any concentration camp for that matter), you’d be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t go. It might not be the most fun experience of your life, but will definitley be something you will never forget.

After Dachau, we got back and hit the town for the night. Melissa and I were going to go on a bier challenge, but didn’t meet up with the group in time so we had to make our own, and Matt and Sarah went and hung out with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz (who were in town for the premier of Night and Day). All in all, Munich was a great city that I could definitely go back to.


Statue outside of the gas chamber stating "We honor the dead through warning the living"

Work will set you free

Gas chamber (where they put the gas in)

Imagine fitting 10 people or so on top of each other all the way down

bathroom facilities

Actual prisoner outfit (the shoe was basically a piece of wood with a piece of cloth going over it like a slipper)

Munich

So after a tough travel day, we started Munich out fresh and hit up a free walking tour with Sandeman’s New Europe. And I gotta say, if you are ever in Europe and want a good orientation/history lesson for free, this is unbeatable. The tour guides were amazing, knew their history and the city pretty well. We saw everything from the glockenspiel in marienplatz, to the St. Peters church (and climbed the bell tower for an amazing view), to the history of the Third Reich and how it basically got started. It was a three hour walking tour, but was well worth it.

After the walking tour, we had a good lunch with the tour guide, then made our way to the English Garden (which is bigger than Central Park in New York). Two things that were, shall we say interesting, were a man made wave that people actually surf. I didn’t know there was much surfing in Germany, but apparently there is. Since the Garden is so big, we only ventured into it for a short stroll, but that stroll took us to the most interesting part of it (I guess, depends how you look at it). We soon found ourselves along the banks of the river with one side for regular sun bathers and the other for nude sun bathers. Go figure, we ended up on the nude side. Which in all honesty isnt necessarily a bad thing, except the ratio of naked old fat men to attractive young women was about 99:1. So as soon as we found a bridge, we booked it to the other side.

Matt wanted plated dessert after that, so we looked at our trusty Lonely Planet guide to find a good delicattesen. We were supposedly pretty close to one, so we went out to find it. About 30 minutes later after finding where is should be, were told that it closed 8 years ago. So we just ended up in Marienplatz (main square) and sat at a café on the square for a few hours to end the day. All in all, and excellent inroduction to the city. Dachau in the morning.


Marienplatz at sunset

Surfing in Munich, who knew?

View of Munich from above.

The Glockenspiel

This is where Hitler gave one of his famous speeches convincing people to join him.

Venice/Munich Travel day

WOW!!!, what a day. Our last night in Venice was amazing. First off, we just finally got a chance to get lost and just walk around and check out the city. A little gelato, a little shopping, and before you know it, it’s dinner time. We trusted Rick Steves on dinner, and it was a pretty good experience. The ambience was great, and the food was pretty good (matt’s pizza was really good, the rest of ours was ok). We topped off our dinner with a little after dinner drink/dessert, which Matt just LOVED!!!!, you’ll have to ask him about his spritz. To finally cap off the night, we made it around to a gondola ride. It was pricey, but we had a great time. We waited until the last possible second to catch one, but that meant we had the moonlit canals to ourselves. Our gondolier was amazing as he gave us a pretty good history lesson of Venice and was more than excited to talk about tornadoes (sinc e he found out we lived in a state with them). Overall, Venice was GREAT!!!

Then came the travel day…

What to say what to say. We made it to the train station with more than enough time to get organized. We even got some lunch and got on the train early to relax. We had a stop over in Verona to change trains and that’s where the fun began. Supposedly Verona is more than the Montague’s and Capulet’s. It is a big enough city to have TWO train stations named after it. One for the outer city limits, and one for the main station. Well our connection was for the main station, but we didn’t realize that the other station was also named Verona, so we got off the train and went to catch our connector when we realized we got off at the wrong stop. So we had 20 minutes to get to the other train station that was only a 5 minute train ride away. Easy huh? Well, not when no one knows how to use the pay phones to call for a cab or will use their cell phones to call a cab for 5 euro (true story, cow, for 5 euro, I’d drive someone 5 minutes down the road). So we ended up missing our train. After we finally made it to the correct Verona train station, we tried to figure out if we had to buy a new ticket or just get on the later train to munich. Turns out, we were able to get on the train with no problems and got seats together. So even though we were arriving in Munich two hours later than we thought, we weren’t out any more money which is always a plus. Hopefully that’s the worst thing that will happen to us.

So that’s where we are, finally in Munich where the weather is absolutely wonderful. Cool enough tonight to even warrant a jacket. PERFECT for a change. Well, tommorow is a walking tour of the city, so hopefully we’ll have a new post with some cool pics. Till the next time.


on the gondola

View of the Rialto Bridge from the middle of the canal

view from the gondola

Grand Canal at night.

Hangin out by the canal

more of the same.

Venice:
Ciao from Venecia, so far, our time here has been full of high’s and low’s.
Dissapointment #1:
We arrived in Venice to, you guessed it, more heat. We thought traveling several hours north to the coast would cool things down a bit, but not so fast my friend. But your in Venice, so we managed. Venice is definitely one of the most unique, beautiful cities I’ve ever been in. I’ve always been told it stinks but to be honest, Rome smelled worse than Venice by far.
Dissapointment #2:
After navigating the alleys, we finally found our hotel only to be told we could not stay there. The desk manager was super nice, just told us that their bathrooms were out of order so they had worked it out with another place down the street for us to stay. After talking it up to us, our worst fears were put aside as this is a very nice room in a really good location as well. We don’t get the breakfast buffet we were supposed to get, but so far, the breakfast has been really good. And that leads us to…
Surprise #1:
After our first hotel told us we could not stay there, he told us we were in for a treat as this weekend is Venice’s biggest festival of the year. Festa del Redentore. This festival has been celebrated since 1576 since the cities deliverance from the plague. What does the festival include you may ask? How about music all over the city with dancing in the streets, boats going down the main canal full of people partying, and to top it all off, a 35 minute firework show in St. Marks Square in the shadow of the Doge’s Palace overlooking the Adriatic Sea. The square had thousands of people shoulder to shoulder celebrating (aka drinking wine) and oohing and ahhing at the fireworks (which don’t worry, still doesn’t compare to Thunder over Louisville).
Surprise #2:
Early morning Sunday morning brought a pretty good storm through the city. Which much to our delight, brought cooler temperatures. I’d say we’re now at the average temperature of about 80 degrees or so. Trust me, that is fallish compared to what we’ve had. So we headed out to see the Correr Museum and the Doge’s Palace which was quite incredible. And surprise surprise, one of the things we were excited about seeing was the mural of all the Doge’s with one blacked out because of treason/decapitation (for those of you that don’t know why this made us excited, just refer to the Black mansion in Harry Potter with Sirius’ head blacked out of the family mural).
Tonight is planned with some exploration of the city, some shopping, and the quintessential venetian experience (ok, maybe a strictly tourist thing, but a must I suppose nonetheless), a gondola ride. Tomorrow will quite the travel day as we have a roughly 6 hour train ride up north through the Alps and Black Forest to Munich. Hopefully the trend of cooler weather continues. Till then, arivaderci.


Courtyard of Doge's Palace

Doge's Palace

Doge's Palace

Festa del Redentore

Festa del Redentore

St. Mark's Square at night.

Grand Canal

Gondola

St. Mark's Square

Day 13 - Rome

The Colosseum (at 114 degrees)

Well, I guess there really is only one thing to say about Rome, and that is that it was extremely HOT!!!!, and humid. I mean swamp ass hot before you even walk out of the termini. I'm not gonna lie, it was much more pleasant in March, but how can you complain about that, you're in Europe on holiday. While the Durham/Willoughby clan did the Vatican tour, Melissa and I just had a few hours to explore, so we grabbed some paninis and enjoyed them in St. Peter's square while watching the world go by. Afterwards, we went to go into the basicllica but Melissa was apparently too sexy for Pope Benedicts taste so we had to buy a scarf to cover up her shoulders.

St. Peter's Basilica

Watching the World go by in St. Peter's Square.

SUPER HOT DINNER - and not just because I'm there!

We eventually met up with the other three later on at the hotel to have a night out on the town. After stops at the Spanish steps (and the rose con artists; you'll have to ask the girls about them) and pantheon, we had a pretty pleasant dinner except for the hot exhaust blowing on Mandy and I, so after we moved tables, dinner was that much more enjoyable. After dinner (and great Chianti) we did one of my favorite places in all the world, the Trevi Fountain at night. Nothing better than enjoying gelato (and more Chianti) while people watching at one of the most beautiful fountains in the world (bernini is a genius).

Assuring our trip back to Rome - Maybe!

That was enough for one day as the heat pretty much drained us all, but overall, a great day in Rome.

Leg 2

If i can interrupt you regularly scheduled programming, I'm just dropping a quick not from the oasis that is Detroit. Melissa and I are on our way to Rome to meet with the magellans and continue on leg two of the great exploration of the old world. Last time we were in Rome, we threw our pence onto the Trevi fountain hoping that old wives tail would come true. Lo and behold, in less than 24 hours we'll be back at the Trevi, wine in hand celebrating like the Romans. When in Rome (you keep saying that, I do not think it means what you think it means; that's for the Campbell clan). Well, enough rambling, hopefully tomorrow at some point I'll have my first European post in, you know, Europe. Later.

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