Loose Lips Sink Ships

Friday, July 31, 2009

Signs of the Apocalypse #293

My days of simply using Google Reader for viewing friend's shared items are over. Effective immediately, I will be returning to the wonderful world of RSS.

My experiment of not using RSS feeds was not all in vain. To be fair, I did stop a lot of my 'waste of time' Internet browsing. However, now that I'm back at work, I need something to break up the day and this might as well be it.

So, be kind to me. It might take a while to readjust to this crazy world.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Last, but not least

The last of our trips was a big one, with everyone going at some point int he trip. I flew Friday morning with Charing. Richard arrived on Friday night. Jing came on Saturday, after getting stuck at the airport, without any cabs or trains to the city. Miron and Angie came on Saturday via the EuroStar. The vacation was packed from beginning to end as there is so much to see in Paris.

Charing and I got off the plane and right away headed to the city centre. We started at Notre Dame and climbed the tower. It offered a great view of the city and my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. From here, we started wandering the streets and eventually found the Louvre. The two of us split off and spent a couple of hours on our own in the museum. I saw the main attractions in the Mona Lisa, Venis de Milo and the Nike of Samothrace. From here, we headed off the Invalides, otherwise known as the War Museum or better yet the tomb of Napolean. The war museum was great and provided extensive depth of all major wars, especially the world wars. Finally, Napoleans Tomb was huuuge. You can't get a good idea of its size through pictures. On our way out, I asked the ticket guy if Napolean was cremated or it was entire body. He said that nobody knows for certain and in fact, Napolean might not even be in there! He did say that the coffin was encased in Platinum, Lead, metal and more metal, then wood. Charing and I headed to our hostel to check in and then found ourselves at a small French restaurant. I ended up taking a nap and waking to find Richard arriving. The three of us went for some beers.

The following day, Jing finally trickled in and was with us for the day. We started by going to the Arc de Triumphe and went to the top, which was amazing. Such a great structure and seeing all of the 8 roads converging on it and the intense traffic is really neat. We then headed back to Notre Dame and everyone else went up while me, Charing and Miron bought a huuuge baguette. It was so cheap too. Great lunch. While we were waiting, we entertained ourselves by watching this French rollar blader do crazy tricks around pylons. Then, we met up with the rest of the group and ended up going on a carousel. It was fun, but got old pretty fast lol. After some lunch, we headed to Sacre Couer, the building which looks like a smaller Taj Mahal. It was situated on top of a large hill and offered an incredible view of the city. Miron, Jing, Richard, Omar and I were the only ones to climb to the top, but it was well worth it. From here, we headed to Trocadero, which had the most amazing view of the Eiffel Tower. The weather was perfect - Pure blue skies and no clouds. I took some pictures of the Tower, which I could have sold as post cards. We lounged with our great view, until finally heading back to the hostel a few hours later.

For dinner, we all went to a great French restaurant, where I tried a number of good French dishes. Notably, I tried Fois Gras, which was surprisingly like butter. It was delicious, but I couldn't eat a lot of it.

As night fell, we headed to the Eiffel Tower to see it lit up with all the lights. It was quite the sight and was beautiful to watch. Afterwards, Much to our surprise that night, we could not find a bar or club of any kind. It was incredible. Downtown Paris was just shut down. Finally, we stumbled upon a bar and wouldn't you know it, it was called The Great Canadian. The bar featured imported Canadian beers, poutine and was showing the Habs v Bruins game. We stayed and left the girls to find a bar, but they ended up back with us. It was a great night and we had many a beer. I ended up having quite a strange chat with the French man, who was proclaiming his love for Canadians - Awkward.... Dragging the drunk girls home, we crashed hard that night.

The next morning, after a great breakfast at the hostel, Jing, Charing, Angie, Omar (our new Turkish friend) and myself took the metro to the Eiffel Tower. We waited in line for such a long time and finally got to the top. The weather was terrible and it was really not worth it at all. Big waste of time, but something I guess you have to do once. Afterwards, Omar and I split off and went to Chateau Versailles. Since it was winter, there was not a lot of flowers or much leaves in the garden. However, the park was still huge and we did see all of the statues and large fountains. Still quite impressive, despite it being winter. We headed back to the city and I said goodbye to Omar and met up with Jing in a park in the city (Luxembourg). We lounged on the chairs in the beautiful park, grabbed a delicious crepe and eventually worked back to the hostel to grab our stuff and grab a quick bite before splitting off and heading back home.

Surprising Favourite = Poland

With the rest of the group going to Barcelona, I went off on my own to the beautiful city of Krakow. I arrived in the small city of Katowice and took a pretty sketchy shuttle from the airport to Krakow. I got to Krakow at 3am, grabbed a cab to my hostel and then met other people staying in the hostel. There was quite a group, with people from Australia, Germany, Portugal, Usa and England. Spent the rest of the night chatting with them, before heading to bed.

Saturday morning, I headed off on the local bus by myself to Auschwitz. After arriving, I had a bit of time to spend before the tour started, so I headed to a local shop for a strange dish. It was half of a baguette, with hamburger, cheese and ketchup, yet unlike a hamburger, it tasted sweet. After eating, the tour began by first heading to Birkenau. This was the larger of the camps, which held most of the people. The tour showed the size and how many of the original chimneys still existed. We headed back to Auschwitz for the most disturbing part of all my travels.

The tour provided extensive indepth information about the horrors of Auschwitz. I had heard much of the information before, but to actually see numbers made it such a horrible experience, yet one that should be done. By actually seeing an entire room full of the hair of all of the prisoners or the shoes was unbelievable. Walking into the room with the gas chambers was terrifying. Such an experience, one I wouldn't want to do again.

After such a downer, I headed back to Krakow and met up with everyone to hit up the Polish nightlife. We went to a number of bars and clubs, each more different from the rest. I loved how each club had a downstairs, which was incredibly mazelike.I Tiny rooms all connected to one another. It was very similar to the clubs of Prague in Czech Republic.

Sunday, we all slept in before heading to a local restaurant for cheap and delicious homemade perogies. It was our final meal together and we all parted after walking around the large city square. I spent the rest of the day walking through the city and exploring the small city shops, before heading back to the bus station, where I boarded my shuttle back to Katowice. Arriving back in the airport, we had a bit of a delay as our plane had smoked a bird on its descent.

Beer!

Myself, Charing, Jing and Richard flew into Munich Airport late on Friday night. We stumbled around the streets and eventually found our large hostel. The hostel had a large open area filled with bean bag chairs and hammocks - great for passing out on after a night of drinking. Friday night was spent drinking many local German beers in the hostel bar, which was jam packed. Met some locals and then called it a night.

Following morning, we left the hostel and found a place for breakfast. Our waitress did not speak any English and simply pointed to three different items on the menu. Not knowing what we were going to get, we all picked one at random. My "breakfast" was three hot dogs, with a white bun on the side. Not the breakfast I was expecting, but filling nonetheless.

Afterwards, we joined a free walking tour and got to see much of the market areas/downtown Munich. This tour included the show put on by the puppets and clocks at midday. We continued onto HaufbrauHaas, which is one of the more famous beer gardens in Munich. The garden is so old, that the roof still had swastika shaped paintings on the roof, which had been covered by Bavarian flags. Richard and I accidently split off from the group and ended up walking alongside the river and seeing some great statues/views of the city. We ventured into one of the large city parks and found ourselves at another beer garden. Here, we parked for most of the day. Jing, Angie and Charing eventually found us and drank alongside. We kept eating plenty of meat and other German treats, while drinking beer.

That night was spent recovering from the drinking, by drinking more at the hostel bar. The next day, Richard, Jing and I went to the Statue of the Giant Old Woman. The weather was freezing and we weathered the storm by camping out in the head of the giant statue. From here, we went to the Deutsche Museum (technological museum). I left the two and headed to Bayern Munich stadium to watch them play a league game, which they won 3-1. It was a great game and the crowd was going crazy.

I rushed to the airport, only to meet up the rest of the group and learn that our flight home was cancelled due to bad weather in England. The bad weather was a centimeter of snow/rain. Crazy how London shuts down at any bad weather. With another day left, we returned to our hostel for the night and then went to Salzburg, Austria the following day. We took the train and got to Salzburg, with not much time to do much. We filled the time by going to Mozarts Birthplace and then to an area where The Sound of Music was filmed. Then, we headed back to Munich, jumped on our plane (upgraded to Luftansa) and headed back to London.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Welcome to Italy.....10 Euro!

Much to my happiness, the UK decides to make Good Friday and Easter Monday public holidays. This news led to the planning of the longest trip of the term and what better place for it to be, than the big one - Italy. We elected to hit up the northern area of Italy, Milan and Venice, and save Rome for another venture. Thursday night, we flew in, quickly dropped off our bags and made our way for the extravagant nightlife of Milan. Someone must have forgotten to mention said nightlife to the people of Milan, because the main clubbing area was pretty dead. We did find one place, but after a couple of pricey beers, we were done for the night.

Friday was a much better day as we met up at the unbelievable Duomo Cathedral. It's well documented that my interest in Cathedrals/Churches/Anything religious has been fading quickly since arriving. However, Duomo was so unique and well crafted that it made all of the other buildings look like a bunch of old dingy buildings. As well, for only 5 Euro, you could climb the stairs to the top of the building, which allowed for a great view of the city and you could even make out the Alps in the distance.

The only bad part about Duomo was these incredible con artists. I'm sorry if you were conned by these guys, but you have to be a bit stupid to be had by these guys. There are two forms of artists. First, there are the Friendship Bracelets guys. These fellows approach a group of tourists (or anyone touristy looking) and try to throw a friendship bracelet into your hands. Of course, they keep saying it's a free bracelet. However, as soon as you take it or let them tie it on you, they immediately demand 10 Euros for the bracelet.

Second, is the Birdseed guys. These individuals will throw birdseed at you, at which point you will be swarmed by pigeons. With all the birds surrounding them, they offer to take a picture for you. I still don't understand why people want pictures with dirty pigeons, but I digress. Once the pictures are taken, they demand 10 Euro for the bird seed they used. Call me a cruel person, but I don't think it's hard to realize what these people are doing and I don't feel bad for people who get had.

I really enjoyed Milan, because since it is not a very touristy area, you can gain a true feeling of an Italian metropolis area. Ordering panzerottis at the local corner shop amongst other Italians or spending two hours in a cinema watching an American movie dubbed entirely in Italian (no sub titles of course - nothing like a crash course in Italian) made the experience unforgettable.

Saturday afternoon, we hopped on the intercity train to Venice. I would say that Venice is a once in a lifetime kind of place. It's unbelievably unique and I don't think there's really any place like it. However, there really isn't anything to do there. Once you've seen the canals and gotten lost in the tiny little streets, you've experienced nearly all of Venice. Gondola rides are very overpriced and at 80 Euro for a short ride, I don't think they're worth it.

With respect to the other places visited, Milan ranked pretty high on the list, while Venice was very low on the list. I expected much less out of Milan and much more out of Venice. For the opposite to happen at both places, it was quite surprising, but I'm quite pleased with the way things turned out.

Guinness is Good For You!

To celebrate the late great Saint Patrick, the weekend was spent drinking Guinness in the fine island of Ireland. The trip started off with one of the dumbest moves this term, but all in all turned out to be one of the best thus far.

Friday morning at 2am, I left the house and traveled to Stansted Airport (the main hub of the cheap airline Ryan Air). Upon arriving at the airport, I was told that I couldn't check in here, because I was at the wrong airport. Sadly, there is 5 airports in the greater London area and I had managed to go to the wrong one. Great start to the weekend. Luckily, despite countless complaints about Ryan Air and their customer service, I was able to get on a flight shortly thereafter and was soon in Dublin.

I had the day to myself, as the rest of the gang was set to land at night. With the town at my disposal, I spent my time in the city centre and became accustomed with the city. Did some shopping, hopped on a city tour bus, nothing too exciting, but enough to see all of the city. From there, the Guinness came out in full force. Since I was in Ireland, I tried to be as much as an Irishman as possible. Naturally, this consisted of only drinking Guinness for the rest of the weekend. When I got home on Monday, I couldn't stop drinking water as I was so dehydrated.

Saturday, we traveled on the longest coach ride of my life to see the Cliffs of Moher. It was over four hours of bus each way to the cliffs. Upon arriving, we had about an hour and a half at the actual cliffs. While it was a pretty cool sight, I'm still not sure if it warranted my nearly crippled back and legs at the end of the trip. Much to my disappointment, dumb people wrecked the attraction. Due to the 10-12 people falling/throwing themselves off the cliffs, large walls were erected to prevent ~~idiots~~ risktakers from going to the edge. Of course, Richard and I still tried to get to the edge, but were stopped by the Ranger who blew his whistle at us in an angry manner.

Sunday, a solid 6 hours was spent in the best place in Ireland - the Guinness Factory. I was able to sample all the kinds of Guinness, have many a pint and learn all about the process from manufacturing to advertising to learning that alcohol can inhibit your decision making abilities. All valuable information. I got a sweet poster of my favourite Guinness toucan, with whom I have an unhealthy obsession.

Looking back on the trip, there wasn't a lot done in Ireland. However, it really is just one of those incredible places where you can go into any shop/pub/whatever, share a pint with some friendly people and have a good time. It's pretty tough to not like Ireland, unless you're an idiot.