Heidelberg: Prost!

Continuing on our journey we made it into Heidelberg after a series of trains and were greeted by two of my good friends, Kirsten and Patrick. Kirsten, my old roommate and one of my best friends, had been studying in Heidelberg for the past year, and Patrick is doing an internship in Northern Germany and decided to take the train down to visit. We got in around 4pm and quickly found out we were going to have a bit of a journey to get into Barcelona. The train we wanted to take had become fully booked and our best option turned into staying another night and working our way into Southern France (which just gave me more time with Kirsten, so zero complaints). We managed to see most of the city that day and worked our way up to the ruins of the old castle there where we could see the entire city. So gorgeous. Also proving the point that we live in such a small world, an old friend of Patch's from boarding school happened to being going to the university in Heidelberg and knew Kirsten, so she joined us for the sight seeing. That night we got to try our first taste of German food (wiener schnitzel - sooo good) and beer (also amazing). We got back to Kirsten's dorm relatively early and Jenn, Patrick, and I all managed to play a bit of sleeping tetras and all find a way to fit on her dorm floor
- not the most comfortable but after all the travel it didn't really matter. All we wanted to do was sleep.

On the second day we went through a bunch of the shops in old town Heidelberg and just explored more around the city before making a home cooked meal back in Kirsten's dorms. Patch left us around lunch time to head up north which gave us some girl time. I hadn't realized how much I missed Kirsten before arriving. After food we went out to a couple different bars and at the last one I was so tired while we waited for a cab I actually fell asleep in the middle of the smokey room. I guess getting such little sleep finally took its toll on my body. Jenn, Kirsten, and the others woke me up a bit later to get in the cab and we headed home for the night. Jenn and I jetted off pretty early in the morning on another train journey (Heidelberg-Mannheim-Paris-Marseilles-Montpelier), starting to work our way to Barcelona.

Paris Pictures

Paris: Je t'amie

So, it's official: I am horrible at being prompt about blogging. It's been over a month since I was in Paris so I'll have to try to remember it to the best of my ability. We left London rather early (and by that I mean we woke up at 5:30am to quickly rush to the station and almost miss our train). We arrived in Paris around 11am after a short stop in Calais (quick note: local time sprung forward an hour from London, so we were not on trains for horribly long). From the train station we took the subway (Paris has an amazing public transit system) into Malakoff and then had a bit of an adventure trying to find our hotel. It was located about a ten minute walk from the station, however streets in Europe are not labeled well. We ended up having a couple who spoke zero English lead us in the right direction. It ended up being our first of many "lost in translation" moments in Paris. The rest of the first day was spent relaxing, trying French pizza, and napping. Which was a fantastic change from the go-go-go atmosphere we had previously been experiencing.

The next day was probably one of my favorite of the entire trip. My friends Alyssa, Megan, and Matt from back at school were also traveling Europe this summer and happened to be in Paris during the same time. We met up with them in the morning and did a free walking tour of Paris - which I HIGHLY recommend to anyone visiting the city for the first time. Our tour guide took us around showing us pretty much everything we could have wanted in the city and then giving us the history behind the monuments. We managed to see Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Pont Neuf, the Latin Quarter, Tuileries Gardens, Champs-Élysées, the Lourve, and a whole lot more. Afterward, we took our tired feet back toward our starting location and had a nice dinner together before heading out for our first pub crawl. Starting our crawl at Cafe Oz (an Australian pub), we made our way to 3 more clubs before calling it a night and taking the subway home.

For our last day in Paris, we met up with Alyssa, Matt, and Megan again and explored a flea market in the morning. Following that we walked around until we went to one of my favorite sights of the entire trip: the Basilique de Sacre-Coeur. Situated near the top of the city with an amazing view, the basilica is an incredible sight to take in. I took about a million photos of the outside, however no photography is allowed inside the monument (understandably). We finished our day over at Megan Matt, and Alyssa's hostel in a park and then headed home so we could catch our trains (yes plural, we had a bit of an adventure with a bunch of connections) to Heidelberg in the morning. Overall, I truly adored Paris. All the architecture, history, and culture makes the city worth the time of being there. Adding to that the food was delicious, everything was pretty easy to navigate, and I was no longer sick.