Spring Break: Part Dos

Hello! So I know i making this post a year later....but I just want to make sure I don't forget everything.... so here it goes!


Bratislava

So Kayt and I flew from Rome to Bratislava, Slovakia on Holy Friday. The area the airport was in was heavily industrialized and looked a lot like what you would expect a former soviet union country to look like. We took a bus and then tram into the city center. We met a really nice guy, Alex, from NYC who was trying to escape Easter weekend in Rome. We all had a traditional Slovakian dinner together. It started off with a bread bowl of garlic soup and ended with dumblings in Slovak cheese. I was good, but very plain. Afterwards we walked around the Bratislava castle. Perched on a hill, it was opend at night and it was beautiful to see the city during the night. We continued to walk around the streets. The city center was beautiful, with colorful buildings and fountains. Kayt and I then went to bed so we could get up early to head to Budapest!


Budapest

We woke up early and hopped on the train to Budapest (not a lot of people spoke English in Bratislave, so it was a bit difficult buying a ticket). Our hostel was AMAZING. It was a lofted area with a very enthuastic hostel owner. He lectured me and kayt about how 2 days was NOT enough time in Budapest and that we better be coming back. We went to go walk around the palace area (Budapest was the capital of the Austrian-Hungarian empire for a while.) It was a huge property, and everything was very pretty. Afterwards, we met up with Mitch for dinner (I had an AMAZING warm Pina Colada- who knew). In the morning, we toured a turkish bath and then a street market. The street markets in eastern europe are AMAZING. We had donuts and pretzels and watched Hungarian dancers before heading to the train station. We had some time to waste, and a few extra Hungarian dollars, so Kayt and I bought 8 bottles of wine (for a grand total of 10 euro). Yes... they were very heavy to carry but we knew it would be worth it when we met up with everyone in Vienna!!


Vienna

Vienna was my version of a family reunion. Most of my best friends (Kayt, Emma, Luke, Chris, and Evan) were all meeting up in the same place. We even had our own room in the hostel! Let the insanity ensue.
Luke, Evan, Emma, Jez (Emma's friend), Kayt, and I spent the night trying to find a pub. Of course, we ended up at an Aussie bar. We just all caught up and then went to bed. In the morning we got brunch and then caught the tram to meet up with Chris at St. Stephens (the Cathedral there) when Mitch surprised us! It was so exciting to see him in Vienna with us. We sat and watched a choir performance before going back to the Aussie pub (trip #2) to catch up more. Afterwards, we went back to the hostel to relax and make a HUGE dinner. We cooked up homemade tomato sauce with pasta, and two bottles of our Hungarian wine. We then tried to go the opera, but the tickets were already sold out. Instead, we went back to the hostel and played drinking games with the rest of the wine. Chris then napped while the rest of us went to the bar for cocktail happy hour. Im sure can only imagine how much fun we had, playing games with the bar tender, etc. We then grabbed Chris to be the leader of our bar crawl. Well the bar crawl just really ended up us wandering around Vienna for about 3 hours trying to find the "Bermuda Triangle" (ironic, right?) and eventually ended at the Aussie bar (Trip #3, go figure). With all this, we still ended up in bed by midnight.

The next day we walked around the Haufborg Place and then the Belevedere. We had a quick dinner before heading off to the opera house. Tonight's performance was a the ballet "A Mid-Summers Night's Dream." We paid 3 euro for standing seats, and it was COMPLETELY worth it. The ballet was beautiful. We spent our last day at the park, which was the best idea ever! It actually was home to....., which was the landmark building I had wanted to see in Vienna but could not seem to find. We walked up the hill, had a photo shoot (actually, Evan had a photo shoot) and then headed to the Children's Park. It was the best 2 euro we spent. We did the labyrinth maze, the reflecting maze, and then the hedge maze. Afterwards, we headed to the park and played on the merry-go-round with the 6-year olds.

Unfortunately, it was time to leave at this point, but not before Kayt and I had our own travel issues. The train we got on said it was going to Innsbruck, but it was the track we were suppose to leave from. Ends up that the train we were on separated at Salzburg, so at the Salzburg stop we had to run up 3 cars so we wouldn't end up in Innsbruck in the morning. We made it though!!


Munich

We got into Munich exhausted and fell asleep right away. We woke up in the morning and took the free walking tour. It was pretty cool to learn so much about Bavaria, especially because thats were my grandmother grew up (She didn't move to the US until she was 19). One different thing about Munich is all the memorials from WWII are discreet, unlike Berlin where memorials take up blocks. This was just the way munich decided to remember the war. After the tour, we climbed to the top of the church tower to get a view of the city before heading the English Beer Gardens. This beautiful park was complete with streams, ponds, a Chinese tower (random, I know). We had glasses of Radler and huge soft pretzels. The desserts were fried dough with applesauce. We then met up with Emily ( a girl who studied in Leeds) for the beer challenge. All in all, it was a great night. We got to sample all different kinds of beers. We started off with a wheat beer, which I LOVED. We went went to a beer museum, followed by the Haufber Haus. Chris actually won the beer challenge, which is probably why I woke up to him trying to snuggle with me in the top bunk of our 8 person hostel room.

The next day we went to visit Neuschwanstein Castle in the Alps. It was probably one the most unique castles I have ever seen. It is perched on the top of a hill in front of the alps. The backstory of it is crazy. King Ludwig II was a bit crazy, and he decided to build this fairy tale castle (with money he didn't really have). Upon his death, construction halted, so the castle is not as big as it was suppose to be. Also, only a fraction of the rooms within the castle are completed. After the tour of the castle, we went to the lake and Chris went swimming (it was jacket weather.... so everyone was looking at him a bit crazy, but he really wanted to do it!). We had dinner at a local hotel before heading back to Munich. I definitely wish I had been able to spend more time in Munich. Off to Athens!

Quote of the trip: "I am actually from the 1300s" -Chris, regarding his height.