A Day in Brussels and our Last Day in Europe

Brussels seemed like a nice enough town. We caught the train from Schiltach into Belgium, and found our hostel. We got in a little late, so all we really had time for was wandering around for dinner, and see what sights we could. We hadn't done much research, but we managed to find a pretty square where the buildings had gilded statues and lights. We got a waffle, which was pretty incredible, and saw a platypus made out of bread.

I can't say that I know the first thing about Belgian culture, but that was a damn awesome bread platypus. The internet was a bit spotty at the hostel, so we trudged to an internet cafe to write down all of our flight information.



When the time came to get on the plane, we were damn ready to go home.

The Black Forest

Tales continue! Things have been going very well as Jessi and I are getting ready to move into our place in Boston, and search for jobs. We last left ourselves in Switzerland. From Interlaken, we made our way through Germany. We had already made reservations to fly out of Brussels, so the idea was to pick a place about halfway to Belgium.

We hadn't really picked a place even while in Switzerland, there wasn't much in the way of hostels at any of the towns we were looking at. While having dinner one night, we encountered a group of Australians who said they were going to Schiltach, and figured it was a good a place as any. It's a little medieval town actually within the black forest. According to websites, rooms in Schiltach were cheap, but they didn't have any sort of online reservation system. So we whisked our way off to Germany with high spirits about finding a accomodations.

I'll be honest, I was completely blank going into Germany. I knew I wanted bratwurst, but other than that I didn't know what I wanted from Germany. From the train, the onset of the Black Forest was pretty intense. The name comes from the Romans, who described how the dense trees seemed to block any light to the forest floor. The description was pretty accurate, although the valleys and trails were wide and sunny.

One of the first things we noticed about Germany was that 1 out of every 10 buildings we saw had a solar panel. Bussinesses had huge solar arrays atop their buildings, and we have to assume that the electricity needs of the community must be mostly met by sustainable energy. Go Germany!

The other thing we noticed on the train was that we were worn out. Switzerland must have been the turning point, because we felt just generally awful. By the time we got off the train in Schiltach we just wanted to go to the tourist office, find a place to stay, and crash.

Long story short, the tourist office was closed, and the accomodations in Schiltach were not nearly so cheap as the website had made them out to be. We walked up and down the length of this pleasant medieval village with cobblestone streets and old murals on the sides of buildings, before just settling on a nice bed and breakfast. We hit the bed and hit hard.

It was a lovely B&B, run by a woman from San Diego who had married a German restauranteur. We were glad to have an American after hearing "no vacancies" in German a handful of times. I'm sure Schiltach is very nice as well, but we spent the majority of our time curled up in bed. Jessi was nauseous, I couldn't stop sneezing, we were miserable and decided to watch japanese tv streamed over the internet.

Fortunately for us, the town specialty is a hearty soup. Meat and spinach dumplings in a savory broth. We couldn't have asked for a better remedy to our battered travel worn bodies. Rest and relaxation and soup for two nights was just what we needed. Cake in the Black Forest didn't hurt either.

Still on the mend, we forced ourselves up a small hill to at least touch the Black Forest, we did so, and called it a day. All in all, still a lovely couple of days.

From Venice. . . Switzerland

-We've very succinctly finished our trip and made it back to the states, but we're not finished with everything we did in Europe, so the blog continues.-

Venice was very nice and from there we planned to make a zigzag across Switzerland and Germany to our flight on Wednesday out of Belgium. We'd used up all of our loose Euros and we're ready to pull out Swiss Francs (switzerlands currency)

We got in late to Switzerland, and since we had forgotten to fill our water bottles, we landed thirsty. We had our first suprise at a little kiosk buying water. Where most countries sold bottled drinks for 1Euro, we found the price here at 3.50 Swiss Francs. Exchange rates aside, that's about $1.70 and $3.75 respectivly.

It only got more astonishing from there as we found that Switzerland is a vey expensive country. We did find affordable food though, and sampled the best their supermarkets had to offer in bread and cheese.

We had landed in a town called Interlaken, because it had the cheapest hostels we could find, but we had zero idea what Interlaken was all about. Our guidebook had a brief section telling us it was a Swiss town. We figured it'd be a sleepy alpine village.

Interlaken is the extreme sports capital of Switzerland, at the base of the mountain range that leads to Jungfrau which is modestly dubbed, the top of Europe. Pictures of that soon. I couldn't convince Jessi to jump out of a plane or jump off a cliff with me, so intead we took a hike to the Trummelbach falls.

Amazing. Trummelbach feeds directly from some of the largest glaciers in Switzerland, and consists of 10 waterfalls that have carved their way through underground caverns within a mountain. You ride a funicular to the top and walk your way down from there. Easily the most intense thing we saw in Europe.

Furthermore while walking to the falls, we saw Swiss Cows, Goats, Gondolas, base jumpers, para gliders, and we're pretty sure 1 sky diver. We were walking out in the middle of this wide valley, when all of a sudden we here this loud rustling noise almost like a crash. We turn around just in time to see this sky diver's chute open, and see him land not even 200 yards away. Right out of the bloody sky, incredible.

Pricy? Yeah Switzerland was pricy, but we made it work and made incredible memories.

A Night in Venice

Venice is an incredible city. From the sheer marvel of the city on the water, to the drainage stones that marked where the underground aquaducts collected and funneled rain water. Our hotel receptionist guided us to a lovely all you can eat buffet, where I proceeded to eat all of the mussels I could eat. Venice prices were a little high, an our guidebook told us to just accept that, but the place we went was cheap and included wine.

We saw St. Marks Square and Basillica, the Rialto Bridge, and a half dozen tiny churches. We saw the sun setting off the West bank of the island, and had some incredible tea.

Let me tell you about the tea.

We managed to find the tea shop of a local Venetian who had spent 8 years in Japan. In a little secluded garden I had a Matcha Latte the likes off which I had never thought I'd find outside of Japan. We spoke a little Japanese to the owner, and had the chance to simply enjoy a little bit of time together. We had been missing our tea time from England with our friend Ellie, so this was the perfect place for a send off out of Italy.

This of course continued to reinforce the idea that in Europe we discovered that we really just want to back to Japan.

Friendz in Firenze

Florence (Firenze) is a great town, and we had a great time, spending three nights there. The hostel that we stayed at had a great breakfast and dinner option, which was nice for our budget, but also gathered all the guests out into the common area.

We met 3 guys from northern Virginia, with whom we shared a few bottles of wine. A group of Japanese tourists, who I engaged in awkward conversation in Japanese, a nice photagrapher, Jodi, from LA, and an awesome guy from DC area who's starting up his own film production company.

The first morning we took a guided tour with about 15 other people, and saw a good deal of the lesser known sights of Florence. We also got the best gelato in the city (according to the guide and a Japanese tourist who had tried 20 different places in two days).

After the tour we wandered and found a local Italian place where the menu was handwritten with the day's date written across the top. Fresh, excellent, and filled with locals. We certainly ate our fill of pasta.

The next day was unfortunately fortunate. The last tuesday of September is the day in Florence where they open up all of the museums free to the public. Our hostel keeper told me it was the best way to see Michalangelo's David. Long story short, the David was not on display in the museum where it was, there was some convention going on and it was impossible to get into the section with the David. Our itenerary for museums after the David had us running from one museum to the next finding them closing the doors just as we got there. It was just strokes of bad luck that in the time it took us to get to the museum that closed at 8:30, we would miss the one that closed at 9:00.

We both agree that it's a great city, but we'll have to see it to a fuller extent sometime in the future. We did see a great deal of art, had some great food, and met some great people, so certainly no regrets.

We're ending our day here in Venice now, having taken a brief gondola ride, seen 5 churches and St. Marks square,had all you can eat mussels and pasta, and taken tea at a brilliant little tea shop. Accomdations have been a little more expensive in Venice, but so far we're doing great without breaking the bank.

We've got a week till flying out of Brussels, and while we're still enjoying ourselves, we're a little excited to get home as well.

Nice was nice

Back in France, visiting a city notorious to my parents as the "bad" city. Bad service, rude people, all that. Apparently things have changed, because we've had an excellent time in Nice. Got some excellent local cuisine (think fancy tuna burger), grabbed some authentic French Violet Ice Cream (think the flower), and took a dip into the Mediterrean. The 'beaches' were rocky, but the water was actually quite warm. We had to pick up some swimware, but we got it at a pretty good price, looks pretty good too.



It was a beach of exceptional beauty, and we saw plenty of fish and a lone red jelly fish along the coast. A day made better by a good dinner



Italy tomorrow.

Barcelona and back to France

We spent a relaxing 3 nights exploring the Siesta side of Barcelona as opposed to the Fiesta side. We had a lovely hostel, booked very affordably, a little off the beaten track. Well, a lot off the beaten track, which was beautifully amidst a Spanish National Forest; it's just the metro didn't run super late out to it.

Our first day out, we explored an incredible market on the main drag, and got (I guess) fruit smoothies of incredible flavor and intensity. Our last night we got a taste of night life and some excellent tapas. We had to grab the 11:30 metro back, so the dancing hadn't really started in the streets, but we enjoyed ourselves anyway in a little plaza where a hippy band played Africanish looking instruments. We also found a roving Mariachi Band, or the spanish equivalent, who seemed to be having a lot of fun, in ther forest green outfits.

It was a good chance to rechage and prepare for going back to France, where we'll see if Nice and Monaco make up for our Parisian Dissapointment.