Amsterdam / Reflections

I am sitting in a coffee shop in Amsterdam called Green House, so take that into consideration when reading this blog post. This fresh mint tea is very good, though. I am waiting here for my flight to Copenhagen, but that isn't until abou 9:00 tonight. It's currently 2:15 so I have a lot of time to burn. Which is exactly what one does in Amsterdam. Burn time.

I've been wandering around Amsterdam for the past few days with Megan. We didn't really have any direction or anywhere we really wanted to be. We ended up going to like 11 coffee shops in 2+ days. That's a lot of coffee shops in not much time. So the way I like to sum up Amsterdam is that we did a lot, but we didn't really do that much at all. I don't think I could spend much more time living like this in Amsterdam though. I've had enough of the furious tour of coffee shops. I don't really have any pictures that I'm willing to share to be honest. I hope you don't mind.

I'm pretty excited to go to Copenhagen. I'm gonna hang out with my friend Katja who I haven't seen since my junior year in High School. So that'll be fun, but I'm really only there for one day. I get in late tonight, hang out tomorrow, and then I leave early the next day.

So I thought I had a job lined up at home, but it looks like the job might not be happening after all. This guy is just really bad at getting back to me. I think that might be because the attendance to the camp is way down so the amount of staff is lowered as well. I dunno, I guess we'll see when I get back to the states.

Croatia in a Nutshell

There wasn't a lot of wireless internet in Croatia, so I didn't really have time to write any blog posts. Basically I sailed around a lot of beautiful islands with odd names Mijet, Kortula, Hvar, Odis. Many of these were small island towns. The big city, Dubrovnik, was surrounded by walls that looked like this.







That last view was taken from a castle thing over a lagoon that looked like this


So Croatia was picturesque. We sailed around on a little boat. It had a tanning area on top that we could also jump off.




We dove off cliffs a few times: once they looked like this:

We went whitewater rafting. We laughed, we cried. We watched the championship league final soccer game. Barca beat Man U. The people were really fun. Good times were had by all. There was a pirate party, we all got kinda drunk. I don't really know what else to say about Croatia. It's not nearly as wartorn as you would think, not as bad as Bosnia or anything. The peope have a good sense of nationality. Anyway, it was a great place. I would recommend it to anyone.

Paris, France

Since my last post in Barcelona, I have been to Nice (and Monaco), Pisa, Florence, and Rome (and the Vatican) and now I'm back in Paris. The pictures got kind of messed up last time, so I'll just post them all at the end of this blog.

Nice was very pretty. The pebble beaches were kind of hard to walk on, but when the waves washed away it made a really creepy sound of all the rocks crashing against each other. It's hard to explain, you'll just have to go and hear for yourself. We climbed up some steps to a lookout and were rewarded with beautiful views of the Nice shore. It was pretty bad ass.

That night, we went to the Monte Carlo casino in Monaco. I gambled, and lost it all. I now have to beg on the streets for money to buy food. Actually, I didn't even go into the Monte Carlo because it was 10 euro just to enter, but I went to another casino in Monaco. I lost 35 euro. Poker wasn't my game that night. Should have played roulette, some people were making serious bank.

After Monaco we made our way to Florence. Florence was nice, it felt like a smaller city. Our "campground" in Florence was amazing; it was basically a resort. In Florence I saw some cool sculptures and the Duomo and stuff like that, but all the really awesome art was in the Louvre or the Vatican or stuff like that, so Florence couldn't really compare. Sorry, Florence.

Rome was pretty freaking awesome. Ancient Rome was especially cool. It's really awesome to walk around the Roman ruins and think that all the ancient Romans were walking around the same places 2000+ years ago. The Pantheon (one of the oldest buildings in Rome) was impressive, as was the Coliseum, the Roman forums and the Trevi fountain. All of Rome was impressive, actually. It was probably my favorite European city so far.

So that's my life for the past few days in a nutshell. The bus trip is over, and I'm sad that I had to leave all those friends. They were pretty cool people. But now I'm hanging out with Megan, and that's pretty cool as well (I'm not just writing that because she is reading over my shoulder). In a few days I'm off to Croatia, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to blog. I'm not sure how much internet Croatia has, but I'll do my best. For the time being, enjoy these pictures of all the things I just explained. Ciao.

p.s: I meant to post this blog yesterday, but then Megan and I went out to bars with her friends. It was quite fun. Sorry for the delay.




Outside of St. Peter's Basilica












Inside of St.Peter's Basilica






















The Roman Forums. They don't look like much from this picture, but they're really cool. Caeser's body is buried there and there are ruins from old temples and stuff.












The Pantheon, the oldest building in Rome
















I don't really remember what this building is.




Just kidding, it's the colisseum













The Trevi Fountain. They say that if you throw one coin in you will return to Rome, if you throw two you'll meet someone in Rome and if you throw three you'll marry someone in Rome.









The Duomo in Florence, Italy
Monte Carlo Casino, MonacoPisa. You can see the tower in the distance
A cool random church in Florence. I liked it because it had the Jewish star on the front
A really awesome church at some random small town in the middle of Italy. I don't remember what the town was called.








The Nice Beach from above










Me and Becca standing next to a waterfall near the Nice lookout












pps: It's really annoying to upload photos to blogger and have the captions show up where I want them to, so just deal with the weird formatting.

Barcelona, Spain

Alright, this post is for real. I'm in a really nice hostel this time, I bought an hour of wi-fi, my camera is connected and I'm good to go. I'm currently in Barcelona, after a decently long bus trip from Avignon, France.

My favorite place I have been so far is probably Switzerland. We were in a beautiful valley town called Lauterbrunnan. I took that picture from a mountain trail on my way down from a little town situated on the mountain. The city was small and kind of boring but it was pretty and you could drink the water from right out of the streams, like the one in the picture but smaller and with less rapids, which was kind of awesome. We climbed up Jungfrau, the highest point in Europe.

In Paris we did a lot of things like the Louvre and a bus tour that hit all the major places. We also took a river cruise at night where I took this nice, although slightly blurry, picture of the Eiffel Tower. It flashes for 15 minutes every hour, but my pictures of the tower flashing aren't that good. Maybe I'll get better ones when I go back.

I haven't taken that many pictures in Barcelona yet. We are hanging out in the city all day tomorrow. I don't know what I'm going to do yet, I'm thinking about a bike tour. There is a really sweet architect here named Goudi. He makes buildings that look something like this.
He has a lot of stuff in Barcelona. It's really cool. That's all I can think of right now. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. I'll try to blog more often, but it's hard to find internet. Peace out.

Lauterbrunnan, Switzerland

Alright, so I'm going to try to make this fast. I'm stealing wi-fi thanks to my friend Remi from Staubbach in Lauterbrunnan, Switzerland. Today I ventured up the highest (civilized) point in Europe; Jungfrau. Switzerland is absolutely beautiful. Yesterday I spent the day in Paris with Megan, Tiffany and Becca. We went to the Louvre, rue rivioli (big shopping street), had a picnic in front of the Eiffel Tower and went out to a french bar where a french banker bought us all shots. We also went to sacre coeur, but that was technically the day before. Paris was very fu, I'm excited to go back soon. Tomorrow I'm going to Avignon, France. It's basically just a pit-stop on the way to Barcelona. Sorry that there aren't any pictures and there isn't a ton of information, but I've taken a shitload of pics. Especially of mountains. I'll try to get internet in a more legitimate, legal way soon.

Paris, France

I just got to the Soverign Hotel where I met up with my tour group. Becca and TIff aren't here right now, but I'm sure I'll see them in a bit. I think they went for a walk or something. I haven't really done much in Europe yet. The flight was kinda nice, I got a whole row to myself. Megan met me at the airport which was awesome. Then I went back to her place, took a nice long nap and showered, and now I'm here. Tonight we are going on a night tour of Paris, which should be pretty awesome. We're going to see the Eiffel Tower all lit up and probably some other cool stuff.

I don't have any pictures yet, but hopefully I will soon. Also, I'm writing this post before I actually post it because the internet isn't free in this hotel. Hopefully I'll find some free internets soon.

First Post! ...Still in Michigan...

Welcome to my travel blog. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with it at least a little bit. I'm not sure how many pictures and stuff I'll be able to upload, but I'll do my best.

Enjoy.

Nate