Cinque Terre

As much as we loved the Germany/Austria portion of our travels, we were so excited to move on to Italy. We had heard so many amazing things about Cinque Terre, and couldn’t wait to get there and experience it for ourselves. The trip from Salzburg to Monterosso was a long one. It tookfour different trains to get us there: Salzburg to Innsbruck, Innsbruck toVerona, Italy, Verona to Milan, and finally Milan to Monterosso. We hadn't figuredin a time change on the way to Milan, so we weren’t really expecting to get offthe train so soon. I heard an announcement (in Italian) about arriving in Milanso I told Erin we were getting off soon. She was telling me that we still had an hour left and I finally convinced her we needed to get off the train. Let’s just saywe’re lucky we hadn’t fallen asleep on the train like we so wanted to, or who knowswhere we would have ended up!

When we got to Monterossoit was dark, and finding our hotel was a challenge. It took awhile, but weeventually came upon a street that sounded like the right one. I noticed a manfurther down the street and asked if he knew where Hotel Souvenir was. He said“Keep walking…keep walking…keep walking…” (it was sort of creepy but we followedhim, not really sure what sort of trap this random guy was trying to lead usinto) but then he says “Welcome to Hotel Souvenir!!” So we made it, and foundour room. That first night was eventful. I’m not really sure what time it was,but I wake up and see Erin standing up near my bed. There had been a bunkbedthat I had slept in the bottom bed of, and she had been in a different bed bythe window. She said she had felt sort of itchy, and woke up, clicked on heriPad to see what time it was, and from the light of the iPad saw a ton ofbedbugs scurry away. They had been all over the bed. She was super grossed out,and I feel bad but I was sort of still asleep through all of this so I wasn’ttoo sympathetic, telling her to just sleep in the other bed (sorry Erin). Butthings worked out well, because when we checked in they told us we may have tochange rooms after the first night, which we did the next morning. It was muchnicer, and most importantly, bedbug free.

The following three days were perfect, consisting of beach,sun, good food, more sun, more beach, wine, the best pizza I’ve ever had,hiking, gelato, gorgeous views, and beautiful little towns along the coast.It was the perfect way to wind down our trip, and relax before we moved on tothe place we would be spending the semester.

On the second full day in Cinque Terre, we did the hikebetween the five towns. It was literally breathtaking at some points. We wereboth practically giddy with happiness to be experiencing these places. It was alittle surreal and dream-like.When we started the hike and bought our Cinque Terre card,they told us the trail between two of the towns, Corniglia and Manorola, wasclosed, but we could take a train in between or hike a different detour trail.Well, we wanted to say we hiked the whole thing, so we opted for the detour. Weshould have maybe guessed it would be a little challenging when we went forawhile without seeing any other hikers. Up until this point the hike was nottoo strenuous, but now it was the middle of the afternoon, we were sweatinglike crazy, and walking uphill for what felt like forever. The normal trailbetween Corniglia and Manorola is supposed to take about 45 minutes, but thistrail probably took over 2.5 hours. We were pretty exhausted by the end, butgot to see some cool things that the other hike doesn’t have, like this tieredvineyard on the side of the cliff. We maybe stole a few grapes (hey, there weremoments when we thought we were never going to see the end of this hike…) Buteventually we made it to the last town Riomaggorie, and took a train back toMonterosso, and ended the day with delicious pasta and wine.

Austria

By the time we reached Vienna, we had kind of hit the slump of traveling for over a week, and were pretty tired. It was a little overwhelming because there seemed like there was a lot we could do, but we had a hard time deciding on anything, and only had two nights there. After checking into the hostel and stashing our stuff in the dorm room, where we later met girls from Finland, Germany, and two adorable sisters from Korea, we went to find something to eat.  It was one of those times when really nothing looked appealing for some reason, and we walked for what seemed like forever. Eventually we found something, and were much happier with food in our stomachs.

We spent our one full day in Vienna going to a Museum of Music (mainly to get out of the heat for awhile, it was HOT that day), seeing St. Stephen’s church and climbing over 300 steps to see the view from one of the towers, and then going out to Shonbrunn Palace in the afternoon and touring some of the rooms and seeing the beautiful gardens (for some reason we went to a ton of gardens/parks throughout the trip). In the evening we went to a restaurant in the center of the Museumsquartier area, which was really good. It wasn’t particularly Austrian, but it was a cool place and the people watching was fun.

Salzburg was quaint, sometimes bordering on cheesy, but it was a pretty and slow-paced town, which was perfect for this point of the trip. The first night we walked around by the river, and it was pretty to see the different buildings at night. Some of the highlights of the rest of our time in Salzburg:

Seeing some of the “Sound of Music” sights. Both us being fans of the movie, we wanted to see some of the sights from the movie, but didn’t want to really do the official Sound of Music tour. We did do a basic Salzburg city bus tour, though, and at one of the stops we saw a palace on the map and asked the bus driver what it was. He said it was what they used as the front entrance of the Von Trapp house in the movie, and it wasn’t too far of a walk to get there. So Erin and I hiked down this dusty road and eventually found it. Nothing too exciting, but the hunt was more memorable than if a tour had taken us directly there!

Trying to do a load of laundry with all the settings in German...

 Two different kinds of strudel:

Apple

Goat Cheese and Spinach

We went to an art exhibit called “Alpen”, which I really liked. It has all different styles of art that centered around the general theme of the nearby Alps, and how they have changed over time.

The view of Salzburg from an old fortress we sort of stumbled upon:

And some other lovely sights:

Munich Highlights

On our last morning in Prague, we made it to the train station, got our Eurail passes stamped and activated, and found our train to Munich. I have realized that I love train travel. I love how they are very reliable and pretty much always on time. I love the ease of just being able to hop on board without the hassle of security and things that flights have. I love seeing the countryside and different sights pass by the window. I love how the little snack cart always comes by even though we never bought anything from it, because each time I think of Harry Potter and hear “Anything from the trolley?” in my head. So yes, I enjoyed our various train trips, even though a few were more stressful than others.

When we made it to Munich, we had a little difficulty locating our hostel, but eventually found it. The hostel in Munich was probably my favorite of the trip. It just had a really fun atmosphere and was pretty well located. That first night in Munich we walked a really long ways, just seeing what sort of things we would want to check out during the next three days. There was a bar on the main floor of the hostel that was pretty busy when we got back, so we stopped for “one beer” and thought we wouldn’t stay very long since we were pretty tired. Well, at 3 am we were still there, and it had been a lot of fun. I had thought that there would have been mostly American students staying there, but most of the people we met were from Australia, and we talked to some guys from Holland too. When I first started talking to the guy from Holland, I thought he had said he was from Ireland. So I was all excited and was talking about how I was going to be living there this semester, and he couldn’t believe it. I thought he seemed a little too surprised, and then sort of confused when I talked about where I was going to be, which is when I realized he had said Holland and not Ireland.  But it was very fun talking with people from all over the world and hearing about where they had traveled so far and where they were headed next.

The next night as Erin and I were headed out to find something for dinner, we had a “small world” moment as we were waiting to cross the street. The girls standing right in front of us looked really familiar, and we realized they were our friends from St. Ben’s. We probably made sort of a scene on that street corner because we were so excited we had just run into each other. We joined them for dinner, realized they were staying in the place right next door to us, and we ended up spending most of the next two days seeing Munich with them.

Some of the highlights:

The free walking tour we took, which was very informational.

Trying some German beer.

The HUGE, lovely park.

Our day trip to the Dachau concentration camp Memorial was very informative, disturbing, and pretty depressing, but definitely and memorable and worthwhile way to spend a day.

Some other various photos:

(Yes, they are surfing in the middle of a city park!)

Prague Photos

(Note: This was written on August 31st) 

As I begin to write this, I am at the airport in Rome waiting for my flight to Dublin! This is my first time flying alone, but so far everything has gone smoothly.  I’m not really sure where to start since so much has happened in the last two and a half weeks, but I will try to fill you in on the highlights. I will probably break it all up into a series of posts, so stay tuned!

I wrote a little already about our time in Prague, which we really enjoyed. Here are some more photos from the first few days of our trip, which seems like a really long time ago now!