flickr site

since my trip is over

i've decided to keep the blog going

now for a different purpose

all about photos

places i've been

shots i've taken

check em out

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bernbartos/

the best of

our last night in amsterdam cait and i sat down to do the best of… and some worst of… these are just our opinions from our experiences...

best place to stay: hotel in amsterdam (we splurged a little towards the end)

worst place to stay: accommodations wise it was switzerland… rome was pretty shady too, but we had a great time in both places

best meal: cinque terre (pesto ravioli and scampi)

worst meal: some agentinian steak place in amsterdam

best guy we met: guy named alex from australia, met him in rome and hung out with him for two days

worst guy we met: a random in a bar in cinque terre, very intense with a interesting past

best girl we met: three lads from redding, england... drinking games and walking the streets of rome at 3AM

worst girl we met: waitress in cinque terre, did not like americans

best views: tie between swizerland and cinque terre, both equally gorgeous

worst views: rome

best train ride: coming into interlaken, mountains on two sides and lakes on the other two

worst train ride: think we already covered this one

best train station: rome

worst train station: milan

best overall people: switzerland

worst overall people: paris

best weather: interlaken

worst weather:amsterdam

best activity: white water rafting in switzerland

worst activity: audio tour of the ruins by the coliseum

what we learned

few thoughts on the trip now that i have had a day to rest and reflect...

-jet lag's a bitch

-patience is still a virtue

-trying new things is usually worth it

-take time to slow down (smell the roses if you will)

-cait and i are very similar people, its interesting to spend three straight weeks with someone, you learn a lot

-big cities all smell like crap no matter where you are

-i love where i live and the people that are in my life (not really a lesson but a greater appreciation)

-things we saw everywhere

ice cream/gelato stands

coffee shops

french fries

mcdonalds

pizzerias

irish pubs

-personal space does not exist in Europe

-everyone knows a little English (interesting to watch a japanese and italian person talk and engligh was the way they did it)

-some parts of europe really do close for a one or two months at a time for holiday

-washing clothes in your sink is not fun

-we only saw one mexican restaurant and that was in amsterdam and that was a steak/mexican place

-on the plane writing this and "closing time" came on the ipod…

very fitting

rain

four straight days of rain was how we ended our trip

we were ok with it after ten days of 90 plus weather

it did eventually suck to walk around in

our stay was nice and relaxing

each day consisting of a mid afternoon siesta

went to the van gough museum

anne frank house (bigger than i expected)

flower market

red light district (could write a whole post about that area)

and walked around a lot

ate some very good food

drank some good beer

overall a good last stop

i am now home

cait has gone on to ireland for school

i am back at work

just under 500 emails to get through

good stuff

few more posts coming tonight or tomorrow

more to come

i will be posting a few more entries once i get settled back to real life... stay tuned

the last stop

few pics of amsterdame

been raining since we got here

we dont mind

the train ride

for the sake of time i will stray from my normal style; i will still right one long run on sentence, but with more words and less spaces... i will preface this with a few observations cait and i have noticed about the train system in europe; there is no security when boarding a train, none. there are no rules of the road or guides to help you navigate through all the unspoken rules; but they are effcient and relatively inexpensive. some other items i should note; for those who have never been on an overnight train, picture a small cabin with three seats on each side that all fold down to make three beds on each side; three deck bunk bed on each side if you are looking at it; when we boarded we had no idea how this worked, when the beds should be flipped and who should be doing it.

and now the story...

cait and i board twenty minutes early, a young man sits next to cait and i with no luggage for a 14 or something hour train ride... odd; we say hello and he returns our pleasntries; train leaves twenty minutes late, no big deal. since cait and i know nothing about this type of train, we ask him if he knows, he responds with i have ticket. ok so he does not know english as much as we thought. a bit later cait asks where he is from, he ignores her a few times. he then proceeds to read the same page of the koran over and over again, starting singing something in arabic within in like a one foot radius of cait and i; now we have never seen anything like this before so it may be normal so be it, but it kind of freaked us out...

later an older gentleman joins us; welcomes himself to our cabin by yelling at us in italian about how we can help him place his suitcase in the right spot; after five minutes, he does it himself and is frustrated with us and lets us know it, in italian of course; we shake our heads; now this guy has been smoking two packs a day since he was 12, so he looks and smells like it, not pleasant to say the least...

by now its 930 and both guys are dozing off, so they old guys starts to gesture at us to put the beds down so he and the other guy can sleep; we oblige and the two guys take off to somewhere; the young guy comes back an hour later and goes to sleep, the other guys paces outside our cabin for a good two hours until almost 1145 then finally comes in and lays down; so very confusing...

we are all trying to fall asleep to the sweet smell of ashtray and we make it to our first stop, (side note: we gave our passports and tickets to the conductor when we boarded so he would not wake us in the middle of the night, totally normal, but the young guys passport is pink, again strange) at about midnight we hear pounding on the door next to us and someone yell police; the young guy bolts out of our room, next time we see him he's in police custody getting his things and being escorted off the train with three others from our car...

during the series of next six stops police at each station boarded our train, knocked on our door and asked where that dude was...

now again this may be normal, but for a first timer here it was quite intense at momments...

cait and i got very little sleep while worrying about who was in our cabin, waking every few hours to the police and breathing ashtray through a blanket or pillow...

needless to say likely our last overnight train

but we have arrived safely in amsterdam

it is rainy

when in rome

cait and i are killing time in an internet cafe before our train

so here are a few pictures from rome

the police force around the bus i mentioned in the last post



gilmore this one is for you

we did not use this travel agency

i just batted it to the ground (inside joke for all you other readers)

flower outside the forum

the colleseum

st. peter's

cait and i inside st. peter's

cait inside st. peter's

they must have loved us

not too sure what this was

but it looked super cool at night

thats all for now

we will be shortly getting on a sixteen hour train to paris

followed by a four hour train to amsterdam

as you can imagine

we are super excited

we are glad to see the dollar gaining strengh againist the dollar recently

makes our purchases a little less painful

some other notes on rome

it is probably the dirtiest city we have been

and it smells just about everywhere you go

the food has been good

but we are excited to try out some new things in holland

we have learned our lesson from paris

and learned to use the metro right away to save some walking

our shady hostel decide to give us counterfit money one night

that was an interesting conversation when i tried to use the same money they gave us

and they told me it was fake

lets just say it didnt go well

but we got some other money that was real, supposedly

rome is burning

well not literally

but its hot

we arrived sunday

just in time for the rome-naples soccer match (the fans do not like each other)

picture armstrong-cooper day times a million

as we headed to meet our friend amber for dinner

we ran into thirty plus buses filled with naples fans

each escorted by twenty of so police in riot gear

as we passed the train station there was actually tons of people running

running from the train station in case something happens

like the kind of running when there is a fire

it was crazy to say the least

we then run into a 10k that is going through the city

making us a little late for dinner

monday was spent in vatican city with some new friends

saw JPII's tomb

sistine chapel

st. peter's (its huge)

we took a guided tour

learned a great deal

next to trevi fountain

today was spent at the colosseum (also huge)

and impressive

our feet hate us

the evenings have been spent at the bar in our hostel

by now we have met at least half the people in this place

its a lot of fun

we introduced them to faded eights last night

kostka would have been proud

we have been hanging out with lots of aussies and brits

(nerd, i learned some interesting things about the kangaroo you might be intereseted in)

we decided to spend an extra day in rome

and grab a bunch of trains to make it to amsterdam a day earlier than planned

getting to prague proved too difficult

next post will come from holland

go twins

miss ya'll at home