WOW! Things have been amazingly busy since my last post (I am aware that it was close to a month ago)! I am currently almost halfway through a 4-week intensive TEFL course in Prague, Czech Republic. I have been doing about 18-hour days that are chalk full of courses, lesson planning, grammar assignments, and teaching practices in front of students. However, all that is for another post! Right now I would like to tell you a little bit about my trip with Patrick...
First of all, it is important to know that Patrick, my best friend, has just graduated from physical therapy school at the University of New Mexico, this being one of the big reasons for his excursion to Europe. Congrats for that! Anyway, to the trip. Patrick and I met in Munich on July 27 and proceeded to tour Vienna, Budapest, Croatia, and Prague over the following two weeks. We loosely labeled it an 'eastern' European trip. It was quite the trip and was an absolute blast! Things were kept high paced, as we had a maximum of 2 days at any given destination; sometimes we only had a single day or a part day and overnight. Needless to say, this made for quite a significant amount of time in transit, as much of the traveling was done internationally. I will shamelessly compliment ourselves on our not missing a single bus (which accounted for the majority of transport) or train the entire trip.
As there are a TON of photos from these two weeks, I will just write a short blurb before transitioning into each location, but will primarily stick to captions.
Munich, Germany
Munich was great. We stayed with a man named Wolfgang and his family via the home sharing website called Air BnB. We had a ton of fun checking out the various palaces and gardens within the city and we decided that we wouldn't at all mind having our own personal gardens for meditation, writing, and just enjoyment. We also visited Dachau during our time in the area.
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| Pat enjoying his first German beer |
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| Nymphenburg Palace |
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| In the back of the Nymphenburg Palace walking around in the royal gardens |
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The gardens were huge, as you can see from the distance to the palace
in this photo. They had countless trails winding through them and there
were four small palaces within it. |
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| Inside the palace....not poorly decorated |
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A bulldog keeping watch over the street. Made
me think of my sister and her Gonzaga
mascot |
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| Jewels and loot of the Rreidenz's treasury |
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| BMW museum |
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| Olympic park |
Vienna, Austria
Next on the city of Vienna! Patrick and I decided that the city was not a city that we would like to live in, but that it was an extremely interesting city to visit. It seemed very eclectic and more free-spirited than Salzburg, which is the only other Austrian city that I have been to. Salzburg seemed quite western European and we agreed that Vienna began to look much more similar to something we would expect to find in eastern Europe. We thought that Vienna maybe represented a defining point between the cultures of the east and west.
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| The parliament building |
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| St. Charles Church |
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| Hanging out along the Danube |
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| Hundertwasser Haus (Hundred Water House) |
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| Pat deep in thought about his next move |
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| We decided to take the lift....us and our two bags each |
Budapest, Hungary
We both really enjoyed Budapest and wished that we had more time there. We think that we saw the main sites, but there was just so much there to see that we had to miss a lot. One of the amazing things which I do not have photos of here is the thermal baths. We actually went to two in the two days we were there. The first and main one was Rudas, which was a gorgeous old stone building with multiple temperatures of baths as well as various saunas and steam rooms. This baths had a special night session that began at 10 p.m. and ended at 4 a.m.We ended up staying until roughly 2 in the morning before walking to the house.
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| View from the citadel |
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| Buda Palace |
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| Interesting sculpture near the town center |
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| Dome of St. Stephan's cathedral |
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| View from the top of St. Stephan's |
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| Scary window ad for some...cabbage? |
Sibenik + Krka National Park and Plitvice Lakes, Croatia
Our final destination before Prague was Croatia. In the end, we realized that we easily could have spent the whole 2 weeks in Croatia and not grown bored. Croatia is an absolutely amazing country, and not just for the reasons we usually think. Most people think of the beaches and islands when they think of the country, but we realized that it is so much more. On the bus ride from Zagreb to Sibenik we saw farmland, huge mountains, and lowlands. We also saw a National Geographic display in Sibenik that had roughly 30-40 photos with descriptions from all over Croatia; they mentioned a ton of cool places and landscapes that would have been a lot of fun to visit. It turns out that Croatia has quite a spread of national parks and natural attractions.
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| First beer close to our pension in Sibenik |
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Krka National Park was just a 30 min. shuttle out of Sibenik and, as you can see,
was an extremely popular tourist destination |
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| The Patagonia boys |
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| A gated alleyway in Sibenik |
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Sibenik has a fortress in its old town that is now used for concerts and
other cultural events |
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| Panorama from the fortress wall |
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| Croatia produces a lot of wine, another unexpected thing for me |
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We had the MOST DELICIOUS mussel
meal in Sibenik at our pension. They
were called in from the supplier right
after we ordered them |
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Boardwalk at Plitvice Lakes National
Park |
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Catching some zzz's after a long day of
walking |
Our last destination was Prague. This city, my new home, will be the subject of my next post.
