You can easily tell that "H-io" (as the locals pronounce Rio) is a beach town. Even if you're not strolling across the miles of beach-side promenade in neighborhoods like Copacabana and Ipanema that are nearly synonymous with exotic locale, people take their time making it from point A to B, and there is a hint of sea air across the city. In general, the city's vibe can be summed up as "why rush, why worry?" Rio was actually a pleasant surprise for me in many ways. I'd been told that the city was dirty and extremely unsafe, and movies like City [View Full Entry]

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Despite three tough grad-level midterms looming in the coming week, 31 classmates and I decided to take advantage of a three day Columbus Day weekend and trek to Iceland for a much needed break. After landing at 6:30AM and making the 45 minutes drive from Keflavik airport to Reykjavík amidst a cloudy sunrise, we were greeted in our hotel lobby with what we were to find out was a ubiquitous odor of rotten egg in many buildings. Referred to as “Iceland perfume”, the sulfur in the pipes keeps the briny hot water pulled from hot springs and pumped into buildings across [View Full Entry]

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We had gotten up really early in Amsterdam to make it to our EasyJet flight to London on time. The clientele on the airplane were quite varied, some were still drunk from a night out partying. I was sitting right behind a guy that had "Made in England" tattooed on the back of his neck. It reminded me of one of those "What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas" commercials with the glum or worn out-looking people on the airplane back home. We changed all of the remaining money from the several currencies we had into pounds and got used to [View Full Entry]

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Dave and I were regretting not having payed a few more Euros and upgrading to the first class sleeper train cabin. Things had seemed fine when we had started out in Munich with a pair of Irish schoolteachers - these guys looked and acted more like frat boys than teachers. But, the cabin was small and crowded, and we had people come in from random stops to take up their beds. Aside from that, the loudspeakers would blare every half hour announcing each stop 4 times, and some parts of the room were ice cold, while others were really warm, which [View Full Entry]

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We travelled much of the day, on three separate trains, and finally made it to Munich in the early evening. Our hostel was next to the train station in what turned out to be the "hostel district". After touring our surroundings and getting lost, and met some very fun Canadian girls who were some of our roommates at the hostel. We all made plans to meet up at a jazz bar with an open mic night later that night. Dave and I headed out that way, and after again getting lost, found the hidden away basement bar. Dave had brought his [View Full Entry]

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It took us way too long to leave Prague. When we finally found the car dealership in the maze that is downtown, we were greeted with the information that Eurocar's Cesky Budovice office would be closed when we were supposed to drop the car off. Their solution was to tack on the round trip bus fare for a guy from the Prague office to go down to pick up the car. We indignantly let them know that that was unacceptable, and after some tense moments, they were able to get the agreement of one of their Cesky Budovice agents to meet [View Full Entry]

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I was really excited to get back to Prague. It's one of the most beautiful places I'd ever been to, and when I'd been in 2004, there were some key things like the Jewish quarter that had been closed, and we hadn't gotten to see. After arriving exhusted on an overnight train from Ljubljana, we had issues flagging a cab. The only cabbie that picked us up didn't speak much English (odd from my recollection of Prague) and was also driving his wife in the front seat - odd as well. Turns out that it was an unlicensed cab, as we [View Full Entry]

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We were happy to leave Croatia, as it was wreaking havoc on our wallets. We also felt like we had a good feel for the country after having driven through much of it. We pulled up into Postogne, Slovenia, late at night, and checked into a hostel. The next day, we were hoping to take a trip into the caves of the Karsk region. Dave, being the big geology buff was very excited about this. After some initial trouble getting a phone card to work (and the subsequent stare-down that made me feel like I was in kindergarten again from the [View Full Entry]

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............................................ You all may have noticed that the volume of blog entries in the past few days has dropped down to nil... Travelblog crashed and was down for a couple of days, and a lot of data has been lost on their part. So until I do some fixing, most, if not all of my previous blog entries will be inaccessible, and a lot of the pictures will have to be reloaded... Not good times. ............................................ In any case, we left Dubrovnik, and headed to the airport to pick up our rental car. Getting in and speeding out of the airport [View Full Entry]

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We got into Dubrovnik much later than expected, sweaty, and tired. We tried our hardest to stay up for a bit and check it out, but after an hour of light touring, we were exhausted and went back to our Villa to nap, which ended up being several hours. We also discovered that it was really hot in Dubrovnik, even at night. The next day, we toured the city en force, along with hordes of other tourists. In fact, the place was tourist central. Unlike Kotor, it didn't seem like there was a single non-tourist related business set up. There were [View Full Entry]

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