European Excursion

Okay, here is the literary version of my trip. I do not have photos from the other girls, yet, so they will be coming later, I believe. Hope this will do for now! :)

Monday 1 - Brussels

Our first day of our European vacation. Woo hoo! We left early in the morning for our flight to Brussels, stopping through London. We were all so excited! Nicolas met us at the train station (where we rode to from the airport which we arrived at at 2pm, I think) along with Arne and Catherine, a couple friends of ours from Queens. They were staying with us at Nicolas' house, too. It was great fun!

Nicolas showed us around Brussels that afternoon and evening. The most breathtaking thing I've ever seen in my life was the City Hall in downtown Brussels. I can't even describe it. I just found the architecture to be amazing! We ate supper at a Greek restaurant closeby. Good day. :)

Tuesday 1 - Brussels

The original plan was to go to Bruges, but we decided to hang out at Nicolas' house all day instead. It was so wonderful! We had the best weather, which is crazy because it's Belgium! Nicolas and Arne wheeled out the ping pong table and we had a few matches. I also asked Nicolas to bring out any board games, etc. that he had. Melissa and I played Guess Who for a good half hour I'd say. Other than that, we just lounged around outside in the sun. Haha! So GREAT!

That night, Nicolas' sister and her boyfriend came over to eat dinner with us. It was perhaps my favorite night of the whole trip. It was so great to just be with people that I really love, and the newbies were really friendly and nice and fun. :D

Wednesday 1 - Brussels/Barcelona

Nicolas drove us to the airport after one last brunch at his house. It was really sad to leave him, and we almost convinced him to just come to Barcelona with us, but the tickets ended up being ridiculously expensive. Haha! It was fun, though.

We finally made it to our hostel and dropped our stuff off in order to go get some food. It was really excited for me to be in Spain!!! :D The restaurant we went to wasn't actually very good. I mean, they charged us like they were phenomenal, but really they weren't. Luckily, we found a convenient store afterward that hadn't closed, yet, and bought some groceries to eat in the hostel. It was much better!

Thursday 1 - Barcelona

We just walked around and shopped a bit all day. It was really relaxed, which is what all of us wanted. Thankfully, some of the sights of Barcelona were even on our way from our hostel, so we got to see a couple of the Gaudi buildings. REALLY cool! We also stopped in a market on the side of one of the streets and got some fresh fruits and stuff for eating later. :)

Friday 1 - Barcelona

Bike day! We rented bikes for a few hours and rode around Barcelona. So cool!! Oh my gosh. The weather was really great. Funny story, though. Sydney and I both were wearing skorts that day and people kept staring at us as we rode past. Hahaha, Sydney said she felt like we were corrupting the men of Barcelona. lol! I almost stopped at one point to roll up the skirt a bit so you could see the shorts, but oh well. Haha! We really weren't indecent, I promise! It just looked like it. Hahaha. Woops.

The bike ride was really great, tho. We stopped at a supermarket to pick up some stuff for a picnic lunch on the beach. It was so great to be at the beach. On the freaking Mediterannean Sea, too! Sigh. So great!

Oh, and I had a full conversation in Spanish with a guy at the tourist information desk about the bikes. As far as I can tell, I only made one mistake. Woo hoo! It was SO much fun to be able to use Spanish again! I can't believe how much I've missed it! The other three girls keep joking about how I'm going to move to Barcelona after I graduate, and they're gonna come visit me. Haha! How cool would that be! Sigh.

Saturday 1 - Barcelona

We went out for lunch with Eric and Brendan - the two Americans we randomly ran into at our hostel who also go to Queen's. We walked down to the beach to have some paellas at this restaurant there. We really just mosied a lot. We watched some street performers at times. We visited the market again. It was fun! We ate dinner together back at the hostel that night, too.

Sunday 1 - Paris

We left our hostel in Barcelona at 2 in the morning to catch our flight to Paris. We spent the entire day sightseeing. We were all incredibly exhausted. There was way too much walking for me. Haha! I'm such a wimp.

But yeah, let's see. We saw Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and went in The Louvre. (Apparently under-26ers get in free - woo hoo!!) I'm not a huge art fan, but the other girls were really excited about it. It was fine except for how tired I was, but I suppose now I can say that I've seen the Mona Lisa. (P.S. Everyone always says that it's smaller than they thought, so I was picturing this tiny little painting. In fact, it was bigger than I thought. So there's a first.) Little Nicolas got a picture with the Mona Lisa. Hee hee!

In fact, Paris was really Little Nicolas' town! We saw signs saying "Nicolas" quite often. I took pictures of him in front of them, of course. And, you'll never believe it, but we happened to walk past this billboard-ish sign for.... drum roll.... Le Petit Nicolas!!! Oh man, I could not pass that up! Apparently, it's a famous children's book in French. Haha! It was destiny! ;)

Monday 2 - Paris/Bordeaux

We took a train early in the morning to Bordeaux where Julia would pick us up. The train ride was really long, and rather cold, but most of us slept the whole time because we were all so tired.

Julia met us on the platform when we arrived. It was so great to see her again! She drove us to downtown Bordeaux for some breakfast. We were going to sightsee around Bordeaux but then decided none of us really wanted to and would rather just go back to her house to relax. Haha!

Her house - ahem, chateaux I mean - is about a 45 minuted drive from Bordeaux. It was a great ride through the countryside of southern France. Sigh. Very nice. We arrived at her home at last and, oh my goodness, it was AMAZING! Apparently it's from the 16th century! It was so cool! I took many pictures to prove that I actually went and stayed at a place that cool because sometime I don't even believe it myself!

We met her two dogs - Busco and Ozone. Both huge. Both a little smelly (outside dogs). Both adorable. :) We made lunch in the guest house-thing where the four of us were staying - Julia was sleeping in her bedroom in her house. It was really great! Such good food! We made Hannes Potatoes and everything! (Haha, Hannes Potatoes are just like seasoned french fries, really, but they are delicious. Hannes made them for us before, hence the name).

Then Julia gave us the tour of her house and land. Her parents make wine so we walked around the vineyards. She took us to the place where they store the wine in barrels and showed us around the factory where they bottle and package the wine. It was really cool to see. Her parents' enterprise is about 5 or 6 years old, so it's still rather small compared to some others, I suppose, but it was still really neat. She also took us to this pasture behind her house where her horses are. So great!

Inside the house is so crazy cool. Oh man, I can't even describe it. You'd just have to see it for yourself. But it's amazing! I hope the pictures will do it a bit of justice!

Tuesday 2 - Bordeaux/Paris

This day was mostly spent travelling. We left Julia's house after a nice French breakfast complete with croissants. :) Then she drove us back to the train station in Bordeaux, where we boarded our train back to Paris. The B and B we were going to stay at that night picked us up from the train station in Paris. (We chose to go with a different place for this night because it was closer to the airport and we had a morning flight the next day).

This place was by far the nicest we stayed in, aside from people's houses of course. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures. The others were laughing at me, but hey, I wanted to document the wonderful experience. We had some tea downstairs in the kitchen that night and met this one guy - Jan (pronounced "Yawn") - who was staying there, as well. It turns out he semi-lives at this B and B because he's work in Paris during the week (shutting down a factory) and then he drives back home to Belgium for the weekend. He's been doing this for almost a year I think. He was a Dutch-speaking Belgian, though. (All of our Belgian friends are from French-speaking areas). He said that he could understand German and Melissa can understand Dutch but neither can speak the other. We made them have a conversation in their own languages in front of us, and they communicated just fine. Haha! How cool is that!

Wednesday 2 - Paris/Rome

We left for Rome after breakfast at the B and B in Paris. They had an airport shuttle service for a small price, so we accepted. It was really nice!

While in line to check in at the airport, a guy behind us heard us talking and asked where we were from. He was American, too, from LA, and on our same flight. We chatted for a bit then were on our ways.

Later in Rome, we happened to jump on the same subway train as him. He was closest to Jen and told her about this free Ben Harper concert in some square somewhere that night. We were like, Ben Harper? For free? In Rome? Sure! We first went out to dinner, though, and then made our way to the square. It was absolutely PACKED!! I cannot believe how many people there were. I don't know if I've ever actually seen that many people in one place in my entire life. It was crazy! Ben wasn't playing, yet, so we squeezed our way through the packed croud to find a better place to see. We passed the toilets on the way, so Jen stopped in. A guy came up asking if we were waiting in line for the toilets, but he wasn't speaking English. I don't know how it came out, but somehow we figured out that he could speak Spanish, so I spoke with him for a bit. He's from Argentina and doesn't speak very much English. It was so much fun to have that last little flair of Spanish! Oh, it made me so happy! :)

Thursday 2 - Rome

Beach day! Woo hoo! We made no other plans than to go to the beach and chill. It was great! Sydney and I went for a walk down the shore. We all tanned. There were quite a few dogs prancing around and playing. It was great! :)


Friday 2 - Rome

Sightseeing, sightseeing, sightseeing. We decided the best idea was to buy tickets for a hop on/hop off bus tour. Our stops included the Colosseum, Circus Maximus (where they had the chariot races; Ben Hur was partly filmed there), the Mouth of Truth (like in Roman Holiday), and the Vatican. We didn't end up going into the Vatican because we weren't dressed appropriately that day, but oh well. We figured we had time to see it later. And if not, we can always go back, yeah? :)

Oh, Little Nicolas made a pink, fuzzy friend at the Colosseum. His name was Larry. They had a picture taken together. Haha! It was great fun! I guess Larry was having his picture taken everywhere, too. :)


Saturday 2 - Rome

We went to the Catacombs this day. We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside, but I got one of the sign outside. It was really neat to see something of Christian history. We could tell it excited our tour guide to be talking about these things, so that made it all the better!

Sunday 2 - Rome

Our last day of vacation. Although we'd had a wonderful time away, I think all of us were pretty anxious to get home. In fact, I was feeling a little burned out and decided to spend the day by myself. The other girls understood and were completely fine with it, so that's good. I packed all my stuff and carried my backpack with me to the metro, where I grabbed a ride to the Trevy Fountain. I wanted to visit it again because it's just so relaxing and beautiful. Part of my time was spent people-watching and taking pictures for them. At one point there was this really big Hispanic family. They looked like they were having so much fun! And they were so funny! I think it must have been a family reunion of some sort. It was really cool.

After a few hours at the fountain, I decided to head towards the theatre where I would meet up with the rest of my group. I still had 4 hours or so, but I wanted to make sure I knew where it was. Funny thing, as I was walking along, I stepped out into this clearing and sort of stumbled on the Pantheon. Haha! I took tons of pictures there. It was so great. Amazing, really.

I pattered down side streets for a while after that and eventually came out at our meeting place. I still had two hours, so I went into a bookshop on the corner there. After I'd exhausted looking through everything there, I went upstairs to the cafe and got a tea. While I sitting, reading, and sipping, a couple of women came in with a little dog. He was just walking along beside them, no leash or anything, with scrappy hair, a long body, and short, stumpy legs. Lol! So cute!! Oh man, I think I sat there and chuckled at him and his antics for a good 45 minutes. Other people were getting a kick out of my getting a kick out of him. Haha!

I finished my tea after about an hour and a half and decided to just check out the little shops around the square while I waited for the others some more. I was almost done with the rounds when I looked at the broken down ruins in the middle of the square and noticed a cat sitting on one of the walls. What? So, I went over to investigate. There was another cat next to the first, then another, and another, and another... I finally found the sign that explained this phenomenon - The Cat Sanctuary! I took a picture of every cat for a while until I found the inside and realized it was a futile goal. It was great, though!

After I met up with the girls, Sydney and Jen went to see Macbeth at the theatre and Melissa and I went out for some pizza. We sat on the wall around the ruins where all the cats were. It was funny. Practically everyone who went by would just stare at us. I guess it's not a normal thing to do - haha! One guy actually came up to us, though, and asked us where we got the pizza from. He liked our idea.

We reunited with the other two and then made the long journey to the airport via walking/train ride. Our flight was to leave at 11:00pm I think. We got back home around one in the morning. I soaked up my internet for a while because I had been missing it for almost a week!