First Day In Sin City

Yesterday night Paul and I sat at the reception desk after they closed the common rooms at 11 pm (another stupid policy of the hostel) because Wi-Fi doesn’t work in our room and there was nowhere else to sit when the common rooms closed.  Although the hostel makes it clear that reception isn’t 24 hours, people coming in and out kept asking us questions because they thought we worked there, which was amusing and led to a few random conversations.  Two of those people, Rosamond and Matt from Texas, ended up going out for beers with us when Paul finished work, and we ended up making Matt our travel buddy when we found out he was heading to Amsterdam today like us.  You know what they say – the more the merrier! (more…)

In Brugge

Because the hostel made us wait until 4 to check in yesterday and there wasn’t a secure location to put our bags (they suggested we leave them in the common room and they would “keep an eye on them” but we didn’t feel that was safe), we didn’t do much apart from going out for dinner at a restaurant called Bierbrasserie Cambrinus after checking in.  Although the food we had wasn’t as good as Le Fin de Siecle in Brussels, it was decent and there was a huge selection of 400 beers to choose from – the drink menu is one inch thick and I had to spend 10 min reading it to decide!  It was a nice relaxing start to our time in Brugge and today we found out what Brugge really has to offer… (more…)

Comparison of Accomodations

Today we’ve moved on to Bruges (also spelt Brugge if you go by the Dutch version), a medieval city in the northwest region of Belgium. We’re staying at a hostel called Lybeer Travellers, and my main thought is “thank God we’re only here for two nights!”  Apart from the fact that we’re in a dorm room with two other guys who don’t seem to understand the common courtesy of coming and going quietly when you’re staying in a dorm room, the hostel itself is in bad need of repair and the bathrooms are horrendous.  I tried taking a shower and the water went from freezing cold to scorching hot every five minutes so I had keep waiting for that brief moment when the water would start changing temperatures to splash myself with a bit of normal temperature water!  It was not a fun experience… (more…)

The Best Food So Far!

After a good nights sleep at Novotel (four star really does make difference!), we made our way to Brussels this afternoon where we encountered the most confusing transit system so far (worse than Berlin!).  Our directions to our B&B said to take tram # 3 and it took us half an hour of wandering to figure out where to catch tram #3 – instead of having one central tram/bus stop at the train station like most cities, there were about 6 different tram stops all over and around the train station so we had to run around checking each stop to see which tram stopped there.  Tram # 3 turned out to be in the least obvious place possible, underground where the metro was, and we couldn’t figure out why it’s called a tram instead of a metro because they look identical! 

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The ING Marathon

Today we’re onto Luxembourg City, the capital of Luxembourg, a small country in between Germany, France, and Belgium.  Unfortunately, we’re only stopping here for one night because all the hotels are quite expensive and there weren’t any suitable options for budget accommodations. Although I would have preferred a bit more time to explore Luxembourg, we managed to see a lot of the city and we got to be a spectator at the ING Europe Marathon, which was quite the event!

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Why Not Germany?!?!

When we were planning our trip, a few of our friends discussed the possibility of meeting up with us in May, but when we told them our routing would put us in Germany in May, they all responded with the same “well, Germany was not on the top of my list of places to go to…” and they all decided not to meet up with us in May.  I can’t say I blame them, since Germany wasn’t on the top of my list of countries to visit either, but as we finish up our time in Germany, I have to say I’ve changed my mind and I think Germany should be on the top of more people’s lists!  The sights and history have been interesting, the people are serious looking but friendly, almost everyone speaks English so there’s hardly any communication barrier, and the food has been consistently good.  Germany has surprisingly become one of my favourite countries visited so far! (more…)

Düsseldorf, Why Did We Bother?

Hindsight is always 20/20, and in hindsight, we should have just skipped Düsseldorf, Germany!  Paul had added it to our itinerary after reading somewhere that it was a nice city and the “fashion capital” of Germany, but neither of us found it particularly worth seeing.  The coolest thing we saw was the door knocker in the picture above and in total we only took 15 pictures today! (more…)

First Day Out In Berlin

After another long travel day (which went from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.) we got to Berlin, the capital of Germany, yesterday, but didn’t do anything after checking into the hotel because it it was so late.  Today we headed out to Alexanderplatz, a large sqaure in the Mitte (city center) district of Berlin, where we tried some German schnitzel and went to the Berliner dom, an impressive Baroque style cathedral near Museum Island.  Not an especially exciting first day in Berlin, but it was nice and relaxing (more…)

Finally in Paris!

At last, we’ve arrived in Paris!  It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to come here, so we scheduled nine nights in Paris, which worked out well because it gave us time to chill and do some more trip planning (for our next segment, the UK) when we arrived yesterday, without having to worry about not having enough time to explore Paris.  We’ve decided it’s a good idea to have an extra day in as many cities as possible so we can take a break from sightseeing without having to skip stuff, and our upcoming schedule has been modified accordingly (we’ve also noticed that from Barcelona till now, when we move from one city to another, the travel day is pretty a write-off because we’re too tired to do anything).  I don’t know how some people can hop from city to city without any breaks in between – we get tired after three days of running around sightseeing! (more…)

Halfway To Beef Tartare

After eating bad food in Rouen, Saint-Aubin-Sur-Mer, and Mont-Saint-Michel, we resorted back to eating at McDonald’s for our past few meals – I know it’s horrible for you, but at least the food is consistent!  Tonight, however, we tried the restaurant at the Holiday Inn (because Paul needed Internet and our hotel’s wasn’t working), and we were happily reminded of how good French food can be!  I think it’s been a week since a meal made me go “mmmm…” like this! (more…)