December 26, 2005

Originally Posted by CxD

I'm going to keep a diary so I'll have something to look back on and I'll take lots of pictures and make an awesome thread about my drunken adventures when I get back.

Well Tribalwar here it is.
I finally got the money together around last Christmas and started planning my epic voyage around Europe. Didn't really know how far $4,000 would take me but I definitely found out soon, it takes you plenty far. Twelve countries to be exact and a lot of alcohol with plenty of good times. From May 22 through June 27 we (I was we because my 23 year old brother came along) traveled from country to country by train, plane, ferry or bus. We visited

• Goldach, Switzerland
• Chur, Switzerland
• Munich, Germany
• Vienna, Austria
• Venice, Italy
• Corfu, Greece
• Rome, Italy
• Barcelona, Spain
• Sevilla, Spain
• Lagos, Portugal
• Amsterdam, Holland
• Zurich, Switzerland

Goldach, Switzerland
We started out in Switzerland in the town of Goldach, Switzerland visiting my dad's side of the family. It's in the northern part of the country and is on the Bodensea.



Typical Swiss building


Swiss trains are NEVER late. It's unreal, they run on the second.



Chur, Switzerland
From their we headed over to my mom's side of the family in the mountains in central Switzerland to the town of Chur.


Typical Swiss street


Snow still at the end of May


Cows!


Awesome mountains


The town of Chur


Breakfast is served. I'm really going to miss the meats, cheeses and breads.


NWS aids advertisement - Pretty much says "Use protection"



Munich, Germany
From Switzerland we headed east on train to Munich, Germany which turned out to be one of my favorite places on the trip. I think it was the beer gardens and WWII history

Liter beers at the Hofbrauhaus! (PS there will be no more pics of her, so don't ask and yes I'm wearing her northface bc it was ****ing freezing)


Forgot...


Dachau concentration camp


Oven building


Oven


Fences...good luck


New and old Parliament collide. After WWII, Germany promised to allow it's people to see what it's government was doing so they rebuild with glass. Never again would their be secrecy behind the governments working. Or at least that's what our tour guide told us.


Chinese beer garden. Seats like 700


Surfing the man made river

Vienna, Austria
From Munich we headed even further east to Vienna, Austria. Really don't remember much from here because we were worn out and it rained almost the entire time.

Out the window of our hostel...RAIN


Some big cathedral


Same one from the outside. It was really tall, sorry names escape me this was 2 months ago. (yes that's me)


Went to the carnival outside of Vienna.



Venice, Italy
From Austria we headed south by train to Venice. One night is plenty in this windy unforgiving maze. I was honestly surprised of how run down it was.

Only things we 'bought'. We didn't pay for our bus ferry tickets thinking we could be sly and each got fined 65 euro. We tried to lie and act like we didn't know wtf was up til they tried to arrest us and take out passports. Time to pay now.


They have a scary obsession with masks


A canal, they all look the same.


The square we stayed in and drank wine out of the bottles at night like bums.


Our ferry...didn't realized we were going to spend the next 25 hours on the floor since we bought 'deck' seats. We snuck into a seating compartment and just slept on the floor. Not a fun night.


Famous bridge


St Mark's Square



Corfu, Greece
Now for the fun stuff! We took that rather large and unfun ferry ALL the way down the Adriatic to the island of Corfu. No more rain just sun, sand, girls, and booze.

Pulling into Corfu town (my brother)


The touristy streets of Corfu


The beaches


We stayed at the Pink Palace Hostel - not a bad party place.


No thanks


Cliff diving after 3 hours on the booze cruise...pretty dangerous combo but fun as hell


Highest point on Corfu...we rented mopeds and somehow got lost and found our way up there.


Didn't bother checking the menu, I'm a budget.


Overlook

Corfu, Greece (Continued)

Mainland Greece


Cork trees?


Homer from the Odyssey supposedly landed here.


Where we stayed


How we felt after sleeping on the floor again for another night to get back to the main land.


The culprit



Rome, Italy
After the ferry from Corfu to Brindisi we took a train up to Naples. From Naples (which is a dump) we took another train to Rome.

We passed Pompeii.


Vatican City


Again


Picture from one of the domes


Cameras straight up...We're climbing to the roof.


Dunno if it's safe to stand up here in the storm.


Roma


We were just up on top of the dome. Now we're on the roof.


Dunno, I sorta like the picture.


The art in the Vatican museum is unreal.


Colosseum (Watching a documentary on the Discovery Channel almost does it enough justice to not have to visit it)


Spanish Steps


Piazza Navona


The Vatican

Barcelona, Spain
I love this place, my favorite city in the world. Never ending night life, beaches, hot chicks, awesome weather, great food. We took a cheap flight from an airport outside of Rome to an airport outside of Barcelona. Lots of cheap air carriers do this because it saves lots of money and is cheap for passengers. I think our tickets were 50 euro each with Ryanair.

Las Ramblas! One of the most interesting streets in the world. It's a 2 km pedestrian walk from the city center to the beach.


The marina


We stayed in Plaza Reial, one of the nicest city squares.


I love palm trees.


One of the not so nice beaches. There's better.


Lamb head anyone?


La Sagrada Familia designed by Gaudi. Gaudi is amazing. Period.


Inside. He draws from nature in everything he does.


More of the inside


From the back


Siesta time...no ones out.


La Pedrera


The roof of La Pedrara


More


The center courtyard


His two most famous works


Over elaborate but beautiful chimney stacks


Barcelona from the mountains to the west


A park designed by Gaudi. I love his work.


Ginger bread house or work of Gaudi?

Barcelona, Spain (Continued)

Nice flowers in the park


Closeup


One of the nicest parks I've ever been too. We had sangria's and baguettes for lunch and a view of all of Barcelona.


Gaudi's pet lizard.


Gaudi designed the lights in Plaza Reial. (It's really hard not to be obsessed with Gaudi)


Paella Marisco!


FC Barcelona - Camp Nou



Sevilla, Spain
No, I did not spell it wrong. If you go over there and call it Seville you will be pretty much murdered. We took an overnight train down to Sevilla from Barcelona which sucked. The beds were tiny and were super expensive even with our Eurail passes. Oh well, we didn't have to pay for a bed and we got an extra day in the city.

Cathedral of Sevilla. The cathedral has 44 individual chapels and is the third largest cathedral in the world.


Inside the Alcazar palace. You can see the Moorish influence.


A courtyard within the Alcazar palace.


Outside the palace in one of the many courtyards.


Statue dude


One of my favorite pictures from the whole trip.


Columbus's tomb


Sevilla and the bullring (more to come soon!)


The bullring


The whole city was up in arms for Corpus Christi. It was quite a show.


Everyone decorated everything.


Even McDonald's wanted in.


Really nice park. Forgot the name but was really close to Plaza Espana.

Sevilla, Spain (Continued)

Same park.


Plaza Espana


I look so happy.


Vegetation rocks.


The bullfight
So it starts off with the bull running out. It's confused as HELL and doesn't know wtf to do. It runs around for about 3 minutes while these men tease him. They don't hurt him just run and ride behind the fence until the bull is really tired.


Once that is done, the horse comes out, mind you, its blindfolded or it would freak the **** out. The man on the horse then waits for the bull to charge the horse and then they spear it.


Once its speared, out of energy from being teased than the dart guys come out and stab it some more in the back with little darts.


After that FINALLY, the bullfighter comes out and pretends to be a hero. The bull at this point is so exhausted and so close to dying from blood loss doesn't even put up a decent fight. The bullfighter then proceeds to 'dance with the bull' and 'courageously' kills the bull with a sword through the spine. All BS.



Lagos, Portugal
Another party, alcohol, girls, beaches, sand, fun, surfing location! From Sevilla we took a charter bus to Lagos because there are no trains in southern Spain that connect to Portugal. Lagos is an amazingly beautiful place. The entire Algarve coast is amazing in general.

Winds were gusting to 30 to 45 mph. I really wouldn't recommend getting to close. (Me, brother, best friend who came for Lagos and Amsterdam)


Lunch on the cannons with our new friends from California.


Looong way down.


Algarve coast.


We rented a car and just pulled off the road at a random spot to go hiking.


We found an old fort right on the cliffs.


No description needed.


Portugal


Our little trek back


Little market next door to our hostel.


Who the hell built the first ledge or rocks?


Sunset at the most south western point in continental Europe.

Amsterdam, Holland
Ugh. I overindulged in the legality of certain things in this city. I was really disappointed with Amsterdam. For some reason I was expecting more. Not sure what I was looking for but I didn't find it here. I'm not really sure what made me dislike Amsterdam because there was so much that made me dislike the place. The coffee shops (two per ****ing block), XXX stores, black men at EVERY corner asking me "coka, extacy, pills?", red light district, and the retarded drunk and high British 14 through 45 year old men who were on cheap vacations from England were just some of the things that really took away the true Amsterdam feel.

Well anyway. We took another cheap Ryanair flight from Faro, Portugal to Brussels than took a bus to the train station and than a train to Amsterdam. I don't really have a lot of pictures from inside the city because for some reason I wasn't in the right mindset to take them. I did for some strange reason get lots of nature shots from Vondelpark. (Which is a must to visit)

Vondelpark. The Dutch just chill all day in parks. I'm pretty sure of it.


More proof!


Some trees


Closeup of a pretty flower.


Another flower. I must of been in a flowery mood.


Hanging out on a tree.


Lizards attacking a cat. Unfortunately there only statues.


My one picture from the city. The building was tripping me out so I had to take a picture.


Pretty cool artwork outside the Van Gogh Museum.


Different park, same thing. The Dutch just chill out in parks.


Hot chicks



I guess this is another city shot.


I got the tools, now I just need some patients!


Bikes are THE way around the city.



Zurich, Switzerland
Well this was our last stop. It wasn't actually a planned stop we just had to catch an airplane the next morning so it was more of a spend a night in the airport kind of deal....until we found out the Swiss were playing Ukraine in the world cup. We ended up renting a room in a hostel/hotel and went to a local bar to watch Switzerland loose in PK's. **** UKRAIN. We even met up with two local chicks who told us we would party all night if they won. Yeah let's just say they left the bar crying and cussing.

Really nice EuroStar train.


One of our last trains.


St. Peters Church. Largest clock face in Europe.



It's all over!
Well after a 25 hours in flight with layovers we made it home. Tired, exhausted and glad to be alive we crashed. I can honestly say that was the best experience of my life and the best five weeks of it. My only regret? The slut I hooked up with in one of these countries who gave me mono...

If you have any questions about European backpacking travel please just drop me a PM. I spent well over six months planning this trip (overkill I know) but loved every minute of planning. Congrats if you actually read this thread, it's probably the single longest post in TW history. I hope you enjoyed the pictures and some of the stories.

Personal Travel Website: www.kn34.com (with more pictures and stories)

:bump:

This is going to be nice to read @ work, bumpitty.

Pics or stfu!



Oh wait. Can I get cliffs of pics?

****ing awesome trip dude. I just left Germany last night after studying in Berlin for 14 months. Can't believe that it's over. I got to know some awesome people. But all good things must come to an end.

****ing fantastic man... i dunno if you have ever traveled before, but good on ya.

Wow. That is so sick dude.

Damn, seems like you had an amazing time. The EuroStar train has an insane cockpit.

wow great pictures man...i would like to do this sometime.

cool pics

The level of my envy and desire to do the same is... overwhelming.

Gorgeous.

great thread, great pics


I love Europe and I can't wait to go back
I've been to most of the places you got pics of and the thread took me back
Specifically my REALLY memorable Spain trip. Barcelona and Seville, I had such great times there and met such great people. Everytime I see a thread like this I want to move to Europe and just stay there


can't wait to get a big enough vacation to go do it again...think I'll take the woman backpacking through just like you.

thumbs up

Parliment

nice pics

beautiful places : O