I'm now completely broke, but I had an absolutely wonderful time and
am now working my ass off to pay for yet another trip :-) I threw
this page together before I left, and I got quite a few useful hints
from people on the net about places to visit and things to skip.
Anyways, I thought I'd throw some of my thoughts onto the web so that
others might learn. For right now, this is primarily a description of
my trip until I get my diary (the relevant parts anyways) scanned in
(or typed, if I'm really bored and the scanner can't decipher my
handwriting...).
I left Boston on June 25, and flew to Heathrow, just outside London, via Dulles
International. There I met a friend from high school, whom I toured
with. We spent 4 days in
London.
Memorable sights include the Tower of London, theatre in the West End,
Greenwich Village, and just wandering around central London. We
stayed with some friends of my parents, just north of the city. Be
sure to allocate LOTS of time for museums; the British Museum
is truly enormous, and well worth a full day.
We then took the
EuroStar through the Chunnel to Paris. At the risk of being
flamed by half the world, I'll admit that I wasn't terribly impressed
by Paris. I certainly loved several of chapels -- Notre Dame fell
short of expectations, but Sainte Chapelle more than made up. And I
certainly loved the museums and art gallerys. Unfortunately,
overriding these positive things was the feeling of a dirty city,
highly dedicated towards tourism, that was heavily overpriced. I hope
my impressions aren't common, but there they are. We stayed in a
youth hostel in central Paris, which was reasonably priced, but food
was terribly expensive (even at the few supermarkets we were able to
find), and, quite strangely, we had a harder time finding ATM's on the
correct networks (Cirrus) here than in almost any other city! Look here for more notes on ATM's. We spent 4 days in Paris,
and didn't come close to all seeing a quarter the sights.
In order to
keep on something vaguely regarding our original schedule, we took
a late night train to Brussels, with a 4 hour midnight stop in
Luxembourg, where we took the moonlight tour (self-devised) to see the
sights (using our fabulous night vision :-). We spent a morning in
Brussels visiting a few places, including the Comic Museum. Then back on a train to
Amsterdam,
in order to satisfy our
Eurail passes.
We spent two days in Amsterdam, enjoying the wildlife. If you're into
partying, then this is definitely a city to visit.
From there, we took a train to Berlin,
Germany. My friend and I were using a 5-day Eurorail pass,
meaning that we had 5 24-hour periods in which to travel, meaning that
we had to merely bounce through Germany. We took a guided tour of the
city (via foot and bus) led by a few English History students living
in Berlin, giving us a great overview of the layout of the city, but
not much detail. After the tour, we hopped back onto the train, and
continued on towards Poland.
My friend has a lot of family living in
Warsaw, and we stayed with them for an enjoyable 5 day stay. We took
our time exploring the city (my friend hadn't been back to Poland in
many years), and partially catching up on the sleep we had been
missing. We then took a train to Krakow, to visit the Concentration
Camp there. Although very depressing (the weather suited it
perfectly, being cold and drizzling), I learned a lot and highly
reccomend that anyone who has a chance visit a concentration camp do
so.
We hopped back on the train (yep, we did a lot of that), and continued
on to Prague, in the Czech
Republic. We rented a beautiful apartment from a woman we met at
the airport, right near the center of town. From the room, we
wandered all around the city, visiting several excellent museums and
castles. This was my favorite city of the trip, and would highly
recomend spending a considerable amount of time here -- my 5 days
didn't feel like long enough! Other hilights here include the music
and food -- both very cheap and plentiful. Seriously, don't miss this
city, it portrays "Old Europe" better than any of the other large cities
in Europe (of course, no substitiute for going smaller cities).
From Prague, we continued on to Vienna, Austria. I got the impression that
Vienna used to be a lot like Prague, and then lots of RICH tourists came.
It's a really beautiful town, lots of great museums, castles, and, well,
shopping. Of course, I couldn't afford any of it, but it was interesting
to see. I especially enjoyed
Switzerland - 4 days Geneva
Switzerland
ATM's
Time
Here are other links that haven't been embedded into the above notes,
that I either used in planning my trip, or saw posted to
rec.travel.europe and thought might be useful to others. If you have
a site you'd like me to add, or know of any you think others might
like to see, send me email and I'll add them.