Don't Stop Me Now
Cause I'm having such a good time, I'm having a ballTwo hundred degrees
That's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit
I'm traveling at the speed of light
And I'm back.
I've been back for about a week, but I've been too exhausted/jet lagged/lazy to get around to posting. Not to mention that it's taken a while to upload and resize my 400 odd pictures (the blessing and curse of digital cameras).
I had an absolutely fantastic time, one of the best experiences of my life - cliches be damned. It was non-stop touring, visiting, sight-seeing, partying, drinking, and dancing. I got about 3-4 hours of sleep a night, if that. Sometimes we just crashed for an hour and a half before getting on the bus the next day. I'm flat broke and still exhausted - but it was worth every penny and every lost minute of sleep.
Be prepared for pictures (click the links):
London
London is amazing (though it was disgustingly hot) - I was there by myself for the 4 days, so I spent all my time walking around trying to get in as many sights as possible:
- Me at the London Eye
- Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery
- Me at the British Museum when it was freaking 36 degrees outside!
- Westminster Abbey
- Crossing the Thames
- Me and the London Bridge
Berlin
- The Berlin Wall (there's surprisingly a lot of it left, all covered in either professional or amateur grafitti/art)
- Sachsenhausen concentration camp, just outside of Berlin (really eerie experience, also fairly disturbing)
- The Brandenberg Gates
- Square where the Nazi book-burnings took place
- Monument to German contributions to literature, and me for scale
- Hollocaust memorial, and Hitler's bunker where he killed himself
- Me and Amanda, my roomate, out having a beer with the group
- Oh the beer - 1 litre 'steins'
One of my favourites of the trip, it was also where I did the most (and hardest) partying.
- Prague Castle at sunset
- View from the Castle
- The famous Charles Bridge
- Some of us on the bridge
- Me in Old Town Square at night, walking with ice cream!
- View from the Powder Tower
- The entire Contiki Group - <3
- Me and Amanda at our traditional Czech Evening dinner
- The Boys
- After a hard night of dancing it up in a sweat-pit night club
- Cruise along the River Vltava
Vienna
- Vienna street at sunset
- The gorgeous Parliament building
- Mozart in the gardens
- Me and Goethe
- All dressed up at the Schonbrunn palace for dinner before the classical concert
- Me and Amanda at dinner
- The concert hall
- The last night in Vienna, we went to a nightclub - a photographer took our picture and actually posted it on their website! Check it out: www.gnadenlos.at
We had a short afternoon lay-over in Bratislava, where I oddly enough had McDonalds for lunch (trio and dessert cost me about 1.50 Canadian, hah!)
- Pretty fountain
- Weird War of the Worlds suspension bridge
- Quaint Church and typical street
- Painted Mozart busker dude
- Cute random statue
- Matt with another random statue
- Iron people suspended on wires over the street
Last, but far from least - my other favourite destination on the trip. It was stunningly gorgeous and so fascinating, plus the food was freaking amazing!
- part of the Millenium Monument, celebrating he 1896 Hungarian Land Conquest (special number that pops up all over the city, the Parliament building being 896 meters high)
- View from the top of Buda - Pest being on the right hand side of the Danube
- Mikey and I with the view
- The Chain Bridge
- The Parliament Building and it's stunning (and somewhat ostentatious) interior
- Pretty and blurry night shot of a light up building during our dinner cruise along the Danube
- Maggie and I at a open-air night club along the river
- Benny giving an unsuspecting girl "the spread" at said night club
- The famous and gorgeous Szechenyi baths where we relaxed for a wee while
- Random melting blue cow popsicle - decorated cows were spread throughout the city, for unexplained reasons
- Some of the gang chilling in a park
- Our last night of drinking, with Hans the coach driver at the hotel
To end this post full circle, here's a link to a quick video of us on the coach listening to our trips theme song - Don't Stop Me Now, by Queen. The bus had an iPOD hook up, so we listened to this song every morning. Such good memories!
posted by Joanna @ 4:31 PM
9 Comments:
Wow...sounds like an amazing trip! I'm doing my trip around Europe in November...can't wait! Nice template, btw! ;)
PS - I see that you are reading Outlander by Diana Gabaldon...I read that a few years ago and it is still by far my favorite book...Make sure you read all 6 books for the whole series! (sorry for posting 2 comments!)
Joanna, first things first: You are utterly gorgeous :D Whichever lucky man gets you better have the sense to hold on to you! :D
It looks like you had a really, really fantastic time and I'm only sorry now that I didn't get to meet up with you during the 4 days that you were in London. :)
Thank you so much for sharing your photos with us. :) It certainly makes me look forward to travelling in the near future! :D
Oh, and by the way: Welcome home. :)
thanks for stopping by, sandal - and it definitely was an amazing vacation! And yes, I am definitely enjoying Outlander, though I didn't know I was getting myself into a series! Thankfully I know someone who can lend me the other books.
aww, you're sweet Chorna. It is too bad we didn't get a chance to meet up in London, but I'm definitely planning on going back! Who knows, maybe Wimbledon next June :D
Wonderful pictures and story.
If you have a lot of digital pictures, you might also want to try flickr.com - it's free to sign up (it uses Yahoo accounts if you have one, Yahoo bought them), so the photos will stay out there forever, where I think photobucket only keeps them online a short while. Plus you can integrate it into blogger if you'd like.
Great pictures, Jo!
Europe is the shit! :D
Thanks for the postcard <3
Hope you get mine - I wasn't sure about which address to send it to.
Hey Jo glad you back OK and had a fantastic time - you visited a lot of the same places I did!!
The bus seems a really good way of doing things, having just travelled South Africa by bus the only negative is some days spending all day driving in the bus.
You photos look very good - unfortunately my camera was stolen at the end of my trip so lost loads. Hope you've recovered from the trip!
thanks for the comment, diva! And I have a flickr account, I didn't use it for the pics because it wouldn't let me upload all of them unless I paid a membership fee, seeing as I had 300-400 pics. Plus, I've have pics on photobucket for about 4 years now and they're still fine!
Jamie! Glad you got the postcard - I just moved, so my apartment address in Montreal has changed - but I'll be able to check my mail there for another week or so.
John, welcome back as well! That totally sucks about your camera, I would be so pissed off. Hope you had a good time as well :)
Fantastic pictures! Glad you had a good time, looked like an amazing trip.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home