Hello, Katie

Okay okay, Europe

People are harassing me for stories about my Europe trip, so I am going to go ahead and indulge you in them. First of all, the details: I flew into Prague (in the Czech Republic) on January 4th. I met up with Anna, who I was friends with when I lived in North Carolina when I was five. The next day, her sister Liz would fly in. I stayed until the 25th of January. While in Europe I spent nine days in Prague, four days in Paris, three days in Stockholm, Sweden, and four nights in Bruges, Belgium.

I have been asked numerous times which place was my favorite. I absolutely LOVED Sweden. However, I didn’t see anything historic or visit any cool museums while in Sweden. I enjoyed it so much because the people were so kind. It was difficult to find nice people in Europe but in Sweden there was an overwhelming majority of sweet people. In Stockholm there was a historic district (didn’t see that) and some viking museums and grand castles. I learned quickly that castles can be kinda lame. Granted, I probably missed out on some stellar awesome castle because of my castle bias. Ah, well. But I did see IKEA in Stockholm! I told the girls at the front desk of our hostel that it was sort of a Mecca for me. It was cool- the store was in a giant circle.

Okay, that is a story in itself. I will go through the stories and places as I visited them.

First off, Prague. I had a 9 hour flight from JFK in NYC. The flight in was quite lovely- we flew over some awesome looking grounds. It was dark outside but they looked like castles from the sky (this was before my castle bias set in). I had been vegan for a little while before coming to Europe but decided that I should try and experience everything the countries had to offer. Thus, I ate some TERRIBLE airplane food that upset my belly pretty badly. It had a lot to do with the fact that I had not had dairy, meat, sugar, or caffeine in a while. I went through customs with no hitches and met Anna outside of my terminal. It was very neat seeing someone that I had not physically seen in 15 years. She is just how I imagined her.

We left the airport and took a bus and the metro and the tram to our hostel, the Czech Inn (get it?! pun!). We took a three hour nap because I did not get to sleep at all on the flight. After we had a nice lunch at a traditional Czech eatery. I had some lovely chicken with mozzarella and tomatoes and croquettes. OH croquettes were so yummy. I fell in love. We were sharing a 12 bunk dorm with some kids from New Jersey, so after everyone woke we all went out to the Old Town Square. It was a lovely walk and it was neat seeing everything so quickly. One of the Jersey boys knew exactly where to go and we crisscrossed our way through the town. It was odd that he knew exactly where it was because it was a very difficult spot for us to find and the girls and I only found it one other time and it was by accident.

We tooled around the city a bit before we went back to the hostel.  Anna and I had some dinner and one beer before my eyes would not stay open at all. We went to sleep at 8pm. We woke up at 8am and realized that Liz had already landed. We took a taxi to the airport, where Liz had been waiting for an hour. Poor baby :(. After retrieving her we had to take a taxi to a rental company to get the keys for the apartment we had rented. It turned out that the wrong day was booked for and we were a day behind our rental term. However this was not a big deal and we walked to our apartment. It was quite nice- in a good area of town and easily accessible. The guy who rented it to us was super nice.

After paying the guy for the apartment, we went to lunch. There we had this awesome cheese platter and then for main courses we had tons and tons of cheese and mulled wine. Mulled wine is so good! It is essentially hot wine with a little packed of spices and an orange slice with sugar. Nom nom. We then got all settled in to the apartment and went to the grocery store to pick up some food items. It would have been ridiculously expensive to eat out every meal in Europe so for the duration of our trip we mainly only ate out for lunch. We had a lovely little dinner and then decided to hit the town. We had a very… exciting night out. The stories are quite funny but I am being picky about who I share them with, so if you really want to know, feel free to ask me.

Okay, I know you are tired of reading this by now because I am tired of typing it. I will continue the stories in a later post. <3

Tidings

Hello lovies,

I obviously have not updated in a while. Fear not! I will update big time when I am back in the states. Currently, I am in the lovely Paris. I visited the Eiffel Tower yesterday and told Anna we should pretend to be lovers so we could feel like we belonged. We came from Prague- or as the Czech calll it, Praha- and will be venturing to Sweden in a two days. Fingers crossed that Stockholm is cheaper than Paris! After Stockholm we will be in Bruge, Belgium, and finally Brussels, Belgium. Then I will scurry back to Prague to fly home on the 25th. I have many funny stories for you. And photos. Stay golden!

xoxox

Katie

I found this on Betsey J’s blog

Its Jenny Lewis in “The Wizard” (1989)! I love her.