Munich!

sooo a bit delayed but I have gotten caught up in some random things this week, but more on that later. Munich! It was supposed to be Berlin but hey whats a euro trip without some random adventure and homelessness! We got into the Paris train station a bit after dinner time so we were tired hungry and a bit irritable already. We finally figured out where the ticket booth was just to learn that the night train(we had planned on booking it in spain but bc of our troubles we didn't end up doing that) was full. As were the trains to Berlin for the next 3 days or so because it was easter weekend. Sooooo, bummed we got out of line and sat down opened up the map and tried to find a new place. We settled on Munich bc we still wanted to see Germany. So we asked about a night train there but again were told that it was booked. But there was one the next night so we jumped at that one and booked it. However that left us stranded in Paris with no where to stay. We walked outside and found a McDonalds, which normally I would turn my nose up at but it was familiar and there and I was starving, so we went in. It was the first fast food I had had in over 4 months! needless to say not all that amazing lol. We decided to save money and sleep in the train station, which wasnt thrilling but it seemed decent. But then around 1am we learned that it closed lol. sooo out on the streets at 1am we went to the first hotel we could find booked their only room(two twin beds for 3 ppl...we pushed the beds together and i slept on the crack oh boy!) and slept there till check out the next day lol. Then we spent our day in Paris at Notre Dame by our fav crepe station of course! and after about 4 hours there we moved to the train station to sit for 4 more glorious hours on a tile floor haha.

Finally on the train we found out Suzanne and Allisons good friend was in the cabin right next to us! go figure so we spent most our trip in Munich with Jessica and Amber. Sleeping on a night train in a chair is about as comfortable as sleeping on an airplane with bad turbulents. but i was excited to be in germany so all of that was forgotten! We bought easter candy in the train station to celebrate easter lol. Then we took an amazing walking tour of the city. The same company was putting on a pub crawl that night so we decided to do that as well after going to the hostel to shower and change. The pubcrawl was soooo much fun. I gave most of my drinks away since I'm not a beer fan. But I did split a stein with allison just to say ive done it lol. we went to Hofbrauhaus as well as 2 beer gardens and a hostel bar.

The next day we went to see Neuschwanstein castle. Which is by far my fav castle in all of europe. I saw it when i was younger but didn't remember much of it so I didn't mind seeing it again. We spent the whole day out there. I got sweet bavarian snow balls and they were soooooo good! Even tho i dropped the last few on the ground :( and allison yelled "oh no she dropped her balls!" and everyone turned and looked at us lol good times. then we took it easy this night since it had been a long day.

day three was spent at the dauchau(sp?) concentration camp. I won't go into details but it was very depressing yet informative. There was one girl that was driving us crazy she took pics of everything and i do mean everything. It just felt wrong somehow. but that was a fun day too!

that concluded our trip to munich. I think it was better than Berlin even could have been. Our weather was perfect and everything we saw was great!

Pics are up already on photobucket under Munich, Germany.

More on Italy later!

incase you are still pondering what it is that has kept me so preoccupied it would be my crazy nutrition interest! I found a site called spark people and its amazing! I can put in everything I eat and all my exercises and it runs tons of charts, graphs etc and makes u really realize how you are eating! Also it tracks my work outs and has tonnnnnnnnns of articles to read and I promise I have read almost all of them haha. and also the blogs i keep on keep me busy!

I am making these when i get home! all who are around are going to be recruited to try them! :) http://www.loveandoliveoil.com/2009/01/strawberry-lemonade-cupcakes.html

Barcelona!!!!!!!

The first stop on our Euro trip! We took a bus up to Dublin and flew to Barcelona. Rain rain rain. We brought the Ireland weather with us to Spain. Our beds at the hostel were terrible. I had a huge sink hole in the middle of mine. I folded my blanket up and put it in the hole and it made me level with the rest of the bed(yes the mental picture is right lol). We got up the next day and walked to Las Ramblas(the main street) and saw a market so we walked through it. It had so many types of fruits,veggies,meats etc I have never even seen some of them before. We all got big cases of fresh strawberries to eat with lunch. After that we walked along Las Ramblas and looked at the shops etc. It was raining so hard so we went to Suzanne's hostel to eat lunch(pb&j the first of many) and we spent the next 4 hours there waiting for the rain to let up even just a little. But no such luck so we went back out and Suzanne's friend showed us around the city a bit. We saw the buildings designed by Gaudi(look at the pics they are really cool). We walked until I was so wet i said I wanted to go back to the hostel. We went back and waited till dinner. We ate at a little Italian place just around the corner so we wouldn't have to walk far. It was really frikin good lol.

the next day it was still raining but a bit lighter. We went shopping on one of the streets and I found the "Claire" skirt that I have been looking for. We shopped until lunch and went to Suzanne's again for more pb&j. After lunch we went to see the Sagrada Familia. Its a church that has been under construction for over a hundred years and is still not done. But its really awesome(see pics). For dinner we didnt want more pb&j so we went to the store and all went in on ham and cheese and bread for sandwiches. We also got more stuff to make more pb&j since we were starting to run low lol. There was another shop we walked by the had the coolest clothes ever I wish we had them back in the states. But I got another skirt lol its really cute and was worth it.

day 3 beach day! Today was sunny and really stinkin hot! We walked to the park designed by Gaudi. We had to take the metro to it and then saw the hill we had to climb. It was seriously the biggest hill i have ever seen. It was so steep they had to put in escalators at the top to help ppl get up the hill! But once we got up there we walked around the park taking pics. Then we saw this cross up on a hill with ppl standing around it and wanted to get there soooo we found how ppl did it and we climbed through the fence just like them lol and ate lunch looking over the city(more pb&j). then we got kicked out by the cops haha and went back into town. Then we spent our last afternoon at the beach! we have so many funny stories from this trip that i have not put in here so maybe ill get to share those with everyone soon. For dinner we got traditional tapas which are basically appetizers only u order a few of them and its dinner. It was def not good but it was a fun experience and suzanne and allison had way to much sangria haha and were very entertaining.

travel day: getting on the trains to paris from barcelona was a huge ordeal and the people were mean and unhelpful. they tried to make us pay almost 200 euro for a train even tho we had our eurail passes which means they should be almost free. but eventually 3 trains later we managed to make it to paris around dinner time 12 hours after the journey started lol.

Barcelona pics are up!

http://s12.photobucket.com/albums/a212/accidentallynlove05/Cork/Barcelona%20Spain/

Munich to come tomorrow!

Europe Trip

Well I am officially back home in Cork! Ireland is showing us how much it missed us and giving us rain for the next 7 days straight oh boy! I was trying to figure out how exactly to post about all of the cities so that everyone can hear all about it but still have time to read them considering I expect each to be fairly long. So I think I will do it a city at a time. Meaning one post per city and I will try to put up about one city a day for the next few days. I will add pictures as fast as my computer will let me but doing 4 at a time when I took somewhere around 700-800 takes a while as you can imagine lol. But a few exciting things to note at the moment.
-we celebrated being in cork the entire walk home by screaming laughing and being random
-i have never been so happy to see dirty dishes in the sink and rain outside when i got home
-I'm pretty sure if i walk any more my feet will go on strike and remove themselves from my body
-I spent way too much money...but it was totally worth every cent spent!
-Today I got my mail and a big box from the Colorado gang and it was amazing! the first real Dr.pepper I have had in 111 days!
-Last night we missed the last bus from the airport and had to pay for a taxi and it was the first car/non bus vehicle i have been in in 111 days how crazy is that!?
-I have been out of the US for 111 days! and i only have 29 more left here!

And this was what I lived out of for the last 2 and a half weeks, i gotta say I impress myself sometimes...


Details and pictures on Barcelona Spain coming tonight or tomorrow!

life update...

So life is about to get very interesting! I leave tomorrow morning for Spain Germany and Italy!!! I can't believe it. But I am ready to head out because I have no eaten a decent meal since before I left for Dublin. I didn't want to go to the store when I got back on monday so I have been cleaning out the fridge. I officially have eaten easy mac like 6 times since monday bleh no more! But I have almost nothing left in my fridge now...just some cheese and butter yummy. I am all packed and I can't believe I managed to get enough stuff for 16 days of traveling in one backpack. I'm also packing like an entire loaf of bread worth of pb&j for the trip to save money. After this I won't ever want to see pb&j or easy mac ever again haha.

I'm meeting up with a friend(Rocky) from home in Germany and I'm very excited to see people from home! :) I'm a little worried about getting run over by cars though because apparently only the UK drives on the "wrong" side of the road, which I have become accustomed to. I have a feeling I will look the wrong way before crossing the street. But hopefully I don't forget!

I am some how managing to fit my computer also in my backpack so I will try to update as much as I can while I'm gone. We have free wifi at most of the hostels. I will try to pull myself away from the beach long enough to post ;) I have a feeling I will need to invest in some sunscreen while gone though because the lack of sun my skin has seen here in Ireland.

Oh and get this now we are out of the rainy season here and things are turning brown lol. I guess I can't have it both ways..oh well my allergies sure don't care if its green or brown. I am hoping to run away from those as well on this trip because I can't find allergy meds here to save my life, but they will be gone before some from home could be sent.

I only have 47 more days here in Ireland and that does not count the next few weeks that I won't even be IN Ireland. wow.

and last but not least shout out to Cole for turning in my stats papers while I am gone because my teacher sucks and changed the due date from after I get back to before I get back. lame. but thanks Cole I owe you some beer or food or something!

ps I realize the descriptions on the dublin pictures are not showing up...I'll work on figuring that out!

Dublin

hey all! So just got back from Dublin on monday night. We left around 5am Saturday morning to catch an early flight out of cork. We had an interesting experience at the airport. we sat down next to the bathrooms waiting to get on the plane. While sitting there stephanie went into the bathroom and while she was in there a GUY walked out of the girls bathroom! I thought this was hilarious since the guy and girl bathrooms were very clearly marked. It got better though. Because a minute or so later ANOTHER guy walked INTO the girls bathroom haha and then came running out looked up at the sign and ran over to the guys bathroom. Stephanie came out and I was dying of laughter and she said "there was a guy in there!" and I told her not one 2! Apparently the first guy I saw came out of the stall and asked her if she was in the wrong bathroom or if he was hah. Then as if it couldn't get better...a GIRL went into the mens bathroom. hahaha then she came quickly back out looked at the sign and went into the girls. Now we were watching and waiting for more because apparently the Irish have trouble with the separate bathroom concept. then a guy and his wife stopped outside the womens bathroom. we figured we might get a double on this one. but the man walked right into the womens bathroom and his wife just waited outside. THEN he came back out handed her something and went BACK IN! haha this was like the funniest thing i have seen in months. but that's all we had time to see because we had to board the plane.

once in Dublin we checked into our hostel which was not as nice as the last one but it wasn't terrible. We saw Christ Church, went into the crypt below which was pretty cool. We got some food at the grocery store so we wouldn't have to eat out as much and could save money. We ate at this place called abrakababra for dinner and it was terrible lol i hardly ate any of what I bought but oh well. We called it an early night so we could start the next day early. Sunday we went to New Grange. It is basically a really friking old tomb made to look like a hill. It is said important people are buried there etc. But it is older than the pyramids and supposed to be the biggest tomb around. It was pretty cool we got to go inside of it and it was very tiny compared to how large it looks on the outside. That's about all we had time to do on sunday but we went to a pub when we got home and watched a soccer match that was on and got some ice cream from a vendor at the mall, which is my first ice cream since being in Ireland yum! Monday we saw the national museum and also Dublin Castle. Look at the captions under the pictures for more details that I learned about there because they were really interesting and little known facts! Ps as of 2011 Ireland will have had female presidents for 21 years straight how cool. Then we found crepes for 2 euro which is really cheap so of course I got one! :) but then had to catch my plane which I cut it close on because I had to stand in line for security for over an hour! But I'm back now for a few days and start my big trip on monday! :)

ps pictures are up in the cork folder under Dublin!