William Goes to Europe!

Welcome to the travel blog of my adventure to Europe, May-June 2017! Here is the order of cities I visited! Paris 🇫🇷 Munich 🇩🇪 Vienna 🇦🇹 Salzburg 🇦🇹 Prague 🇨🇿 Berlin 🇩🇪 Amsterdam 🇳🇱 London 🇬🇧

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Superlatives

Bonus post! So in case anyone is curious, as well as for myself looking back, I made a list of superlatives based on city. I put both first and second place because otherwise the whole list would have just been Paris and London, and they’re really in a class of their own. Here are the results!

Overall Favorite 😍 1. London Aesthetics 🏛 1. Paris 2. Vienna Metro 🚇 1. Paris 2. London Food 🧀 1. London 2. Prague People 👱 1. London 2. Amsterdam History 🏰 1. Paris 2. Berlin Feel/Vibes ✨ 1. London 2. Vienna Affordability 🤑 1. Prague 2. Paris

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Final Day in Europe

This morning I spent with Kilian, as we meandered around the shopping area near our hostel before I had to say goodbye 😭. I met a friend of my uncle’s for lunch, Philip, and we had a marvelous time getting to know each other over crab and red wine. Now, I am on my way to the airport and am finally on my way back home after 3.5 weeks! In some ways it has felt like a flash, and in others like a lifetime. I will miss Europe, but am also excited to be home 😊.

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Yesterday, I came back to Royal Albert Hall in the morning to take a proper tour, and I basically lifted into heaven before having to come back down when the tour ended 🌤. That afternoon, I again took a proper tour of the British Museum, known for documenting the history of humanity, and I saw incredible artifacts like the Rosetta Stone and a 2,300 year old human body. Last night, I was finally able to meet up with my cousin who lives in London, and we had some great Indian food in Shoreditch, an up and coming young urban area in East London. I stayed up quite late talking to my German friend Kilian, with whom I have spent my entire time in the hostel, and a new friend from Canada 🇨🇦. It has been quite an interesting time to be in London, as yesterday was a general election and the established party lost quite a bit of ground.

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The past two days have been a riot. On Wednesday, I caught the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace before popping into the National Gallery to see some highlights 💂‍♀️. Many of the museums in London are free, which has been quite nice 😁. After a nice sushi lunch on the lawn looking at St. Paul’s Cathedral, I spent the entire afternoon at Tate Modern, which was fantastic. I couldn’t resist running over to Harrods, which worked out well because it was very close to Royal Albert Hall (a personal Mecca of mine). It’s situated just off of Hyde Park, which provided a beautiful walk over to where Prince William lives in Kensington. I ended the long day with marvelous fish and chips 😋.

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Before that, I had walked the London Bridge, which had a large collection of bouquets at one end to commemorate the attack that had happened there just days before 🌸. After the castle, I took the more famous Tower Bridge back across the river, and it was just spectacular. Tonight I attended a Michael Jackson cover show that was a total blast. Collectively, the 6 singers they used still couldn’t hit every note and style that Michael sang in, which really drove home his brilliance as an artist 🎤.

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This morning I started with a walking tour of the main famous buildings in London. My tour guide Will was hilarious, and even though walking tours aren’t as extensive as bike tours, it was free through the hostel. Kilian and I went together and braved the weather, as it was cold and raining ☔. This afternoon I spent in awe at the Tower of London. Fun fact: it’s a former fortress turned museum, so of the two things that it really is, it isn’t a tower 🤔. The two largest cut white diamonds in the world are in possession of the British monarchy (one in a royal staff and the other in a crown). I spent at least 30 minutes just looking at the royal jewelry, and missed at least 1/3 of the castle despite spending 3 hours there.

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Catch up post: Yesterday I flew from Amsterdam to London and had the afternoon to visit the Eye and see some of the famous sights. That evening, I went to dinner with Kilian and Rob, German and British respectively. I met them as hostel-mates, and we had a great time going out to drink a bit after dinner 😄🍻.

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From dinner I headed over to the pinnacle visit of Amsterdam, the Anne Frank House. The lines are legendary, but after only an hour I was inside. It was powerful, haunting, and inspiring to go through the house and walk through the rooms where Anne and seven others hid for over two years. I decided to walk home to process the experience, and ended up finding some guys playing pickup basketball at a park 🏀. I had to join them for a bit before heading to the hostel to get ready for London. My mates this time were a trip: two party hard bros from Australia and three engineering study abroad students from the US. The dichotomy was hilarious 😂.

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We began this beautiful day in Amsterdam with delicious Dutch pancakes 😋🍓. Sadly, after our tasty breakfast, I walked my dad to the train station and hugged him goodbye on his way back to the states. I then trained to my hostel for the night, a true (cheap) backpacking experience- it was quite a shift from the 4 star hotel we stayed in last night! They had a cat named Simba and we quickly became best friends 🐈. Luckily, my hostel was right around the corner from my next destination, the famous Rijksmuseum. The former palace was beautiful, so well laid out, and featured famous paintings from Van Gogh and Rembrandt. Afterwards I had a marvelous feast at an Indonesian restaurant, called rijsttafel, which is well known here in Amsterdam. There was no way I finished the meal, which covered the three sides around my plate with different foods 😋.

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Early morning❗️To make a train to Amsterdam with enough time to have a day in the city, we had to catch a 6:30am train out of Berlin this morning. After checking into our very nice hotel (right across from the central station), we bought a hop on hop off tour for the canal boats. We first stopped at a diamond factory that gave a fascinating tour and let us look at €30-40,000 diamonds up close 💎. We then spent the afternoon wandering around different city markets before going on a tour of the Red Light District 🚨(oh yes, we had to)! After that fascinating adventure, we finished the night with a great dinner at The Grasshopper, a famous multistory restaurant right on the dam (the one the city is named after).

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My dad and I started the morning off with a late pastry breakfast on Alexanderplatz, one of the largest plazas in Berlin and home to the TV Tower 🗼. It was the starting point of our 11 am bike tour, which took us around the city for over 4 hours! We saw key sights like the platz where the burning of the books took place, the Berlin Cathedral, and the parliament building complex. Our tour guide was a trip (a New Yorker transplanted to Berlin), and met a super friendly family from Australia 🇦🇺. After our tour, we returned to the hotel to cleanup and rest before going back out to the Reichstag, the historic parliamentary building. It has a huge glass dome on top designed for sightseeing, and we were lucky enough to get a reservation the day before to go up in it. It provided a phenomenal 360 degree view of the city. After a long day of exploration, we decided to have a leisurely dinner and head back to the room a bit early to pack and get ready for a very early morning train to Amsterdam (6:30am 😭)!!

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Surprise! Today my dad joined for the Berlin leg of my Euro trip! I met him at the train station right by the hotel and we dropped off his stuff before heading out! We first hit a local market just down the street, then trained into the city center to sightsee. We hit the Brandenburg Gate, Victory Column, and Holocaust memorial, as well as enjoyed some bratwurst and beer by the Spree River for lunch. This afternoon, we headed to a park north of the city to check out 2 massive anti airport towers Hitler built to protect Berlin; now, they are a training ground for free climbers! We concluded our big day at the Berlin branch of Haufbrau, a famous beer hall in Munich. The beer was plenty and it was great!

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This morning checked out of the hostel and headed to a nearby café that I could spend some time chilling before going to catch my bus. It’s really amazing how cheap Prague is, and this was embodied at this nice café where a pressed sandwich, latte, water and tiramisu totalled less than $6. The bus was truly a surprise, costing half as much of a train but arguably better amenities. They served coffee twice, had a restroom on board, and had entertainment screens for every seat (I watched Now you see me 2 hehe) 🚌. In a moment of oddity, our bus was chosen to go through a German police checkpoint at which we had to deboard and have all of our luggage examined. We finally arrived to Berlin early evening, and I trained to the east side of town to check into the hotel. After cleaning up a bit, I went to an Italian restaurant nearby and had some great red wine and gnocchi 😋🍷. They were both incredible, and that’s after having been to 3 Italian cities! I finished with a walk down the longest remaining stretch of the Berlin wall, about 1.5 km. Nothing can compare to the ambiance, especially with the expressive art that now covers it.

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<p>After that episode, I walked over to the stating place for my bike tour of Prague. As it turned out, I was the only one so I got a private tour! My guide was my age and from Texas, so we just had a grand time going around talking about Prague and the NBA finals 🏀. We even stopped half way through at a park to get beers 😂🍻. After biking around, I ran home to shower and get ready for the concert. I grabbed dinner nearby the theatre at a fantastic burger place 😋 before heading to the performance. It was amazing! They first featured two soloists, one of whom was a young yet stellar violinist. They then performed a symphony called “The Inextinguishable,” which was spectacular.</p>

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This morning started off early but unexciting. I could prolong no longer, and had to hoof it a mile to the nearest laundromat (carrying my clothes, oi). That whole experience took me past noon, but I did meet some Canadiens there who were also backpacking, and we had a great time chatting 🇨🇦. I went straight for the all famous Astronomical Clock, and was able to be there for the 1 o'clock “show.” It was pretty neat to see the figurines dance, any there were literally hundreds of people out front just to watch 1 o'clock happen. I then headed over to the Municipal House, a famous theatre, to by a ticket for tonight’s show- a spring into with a full orchestra and soloists. After two phone calls with my bank, 🙄 I was finally able to get the ticket (only 16 euro for students)!

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I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring an old MASSIVE stadium built during communist rule here. It could seat up to 220,000 and can fit 6 regulation size soccer fields. As a history and sports architecture buff, this was fascinating. Through the 50s, it was used for a massive annual synchronized gymnastics show that troupes from all over Czechia would come participate in. Afterwards, I had a wonderful salad dinner before finishing with spectacular night views of Prague crossing the Charles Bridge- a highly popular must-do. Side note- so far, the interactions I’ve had with workers at all of the sights and shops have been quite unpleasant, as if they hate life itself. It’s an odd shift from amicable Austrians, and sadly taking away from my opinion of Prague.

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First full day in Prague complete! I had a bit of a late morning figuring out how to get up the side of the hill to Prague Castle, but I finally made it! The grounds are huge and there is plenty to see. Overall, it was a bit underwhelming in that it just couldn’t rival the ornate magnificence from Paris and Vienna. Still though, it was really cool sightseeing, and the stained glass windows were unparalleled. What makes it so unique is how old it is (much older than palaces from the other two cities), with some areas dating to the 10th century! I then wandered down the hill to see St. Nicholas Church, which easily wins the prize of most beautiful interior decoration of any city’s church thus far (see spectacular alter). After that, I went around the corner to check out the Lennon wall. You can smell it before you can see it because of all the paint!