Finally, the last post of Spring Break!

I love that paper chains are being made in my honor :) I would start one if I wasn’t going to be travelling most of rest of my time here. I’m so excited to get home!! I just finished my last exam today, which went really well! I take off for Ireland and Scotland tomorrow so I thought I’d get another post in before leaving. Then I can blog about that trip right away!

One of the last three cities of my Spring Break was Berlin, Germany. What I loved about Berlin was the amount of history the city has. Of course the recent nature of the history makes it a bit more exciting than some. We did a walking tour of the city our first day, here’s what we saw:

Brandenburg Gate – It is a monument of victory and it’s on Pariser Platz (Paris Square) to mark the victory when the Allies captured Paris after the overthrow of Napoleon in 1814 - "Victory over Paris"

Also found on Pariser Platz: Pretzel stand! Very tasty

Hotel Adlon – Michael Jackson dangled his baby from one of those balconies

Holocaust Memorial for the Jewish victims – takes up a whole block in a busy part of town so people had to think about it when they passed. This monument was incredible.

Hitler’s bunker was underground right here, it is now a carpark

Berlin Wall

Checkpoint Charlie - best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War

Museum Island – pictures of Hitler show him giving a speech from the steps of the Berlin Cathedral on the right

Later that night we went on a tour of the Reichstag, which now houses the German parliament.

Inside Reichstag, It has a glass dome roof similar to the city hall in London that I pictured in one of my first posts, they were designed by the same architect, Norman Foster.

Next was Scandinavia – we visited Copenhagen, Denmark and Stockholm, Sweden. My favorite part of Copenhagen was The Little Mermaid statue. The guys didn’t get it, so I had to explain that there is a statue similar in a fountain in Kimballton, Iowa, which has a Danish history. Near the mermaid statue, Copenhagen has a star shaped island, which used to serve as a citadel. The next day we just walked around and enjoyed the city. We went to the top of the Round Tower to get a view of the city and saw Christianborg Palace and Nyhavn, a well known canal, possibly more "Copenhagen" than the mermaid statue to everyone who's not from Audubon County.

The Little Mermaid

A Danish Windmill!

Copenhagen from The Round Tower

Nyhavn

Last city of our trip: Stockholm. We stayed with a guy who is in Alex and Kyle’s fraternity named Colton. He showed us around a bit and saw the Nobel museum, though it was about to close so we didn’t get to see it. The next day we got a tour of City Hall. The Blue Hall of City Hall is where the Nobel Prize banquet is held, so that was cool to see. We had to catch a plane in the middle of the day so we didn’t get a ton of time in Stockholm. It was still a fun stop and very pretty!

Sergel’s Square, where a lot of stuff happens according to Colton

Pretty blue water everywhere

City Hall

Nobel Prize banquet hall

PHEW, feels good to get that all blogged about! Perfect timing because I will have more to talk about when I get back from Ireland and Scotland!

Where was “Fireworks” by Katy Perry shot? Or “Diamonds” by Kanye West?

Yep! Budapest and Prague, respectively. Alex and I have been trying to watch a movie shot in each of the places we’ve visited, Gladiator, Munich, Da Vinci Code, etc., but all we found for Budapest, Hungary and Prague, Czech Republic were music videos, which is almost as cool of a place to see the cities you’ve been.

So after Vienna we headed to Budapest. After getting settled into our “Homemade Hostel” which was another one of our favorites because it had such a homey feel, Alex, Kyle and I went to the Szechenyi Baths, which is just a big bath house that people go to to relax and swim. There are indoor baths of different temperatures throughout the building. Sounds kind of like the old Roman Baths that my family and I visited in Bath, England! That night we walked along the Danube River to see all the bridges at night, it was so pretty!

Alex and me at the baths

The first place (since the ports on the cruise) that didn’t use Euros.. it was kind of exciting!

Green Bridge

Chain Bridge and the Royal Palace (The courtyard of the palace is at the end of Katy Perry’s video which we saw the next day)

Chain Bridge again, sorry there are so many of the bridges, but bridges on a river at night make the prettiest pictures!

The next day we did a walking tour of the city. We saw St. Stephen’s Basilica, the castle and learned about how one side of the city is called Buda and the other side across the river is called Pest, which actually sounds like Pesht. We also hiked up a large hill to the Citadel, a fortress, and later got food at their Central Market Hall which was just a huge market. We tried Langos, a flat deep-fried dough with toppings similar to pizza. It wasn’t the best; I was thinking one with some powdered sugar would be good, like a funnel cake. :)

We crossed the river so I am on Buda side and you can see Pest in the background

Their Liberty Statue at the Citadel

After Budapest we took our second sleeper car to Prague! On our first day we roamed around the city and got a walking tour again. We saw Old Town Square with the Astronomical Clock. I tried a langos again with nutella, a chocolate spread, this time. It was so good with the sweet chocolate on it instead of the pizza toppings like we had in Budapest. Here are some pictures from the first day.

The Astronomical Clock

Charles Bridge and the Castle Quarter (up on the hill)

We were there during Easter weekend so this is the Old Town Square with all the Easter décor

Alex and I walked along the river that night and saw Charles Bridge by night

The next day we decided we would check out the Castle Quarter and on the way we saw a sign for sky diving. The guys were all excited and called the number, while I sat there in my dress thinking, this is not what I planned on doing today, weren’t we headed to the castle, guys? But they got it all lined up for us to go later that day so we still went to see the castle then I got a chance to change, aaannnd.. we went sky diving!

Me headed to the Castle

Getting all buckled up

Me, Alex, Dylan and Kyle, ready to jump out of an airplane about 13,000 feet above ground.

Alex and me afterwards

We all went tandem, which is when you’re buckled up to someone who knows what they’re doing with a parachute. We got in a little plane and got up to 4000meters (about 13,000 feet) and started jumping out of the plane. It was so crazy, I almost couldn’t wrap my mind around what I was doing as I was doing it. At first it was a little uncomfortable; when I was free falling at the beginning we were going so fast that my eyes were watering really badly so my vision was blurred. It was also pretty cold up that high! Then once my skydiving buddy (who didn’t speak very good English, by the way) pulled the parachute, it was a lot more pleasant. I got to turn us by pulling the cords to the chute. On the landing we both just lifted our legs up and skidded to a stop on our bums. It was an awesome experience, but now that I’ve tried, I was thinking I probably wouldn’t pay to do it again. We met some guys, though, who had skydived over the Alps, so I thought maybe if I got a chance to do that, I would consider doing it again because that view would be so amazing!

Only three more cities on my spring break, so those will be coming up soon!

A Change of Scenery

I’m in the finals period at Swansea University and just finished one today! It feels good to be done with two of my three exams, and I think they both went really well. It’s been crazy having so much time to study for them (3 tests in 12 days vs. 5 tests in 5 days at Iowa State). I have been taking advantage of it though, and am finally getting back to my blog before I start studying for my last test.

After exploring Italy, we got a little change of scenery with Germany and Austria. We took a sleeper car to Munich, Germany, which was a very convenient way to travel when we had an 8 hour train ride. It really made the time pass by quickly! Once we made it to Munich we planned out our time there including the things we wanted to see, places we wanted to eat, and decided that we could use one of our days as a short “day trip” from Munich. This is when Alex (my boyfriend, if I have forgotten to mention) and I decided to head to Salzburg, Austria for a day. We had train passes which made it super easy to hop on any train you wanted to any country you wanted.. if it happened to be on the set list of 25 named by the Eurail system.. but still it was very convenient. So Alex and I saw the Mirabell Gardens and the Salzburg Castle – scenes from The Sound of Music. It was a very pretty town, almost surreal.

Mirabell Garden

Mirabell Garden

Beautiful view from the Salzburg Castle

When we got back to Munich we visited the BMW show room and the site of the 1972 summer Olympics. Munich, a movie about the massacre of Olympic athletes in the ’72 games, is on my “to watch” list. We also visited the Hofbrauhaus, which used to be an old brewery, but is now just a huge tourist attraction that is a beer hall serving only its own brew. The next day, a full day in Munich we took a walking tour, got a bird’s eye view of the city, and ate sausage in the English Gardens. It was so nice to get away from the pastas and pizzas of Italy and get the meat and potatoes that Germans love.

just grabbing a liter – only size you could order for most of the items

Glockenspiel

View of Munich, that’s the TV tower in the distance and to the far right is the BMW headquarters

English Gardens

Our next stop was Vienna, which is well known for its arts and culture scene. What better way to experience this than attend the Opera? They offer standing seats for 4 Euros, which seemed like a deal we couldn’t pass up. We saw Faust in French and had little screens with subtitles in English. The standing section was just packed with people though and I didn’t have a screen for the first half of the opera. I still really liked the experience, but a chair and subtitles throughout would have made the three hours a lot more enjoyable. We also saw Schönbrunn Palace, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and the Dorotheum, which was like an auction house with very expensive things inside (we didn’t stay for long). Then we went to a little town called Grinsing outside of Vienna at the bottom of the Vienna Woods. This town was known for its wine making so we went to a wine tavern and then made our way up the woods (by bus).

All of us in front of the Opera house

Inside

Schönbrunn Palace and Vienna in the background

trying the house wine at a Grinzing Heuriger, or wine tavern

View of Vienna from Vienna Woods

Well, time to go make some dinner. I have 6 days to prepare for my next exam so I’m sure you’ll hear from me again soon!

My Italian Experience

I left off with us porting at Venice, which is where the group I had been travelling with kind of split up. I travelled with Alex, Kyle and Dylan from here on out. In Venice we got to ride a gondola, and see San Marco Square including the Basilica, Doge’s Palace and Campanile, where we got an awesome view of the city. We were excited to get pizzas, pasta and gelato, and liked the seemingly low prices. Once we got our first bill we saw that they tag on a cover charge (for sitting in their restaurant) and beverages are really expensive, so they seem cheap when you check out the menu and then you still end up paying quite a bit. I didn’t realize before my visit to Venice that to get around they either boat on the canals or walk, it was just so unique that there were no roads in this city. We only stayed in Venice for one day, but really did a lot of cool things.

Rialto Bridge on the Grand Canal

San Marco Square

A view of Doge’s Palace from the Campanile

Next we headed to Rome, which was awesome - I saw so many cool things, but it was definitely the worst city when it came to tourists. Without planning it, we ended up in Italy during their “free week” where national sights were free - something to do with promoting their history. So things like the Coliseum and Roman Forums were free! And actually since we didn't know about this "free week" we almost got scammed. We were waiting to meet up with Dylan and his friend, Dave who was studying in Rome, when a guy told us about this great deal - a tour of the Coliseum and Roman Forums for only 10 euros. We thought that sounded like a great deal so he gave us a white sticker and showed us to a group. We noticed the tour guide was already talking to the group and no one else seemed to be wearing a white sticker. Alex said he thought we just got scammed so we went to go talk to the guy who showed us the group. He showed us that other people did have white stickers as well (pointing to one person). We luckily got our money back and then Dave told us that the guy was basically asking for 10 euros to show us a free tour. I'm glad we got that figured out and then had Dave as our free tour guide for the day!

Coliseum by day

Coliseum by night (we walked back by for the night view later on)

Inside the Roman Forums

After the Coliseum and Roman Forums, Dave showed us to the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, and the Pantheon. During our second day in Rome we went to Vatican City to see St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican Museum, and Sistine Chapel, and we also saw Castel Sant’Angelo.

Pantheon

Trevi Fountain

The Spanish Steps

St. Peter’s Square

St. Peter’s Basilica

Unfortunately there were no pictures allowed in the Sistine Chapel.

Sant’Angelo Bridge

Vatican City from Castel Sant’Angelo

Castel Sant’Angelo

The four of us at an awesome Italian Dinner - We had to alternate between pizza and pasta for each meal! That's literally all they eat! - Oh and Gelato, we were doing two-a-days sometimes - it was soo good!

Next up was Florence, we trained in and met one of Kyle’s friends, Anna, who let us stay with her for a night. We saw the Boboli Gardens, Duomo, Michelangelo’s David and Ponte Vecchio. We had a great time and even got to go to Pisa, which we hadn't planned on doing.

Inside the Pitti Palace in the Boboli Gardens

Alex on Ponte Vecchio, the bridge that’s lined with shops

Duomo

We did a walk called the Michelangelo Walk to get this awesome view of Florence

Ponte Vecchio again in the background

The next day we went to Pisa

Leaning Tower of Pisa

Alex didn’t do the greatest job of lining my finger up.. But still cool :)

Kyle, Alex and me – notice the guy to the right of me.. The street was just lined with people posing different ways with the tower.

We all loved Italy a lot, but after the time we spent there we were ready to head to Germany to mix up the entrees a bit from pizza and pasta to meat and potatoes!