May 21st

We made it to Florence, last night!! Once getting off the train we were greeted with a nice consistent down pour of rain, in which we proceeded to walk through to get to our hostel. We finally arrived and it was an amazing place. A bar/ restaurant downstairs, a computer room. It felt just like a dorm, it the greatest sense. It was clean, it was open, it was niiiiiice.

We got to our room and after some exploring and rummaging around for food we settled into our room. Sloan and Jeff went to wifi whilst I stayed in the room to chill. Suddenly 2 guys walk in (it was an 8 person shared room) and instantly we get started talking. They were from New Zealand, the one on the left was Ken, and on the right was Luke! They we're so hilarious! Luke was 24 and he planned to travel around the world on and off until he was 28. LOL Ken asked lots of questions about America, and from what I gathered he/Luke and apparently most New Zealanders think Americans are all rednecks. I told him, thankfully I was from the North, and I don't say y'all. haha, this got everyone laughing. Eventually, everyone came back and we fell asleep.

Today was going to be a great day. We woke up and headed over to Katie's apt. On the way there we went through the leather market and she took us to the food market place where there was lots of fresh food and meats and cheeses and wine. AND AN ENTIRE COWS HEAD for sale. YIKES!


Afterwords we got a group together to tour some famous church. The inside was huge! The outside had a little garden, and it made it seem very cozy and then all of a sudden you get inside the church and BAM, gigantic! There were all these paintings on the walls, a lot of them were hard to see fully because the lights from above were glaring on them, but nevertheless, they we're intense. I would call them your typical church type paintings, people looking sad with lots of little cherubs floating around them and stuff. Jesus on a cross and all that. The architecture of the building was interesting to me. I wondered how long it was there, and how much it's survived, that's overwhelming!

Once we finished we got GELATO from GROM!!!! I can't remember what the name of the flavor I got was but it had waffles in it! WAFFLES! YUMM

Later that night, we met more people that were in Katie's program and we all went to dinner. Most of them were taking a cooking class and already knew so much about Italian food, it was impressive! Sloan and I shared 2 dishes. A spinach tortellini thing, and some pear pasta stuff. OMG! SO GOOD!!

After dinner we returned to the apt to meet the infamous Frank! SO AWESOME!  Frank.....Fran??LOL

Until tomorrow J,

-JEN



Remember:
- Gelato Tour of Italy
- THUNDER!!

May 20th

the map to navigate around Verona

YOLO J,

Today we left Venice, more then a day in Venice is a day to much, it's such a crazy maze to navigate. Onward J, to Verona.

Our main purpose to visit Verona, was to write Juliet letters (like that lame movie, Letters to Juliet, LOL) Well success! We found Juliet's house and sat with backpacks by our side and wrote Juliet letters. Mine wasn't anything specific. Vague actually, mostly about fear of commitment.... how dare a traveling backpacker suggest something of that nature. haha

After spending some QT in Juliet's garden we ventured off to find some lunch. And by lunch, of course I mean pizza!  The lady that work at the restaurant was so entertaining, if your eyes even wandered towards the restaurant she would call out to you and say "You! I have a special place for you in my garden, come eat!" HAHA! I thought that was so funny. After we ate and watched some intense PDA making us sick to our stomachs we moved on and went SHOPPING!

We went into a shoe store, because Sloan wanted to get some new kicks, ADIDAS is her kryptonite. They were having a sale, buy one get one 20% off and I tried on a few, but I didn't like any enough to commit just yet (shocker).

To keep you up on the weather situation, it rained pretty much the entire time we were there, like it has most of the trip so it wasn't to much of a bother.

Let's backtrack a second so I can give a more descriptive tale of Casa de Guilette. When you arrived you walk through an arch like tunnel that has graffiti  and gum sticking to the walls. Gum that has little notes or letters written on them. Continue walking and you enter a type of square, on the right is her house on the left is a couple gift shops and straight ahead is a statue of Juliet and a gate with hundreds and hundreds of locks. I wanted to put a lock on so bad, but thought it wasn't appropriate because I don't have anything physically of metaphorically to lock up.

After shopping we went into the city centre and sat on the steps of an arena that looked like a mini Colosseum and people watched for a while. SUDDENLY! A church group came to the middle of the square and began dancing in a circle and chanting, looking much like a cult. That was our cue to leave for the train station and make our way to Florence!!!!!

xoxo,

-JEN


Remember-
-Baby man statue
-Woman version of Michael Jackson
-Suspenders guy at restaurant  

statue of Juliet

May 19th Venice

This morning we arrived in Venice. Without sleeping on a super creepy train. Lots of trains today, if you didn't already know, Venice is like an island, with lots of water canal streets, so we stayed "off" the island and in some other part of the city so we had to commute to the actual city and back. We weren't able to officially check into our hotel,  so we left our backpacks and then ventured back into the city.

(Sidebar, the lady that owned the hotel we were staying at looked /and reminded me of the lady from Eurotrip during the end credits of the movie, YOWZA!)

Onward. We arrived into the city very VERY early, which was awesome because it was so nice to see when there aren't a lot of people around. Venice is SO confusion to navigate around, its like a maze and you feel like one of those little mice running around trying to find the cheese.

We walked around through tiny streets, past piazzas and over canals and finally came to St. Marco's Square. There we walked up and down by the water and saw lots and lots of gondolas. Jeff went up some tower to get a better view of the city, and Sloan and I fought off all the beggars.

We got pretty lost trying to find some place to eat, and ended up in a bar and ordered a pizza! WHOA! So good!!!!

On our way back to the hotel, we passed all the fancy shops (Burberry, Chanel, Prada, etc.) There were so many, and all in hidden little corners of the city.

We arrived back at the hotel finally got our room and napped out for a few hours, showered and returned to the city for a Gondola ride, more pizza, and our first taste of Italian gelato. Holy Crap! I'm addicted.

The Gondolier man was awesome! He had been gondoliering for 18 years!!! He was so funny and he gave us a student discount, after coaxing Jeff to ride with us "Yeah, come on Jeff!" haha so awesome!

Shortly after our ride was over, we were tuckered out and headed back to watch the Chelsea v Bayern Munich soccer game. Chelsea won, but I don't care that much because I've decided that I support Liverpool. :)

-JEN

PS- Remember the Danny DeVito commericals

May 18th

I'm writing to you from an overnight train to Venice. It's 1:30 in the morning, and I'm pretty sure we are somewhere in Italy, but I can't be certain. I would be sleeping right now, dear journal, but I have a horrid sore throat that has intensified over the past few days, and my ears are popping like crazy.

Everyone else is sleeping, so I decided to take my mind off my ears by writing to you about how the day went. I'm also writing in very poor writing conditions as there is very low light, I don't have my glasses on, and I'm in a moving train car. But anyway...

Today was a fabulous day! We went to Fussen, Germany to see the infamous Disney Castle.   Neuschwanstein Castle, or more commonly known as Cinderella's castle is absolutely magnificent!! Neighbor to that Castle....is another castle: Hohenscwangau. Not as cool, but I only saw it from afar.

We woke up around 8:45am and walked to the train station, dropped off our backpacks and hopped on a 2 hour train to Fuessen, a quaint little town, mostly visited by tourists. Entering Fussen on the train you're able to see Neuschwanstein Castle that basically sits atop a mountain, I bet your thinking how we got up there journal. Well, the only Disney fairy tale way how, a horse-drawn carriage of course!!

Neuschwanstein Castle

Tickets to tour the actual inside of the Castle was already sold out for the day, but touring the outside of it was way beyond amazing!! It was so gigantic, I don't know how anyone could ever live there.

We continued on to cross a sick bridge with a waterfall that wasn't far away from the castle, it had the most righteous views, and after that we hiked down the mountain. Such an spectacular afternoon.

Jeff went to see the Hohenscwangau Castle, while Sloan and I went through town and ate some lunch. We all ended up at a gift shop, where I bought my dad a PUZZLE POSTCARD!!!! OMG THE GREATEST INVENTION EVER!!!

Hohenscwangau Castle

We hopped on a train back to Munich, and once we got there went on a scavenger hunt for some Bayern Munich attire....but all the shops were closed. Unlucky. Then boarded a train to Venice.

Thank god, this is the last overnight train!! There is a man that just walked into our train car, after there was a argument outside, he sat down next to me, took his shoes off, and propped his feet between Sloan and Jeff. Also, his friend is sitting outside our car on suitcases. Creepy!!!

St. Marco's Square

UPDATE: The man and the guy sitting outside our door got up and left the train, and police opened our compartment looking for them. Holy terrifying!!!

We finally made it Venice, and can't check into our hotel room, so I write my goodbyes while sitting on the steps of St. Marco's Square.....so tired

-JEN

May 17th

If you thought the Poland train ride was long, oh baby! The train to Munich was way longer. We had a sleeper car for most of the journey, and I slept pretty well. It was super hot in the car and I woke up sweating but on the up side I did get to use my sick Sleeping Mask for the first time, and that in itself it exciting!!

We had a few hours layover in Vienna, and then another train. Good golly, those Austrians love to talk at high volumes in confined spaces. I blocked most of it out with the Jack Johnson discography. Hours later, we arrived in Munich and walked to our hotel.

Finally journal, A SHOWER!! After 3 days of traveling and night trains, it felt majestic to finally be clean. After that, I took a short nap and went off the find a place to do some laundry. Whilst doing laundry Jeff walked over to a pizza place and ordered a pepperoni pizza. Since obviously they spoke German, they had no idea what pepperoni meant. So about 30 min later Jeff comes back with a pizza that's half cheese, half every different pepper and meat the place had to offer. LOL! It was pretty good, esp. since we hadn't eaten in a while.


Oh man it was so good to be clean and have clean clothes!!! We got back to the hotel and rested up for tomorrow by watching a Johnny Depp marathon in German.

Shabbot Shalom,

-JEN

May 16th

Hi friend,

Today after a super long train ride we ended up in Krakow, Poland at 7am. With minimal sleep... this is exciting! It was so cold, like cardigan, hoodie, and jacket type cold. I was so ill prepared. We boarded another intercity train for Auschwitz, I personally thought it was maybe a 15 minute ride, but it turned into a 2 hour odyssey. Bringing the grand total of travel time to around 12 hours on some sort of train. Now journal, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining , I'm just explaining that it took a really long time, but what was about to happen next is pretty life-changing. Experiencing Auschwitz is extreme.

We got off the shuttle and walked into the concentration camp, right on the train tracks that delivered all the prisoners. We walked through the barbed wire fencing and passed guard towers that surrounds the entire camp. If that sentence enough didn't give you chills we proceeded to walk around through the living quarters of the prisoners and eventually made our way to the ruins of the crematories.

It's a hard concept to wrap your head around the fact that 1.5 MILLION people lived and died in this specific spot for no reason at all.

There were a lot of memorials with candles surrounding them, in a lot of different languages. While I was walking around I thought about how interesting it would be to interview a survivor and know their story.  Walking around, there was a lot of Polish high school students in group tours not really paying attention fully to what was happening around them. I know growing up for me I was always interested in WWII type things, I hope younger generations still appreciate everything past generations have shown us.

After we finished touring we ate some lunch (I ate a hot dog, and I will have to say Prague and Poland have the best bread ever!) and headed back to the train station. We have an appointment with Munich tomorrow that we can't miss. Our train didn't leave until 9pm and we got back to the station at 5pm, so we sat in the station and played some 10,000 when a little Polish girl named Elena approached us with words and phrases her dad was telling her to say to us.

She would run around in circles and then stop in front of Jeff and say "I'm an alien" and giggle and run off. She didn't know what she was saying because she couldn't speak English, but it was so funny!!

We boarded the train to Munich and met our train car mate named Peter from Argentina, he gave us candy and  a story about his life and his travels and then we all went to sleep. IN OUR FIRST SLEEPER CAR..WITH BEDS!! Peter was awesome, and sleeping while lying down is always a plus...

Until tomorrow,
 -JEN

May 15th

Hey there loser. JK!

Today I woke up in a comfy bed and proceeded to take an equally comfy shower. Only to find out when I got out, we only had 15 minutes before we had to check out. YIKES! Talk about speed packing!! Jeff hadn't even woken up yet, and everyone was going crazy. not really.

We went downstairs to check out and hopped into a Prague Castle tour. Not having read the sign I was ill prepared for this trip (which I thought would be maybe an hour), it turned out to be a few hours of a "slight" hike around the castle. Seeing where the best views of the castle are, in such places as "the meadow" and "the valley" and the tour guide telling us that you can hear the underworld if you put your ear on the fountain. I would definetely say it was the strangest tour I've ever been on. We didn't actually go into the castle, only around.

We stopped at a little shop to get some snacks and Sloan and I grabbed what looked to be a delicious sandwich type thing consisting of a bread roll with a piece of bacon on top with melted cheese on top of that. WOAH! Delicious.


We kept walking and saw a bit of the city surrounding the castle, a statue of some importance, and some musicians. Then we passed these really old cars that were just parked there like it wasn't a big deal! It was!

We took some photos with Prague's city overview as the background and left the tour to continue on to the Old Town. We stopped at the church, oh sorry Journal, I mean "Cathedral" and it was pretty gigantic.

Screams EUROPEAN!

We saw the Atomic Clock that has been running since the 1400's go off. People played trumpets and loads of people were standing around it. The town itself looked like it was a standard European town from a movie, it was insane.

Sloan and Jeff went off to see a famous bridge, and I did some wandering around and found Eric a present. Before I left he said "I want something from Europe that screams EUROPEAN." I think I did that justice. Smuggling it into the States might take some work, but it'll be an adventure. ----->

After we all met back up, we went back to the hostel to grab our bags and  headed off to prepare for a very long train ride  to Krakow.

Talk Soon,


 -JEN