Spring Break 2k8

I apologize for it taking me so long to post this. After spring break I had two research papers due that consumed my life. Here are the stories, and I'll get more pictures up soon!

For my spring break this year, I first went to Prague and Budapest with my friend Lauren, and then I met up with two other friends in Dublin, Suzanne and Kristen.

We left Friday for Prague, and we got in fairly late. The bus station we were dropped off was fairly sketchy, but once we started walking we discovered a beautiful city! Our hostel was SO nice. If you're ever in Prague, stay at Sir Toby's Hostel. It was a newly renovated building that was very cozy. The staff was incredibly helpful, breakfast was cheap (and fabulous!), and we had feather blankets and pillows. That doesn't happen often in hostels, so we were pleasantly surprised.

That first night, we were just hungry and tired, so Lauren and I grabbed some food and then headed to the hostel bar for a drink. We ended up playing Scrabble with two guys that were Argentinian/Italian, yet they spoke English perfectly. It was my first time playing Scrabble, so I lost, horribly. It was still fun though.

Saturday we awoke to do the tourist thing. We headed up to the Prague Castle and happened to get there right at the changing of the guards. It was a HUGE deal. Heather and I saw the changing of the guards in Athens, but that's the only other time I've seen such a thing, and Prague blew Athens out of the water. Men played instruments from the second story windows of the building while a massive procession of soldiers switched out. It was really cool!


Then we went to St. Vitus Cathedral, which is unbelievably beautiful. The stained glass windows were huge, and each one was different and ridiculously ornate. The architecture there is very gothic, so standing in line we were looking up to scary gargoyles dripping water from their mouths. From there we headed down to Charles Bridge. There were a ton of people just walking down there. The bridge had statues lining the sides, and it was a great place to look out on the city.

Czech is easy to read...I don't know why Lauren was having such a hard time.


Charles Bridge from afar.


I'm touching this statue for good luck. I forget the story behind it. Oops!


John Lennon's wall.


That night we went to a place called U Sudu that Heather recommended to us. You walk in to a regular looking pub, but then you take the stairs down and it opens up to another huge room. Once you start walking around you find yourself in a labyrinth of different rooms and hallways to sit, drink, and just hang out in. It was my favorite bar I saw the entire spring break. It was weird though to be in a place that I knew Heather went to a lot last semester, yet she wasn't there with me.

The next day we walked around and shopped for a bit. We found Old Town Square and watched the astronomical clock change. It's famous, apparently, but it wasn't all that exciting. As the clock struck on the hour, statues rolled through two windows at the top.

This is me watching the clock, with a castle in the back.


That night was hilarious! We were walking around Old Town Square when we stumbled upon a little bar with live jazz music. We went down and had a glass of wine and listened to the band. They were pretty good too, so we were thrilled about that. After they stopped playing, we wanted to head somewhere else, but not many places were open on a Sunday night. The place we ended up going to was an Irish Pub in Old Town Square. We sat at a table, and then a group of middle-aged men came in wearing wigs. One was dressed as Elvis...and oh did he smell bad. I don't think sweat and spandex mix well together. It was entertaining to watch them drunkenly sing Elvis songs and make fools of themselves. When we got up to leave, Elvis put his arm around Lauren and didn't want us to go! I felt so bad that she had to get so close to his armpit, but we were able to leave unscathed.

Before running into Elvis. Old Town Square.


Monday we shopped and walked around a bit more. We found a really cool antique shop where I bought some unique necklaces. Prague has an obsession with puppets, which I didn't really like. Puppet shops were everywhere, and honestly, they were kind of scary. Overall though, I really enjoyed Prague. I really want to come back with Heather, so she can show me around!

The next day we took a 7-hour train to Budapest. We thought it would be a good way to see the countryside, but it was all really flat and not very exciting. Once in Budapest, we got to our hostel, which was not nearly as nice as Sir Tobey's in Prague, but it was clean and safe. The lady at the front desk was really nice too! The night we arrived was late too, so we just grabbed a bite to eat and then went to bed.

Wednesday was our tourist day in Budapest. After snapping only a few photos, my camera died, so I had to borrow pictures from Lauren! Budapest was a beautiful city though. I loved walking around and randomly finding a statue. They were everywhere. We rounded one corner, looked up, and saw a statue of woman that looked like she had been blown by a heavy wind into the corner of a building. It sounds slightly brutal, but it was actually very tasteful.

Budapest is divided by the Danube into Buda on the west and Pest on the east. The first day we walked to Buda first and went to the Fisherman's Bastion.


It was incredible. People were perched on a ledge and playing music while everyone looked onto Budapest. Next we went to a park on the north side of Pest and walked around for the afternoon. We saw the castle and the thermal baths. If we had been there for longer than one full day, we would have gone to the baths. Lauren had to get up early the next day to head back to Rome, so we called it an early night.

I had most of the day on Thursday to hang out in Budapest before leaving for Dublin. I bought my mom a present in Prague and wanted to mail it to her so that it wouldn't get broken with my remaining travels. On my quest to the post office, the first step was to get on the metro. You are supposed to validate your metro ticket before entering, but the ticket office is on the other side of the gates. It's just a hassle to go back and validate, plus I hadn't noticed the Metro security people being harsh at all. Bad decision. I get off at my next stop and ride the escalator to the top where a hoard of Metro security are waiting. I flash them my ticket, and they pull me aside because it wasn't validated. They were two butch women, and the one that pulled me over couldn't speak English, so the other one was translating. They talked to each other for a long time, then asked me for my passport! They finally told me that I needed to pay 6,000 forints (which is only about 25 euro), but I didn't have that much cash on me. They told me I was going to have to be escorted to an ATM to withdraw the money. It looked like they weren't going to give me my passport back, so I freaked out for a brief moment telling them I wasn't going anywhere without my passport. They gave it back, and I left with the short butch woman that didn't speak English. She waddled as she held on to my arm and smoked a cigarette. After withdrawing the money, I gave it to her quickly and was on my way.

I was so shaken up after that, I wasn't able to find the post office to mail the gift to my mom, so it travelled with me to four different countries! I arrived to Dublin without any problems and met up with Kristen and Suzanne at a pub. I got in around 10, so they were already out. It was funny though because I walked into a pub with my huge backpack and everything!! It was a great reunion though. The three of us had a great hug, and then we were off to another pub.


We didn't stay out too late that night because we wanted to get up early again. Suzanne and I were staying in this really nice hotel. It had a TV in the room! That's definitely a luxury for us who haven't even seen a TV in months.

Friday we wanted to go on a little day trip, so we headed to Killiney. It's about a 30-minute train ride out of Dublin, and it's the "posh" suburb. That part of the Irish coast is said to resemble the Sorrento coast. It's true. It was really beautiful. We climbed to the top of Killiney hill and looked out on the Dublin Bay. We sat for a while and watched a storm roll through. We also saw at least one rainbow a day while in Dublin. It must be those lucky Irish!






After climbing to the top, we started our descent without knowing where we were going. We were really hungry and on the prowl for a pub/restaurant/anything. We continued walking in a completely residential area, and I was honestly getting pretty disappointed.

It was a beautiful day though, so how upset could I really be?


We finally stumbled upon a quaint little city. We got there around 3 pm, so all the restaurants were closed because they had just finished lunch and were preparing for dinner. As we stopped to look at a map to get us back to the train station, a really nice woman stopped to see if we needed help. We chatted for a bit, and then she proceeded to ask us if we wanted to go back to her house for tea! We would have gone if we hadn't been so ravenous, so we declined and headed back to Dublin.

That night we stationed ourselves in a pub and ate and drank most of the night. Kristen came back with us the hotel and the next day we slept in a bit. Saturday we went to the Guiness Factory, which is surprisingly boring. It's amazing how much miscellaneous stuff they can put into a 7-story building. The old advertisements were really interesting, and I enjoyed the first floor that showed all the ingredients that go into Guiness. After that I was fairly bored. We did get to try one small glass of Guiness, which was delightful. I don't like Guiness usually because it's so heavy, but this was really good.

We discovered.


That day was the Wales v. Dublin rugby match, so after the Guiness factory, we headed to a pub to watch the game. Every pub was full of people watching the game. It was a lot of fun, but Wales won, so that wasn't so great. We called it an early night because we had to leave early in the morning on Sunday for Perugia.

All in all, spring break was great! I loved all the cities I went to. I think Budapest was the prettiest, Dublin had the nicest people, and Prague was the one I would like to come back to in order to see more.