Crouton's Blog

Europe 2008

Well, I'm back from Europe, and still paying the price for having way too much fun. I was fortunate enough to get sick on the 2nd to last day of the trip, instead of at the beginning of the trip. My time at home has been spent in bed, while I do still manage to get to work during the day.

Anyways, Berlin was a blast, enjoyed it much, especially meeting individuals while there. Wombat's Hostels are amazing!!! Anyways, on Tuesday we took the train down to Potsdam, where we took a stroll through town to view the palaces of beauty. Tom and I were delayed from leaving right away, so we went separate. We ended up walking around the old city of Potsdam and became depressed as we walked through old Communist housing, this created much appreciation for the freedom of America. Since we didn't plan well for this part of the trip, we kinda wasted a day. I was terribly tired from not sleeping very well since arriving, so I was excited to get to our next Hostel and take a nap. Well, we ended up napping until around 8:30pm, and eventually making it to a restaurant for dinner. We called it a night shortly before midnight, as we were to be up early the next morning for our flight to London.

Here lies the worst day of traveling in history. On Wednesday, we get up around 6:30am, eat breakfast, get on the train to Berlin's airport, and eventually get off at a station so we can catch a bus to the airport. We were all excited to be on a good schedule, so no rushing was required. This happiness was soon to be discarded, as we waited and waited for the airport bus to pick us up...sadly this was to not happen for at least 1 hour. Reason to be found out later, was there was a bus strike that day, so there were very few buses running. Lucky us, so now we are freaking out, and almost to the point of flagging down old grandmas on scooters asking if we can get a ride to the airport. We were almost interviewed on tv, but about 5 minutes after communicating with the tv station crew, our bus finally came. Yeppie. Not so fast though, as we finally get to our gate at the airport, we are on time and almost relaxed, until we find out that our flight has been delayed 1.5 hours due to the airport workers striking. So, now we have to find an alternative method of traveling to London from the connecting airport. Well, we get to the connecting airport, knowingly we missed our next flight, then we are told by the airline that we can take a 45 minute taxi ride to another airport, which has a plane available for us to take to London. We eagerly accepted, as we didn't want to sit around the airport for 6 hours waiting for the next available plane. That turns out ok, so we take the cab to the airport, get on the plane, then arrive in London. "Not so fast ladies, we have a problem, we can't let you out of the plane since there is a fire in the arrival area of the airport." For crying out loud!!! Just let us in the airport so we can get to our Hostel, unpack, shower, then start to party. Well, after an hour of waiting in a hot and dull mooded plane, we finally were allowed to exit the plane. That pretty much ends the worst travel day in history. Sad face here.

London was great, after we finally got there. Lots of old buildings, castles, English speaking, weird accents, funny people. We took a couple tours of London, one of Old City London, and one of the Royal British. Our 2nd hostel was amazing, they had an awesome pub crawl, which we were to experience the night life of many pubs and drink many delicious beers. I actually enjoyed a few Guinness's, even though I can't stand drinking them in the U.S.

Well, there is more to the trip...but pictures will probably explain things in at least a thousand words or something like that.


Berlin Pics

London Pics

Peace out for now, Cheerio, Cheers, Guten Tag, Danke!

posted by Crouton @ 5:44 PM