Switzerland: Searching for Chocolate

Well guys classes are over and only one final awaits me, so I finally have time to catch up on blogging. And checking things off my Denmark to-do list...if only the weather would cooperate. We are still wearing winter clothes over here...between the wind and the rain, it's no fun. Hopefully the sun comes out like it did a week ago.

April 8th
So this blog is all about Switzerland. I learned two things about Switzerland right away. First, their words are extremely long. Second, Switzerland is freakin expensive (even more so then Denmark, Sweden, and Norway). Liz, Dylan, and I arrived into Interlaken, Switzerland about 6 hours later then planned, so we just met Chris at the hostel for an early night in. The hostel was amazing! They help you plan all your day activities, many hang out rooms, free buss pass, free wifi (in the rooms too!), and they have access to a nearby hot tube to name just a few things.

Our awesome hostel...minus their showers.

April 9th
The next morning we used our free breakfast ticket at the hostel before we sent Liz off on her way to jump off of airplanes. Crazy girl, but she survived sky diving over the Alps. So not only is Switzerland expensive but really the only thing to do is adventure activities like glacial hiking and things like that. Interlaken is placed at the bottom of the alps, so really it's just a meeting place before going out and doing something crazy.

Chris and I taking a picture break on our hike.

While Liz was sky diving, we found a free hiking path which gave us a great view of Interlaken. We kept following the path and eventually made it back to the road where we were in a new town called Ringgenberg. There we worked our way out to the lake, but first we stumbled upon an old castle.

The castle and town of Ringgenberg.

The lake.

We then took a bus back to Interlaken where we meet Liz around 1pm. Liz and I ate.We ended up at the train station and after listening to recommendations form a guy that stayed in the same room as us the night before, we bought almost a $100 train ticket up to Schilthorn. This is the top of the mountain (above many ski runs) where they filmed a 007 film.

What the Alps are suppose to look like on a clear day.

What we thought we knew about Interlaken is that each day would start out overcasty and then clear up in the morning. While I still think that's true, we were just so high up that it was very overcasty and we couldn't see the surrounding alps such as the Jungfrau very clearly :( Still an amazing experience though since we took trains and cable cars up the mountain.

Chris loves riding the cable cars.

Once we were back down, we met Dylan and chilled some more before our expensive dinner at the hostel restaurant. A simple fish and chips meal and drink will cost about $20... at least we had free drink cards. Also on a positive note, at the hostel bar (that was underground and shaped as a metro) it was buy one get one free! So that was nice.

Entrance to the bar.

Our roomies for the last night were a Caucasian couple from South Africa, so interesting. Well the next morning we caught an early morning train to Zurich, Switzerland. In Zurich we left our backpacks at the hostel and then spent the day wondering around Zurich.

April 10th
We saw some old buildings and churches. And a lot of Swiss flags (they are not part of the EU). Our goal was to find some good Swiss chocolate. We stopped at two chocolate stores and bought some chocolate for our host family and Tricia. We then went to a supermarket and got some chocolate and souvenirs for ourselves before laying in a park in the sun. It was so hot out.

Liz and I eating chocolate in the park!

Note to everyone: Don't ever buy Rum chocolate, even if it is Swiss... unless you like bad chocolate.

Back at the hostel we showered and rested before Dylan, Liz, and I got an expensive dinner. The hostel we were at was so hippy. They workers were so nice and always smoking. They had a punk rock concert going on that night, but we didn't go...we didn't quite fit in and we didn't even use our free drink cards, instead we went to sleep early. Our hostel was in the red light district. But there were no problems and I hardly noticed.

Our 12 person room.

Well we tried to sleep but as we were in a 12 person room where people kept wondering in at odd hours and I was by the door, that wasn't really doable. Eventually they quieted down and shut off the lights....only for one guy to start snoring, obnoxiously loud. At least he was on the other side of the room (bad for Chris and Liz though). He only woke me up a couple of times but it was a constant snore the whole time. It was like a freight train coming through. Well as some of you may know, I sleep talk when I'm in unfamiliar beds...so apparently at some point I started sleep talking back to this snoring guy with things like "ugh this is the worst!" So no one got any sleep that night between me and him, but hey that's what our train ride to Munich, Germany was for.

While Interlaken was gorgeous, I would not go back to Zurich...there isn't much to do there, and Switzerland in general is just way too expensive. Switzerland reminded me a lot of Norway, it was gorgeous and expensive, but Norway still wins.

But we did eat some good chocolate!

Italy: Searching for Gelato

As I write this I'm sitting in the living room of my host family, enjoying some Carrie Underwood and B.o.B. Yeah it's a random mix. I thought I would have to pull an almost all nighter tonight, but apparently not. Turns out not procrastinating is so worth it. I'm gonna try it more. But it's the last week of classes!

Anyways this blog post is dedicated to my time spent in Italy. It feels like so long ago, so hopefully I can remember everything we did and saw over travel break (Easter time) This blog is my only form of documentation for thoughts and adventures...should have kept a journal...it would have reduced the lengths of these blogs...sorry.

After arriving back in CPH from Norway I struggled home with the Eater train construction once more. When I finally made it home, it was time for a quick skype with mom and then bed. Next it was an early morning rise to pack and sign up for GAC classes. Getting to the airport again was another fun story: I had to walk to a farther train station called Kokkedal (25min). Well even the path I followed was blocked off for construction. Go figure. Well I made it and instead of taking a train I had to take a bus. Then I took the wrong metro. But don't worry guys, I made it to Italy!

April 5th

Flying over the Alps!

I slept the whole plane ride but I did wake up to see us flying over the Alps, perfect timing. After landing I took the Leonardo Express to the central train station in Rome (Termani), where Liz, Tricia, and Dylan met me. By this point, everyone should know that Liz and Tricia are my roomies. But who is Dylan you say? Well he goes to Gettysburg with Tricia, and she was nice enough to invite him on our trip.

The first thing I noticed about Italy was that there were Palm trees. Say what? Anyways, we lived in the GHETTO. Super sketch with people lighting up around us. This door to our "hotel" room was unlocked when we arrived (everyone else had arrived in Rome the day before). Two good things about the ghetto, we didn't pay to use the public transportation and never got checked. And we lived by an AWESOME gelato shop.

Cheap, huge, and just a friendly place!

Before this gelato shop, we had dinner at an over price and over rated Italian buffet. But hey it was food and the Oldest Italian Gelato Factory made up for dinner BY FAR. Not only was the gelato cheap, but the serving sizes were huge, free whip cream, and so many options. It was jam packed in there.

April 6th

Back in the "hotel" we finally decided on a time to get up and start our walking, tourist filled day. We started by wondering into a random church in the morning. For each city we were to visit, I printed out a top 10 list. For Rome, it said to walk into random churches. So worth it, amazing buildings.

The random church.

The Colosseum, picturesque as always.

Next we saw the Colosseum. It was super busy but we were just glad we could see it since everything was weird hours because of Easter. It was huge and like people say, just a bunch of rubble. But you can really envision what went on in there. Next we took this path up to a church. We had no clue where it would lead us, but the only notable thing about this experience was that on the way down I tripped on a rock (go figure) and broke my slipper (or as some would say, flip flop) and it was my comfy yoga mat Sanuks :( Well I then walked around the rest of Rome with a broken slippah. Oh did I mention the weather was 70 and sunny! Even got a little bit sunburnt.

Next on out list was the Roman Forum. It is a bunch of ruins from kings that used to serve as marketplaces. Having Dylan with us during this historic part was good because he loves Rome and was a history buff on this city.

The Roman Forum.

NOTABLE THING ABOUT ITALY: Aqueducts. clean, drinkable, water filters. Water fountains are one hard thing to find around Scandinavia. I loved the aqueducts and miss them already.

Tricia with the aqueduct!

The Spanish Steps were next. I loved getting gelato and just chilling on the steps, soaking up the sun, and people watching. After the steps, we headed to the Pantheon. We had to wait for a church service to be over so we wondered around the area and choose where we would have dinner. After a quick walk through the Pantheon, we had dinner in the shadow of the Pantheon. I had some amazing gnocchi. And we were then surprised by some homemade dessert wine for free!

People watching at the Spanish Steps and enjoying gelato.

The Pantheon, uber busy.

Dessert wine in the shadow of The Pantheon.

Next was my favorite part of Rome. NOT. We got lost getting back to our ghetto hotel. Yes we had a map. But Dylan "knew where we were going" and if we keep walking straight we would find it. NOT. The only good things about this walk is that Liz and I came up with our theme song for Dylan and loved to sing it obnoxiously in public places for the rest of our trip with him. It was Grenade by Bruno Mars. We also decided to give Dylan nicknames since he didn't have any. The first one is D-land while the second is Double D, standing for Dammit Dylan because he walks so fast and we can't keep up.

Trevi Fountain!

Anyways we made it back just in time to jump in the shower and then Liz and I jetted off to Trevi Fountain to meet some of her St. Thomas friends that study at John Cabot University in Rome. At Trevi Fountain we saw someone get proposed to while we were making wishes and enjoying our wine and beer. The boys told us all about Italy, public transportation, oh and about the constant street venders and how they want to punch them.

April 7th

The next day we boarded an early morning train to Florence. Florence is my second favorite place after Norway. It was so gorgeous. Sure it was raining but that didn't put our spirits down. We dropped our stuff off at the hostel that was basically someone's home. Still a 100% improvement over the "hotel" in Rome.

We started off by wondering into the center because we had no map and we literally walked around the corner to see the most beautiful building I have ever seen, it was stunning. The Duomo. For the rest of our day there we literally ran into this building at random times and my jaw dropped every time. While we couldn't climb to the top of the actual Duomo because it was closed for Easter we did get to climb the stairs to the top of the adjacent and connected tower that was almost as tall. Turns out a theme of our travel break was finding the highest thing you can climb for the best view of the city.

My new fav building.

Piazza de Michelangelo

After the gorgeous views of the tower we rewarded ourselves with gelato, of course. Our next stop was walking past a fake Michelangelo statue, over the bridges, and finally leading to the steep walk up to the Piazza de Michelangelo. This was a recommendation from my friend Summer who studied in Florence last fall. It was a really cool area and there was even a fake Michelangelo statue up there. Turns out there are 10 fake statues of him around the city, while the real one is in a museum. I kept looking for the one they filmed in Jersey Shore, no luck in finding it though.

Next we headed back to the hostel for a quick half hour break to rest our feet. We convinced Dylan to come to the leather markets with us (he thought it was how they made leather...nope it's shopping). Oh and Tricia left us in Rome to go to Florence and Austria. Anyways I got a cheap ass purse at the markets since my current one was on it's last leg or should I say last strap.

Leather Markets!

From the leather markets we tried to find some garden but instead ended up laying in front of this big historic building that I can't remember the name of. But we did get more gelato on our walk back to dinner. Although we struggled to find a place for dinner for over an hour that was affordable and had pizza and pasta. You think these requirements were easy in Italy, nope. But we ended up at Gusto Leo to fill our hungry stomachs.

We headed in for an early night after two full days of walking. Not to mention we had an early Easter morning train to catch to Interlaken, Switzerland to finally meet Chris! Only minor problems getting to the next city though. We decided to catch a little earlier train and save 10 Euros. Well this train was hours longer and we missed our connecting train in Milan to Interlaken. Although we did get to see some nice hills and mountains while the Italian guy across from us just stared at us for taking pictures on the train. So many different landscapes in Italy. So we spent at least 5 hours chilling in Milan.

Our cheap, filling, and favorite snack from Italy!

April 8th
Well it was Easter Sunday so of course nothing was open, but we did find a gelato place. Dylan left Liz and I to go read in the train station since he didn't appreciate me reading his book out-loud to him while looking over his shoulder...ha. Liz and I wondered around to different hotels trying to find free wifi to let Chris know we would be super late, but no luck there. So we ended up on a little grassy area in front of a church reading the Hunger Games and I taught Liz how to whistle with grass. There we made friends with an Italian lady and her spaztastic dog.

Our quaint little park.

Overall Italy was nice and warm. It was such a shock coming from freezing Norway, that I got a little cold. But nothing to complain about. Rome was huge. Florence was gorgeous. And we had no clue what to do in Milan, it just looked like a huge shopping city. And that was Italy for you, in less then 3 days. Uff da.