Its been bothering me that I abandoned the blog towards the end of my trip to Europe last summer. I just got tired of making time every night to write the blogs and I didn't think anyone was reading them anyways. So I'm just gonna put some pictures from my last couple days in Europe: the rest of Amsterdam, a train-stop in Brussels, and Paris. I didn't want anyone who randomly stumbles across these blogs to think I became part of the seedy Amsterdam underworld or took some bad mushrooms and am wandering Dutch tulip fields naked. Even though this brings [View Full Entry]

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We decided to stick around Cologne for awhile, catch a train to Amsterdam a little bit after noon. Got our bags packed up, stored them in the hostel’s luggage room, and stepped out to check out the Ludwig Modern Art Museum and the shopping district, both which are conveniently located within steps of the Dom. Walked over to the Ludwig, a crowd was gathered around the Dom and street performers were abundant, bought our tickets, and wandered through all the strange and interesting modern art exhibits. The reason for us going to it was that they had an Andy Warhol exhibit [View Full Entry]

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Summer camp ended today. That’s staying at the Mountain Hostel felt like. It’s a small place and with no city to explore at night, its very easy to get to know everyone staying there. Richard and I decided to catch the 12:25 train from Interlaken to Basel and then finally from there to Cologne. Fortunately, the Mountain Hostel Gang (Chris, Rebecca, Allison, Tim, and the Aussie girls) needed to head out of town to their various next destinations around the same time so we all floated off the cliff from Gimmelwald at the same time. We had an hour or so [View Full Entry]

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The sun coming through the window woke me up at around 8:30am, Richard was gone already for his mountain-biking adventure. My bunk was in the back corner, right by the window, so when I sat up in bed, the snow capped Alps were peeping in on me. Got up, grabbed my clothes and walked downstairs to the showers. After, I went back up to pack up all my things and make my bed, the hostel locks you out of the place from 9:30 to 11 to clean the place, so it was a race against the clock. I didn’t know what [View Full Entry]

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Headaches in tow from last night, we woke up and took part in the free breakfast Balmer’s offers, which for me was oatmeal and fruit. We checked out at 10am and walked next door to a shop that rents scooters. It was only 25 Swiss Francs for two hours so we decided to go for it. Now I have never been on a motorcycle, dirtbike, or really any motorized two wheeled vehicle ever, so even these little “Dumb and Dumber” scooters were kind of intimidating. After the shopkeep showed us the basics of operating these machines, we strapped our nerdy [View Full Entry]

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We got to Milan Centrale station with about 45 minutes to kill before our train to Spiez, Switzerland rolled away, so we bought paninis and sat on the cool concrete floors of the station. When 10:30am came around, we boarded the train, and five minutes later we were headed towards Switzerland. It was a very scenic train ride throughout the Italian portion and the Swiss portion. In Italy, the train went along Lake Cuomo and of course as we approached Switzerland, the Italian Alps were before us and then in an instant they became the Swiss Alps. When we crossed the [View Full Entry]

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Said arrivaderci to Venice and took the train three hours northwest to Milan. On the train ride I could see the Dolomites off in the distance and they were basically saying with their snow-capped peaks “you gotta get through us to leave Italy”. Which I am bummed to do. Its strange, I have been in Italy nine days, I feel comfortable in the country, I am getting the hang of the language and just how the people operate. Great place to visit. Visit and living are two completely different things though. Made it to Milan. Big city, full of fashion and [View Full Entry]

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We caught the 10:55am train out of Bologna Centrale headed for Venice St. Lucia station. It was probably a two and a half hour train ride through the northeastern Italy, stopping in small towns made up of four separate words and the decent sized city of Padova. I like the whole process of taking trains places because you can look out the window and at least see the areas of a country you aren’t spending any time in. We crossed the causeway that connects mainland Italy to the island city of Venice. Hopped off the train, weaved through the station, and [View Full Entry]

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We headed out on the 12:25pm train to La Spezia from Riomaggiore. Was sad to see the cliffs and sea disappear. We had about an hour to kill till our train to Parma and I hate to say that Richard and I violated one of our cardinal rules here at this train station. We ate at McDonald's. We had just gotten kind of sick of eating pasta and pizza in a continuous rotation with a gelato sometimes in bewteen. I'll admit it though, it felt good to be in warm embrace of the Golden Arches. Caught the train to Parma. [View Full Entry]

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Started the day off heading up to the largest and most "resorty" of the five villages, Monterosso. We walked around the town and bit, had some gelato, and took the hopped the train back to Riomaggiore, or at least we thought we were. It was a direct train back to La Spezia which took us zipping past Riomaggiore and ten minutes later we were dumped off in La Spezia. So we had to wait 45 minutes for the next train to come and take us back to Riomaggiore. We spent most the day just hanging out in the town. Around [View Full Entry]

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