Interlaken Again, the train rides through Switzerland are gorgeous!! Switzerland is so green! We passed by some gorgeous lakes and waterfalls. It's almost like the country can't decide what season it's in though, because when you look up, everything is blanketed with snow! Interlaken is in the middle of two lakes and surrounded by the Swiss Alps... and absolutely beautiful. Some highlights.... Paragliding! Interlaken is the home of extreme sports and we decided paragliding would be our sport of choice for this trip. I can't really afford it, but I went anyway and it was well worth it! We were shuttled up a mountain and attached to our paraglides and pilots (tandem paragliding). My pilot was a nice guy named Pashi and we took off by running down this grassy hill (800 m above sea level) ... read more

Cinque Terre The train ride wasn long from Pisa and it went though a bunch of industrial towns and tunnels... until suddenly we came out of a tunnel and saw the sea. It was gorgeous and we couldn wait to get off the trian! Beach We dropped the stuff at the hostel and went straight to the beach. The sun was out, but it was still a little chilly and I decided to wait until the next day to go for a swim. We went hiking the next day, but then spent part of the day after that back at the beach. The water wasn quite as warm as Barcerlona, but that was three weeks ago. The Hike We got a pretty early start to our hike. Cinque (5) Terre is five little towns built until ... read more

Florence Sorry for the delay in updates! Its been a while since Ive stayed at a hostel with free internet and the internet cafés in Italy were really expensive. Got a little bit of catching up to do, so here are some of the highlights from my first trip to Tuscany... Markets As soon as we (Katie, 2 guys we met in Rome that have become our travel buddies and me) dropped our stuff at the hostel in Florence, we wandered to try and find a little food. We wandered straight into the huge outdoor market area where people tried to convince us to buy their leather jackets, purses, wallets, belts, etc. Unfortunately, I don really see much of a need for a cute leather jacket for my possible future jobs... but Katie and both guys ... read more

Andalusia - Sevilla & Granada After a nice train ride from Madrid to Sevilla (where they showed High School Musical 3 on the train in English!), we managed to navigate our way on the buses and then through some small alleys to our hostel in Seville. Our hostel (HostelOne) was about a month old and really cute. It´s the best sleep I´ve gotten on the trip so far, which is great. We dropped off our stuff and went to explore the city a bit. Ending up at... Tapas & Gazpacho We found a nice tapas bar and ordered some Sangria... yum! Very nice after walking around in the hot sun because it´s much warmer down south. We had some yummy tapas to go with it. My favorite was bread with cheese (goat cheese I think) with ... read more

Unfortunately, I´m leaving Barcelona in a few hours; I don´t really want to because it´s been so much fun! I don´t have tons of time, so here are some highlights of the first stop of my Europe trip: Festival de La Merce- Human castles with people stacking on top of one another 10 people high! This morning there was a pyramid with lots of people on their hands and knees (though they also stood atop each others shoulders at other times) and then a little 5 year old kid climbs and stands on top! Last night I went to the fire run whre they run through a main street setting off sparklers and fireworks. I stayed pretty far back because I didn´t want my clothes to burn, but sparks still managed to reach me! The past ... read more