Florence, Hedgehog of the Sea, Barcelona

As of the time of writing, we have about two weeks left on our trip, putting us a bit past the halfway point.

We flew to Florence on Wednesday the 12th. The flight was delayed by about an hour, and we were in bad spirits when we were sitting at the gate and heard that the plane hadn't even left Bologna yet to come to our airport. Luckily, that's a super short flight, so we only got in an hour late.

We got to the Airbnb a bit past midnight. Honestly, it was a pretty weird spot, I think everyone's least favorite accomodations so far on the trip. It was a bit outside of the city so we did a ton of walking, but luckily there was a solid pizza place a minute walk away from it.

We did pretty much all of the touristy things you can do on the very first day in Florence - we went to the Duomo which was stunningly beautiful, went through the Uffizi to look at all of the art, and ate so so so much pasta. That night Deanna took us to a town on a hill overlooking Florence and we had incredible Florentine steak which turned out to be a lot more expensive than we thought it would be :P .

We also went to Cinqueterra, a set of towns on the water about 3 hours away from Florence by train. It's not easy to see all five in a day, so we started at Vernazza, stayed for about twenty minutes, and then started the hike over to Monterosso. It took us about two hours and the heat/incline combination was pretty brutal at points,  but we got such awesome views of both of the towns from the coast. I think it was probably my favorite thing we've done on this trip so far. We stayed in the town for a few hours, got some food and drink, hung out at the beach, and then headed back to Florence.

The following day, our last full day in Florence, was stressful to say the least. Early that morning I found out we'd accidentally booked our Barcelona accomodations for *April*, not July. And by we, I mean me. We lost a decent bit of money that we can't get back which is really frustrating, but we were still able to get rooms in Pars Teatro Hostel for all but the first day that we wanted to stay here (we found a random apartment that we were able to book for the night).

At the same time this was happening, Mike went to the hospital because he stepped on a sea urchin the previous day (known as "the hedgehog of the sea" in Italian), and it seemed like it was starting to get infected.

While he was getting that taken care of, we wound up meeting up with one of Deanna's friends from abroad and her friends. We spent the day with them walking around the city, and went to the Piazza de Michaelangelo to get some great views.

The following day was a long travel day. We woke up early to get a four hour train to Milan, and met another one of Deanna's friends who showed us around the city for a few hours. The street food, panzerotti, was amazing (how many times have I used the word amazing in this post?).

After that, we went to the airport and took Ryanair (easily the crappiest airline I've ever taken) to Barcelona, and stayed in our apartment the first night.

Barcelona has been really cool so far. I knew the food was going to be good, but I'm actually just shocked at how delicious it is. I think I could eat tapas for every meal for the rest of my life and I'd be so happy.

Yesterday we took a walking tour of the city's Gothic Quarter, and walked around the port. At night we went out to a club called Apolo, where we danced until 5AM to a pretty mediocre DJ set, but there was enough beer in all of us that we still had a blast.

After sleeping in today, we went out to see La Sagrada Familia. Wow. Words can't do that place justice, the exterior is so impressive and the stained glass on the inside covers the walls with such a vivid rainbow of color. The other churches we've seen on this trip have been beautiful, but this one just blows them out of the water. Afterwards, we went to Park Guell and walked around, followed by La Boquerilla, a huge food market on El Rambla where we got delicious empanadas.

The plan is to go to the beach tomorrow, and possibly take the cable car to the top of the mountain here to see the castle and "the magic fountain." Then Friday is our last day here, and early Saturday morning we fly to London.

Thanks for checking in!

Paris and Munich Recap

I was hoping to post some pictures on this blog throughout the trip, but getting them uploaded on Blogger from my Google photos has been a total mess, so I'm just gonna use this blog for the occasional recap of the cities we've visited and keep the pictures on Facebook.

On July 3rd Casey, Mike, and I touched down in Paris where we met with Deanna who has spent the last two years (on and off) teaching English there. Given how much we've already done, it's hard to remember the exact order in which all of these things took place, but here are all the cool things we did in Paris, most likely out of order:

- Spent a day more or less walking around the city (I think we walked about 15 miles!)
- Saw Notre Dame, and then later that night drank wine on the side of the river across from it
- Went to the Louvre where we saw a ton of amazing art, including the Mona Lisa (and really, just a ton of people taking pictures of the Mona Lisa)
- Got an incredible view of the city from the top of Sacre-Coure which is an enormous basillica at the highest point of the city
- Spent a bit of time at Versailles
- Had a picnic at the Eiffel Tower and watched it light up. We also met up with my friend Matt from Tufts fencing there which was a nice surprise!
- Took a tour of the catacombs.

The entire time we stayed in an Airbnb which was very quaint but a bit too hot to be super comfortable.

On July 7th, we took an incredibly fast train from Paris to Munich (it maxed out at around 330km/hr!) and checked in to the Euro Youth Hotel that night. This is actually the first hostel I've ever stayed in and it's been a pretty cool experience so far. Munich has been a lot of fun (although I think I'm gonna want to take a break from beer for awhile after we leave).

The first full day in Munich, we did some walking around the city and went to the English Gardens, a beautiful park in the middle of the city. We got some drinks there and watched the river surfers - basically there's a perpetual wave in part of the river in the gardens and people just hop on and surf it, it's so cool to watch. That night we went on a beer tour with a bunch of other people from the hostel where we went to three different places to try out some local beers. The first one we went to was by far the best - the name is slipping me at the moment but it seats over 6000 people and the food is incredible.

The next day we went out to the BMW museum which was cool but not really my thing, and then went to the Olympic Park where they're having this festival all month long called Tollwood. While there we met friends of friends of Deanna's and had some more beers together, but sadly it stared to rain so we came back to the hostel and then went out to a schnitzel place that was recommended to us. Needless to say it was delicious.

Yesterday during the day we went to Neuschvanstein (I hope I didn't botch that spelling), a castle erected by Ludwig II who was apparently obsessesed with Richard Faulker and pretty much dedicated the entire thing to him. The castle is about two hours by train away from Munich in the Alps overlooking a beautiful lake, it was incredible to see. Afterwards we came back and did bar trivia at the hostel. We held a strong second place going into the final round, but because we sorely lack knowledge of European currencies, we fell down to fourth and didn't win anything.

Today we took the trip out to Dachau. There aren't really words to describe the experience; as much as you can prepare yourself for it, hearing what happened there was emotionally exhausting, and honestly just kind of horrifying. Despite that, it's a really important part of history to remember, and I'm really glad we were able to see it on this trip.

Tomorrow we leave for Florence, the third stop on this trip. To be honest, I'm a little bit homesick (and probably will be this whole time we're away), but I'm also happy that I'm doing something I've never done before and really trying to get myself out of my comfort zone.

I'll do my best to write updates when I get time in the following cities!

Luck

Last night we drank, sang, and danced the night away under lights down by the river. This morning we woke frustrated to the knocking of a painter whose sole purpose seems to keep us from resting while we're in this apartment.

I'm grateful for these ups and downs because they mean I'm alive. In the conversations I've had catching up with these old friends of mine, I found out that a person we grew up with died from an opiate overdose. I also found out that another, someone I've known since I was a child, is struggling with their own addiction and just got out of the limited time in rehab their insurance would cover.

I don't know what else there is to write after that, except that we're all luckier to be here than we think.

Doing Something Different

A little over a day from now, I'm going to be on a plane headed to Paris -- the first stop in a month long backpacking trip throughout Europe with some of my oldest friends.

As a creature of routine, this trip is a marked departure from my day to day, and comes halfway through a year of intense introspection and insight into who I am, what I'm doing, and what I want out of life. To break from routine is uncomfortable but necessary for my personal growth.

Equal parts nervous and excited, I'm hopeful for the experiences these four weeks will hold, and how they'll shape me moving forward.

Thanks for following along!