VACATION!

Oh my goodness, it has been nearly a month since my last blog update! How the time flies while you gallivant through Europe! While I was gone, I visited 5 countries, 8 cities, and have been having an amazing time! So, my first vacation! I traveled to 4 countries (including France), with 3 girls from my program, Mary (Ohio), Karah (Indiana), Stephanie (New Hampshire). It started Saturday the 25th of October, when we met at the train station in Rennes. We train to Paris, and then took a night train to Munich. Spent the day hanging out in Munich, we had an amazing Bavarian Breakfast, consisting of beer, pretzels, and white veal sausages. We visited the Nymphenburg Palace in the afternoon. Overall, Munich was a great city; it was a little closed down since it was a Sunday.
The next morning we trained to Salzburg, home of my favorite movie, The Sound of Music. The city was one of the highlights for me, it is gently nestled into the alps, which surround the city on almost all sides. It was a great city to just walk around and hang out. The first day that we were there we checked into our swanky hotel (25 Euros a night, about $30, but it was a big deal because we got a PRIVATE room), and decided to look around the city for the day. We ate some lunch and then headed up to Nonnberg Abby, where the real Maria von Trapp spent some of her earlier days. We then decided to keep walking up, and we found the Salzburg Fortress. Which is the castle-looking thing that you see in ALL of the photos of Salzburg. It has bigger then we had expected, and we spent the entire afternoon gazing over the city, and onward to the Alps. It was probably one of the most beautiful things that I had seen in my life, just sitting there on a wall of the fortress, looking out onto what looking like the most powerful mountains in the world, the Alps.
That night, we went to a super market for dinner. We got some cheese, beer, bread, chocolate, oranges, milk, and some yogurt. It was really nice at this point, just to hang out in the room and relax a little, which we hadn’t had time to do yet. The next morning we got up bright and early so that we could us the ‘hop on, hop off’ tour in Salzburg. A hop on-hop off tour is basically a tour bus, but there are stops that you can get on and off all along the route. And since there are busses funning all day, you can just hop on the next bus that comes to the stop that you are at. This is not the kind of thing that I usually enjoying doing, but because there are a lot of attractions that are outside of Salzburg, it was the best option for us.
We went to the Stiegl Beer Factory; Stiegl is the beer of Salzburg. We visited the new museum, had a beer tasting, and even helped make a batch of Christmas Beer! It was a blast because there was NO ONE in any of the museum, and we just got to look around at our own pace, take lots of goofy pictures, and just have a good ole time. Plus, I picked up some Christmas presents there… After that we got to see the places where they filmed the Sound of Music, and a palace/garden that was beautiful. After a very cold afternoon, we went to a traditional Salzburg restaurant for dinner, where I had beer (no surprise) and an excellent sausage dish. It had 3 types of sausage and friend onions throughout; and of course for desert, a little apple strudel to top it all off.
We spent the night in Salzburg again, and then got on the train to Vienna the next morning. But before we left, I went and took lots of pictures at the garden where they had filmed most of the song Do-Re-Me in the Sound of Music. It was great to see all of the cool places that are in the movies, and I definetly will be going back to Salzburg some day.

When we arrived in Vienna, we checked into our hostel, and then decided to go downtown and check things out. That first day, we walked around in the Museum District, and visited the Royal Treasury of the Hapsburgs Empire. When we got out, it was dark outside, so we walked around downtown for about an hour and the decided to go find something to eat. We found a restaurant near our hostel and ate so…interesting… food there. We were all very tired after traveling all morning, and sort of crashed in the hotel room that night.
Before we went to bed, we all picked something that we wanted to do the next morning: Mary- Royal Apartments, Karah- Museum of Natural History, Stephanie- The Sissy Museum, and me- The Spanish Riding School, home of the Lippizaner Stallions. The next morning we got up bright and early, and we did the Apartments, the Sissy Museum, and the Spanish Riding School, all before lunch. Then we did the Museum of Natural History (MNH) in the afternoon, which was amazing. The MNH was HUGE, and really amazing because most of the animals there were at least 100 years old. The museum was founded in the late 1800’s (I think), and everything is SUPER old. That evening on the way to the train station we had a little adventure, and here’s how it goes.
We started out at the hostel with directions to the train station; it was really simple, just get on this S-Bahn (tram) and it would take us right there. We had allotted about an hour to get there, even though they said it would only take 15-20 minutes. So we walk to the tram station and get right on the tram that we need. It was a little odd because the tram didn’t start moving until about 10 minutes after we had boarded, but we did think anything of it. About 10 minutes into the journey, the tram suddenly comes to a screeching halt, and the driver immediately jumps out and runs towards the back of the tram. I thought that we had hit a person or an animal, and a minute later we feel the tram being moved backwards. At this point you can feel the tension in the tram because almost all of the people on the tram are trying to get to the train station. Another minute goes by and the driver gets back into the tram and says something in German over the speakers. Instantly that entire tram just deflates, like they had just been told the world was going to end. People are screaming, and then suddenly EVERYONE runs off of the tram and starts to walk up the street. Since we had NO idea what was going on, we resorted to ask if any one spoke English who could tell us what was going on. Luckily a woman was happy to help us, she said that the tram and gone onto the wrong track and that everyone was walking to the next stop to pick up the next tram. Of course at this point we had about 20 minutes to get to our train. We run to the next stop with all of the other passengers, and hop on the next tram. Luckily, we made it in time for the train. But if we had missed that train to Venice, we would not have been able to complete our trip because it would have messed up the train to Milan, and then the train to Nice as well.

So we make it onto the train, and are on our way to Venice where we will get another train to Milan, and then yet another to Nice. When we arrive in Venice it is 2:30 in the morning, and we have to change train stations, so we decide to take a taxi. When we get to Santa Lucia, we discover that it isn’t open yet, and won’t be open for another hour and a half. So we decided to plop ourselves down in front of the doors with some homeless people about 500 feet away from us. There was also a nice looking Italian woman who struck up conversation with us about 45 minutes into the wait. She didn’t speak English, but because French is so close to Italian we understood (for the most part), what she was saying. She told us about the homeless people around us who were yelling; she said that they were fighting about drugs… great! That made us fell REALLY safe. And then she told us about how stupid the train stations in Italy were because they don’t open until 4:30 in the morning. Needless to say, it was an experience, and by the end of it we were freezing and were VERY happy to get inside where it was a little bit warmer.
We got on our train at 7:30, and landed in Milan in time to grab a quick bite, and then catch our train to Nice. And after 24 hours of travel, we got to Nice, where it was dark, raining, cold, and generally not what we had been looking forward to. At that point we were tired, cold, wet, and hungry. And instantly said that we didn’t want to stay in Nice any longer then we had to. So we decided to change our tickets from Sunday afternoon, to Saturday evening. Which was perfect because we saved money and got back to Rennes at a reasonable hour on Sunday, instead of midnight, which was what our original train was.
Nice was abosolutely heaven on Saturday though. It was November 1st, 75 degrees, people swimming and tanning. I got ice cream for lunch at a place that I had been when I visited Nice in April. It seemed to be a nice reminder of home and my life back home. I took lots of pictures here, and just walked around in the warmth. It was a perfect end to a wonderful vacation.