And also an experience I'll never forget. I don't know if you all know, but I really really have a problem retrieving information from my brain -cos if you ask me to tell you something really interesting that happened off-hand I wouldn't be able to, not because I didn't do anything interesting or that nothing interesting happened to me but because my brain just doesn't work that way! The best you can do is wait for me to remember something interesting that happened (which may, or may not happen). Haha.
The last you heard about my Easter travels was probably about how I was completely stressed out with tons of things to accomplish in the 2 or 3 days before I left -this resulted in me packing for a 3 week trip in about one hour, leaving hall near 2am, giving up on taking a night bus to Yinghong's place because the bus frequencies were too far apart, and ending up taking a 12 pound cab ride there instead.
The rest of the trip was good, despite many many frustrating moments I think we dealt with them and managed to have a good time still (:
So this post is going to be dedicated to my travel & London SEP buddies Esther, Huoyfen, Ziwei and Yinghong -well just because I believe that a trip is also all about the company, and they were great (:
Czech Republic: Cesky Krumlov & Praha (31/03 - 03/04)
Cesky Krumlov -a very picturesque town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which is a 3 hour bus ride out of Prague, where we stayed in a very cosy hostel and where we realised after awhile that it would be much better to be there in the summer as the town was a little dead. Haha. We visited the castle, trod on the roads, retraced our steps loads of times when we realised how small the place was. However it was really a nice place and it was good to get our trip started there!
Praha-a really pretty place! We went on the free walking tour where we learnt loads about the city, had really good food which involves loads of meat, some sort of bread thing(which they insist taste like fa gao), and interesting selections of cheese and cold meats (for the adventurous). Where we sat by the river and chilled, had our first encounter with cheating on public transport, where Yinghong faced an internal struggle on whether or not she should buy a cup of Coke, where we walked to the Museum only to find out it was closed, where we encountered the first of many statues of people we don't know but took pictures of anyway. Haha.
Berlin (03/04-05/04)
The city we loved because of its rich history, where we went to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, thought we were cheating on the S-Bahn before realising much later that we were entitled to free rides with our Eurail pass, where we had encountered delicious German sausages, where we went for a great walking tour with a guide who talked really slowly for dramatic effect, where we bathed in record speed every night because of the open-concept-toilets in our hostel, where we loved shopping in supermarkets and stocked up on cheap Haribos (gummy bears!) and Rittersport which lasted us for the rest of the trip (: Picture from Esther's album cos my camera battery was dying by this point. Heh.
Munich (05/04-07/04)
Where we walked down a very long, dark and dodgy looking road from the train station to our hostel, where we learnt more about German history, where we had fantastic icecream, where we climbed damn a lot of steps up the St Peters Church Tower and left our mark on a bench, where we relaxed in the Englisher Gardens under the sun while swapping sunglasses, where we went looking for the very ulu Hirschgarten, Munich's largest beer garden -involving again walking down dark streets and through a dark scary garden (and where a car stopped to ask us where we were going cos it was weird to see 5 girls in the middle of nowhere), playing singing games to keep ourselves company, where Esther and I had a strange dish involving cold roast pork in aspic (some sort of gelatin), where we relaxed once again at Nymphenburg, looking at swans doing unglam things, where we discovered our travel plans in France were TOTALLY SCREWED cos of the Easter weekend and stupid French-train policies but where friendly American who looked like Jim Carrey helped salvage the situation a little (but we had to forgo going to Nice raah). Pictures courtesy of Esther once again!
Paris & Montpellier (07/04-12/04)
Where things all started to go wrong, where we collectively accumulated €150 in fines in our attempts to cheat on public transport ($(*)#&$), where we had baguette for lunch before realising that baguettes were what the Parisians were feeding to the pigeons, where we made 3 visits to the base of the Eiffel Tower but never once made it up there, where we were asked 10000 times whether we spoke English, where the Metro smells like pee and the list goes on and on and on (Refer to Esther's note on 15 reasons why we hate Paris on FB). Where we spent about 4-5 hours in McDonalds in Montpellier because it was raining even though it seemed like such a nice place, but also where we were SO HAPPY TO LEAVE FRANCE even though we nearly got a heart attack when our train was late and we thought we were going to miss our connection to Barcelona (luckily there were loads of other people taking the same connection), where when we thought we were finally safe on the train to Barcelona and I suddenly realised the carriage was emptying out and a kind guy who was going to get off too paused to tell us that we needed to get onto the other carriages cos the one we were on was going somewhere else, leading us grab our luggage in a mad rush and attempt to retrive Ziwei from the toilet. Haha.
(we look happy cos it's only our first day here)The first city where we actually had time to chill and stay put for a few days, where the sun was fantastic, where we had Paella, where we went shopping, where we were fascinated by Gaudi's architecture, where we chilled loads by the beach, where Fen-ma and Ziwei bravely dipped their toes into the waters while Yinghong, Esther and I remained all wrapped up on the beach, where we spent an annoying few hours trying to figure out how to get to Rome (damn Eurail), where Fen-Ma searched shop after shop for a magnet, where we just basically took things really slow and it was fun that way!
Roma (16/04 -20/04)
Where the girls indulged me and my fascination with the Roman ruins and all things Julius Caesar related, where we visited most attractions for free because we were for once at the right place at the right time, where we threw coins into the Treviso Fountain which ensures our return one day but we forgot to throw another one in to get a wish, where we had the bestest gelato after having trouble finding the shop (thinking it had closed down when actually it was somewhere else), where we somehow could understand our warm hostel owner who spoke to us in rapid Italian, where it rained on us and we had a loooooooong lunch (with Ziwei and Esther competing for last place), where we brisk walked for an hour in the rain by the lovely Tiber to get to the Vatican City, where the next day we decided NOT to walk to the Vatican City and took a bus instead, where we saw the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel and sent postcards using Vatican stamps, where we had a simple lovely dinner of pizza which we dabao-ed back to our room, where we wondered why there was so much nudity on Italian TV (:
Firenze (20/4 -22/4)
Where we encountered more and more Italian Art and Michelangelo, Ti4Tian3, Raphael, etc etc etc (what is art?), where we ate more gelato, where we attempted to locate Lonely Planet's recommendations and successfully managed to eat at Mario's YUM (albeit on our 2nd attempt), where we sat on the floor at the train station because once again our train was rit.
Venice (22/4 -23/4)
Where we had to find our way to our hotel deep in the suburbs, where we spent day '1' in the hotel, where we watched The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll and Sweet Home Alabama in Italian, where we tricked Ziwei into having her fortune told while the rest of us conveniently forgot about our turns after hers, where we made our way into Venice on a bus, blocking the ailse with our huge backpacks (it was a CRAZY squeeze when people wanted to get out), where Fen-Ma struck up a conversation with a lady on the bus who gave us some good information on Venice, where we found out that baggage deposit was freaking expensive, where we wandered around with Fen-Ma leading the way with the map, where we enjoyed the picturesque sites, where it started pouring again, where we ate our lunch (which was dabao-ed from our breakfast) in a dark alley, where we realised gelato was really cheap and ate it anyway though the winds were blowing crazily at us, where we were all glad to get onto the plane and head back to London (:
Well, all in all I think we all had a fantastic time, and THANK YOU girls so much for being part of this experience! (: I'm missing all the good times we had, so hopefully we can have some more in Singapore! (:
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