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Travel Update - Where we are and what we've
been doing May 30 - We finally tore ourselves away from saying goodbye to our classmates and caught a bus to Gothenburg. Our luggage weighs over 300 pounds total! May 31 - We had a whirlwind tour of Gothenburg, also the topic of a future column. June 1 - We caught the ferry from Gothenburg to Newcastle, England. It's much more like a cruise ship! We laid on the deck for a few hours getting some sun, which is a welcome change from the Swedish winter. June 2 - Arrived in Newcastle in the morning and took a bus to Sheffield. We're dropped four suitcases, our heavy winter coats and the laptop at our friends Rob and Rosie's house. June 4 - Much lighter with only our packs (each about 30 pounds), we caught the bus to London (it took 7 hours total) and then flew from London Stanstead to Rome. No frill airlines are great - our tickets cost about $40 each. June 5 - It's HOT in Rome! We both got a bit sunburned. We went to the Colosseum, Palestine Hill, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps and the Church of L'Immacolata Concezione's Capuchin Crypt. The crypt has the remains of 4000 monks. It's decorated completely in bones, including the light hangings. Monks stand still robed with crosses in their hands, but they've been dead a long time. It's creepy and really cool. We've also enjoyed the amazing gelato here! Gelato is ice cream, but not so creamy. More icy and busting with flavor. June 6 - We visited the Vatican today. The Sistine Chapel was quite amazing. We also visited St. Peter's Bascilla which is absolutely massive. June 7 - We left for Naples today. After arriving we figured out the city and had some problems finding a cable car to the top of the highest hill. Always fun not being able to read the language. Naples is the home of pizza so we figured it appropriate to sample some of the local delicacy. June 8 - Ascended mainland Europe's only active volcano, Mt. Vesuvius, on our way to Pompeii. Vesuvius buried Pompeii 2000 years ago and the ruins are a big tourist attraction. June 9 - We caught the train from Naples to Bari and then killed a few hours before catching our 15 hour ferry to Patras, Greece. June 10 - Arrived in Patras, Greece, around noon. We found out where the saying "It's all Greek to me" came from. Not a lot of English speakers here and same for signs. We took a 1 Euro tour of the city by bus because we could not find the stop we were looking for. June 11 - Arrived in Athens, Greece, this afternoon. We found a hostel and found out many sites were closed due to renovations for the Olympics. We decided to visit some islands instead of spending all of our time in Athens. June 12 - We arranged our trip to the Greek Islands today and then toured famous Acropolis. The ruins were cool to see, but the wind nearly carried us away. After our touring we spent a couple hours in the markets and then went to catch our overnight ferry to Santorini. June 13 - Arriving on Santorini about 7 AM gave us a full day on the island to relax and lie on the beach. We enjoyed a tour of an old winery and wine tasting at sunset atop a cliff viewing several of the islands. We proceeded to Fira, the capital, for dinner and a stroll. June 14 - We had a busy day on on an excursion around this islands today. We hiked to the top of another volcano, took a long swim to warm water sulfur springs and hiked to the top of two cliff villages. From Ia we watched a wonderful sunset over the sea. June 15 - Our ferry back to Athens left at 10:00 this morning. We arrived in Athens around 8 PM and caught a night train to Thessaloniki. June 16 - We arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria, around 2:00 this afternoon. We are quite tired after spending the last 30 hours traveling. The hostel we have is quite nice and reasonably priced. We will get a good night's sleep and tour Sofia tomorrow. June 17 -We walked around exploring (actually, kind of lost because we didn't have a Cyrllic map) most of the day. A man named Cyril overheard us speaking English and asked if we'd talk to him. He speaks six languages but never gets to practice his English. June 18 - We went with Cyril to a small village about three hours south of Sofia, so he could show us the Bulgarian lifestyle most tourists don't see. We learned many things about Communism, the Mafia, Gypsies, and Bulgarian views of America. June 19 - We took three different buses to Rila, where a famous monastary with beautiful paintings is located in the mountains. We also had to take three buses back, because the first one broke down. After getting back to Sofia, we took a night train to Varna. June 20- Varna is on the Black Sea Coast. It appears less run-down and more touristed than Sofia. June 21- We went to Roman bath ruins, shopped and laid on the beach. We took a night train and ended up in Bucharest, Romania at 4:30 a.m. June 22- We went to the 2nd biggest building in the world, which is the Parliamentary Palace. The architecture is very interesting to us because Nicolae Ceauşescu had tried to turn Bucharest into a model Communist city, so it's all big cement blocks for buildings. We rented a rowboat and took a spin around the man-made lake in Cismigiu Gardens in the evening. June 23- Discovered the hard way that posted train info isn't always correct here, but made it to Braşov anyway. Most things are closed Mondays so we'll do most of our sightseeing tomorrow. The hostel we're staying at is great - a free hour of internet, a free beer, and (best of all) they wash, dry and fold your laundry for free! We ate at a very nice Romanian-Mexican wine cellar, which even had a call button for us to summon our waiter. June 24- We rode a cable car to the top of Mount Tâmpa and had a great view of Braşov. The Black Church was our next stop, which got its name from a fire. The buildings here are much more European than communist. June 25- Took a tour with about 20 others staying at our hostel. We visited Rishov fortress, Bran Castle and Péles castle. Bran Castle was the model for the book Dracula. We took a night train to Budapest. June 26- After lugging our packs to the Aquarium hostel, we walked around Budapest for several hours. We walked along the Danube River, and to Margit Island. We had dinner with a friend from Jönköping. June 27- We are getting tired of public transportation, especially when we miss the bus or deal with rude cashiers. We spent the afternoon at the Gellért baths and enjoyed the thermal baths and swimming pools. Budapest is famous for its many baths and we may visit another one tomorrow. June 28- Having further problems with transportation today, we are realizing that everything scheduled doesn't necessarily happen. After failing to locate a tour and a bus to one of the attractions we decided to finish the afternoon with some more time at the baths. We went to the city baths and endulged in a massage (Emily) and a much needed pedicure (Jon). Convenient computer malfunctions 10 minutes before closing time on Saturday night has us craving Wal-Mart and their no questions asked attitude. What ever happened to the customer is always right? Some attendents won't even talk to us, just wave their hand at us and shoo us away. June 29- We caught a train to Bratislava in the Slovak Republic this morning. We're staying in a nice university dorm for $9 each. We walked around the city and ate at a place called the KGB. We also enjoyed eight flavors of gelato and a park. Bratislava is definitely one of the nicest cities we've seen in the former Communist countries. June 30- Our time in Bratislava was cut a bit short as we encountered some time conflicts with the trains. We packed up and left the city this afternoon and spent 8 hours on a slow train to Cracow, Poland. We met a couple of German-Canadian sisters on the train that sat with us after getting harassed by an odd old man. Upon arriving in Cracow we only had time to find a place to stay and get a bite to eat. July 1 - Cracow is a wonderful city with a lot of history. It is one of the only major Polish cities spared during WWII. Today we toured Kazimierz (the Old Jewish Quarter) where most of the Jewish population of Cracow lived before WWII. Visiting several synagogues and museums gave us a good look into the Polish Jews' lives before and after the war. We also met with our friend Robert, whom we met in Sweden, who lives here in Cracow. We went to dinner and a few pubs later in the evening. July 2 - Today we traveled to the small city of Wieliczka to tour one of Poland's most popular attractions. The 1000 year old salt mine is adorned with sculptures and chapels created out of the salt by miners that have worked in the mine. The mine is listed on UNESCO's World Heritage List as one of the world's 12 most priceless monuments. Our tour took us 135 meters (443 feet) below the surface where we saw the world's largest subterranean chapel. We returned to Cracow to go shopping for a while and a stroll around the main square. July 3 - We went to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp today. An 1 1/2 hour bus ride and three hour tour of the complexes took up most of our day. It unfortunately rained most of the day, but the dreary day added to the somber atmosphere of the facility where the Nazis murdered thousands of people during World War II. July 4 - Happy 4th of July! We may not be in the States, but we remember our important dates. Wawel Castle was on our schedule today. We took our time roaming around one of Poland's finest castles. The massive cathedral and royal tombs were very interesting. Our roaming ended with a trip through the Dragon's Den, a cave where a seven-headed dragon was said to once live under the castle. A real fire breathing dragon still waits for you at the exit of the cave. July 5 - We caught a bus this morning to head for Antwerp, Belgium. The little trip was scheduled to take 23 hours total. On the bus, while waiting to cross the border from Poland into Germany, the bus drivers put in a movie for us to watch while waiting. It was an American movie dubbed in Polish. Not dubbed like normal though. Only one male voice translated the entire movie with no expression. We could still hear the voices if we listened carefully so we still enjoyed the movie, but it was certainly interesting. July 6 - Arrived in Antwerp this morning at 10:30 AM, two and a half hours later than scheduled. After an entire day on the bus, we were excited to meet with our friend Esther and her parents for the day. We went to their home and had lunch and relaxed for a few hours. Unfortunately we were only able to see Esther till the afternoon when she left to do charity work for a couple of weeks. Esther's father, Hank, to us on a guided walking tour of Antwerp in the evening. July 7 - We went shopping this morning and checked out the many diamond shops in the city. We also made sure to load up on good Belgium chocolate. We then caught a train to The Hague, Netherlands, to meet up with our friend Birgit for a couple of days. After arriving we sat and recalled fond memories of Jönköping and then took a long walk on the beach. July 8 - Had a good night sleep last night and slept in a bit. We had a relaxing day and walked around the city a bit. July 9 - We and Birgit went to Amsterdam today to check out the Van Gogh musuem, which is huge. We also had a picnic in the park. We took the train to the small (for Holland) village of Heemskerk where our friend Inge lives. We'll be spending the next three nights here. July 10 - We slept in again, relieved to not be in a hostel dorm bed! We biked to the beach, swam in the North Sea and played Kugg, a game from Sweden involving throwing and knocking down blocks of wood. Inge's parents made us a traditional Dutch meal; then we biked to the movie theater. We took in the first movie we've seen in over seven months! The movies are in English, subtitled in Dutch and have a 15 minute intermission in the middle of every movie. July 11 - Inge and we took a trip to Amsterdam. We arrived at the Anne Frank house just as it opened to beat the heavy crowds; then met Birgit. We walked around a lot admiring the canals and tall, narrow houses. We also went shopping and had a final meal at a Chinese restaurant with our Dutch friends. July 12 - We caught an Easyjet flight from Amsterdam to Liverpool, England, then took a bus to Sheffield. Our friends Rob and Rosie picked us up and made supper. We dug all of our 300 pounds of luggage out of their closet. July 13 - The only bus we could take and make it to the airport in time to check in left at 10:55 p.m. this evening. We napped most of the way and arrived at the airport at 4:15 a.m. July 14 - After spending 8 hours waiting at Gatwick, we got on the plane and took off for Minneapolis. We arrive in Sioux Falls around 7:00 p.m. and were greeted at the airport by Emily's family and our friends Neal and Becky, who'd even left a care package in our fridge for when we arrived in Brookings. |