AMSTERDAM!

Hey Team!

Just got home from another action packed weekend in Europe. This weekend we traveled to the beautiful Netherlands, Dutch Country, Amsterdam. I'm just gonna be honest from the get go...Ma I did not take a beret pic in Amsterdam. I completely forgot to take it out with me during the day and it just never happened. :( Anyways, night one consisted of a huge rage club that some Amsterdamians that we met on the street took us to. Definitely a good time had by all.

Day 1: wake up for around 9:30 to catch free breakfast at our hostel. Which by the way was a super grime fest/I hope I didn't catch any diseases over the weekend. If you were wondering, free breakfast really just means a piece of bread, a piece of cheese, and a hard boiled egg. haha. So basically we then went out for a second breakfast and I had a delicious chocolate pancake Dutch authentic style and it was fabulous! After breakfast we met Morgo and her friends at the Anne Frank house. Anne hit us with some knowledge and some history, so it was overall a good experience. Afterwards we hit up a coffeeshop and were pretty much done-zo for the day. We went back to our hostel and took the world's largest nap. It was essentially through the grace of god that we awoke and put our raging pants on for night. We went to some real grimey club (because it was only 5 Euro to get in, and it is important to always be as economical as possible in the current financial climate) Anyways it started off pretty packed but within the first hour of being there it baaaasically cleared out, and the boys we were with were not impressed with the boy to girl ratio so they left...Erin and I, however, were getting free drinks all night from our new best friend, Rob the bartender, so we decided...once again, to be economically efficient and stay there. All in all, solid first 2 nights.

Saturday: Another tough wake up, we managed to leave the hostel by 12:30 cleansed and ready to replenish the body...oh the hardships of being a tourist. We met up with Morgo, had some more fabulous Amsterdam pancakes, and took a canal tour to the Van Gogh museum where I saw the original Starry Night (pretty cool stuff). After Van Gogh we did the Heineken Experience, which was actually a) worth the 15 Euro and b) very interesting! We learned all about the company, how they brew the beer, made a music video, had a virtual reality expereince, and about 3 free beers in the process...definitely would reccomend it next time you are in Amsterdam.

I should interject here my overall opinion and thoughts of the city. Positives: canals everywhere, everyone bikes everywhere, lots of modern art galleries, modern architecture, everyone speaks English, chocolate chip pancakes, and the coolest airport I have ever been in. Negatives: graffiti, Eurotrashy people, too small of a city to consider home, annnd everyone is probably blazed out of their minds 24/7 which would get annoying.

Night 3 was kind of a bust, because my economical efficiency had run out, plus we had to get up at 6:30 to catch our plane home. I flew home with Erin and all morning she had been saying that she didn't feel good, her tummy hurt etc (Aunt Flow was in town if you catch my drift). So, we just had some fruit for breakfast since she couldn't really handle anything else. We slept on our half hour flight then we got on an hour and a half bus ride once we got into London. We had about 15 minutes of the journey left and Erin looks at me. She does not look good. I ask: Are you ok, are you going to puke? She starts doing the hand over the mouth gagging move. Oh no...its coming. I open my bag and pull out a plastic envelope thing that I put my research paper notes in, take the notes out and hand it to her...ohhhhhh but its too late because she just puked everywhere. And by everywhere I mean on me, on her, on the floor. She had like a resevoir of puke in her lap. She looks at me afterwards like she is going to cry but I just start laughing (because what else are you going to do when your friend pukes on you while riding home after a weekend in Amsterdam on an EasyBus?) Then she starts laughing...then we are the two American girls covered in puke laughing on the easy bus. We had to take off our scarves to clean up the puke. Soooo you would think that would be the end, that we could just get off the bus and be home. Oh no...we had to put our bags and pukey bodies on the tube for four stops then we had a 6 minute walk home from there. We basically just laughed the whole way home in a pukey delirium.

So to finish off the blog I would say that 1) I am thankful that we ate fruit for breakfast (if it would have been something crazy like an English breakfast I do not think I would've laughed so hard) and 2) Being a girl really sucks.

Morgan's coming on Tuesday for St. Pattys and staying til Sunday so we should have some good stories for next Sunday's blog.

Love Love!

Paris!

Bonjour my loyal readers!

Let us recap our weekend in Paris.

Day 1: Early morning start on Friday traveling to the Eurostar to take the Chunnel from London to Paris. To get on the train you have to go through airport-like security. After Erin and I got through security we were immediately stopped by some train station employee flashing her badge at us, “Excuse me, we are required to survey every 10th person that walks through security, and you are number 10!” Great. Security lady: “Since your arrival upon the UK how much money do you think you have spent (housing accommodations not included)” Erin: “Umm maybe around $3,000.” Security Lady: “Wow, $3,000 since January 13th!? Are you sure? That is quite a lot.” Erin: “Yeah…” Security Lady: “So, since the 13th of January you have spent three thousand dollars?” Erin: “Yes! I have a shopping/drinking issue!”

Fast forward to arriving in Paris. Since this was a trip sponsored through Arcadia we got on a 2 hour bus tour throughout the city which was actually pretty neat. After the bus tour we saw the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysées where the unknown soldier is buried. We (group of 5 IU kids) randomly ran into Joanna and Cait on the streets which was hilarious. Following the reunion, all 13 of us took a 5 Euro boat cruise for an hour up and down the Seine River. When we finally docked the Eiffel Tower was doing its every hour on the hour sparkle show which was beautiful.

That night I got hit on by a French man from 30 feet away while waiting for a Metro. Apparently it is completely normal for French dudes to blow kisses, wink, and stare at you for extended periods of time. The night consisted of the typical drink drank drunk + dancing experience. Scott: close your eyes and jump to the next paragraph. Then it was 4 am and we were ready to go home. We attempted to hail down a cab for about 15 minutes (which in drunk time was about 2 hours) After we all decided we were never going to get home some young-ish man tells us he can take us home for 10 Euro each in his car. Yes, his car, not his taxi. We think, wow, what a good deal let’s go. We (Myself, Erin, Sharday, Joe, and Evan) get into this man’s tic tac piece car and begin our journey home. Midway through we realize, hey we are getting pulled over right now. He tells us he is just going to go talk to his “friend”…right buddy. The guy has to step out of the car, do the drunk test, do the open the trunk to make sure you aren’t trafficking drugs test, and after about a 25 minute delay we were off again. We finally got home around 5 am (safe and sound!).

Day 2: I of course set my phone alarm for 9:30 am so as not to miss breakfast. (Got to be as economically efficient as possible ya know!?) Apparently, continental breakfast attire is not the same in Europe as it is in America. I walk down wearing Uggs, Adidas shorts, and a Notre Dame T-shirt. Everyone is dressed, showered, and staring. Oops! Anyways, day two we went to the catacombs, which was creepy yet intriguing. We saw Saint Chapelle and the stain glass windows literally took my breath away. And the last sight seeing destination of the day was Notre Dame which almost made me want to be Catholic. After all that sight seeing we needed to get a crepe: Nutella and Strawberries=to die for. If you haven’t experienced Nutella you need to jump on that tasty train because it is unreal!


Day 3: A little exhausted…being a tourist can really take it out of you. It was raining in the morning which did not make a very impressive beret in front of the Eiffel Tower shot, but you can’t win all the time ya know? After that we went to the Pompidou, which is a very famous modern art museum. We were there for about a half hour before everyone that I was with started the modern art complaints: I don’t get it, this sucks, I think I made this in 3rd grade etc etc. So they all left and I stayed. I bought the headphone sets you can wear around the museum and type in the number corresponding to the art work and you hear an explanation of the work…it was probably the best 4 Euro I spent (besides the crepe). We all met up at 6:30 pm in the lobby to go home. Got back around 11 pm, did some homework, and now its time for bed.

I’m Exhausted!!! Aurvoir mon ami!

Madrid!

Hola mis amigos!

So Madrid was absolutely amazing. Erin and I arrived at the Madrid airport around 10:30/11:00 pm and realized...Hey, we did not establish a solid plan to find Joanna or Caitlin and airports are kind of large. So basically we ran around the airport for 45 minutes trying to find each other but when we did it was your classic: yell each others name across the airport and run into each others arms reunion style. We got back to Joanna's apartment where a beautiful pasta dinner and birthday cake awaited us. We ate, drank, and I got some Bday presents from Cait and Jo which were PERFECT! Jo got me this amazing bracelet from a boutique in Spain and Cait wrote my name on the Lennon wall (very famous in Prague), took a picture of it, blew it up, and framed it for me.

By 3am we were ready to rage, we went to a club called Orange which Erin and I got in for free by offering the bouncer a piece of my gum. He then supplied us with two free drinks passes...man I love starting my nights off right! We didn't pay for drinks all night because we were with two of Joanna's friends...who are blonde...which in Spain means you are the hottest thing around! At one point Spice Girls-Wannabe came on so we clearly had to yell the entire song lyrics in one large group. We got home around 6:30/7 am...people in Madrid know how to party.

We woke up to blue skies, sunshine, and 65 degree weather! Erin, Caitlin, and I spent most of the day commenting on how much we miss the sun and how fabulous the weather felt. That day we went to a beautiful park and explored around Madrid. It was a perfect day. That night we put our raging shoes on and went to this super posh club called Joy. We were "on the list" so we got in for free (normally its a 20 euro cover charge) and danced our brains out. An hour into our clubbing sesh, i look on stage (where the VIP section is) and there is Cait and Jo! Cait and Jo started talking to this old dude who turned out to be an owner of another huge club in Madrid so he got us all into VIP (7 girls in total). Check out the facebook pictures to get the true effect of the club. Although I never got into that large wine glass I would constitute night two as a success.

Day three we walked around and did some shopping because in Spain every store has government regulated sales twice a year during February and August. aka Jill Marsh's optimal months of travel. Riley, I got you a Barcelona jersey...I didn't get you a Real Madrid because they were 100 Euro and thats a little serious for a jersey in my opinion...the Barcelona jersey is tight though! After shop shop time we went to Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (a spectacular modern art museum) and I saw one of Picasso's most famous art works: Guernica. We walked in the room and it was so massive and powerful I felt like I couldn't breathe. We probably spent 1 week discussing this painting alone in one of my classes at IU and the fact that I saw it in real life was definitely one of my highlights as of yet.

Night 3 contained a slightly more controlled version of raging seeing as we left the club at 3:45, went back to Joanna's apartment to change, and then jumped in a taxi to the airport. Our plane left at 7:30 am and the airport was a good 45 minutes away so sleeping clearly wasn't on the agenda. Erin, being perhaps a little too shwastey for a 5:30 am security check lost her wallet at the airport. Thank god her wallet didn't have her passport in it, otherwise we would have been in quite the pickle. So to wrap up the weekend we got back to our apartment around 10 am. I showered, went to a really cool street market, and played soccer with some of the guys from my flat. And now I am laying in bed, ready to catch up on some much needed sleep!

I Love you all very much! Hasta Luego!