Two Girls and a Eurail Pass

It's been exactly one week since Natalie and I returned from our incredible four and a half week adventure in Europe.  In some ways it's back to business as usual with work, family, and friends and the trip seems somewhat surreal and like a fantastic dream that we've awoken from, but in some ways - everything seems different. I never thought this trip would be (as Natalie kept saying) "life changing", but now looking back, I don't know how I thought it wouldn't be. There was this moment in Berlin when I was at this incredible bakery and the waitress asked me what I wanted.  Everything looked so good so I asked her to pick for me.  She gave me a funny and pointed look and said, "No, you must choose for yourself!". It was a moment, however small and insignificant as it may have been, that really stuck with me as an analogy for this trip as a whole. On this trip, I went to some incredible awe-inspiring places, saw some incredible things, ate...

Natalie and I arrived in Dublin devastated that it was our last night of our Europe trip so we decided to do what any normal American Women would do in our sorrow and seek out a giant meal of comfort food to ease our pain.  We had decided to stay at the Dublin Hilton Hotel by the airport for our last night to avoid missing our flight again like the first round in Dublin.  The Hilton was a welcome change of pace from our recent month-long hostel hopping.  In addition to clean queen beds with beautiful white linen, we were beyond thrilled to see our favorite toiletries supplied in the bathroom - shampoo, conditioner, and even face wash from the great Peter Thomas Roth.  (At this point, between the bed bugs and the mixed dorms, we were fairly easily impressed) After enjoying the PTR and a lengthy shower, Natalie and I asked Joseph, the friendly Irish concierge, where we could go to enjoy a good hearty Irish meal.  I was pushing Natalie to head back to...

I'd like to preface this post by saying that I can't say enough wonderful things about Amsterdam.  If there was one place that Natalie and I didn't spend enough time in, it was most certainly Amsterdam.  2 years wouldn't be enough, let alone 2 days. Before coming to this magical little city in the Netherlands, I had imagined something of a Sodom and Gomorrah where everyone was lurking in corners banging hookers and smoking weed without consequence - my imagination could not have been more off. Natalie and I were instantly delighted when we arrived at the Amsterdam train station (which looks akin to many countries national monuments).  Though the weather was murky, even the grey skies and light rain couldn't take away from the natural beauty of this city with it's beautiful canals, awe-inspiring architecture, and natural greenery.  En route to our hostel, The Flying Pig which was located in the infamous red light district, everything was passed was beautiful ...

After a 20-hour train trip from our 24-hour reunion disaster in Florence, Natalie and I finally arrived in the crazy cultural and historical juggernaut that is Berlin, Germany. From the train station we followed our intricate directions to the hostel which included a subway ride and walking under a secret subway passage. 1 out of 3 people that we passed en route to the hostel had some sort of face piercing, grimace, and looked like they had dressed themselves in a secondhand Hot Topic.  Berlin was like a dirty concrete city with graffiti literally everywhere.  The population was like a bunch of angry, judgmental hippies on upper drugs.  I felt like we were on the movie set of Girl with the Dragon tattoo. The secret passage through the subway turned out not as ominous as suspected and The PLUS hostel Berlin was like a bohemian paradise for young backpackers. It was huge, with all the accommodations of a hotel including a pool, a sauna, restaurant, bar, free yoga on T...

Florence 2 - where lessons were learned, tears were shed, and Natalie ruined more of her clothes. Natalie and I made a gut call to return to Florence so that I would have the opportunity to see Bob again, the special friend whom I'd met last year in Vegas who had taken a little piece of my heart with him when he left and happened to be vacationing in Florence for 2 weeks starting on the 3rd. It wasn't the most opportune timing (as in not opportune at all since we were already in Germany by this point), but we decided together to make it happen so all my fantasies and dreams could come true. The train ride to Florence from Munich thanks to some translation issues and wrong ticket reservations, took roughly 10 hours.  On our final train switch, exhausted and haggard, we begged an Italian man to let us use his phone to call our hotel and let them know we'd be arriving after they closed.  (We both were having flash images to sleeping on street corners in Florence and rats...

So Munich was a short day and a half trip, but a lovely one no less. When we arrived at the train station, we couldn't believe the array of amazing food they had. Basically the Munich train station is also the worlds best food court.  I even found some pretzels that were filled with (my favorite food) ...cream cheese!  They also had, for those with a more discerning pallet, fresh fish, produce, amazing meats, sushi, and everything you could want. Our hostel (Euro Youth Hostel) was located roughly 3 blocks away and we were greeted by the most beautiful hostel worker I've ever seen.  Having encountered a slight bed bug incident in Florence, which we had been unable to resolve in Lucerne because it's Switzerland and apparently those posh Swiss only believe in dry cleaning, we needed to do laundry ASAP. (Natalie inspecting for bed bugs - lessons learned from Florence) We threw everything we owned into a few washing machines and headed out in our only 2 clean o...

Are you Falkin' Kidding me?  _ Lucerne Having loved our time in Lausanne/Geneva and needing a pick me up from Cinque Terre, Natalie and I decided to hit up the German side of Switzerland and head to gorgeous Lucerne (a city not on our original agenda). Immediately after exiting the train from our boring honeymoon, we were greeted once again with Switzerland's immaculate sidewalks, friendly faces, and beautiful mountain landscape- only this time everything was in German, not French. After exiting the train and sneaking some free wifi at Starbucks by pretending to wait in line, we began walking to our hotel, The hotel Falkin -which we booked based solely on our assumption that it was pronounced "fawk-en" (we later found it is actually pronounced falcon which is not nearly as fun). I should confess that both Natalie and I, by this point In the trip, have become bag ladies.  (Legit bag ladies).  Our hygiene has seriously deteriorated and in addition to our backpac...

(Please note- I apologize If this post isn't as lively as our typical city takes, unfortunately it simply just wasn't that eventful) Natalie and I had reserved 3 days at our "hostel" for magical Cinque Terre the beautiful cliff beach town on the Italian coast. Following our fun in Florence, we felt a little wind down time should be in order (aka we were still hungover from Flo') and we were both hardcore craving some beach time (aka a tan and an excuse to sleep during the day). The train ride from Florence to Cinque Terre was, in a word....terrifying.  Each stop seemed to get worse and worse with abandoned train cars strewn about the tracks and little Tijuana look alike towns passing by. Natalie and I began to see flash images from the movie touristas and wondered if the train was heading straight to the organ harvesting shop or if they were going to wine and dine us first. (The beautiful view from our train while en route to Cinque Terre) Addition...