The Wrap Up: In Photos

There are a lot more photos. You can see the rest of them here, and here.

So, here is the run-down of the last two weeks. Here wo go.

We landed in Madrid, headed to the CEA office, dropped off our stuff... and then realized that we were homeless until we could meet our couchsurfing host at seven. So, we slept of some jet lag at a park across the street.

We woke up at 5:30, because our host had to catch a plane, and then went to sleep at the train station for a few hours. We got yelled at a few times for sleeping there, but it didn't make much difference to us. We were SO TIRED.

I went to order some breakfast... I ordered "Sweet Breakfast." What I got? One piece of toast with some kind of chewy ham (which I promptly gave to Graham,) coffee, and fresh orange juice. Hmmm... Not my idea of breakfast, Spain.

We got to Perpignan, France that night. We then couldn't get ahold of our couchsurfing host to figure out how to get to his house... so we checked into a hotel. This is what the room looked like:

It was really creepy. There were weird things stenciled on the walls...And no shower curtain. Luckily, we managed to get ahold of our host, and promptly checked out of this hotel about thirty minutes after we checked in. The lady at the desk was not at all happy with us.

The next day we got on a train to Geneva. We were one stop away from Geneva, when our train starts moving backwards! Yikes. Apparently, our half of the train broke off from the other half, and ours was going somewhere totally different. Ooops. So, we got off in Cluses, France. We were stuck there for a few hours... Pretty little town. I got asked to coffee by a French man who spoke no English, and then harassed by a drunk man who kept switching between French and English.

We finally made it to Switzerland! This is the view from the top of an old castle next to the house we were staying at. It was raining, but we walked around and got to see some pretty amazing views anyway.

We got traditional Swiss fondue, got made fun of in German by our waiter, and at way more than we should have. And it was wonderful.

Next stop: Austria. It was so beautiful. We climbed with our hosts for two days, watched Mt. St. Elias, played card games, ate home made schnitzel and plum cake, and generally had a whole lot of fun. I was sad to leave Austria.

Then, on the way to Croatia, we got stuck in Slovenia for a few hours. There was a pizza place across the street, so we ate there (not bad, either.) And then on the train to Zagreb, a policeman came into our car (it was totally dark by then) and yelled "Passports!" took them outside and started talking feverishly into his walkie talkie. I thought we were going to die. This happened three different times throughout a forty-five minute train ride.

When we got off the train, we walked to our host's house, which involved a very, very, very creepy stairwell. That's Graham being a creeper in the picture above.

We slept on the kitchen floor, in about a 8x6 foot space. Not my favorite. We also didn't meet our host until a few hours before we left. We met his girlfriend, and his very scary brother right away, though.

Zagreb was a total bust. We went there to see Plitvice lakes, and for a lot of unfortunate circumstances, we couldn't go. We ended up staying in the tiniest, smelliest apartment ever, doing absolutely nothing other than making ourselves homesick. We spent the evening sitting in McDonald's. This helped.

We were both really excited to get to Venice. We walked down the Grand Canal, looked at all the yummy pastries and gelato, got some great photos, and stopped for dinner. We had bruschetta, sea bass and potatoes, tiramisu and lemon gelato. So so so so so good.

The next morning, before we left, we got breakfast. Rolls and jam (and Nutella) croissants stuffed with apricots, coffee and orange juice. Much better, Italy. Spain: take note.

This is where we stayed in Italy ^^. Our host was only 19, and was really nice. We got Turkish Kebap, Graham tried a spritzer, and we walked around the town for a bit. And we got a real couch to sleep on, instead of the kitchen floor in Zagreb. Italian win.

After the longest travel day ever, we got to our host in Nice's house... Where his couch surfers from the night before had missed their connection and were staying for another night. We managed to get five beds in this room. And yes, that is the entire flat right there. There were no other rooms, other than the bathroom. Wow.

The next day, we missed our train because we couldn't figure out the crazy bus system in Nice. We had been doing so well, too! Oh, well. We got our tickets changed, and got into Barcelona about the same time we would have anyway.

We were walking around at midnight, trying to find a hotel for the night when this lady walked up behind us to ask for directions. She was a little sketchy, but we did our best to point her in the right direction... And then two men come running after us yelling, "STOP!" One of them flashed some sort of badge to Graham, and then they proceed to take us off into an alley. They kept asking us if we had just sold or bought cocaine, and then proceeded to examine our passports, go through all of our stuff, looking for cocaine.

Yeah, that's right. We got stuck in the middle of a drug bust.

He told us that we were in a very dangerous part of town (only five minutes from the train station. We had no idea...) and that we should go to our hotel asap. That's Graham sitting in the hotel room ^^, where we were just thankful to be alive.

We caught the train back to Madrid today, got our stuff from CEA, and are now moved into our apartments! (Pictures of that to come later.)

It was a lot of fun. And exhausting. I'm glad to have a place to call my own, and wear something other than the same two shirts. :)