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!
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