Prague, Czech Republic.

Alright. I know I'm SUPER behind on my blogging so I'd like to start by formally apologizing. These last few weeks have been surprisingly hectic, but I'm back in action. Somewhat. ANYWAYS, here's a little bit about the wonderful city of Praha. Ohhhhh Prague. Prague Prague Prague. Now I know why my dearly beloved friend, Jessica "Tricky" Helton, is in love with this city. It was incredible. Everything about Prague was amazing, I loved every minute of it. My two roommates, Steph and Mary Kate (who you all should know well by now, if you've been reading this blog over the last two months) and I arrived to Prague early on Friday, February 24th, AKA the day before my birthday. We met up with Jess at the Metro and I'm pretty sure we both fell in love all over again. Our love crosses borders! This time to the Czech Republic. It was beyond amazing, being in a foreign country with one of my best friends.

That morning Jess and her three friends, Rachel, Lucy and Gabby took us out to breakfast at a little place called the Globe Cafe. This wasn't any normal, foreign, European cafe, but an AMERICAN cafe! One with bagels, omelettes, pancakes, breakfast burritos (closest to a breakfast taco I could find, holla to my Austinites) and best of all, American coffee. Turns out that's quite the rarity here in Europe. Needless to say, it tasted amazing. After our scrumptious breakfast Jessica played tour guide and showed us around Praha! It was beautiful. Breathtaking. Old. All words that can sum up practically every country in Europe I've been to thus far, but Prague... it was in its own category. 

The pictures above and below are shots from Old Town Square in Prague. It's a really old, really pretty, really touristy square with lots of colorful buildings, but definitely worth seeing. 

Finally, reunited with my Jessica! And let me tell you, it felt great. 

So while we were walking around, oo-ing and ahw-ing at the buildings and architecture, we saw a sign that said. "Chocolate Factory! This way." None of us were in the position to turn down a chocolate factory, so we obligingly followed the arrows. We were greeted by Charlie, AKA the love of my life (apparently). Charlie explained how he was from Paris originally but came to Prague and now works in a chocolate factory, to which Jessica replied, "Charlie in the Chocolate Factory!" We all knew right then that it was love at first joke. Charlie ushered us into the chocolate factory, where we had a brief, museum-like tour describing the origins of chocolate and how it's made. There was even a demonstration with free samples at the end! Chocolate filled with hazelnut. Yum. Charlie then gave us all tickets to get free hot chocolate at the end, which was ah-mazing. Charlie took a liking to me for some reason (possibly my blonde hair?), so he asked if we could take a few pictures together. In the picture below, he literally said, "Julie, gaze into my eyes." So I did. Kind of.

Here's what cacao beans look like! Cacao beans are the beans used to make chocolate, who woulda thunk?

Pictured below is the infamous Clock Tower in Old Town Square of Prague! In a bit you'll see pictures of us from the top, looking down at the square and the city, so stay tuned. This Clock Tower was built in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest one still working. At 5:00 every evening, or 17:00 as the Europeans say, the clock goes off and plays some tune. Since it's in the Old Time Square, a generally touristy hotspot to begin with, once the clock strikes 5:00 the square is packed with people to watch! 

Below is a closeup of the other side of the clock tower. You see the two windows above the dial, on either side of the statue figure? At 5:00 those open and little figurines (very old and historic looking) come out and do a little dance. It's seriously like something you'd see in a movie, it was so surreal. Fun fact definitely worth noting, however -- rumor has it that the man who designed and created the Prague Clock Tower was blinded by the Prague government to prevent him from creating another masterpiece similar to it in another country. Preeeeeetty eerie, if you ask me.

This is the climb to the top of the clock tower! That cool-looking infrastructure in the middle is for the elevator, clearly an add-on from the original.

And here we are, looking out at Prague. So. Beautiful.

Loved every minute I got to spend with this crazy lady.

You see that castle looking building in the upper left side of the screen? Yup, that's the Prague Castle. From the Old Town Square Clock Tower. More (closeups) to come soon.

Old Town Square at night!

And THIS lovely, handsome fella... wait for it... is David (pronounced Dah-veed), Jessica's boyfriend from the Czech Republic. He is the nicest, cutest, sweetest guy I've ever met, and I could not be happier for them. He's definitely got my stamp of approval.

After we met David at work we went to a real, authentic Czech restaurant! We got a pint of beer each (only about $2 for one pint, WOAH) and some beef goulash, a typical dish of Prague. It was so stellar, I want some now.

Nighttime has come and gone at this point, and I'll say this much -- it was epic. The rest of the pictures are from February 25th, the day of my birthday! We had another epic day of traveling and sight seeing, as you will soon see. Below is the Charles Bridge, another hotspot in Prague.

View from the Charles Bridge once we were on it. I remember being pissed off that there were so many birds getting in the way of my picture, but as it turns out, they add to it. So thanks birds, I'm sorry I yelled at you.

The John Lennon Wall! It was so great. Another fun fact: did you know that the Czech Republic was ruled under communism until 1989? Because I didn't. Shortly after John Lennon, member of the Beatles died, the youth of Prague created this wall in dedication to him. His stance for peace was motivation for the youth of Prague at the time to rebel against the communist government of the Czech Republic; this wall remains a symbol of lasting, worldwide peace as people travel from around the world to look at it, or better yet, add to it.

And below is the Prague Castle! It cost money to get in so we weren't about to do that, however it was incredibly breathtaking from the outside nonetheless. 

These are mosaics painted on the outside of the castle.

The Prague Castle from behind. 

Artsy view of the city!

The beautiful, wonderful city of Praha. In this picture you can see the river that runs underneath the Charles Bridge aforementioned as well as the Charles Bridge itself (the tall dark structure running across the river). 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my virtual tour of Prague! It was seriously one of the best weekends of my entire life. I loved spending my birthday with my roommates, my Jessica, and Jessica's INCREDIBLE friends. They were seriously the greatest, I loved getting to know each of them. As it turns out, there was a bit of a hiccup at the end of my trip which resulted in a few last minute changes of plans, so if you want to know more details about that just shoot me a message. Otherwise, it was definitely an unforgettable, one-day-I'll-laugh-about-this end to the trip. Shoutout to Jessica and her friends Gabby, Lucy and Rachel -- you guys are the best. Thank you for keeping me sane.

I know I'm incredibly behind on blogging, I KNOW! Soon enough I'll get to my adventures from last weekend (March 1st to 5th) in Spain with my other roommate and dear friend from Clemson, miss Constance Henderson. This weekend, however, is my spring break! I'm going on a 12 day excursion with my friends Mary Kate and Meredith to London, Paris, Amsterdam, and possibly Belgium. So be on the lookout for a super long blog post in the near(ish) future.

I love you all to the moon and back,

Julie

Venezia Carnevale.

 That's right, the Venice Carnival! And what an epic Saturday it was. Mary Kate, Steph and I took a day trip to Venice for the Carnival this last Saturday, the 18th of February. The best way to describe Carnival is a classier, more formal version of Mardi Gras. Carnevale is held three weekends out of the year from late January to mid February, and basically everyone just walks (drunkenly) around the streets at night with masks on. The masks are handmade in Italy, so of course we had to get some of those. More on that later though. To the left is Venice! We left Florence around 9:00 AM and got to Venice by 12:30. This is the port we stood at waiting for our water taxi to take us to Murano where we ate and watched a glass blowing demonstration. 

To the left is the glass blowing demonstration! It was incredible, he made a glass vase and a horse right in front of us. He took the hot glass out, which was attached to that metal rod, and played with the blob until it formed actual works of art. Below is a picture of the glass art he created - a horse and a vase of some sort. Glass blowing is apparently pretty big in Venice, so it was a pretty cool thing to see. I of course, being the klutz that I am, walked into the shop next door with anything and everything you could imagine being made out of glass (clocks, vases, jewelry, decorations, plates, etc) and broke the first thing I touched. Thankfully it was just a 6 euro necklace. The lady behind the counter was incredibly nice, I apologized profusely and told her I'd pay for it and she let me pick out another one! Needless to say, I didn't touch anything remotely breakable the rest of the day.

After the glass blowing demonstration we started walking the streets of Venice! As you can see, it's amazing.

Breathtaking, even.

 The main form of transportation within the city is boating, as seen above. Their cars are boats, so that was pretty cool to see. I seriously cannot get over the buildings in Europe -- I love how they are all old, connected, with different color walls and windows. They're all touching yet are all so different from each other; there's nothing like this back home, especially not in Texas. Below is a picture of part of our travel group for the day. A group of about twelve of us happened to get off of our charter bus around the same time, so it worked out quite nicely. This is the group with a Carnevale themed lady; there were lots of people dressed up like this throughout the city so of course we had to stop and take a quick picture. Shortly after this picture was taken, we all stopped and ate. Steph and I split a pizza, which was amazing. A massive pizza with artichokes (apparently it's artichoke season here in Italy), mushrooms and ham. Then the group (13 of us) got two liters of red wine with our meal. Let's just say it was a good start to our evening. 

After we ate we stumbled into (what seemed to be) the coolest mask shop we could find. The masks in most of Venice are all HAND MADE -- the owner of the store was actually making a mask as we walked in. Each mask was so intricate in their design, style and coloring, it was unreal. There were mask shops like this dispersed all throughout Venice, so we definitely had our fair share to choose from. Below to the left is a picture of me with my mask! I love it, it's absolutely beautiful. And authentic. As we came off our charter bus there were multiple stands of cheap Chinese made masks that you could get for 2 euro, but myself and my company all chose to splurge a bit and pay 10 euro to go for the real thing.


 I can't wait to hang this up in my room back home and put it on display for the world to see. I love it! This picture was taken on the water taxi ride from Murano to San Marco, the part of Venice where Carnevale is located. All 13 of us played some drinking game (we had each bought a bottle of wine, per person) so needless to say, we were the touristy, obnoxious American's of the water taxi ride. I could care less, because it was a blast.

Here we are, finally in San Marco for the Carnival! To the right is myself and Kelley, our Bus2Alps guide for the day. Bus2Alps is the company we booked our bus ride through and basically, their job for the day entailed taking us from Florence to Venice and then back. Kelley, however, knew who the cool kids were on the bus and decided to tag along with our crew for the day! Thank goodness for Kelley is all I have to say -- from everyone else I've talked to it's really easy to get lost in Venice, but not for us! Kelley has been to Venice multiple times, so not only was he AMAZING company during the day, he made sure we had a great time, saw all that we needed to see and, last but not least, survived. He also bought us all a few shots, definitely a bonus. Below is a (blurry) picture of the Venice Canal! It was packed in the city but Kelley was determined to get us there.

HAPPY CARNEVALE!!! There was loads of confetti every which way, so this shot was inevitable. We ended up leaving Venice around 10:30 PM, giving us just about a full 12 hours in this wonderful city. We got back to Florence pretty darn late, but so worth it.


So ya, that was our day trip to Venice in a nutshell! I've improved my formatting a bit -- it takes longer but looks much prettier. Next up, PRAGUE for my BIRTHDAY! I am excited beyond belief. Myself, Mary Kate and Steph all leave tomorrow evening around 7:00 PM on a 12 hour bus ride, putting us in Prague around 8:00 AM the next morning. So that should be fun. I cannot wait to see Jessica, one of my closest friends from back at school and my roommate for next year! We are going to have an epic weekend. A few of the things I'm looking forward to about Prague: seeing Jessica, my birthday, the food, the people, the sights, and the fact that BEER IS CHEAPER THAN WATER. That's right. Clearly I'm excited.


Partying like it's my birthday,


Julie

Switzerland: Interlaken, Grindelwald and Bern.

So, I finally decided on an official theme for my blogs! I'll post here once a week recapping my last weekend's endeavors, which should be pretty much every weekend from the looks of it. I guess I'll start by telling you all about the lovely and frigid Switzerland! It was absolutely beautiful, for starters. I've never seen so much snow in my entire life. My travel buddies Mary Kate, Steph, Sarah and I were in Switzerland from Thursday, February 9th to Sunday the 12th and visited three cities during our stay: Interlaken, Grindelwald and Bern, the capital. 

The ride getting to Switzerland, however, wasn't exactly a smooth ride. We took a charter bus from Florence to Interlaken, about an eight hour drive. However, we got there in about nine due to extreme weather conditions: it was snowing, below freezing, dark outside (we left Florence at 6:45 PM) and to top it all off, the ground was icy. Just picture a massive charter bus with over 35 people in it, going down a mountain covered in ice. At night. With snow flurries whizzing by. Definitely a trip I won't forget for awhile. 

Anywhooo, come 3:30 AM we finally made it to Interlaken! Here's a view of our hostel for the weekend. This picture was taken around 4:00 AM, fun times.

And this is the view from our room window! We woke up to this the next morning -- it was absolutely breathtaking. So. Much. Snow.

None of us got much sleep the first night. We rolled into Interlaken around 4:00 AM and were up by 7:45 AM to sign up for any activities we wanted to do that weekend. It was a very impulsive, last minute decision, but myself, Mary Kate and Steph decided to go canyon jumping! Just a little bit of background for those of you who don't know what it is (I didn't, so don't feel bad), we basically jumped into a canyon 300 feet below us, a four second free fall. Canyon jumping is only offered in two places in the world: Interlaken and New Zealand, due to canyon dimension restrictions. So of course, we had to take advantage of the once in a lifetime opportunity.  We had to take a bus from Interlaken to Grindelwald to get to the canyon, so here's a few shots of the town of Grindelwald.

Myself, Mary Kate and Steph getting pumped for the jump!

Pictures do not do any of this justice. It literally looked like this from every angle; massive mountains covered with massive trees, all of which were covered with snow.

This is a shot of the canyon we jumped into. You can see at the lower right hand of the mountain the walkway that encompasses the bottom of the canyon - that's where we walked once we finished the free fall.

Making our way up the mountain!

Here we are, all harnessed up and ready to jump! Steph, myself, Mary Kate, and our fellow canyon jumper friend Molly. As you can see, we're all pretty bundled up as it was below freezing. I had seven layers on top and two layers on my legs, and I've never been so cold in my life. I'm also from Texas, so most people who know me can vouch for me when I say I hate the cold.

As it turns out, we had to sign a contract saying we were aware of the dangers of jumping off a cliff into a canyon. They read it aloud to us before we took the leap, so we all got a good laugh in.

Me and my man Ziggy right before I took the jump!!! Here's a good view of the 300 foot drop below me.

And I'm off! The photographer, Julie (true story), recommended all the girls wear their hair down for the drop as it makes for a better picture. I can't help but agree.

Literally the weirdest feeling I've ever experienced. I wanted to scream but gravity was pulling my face down so it kept me from making a peep. After the four second free fall the rope becomes taut, then you swing sideways throughout the canyon. I wish I was able to have my camera, it was incredible.

This is Mark! He met us at the end of the canyon fall and pulled us back to land. On the bus ride back to Interlaken from Grindelwald Mark and I talked most of the way, which basically consisted of me asking him endless questions. As a native Switzerland, I asked him how long snow was on the ground in a year: his response was November to May. Can you imagine, snow like this for seven months out of the year? I sure cannot.

After a four second, 300 foot free-fall, beer had never tasted better. On a side note, everything is incredibly expensive in Switzerland, so be prepared to spend your life's savings away. The Swiss Franc has about the same exchange rate to the US dollar, so when I spent 25 Swiss Francs on my lunch (a beer and a burger), I was not a happy camper.

As part of the program we booked our trip with (Florence For Fun), we got to take part in a Swiss chocolate tasting! I'm usually not a fan of chocolate, but even I was swooned by this stuff. Below is a champagne truffle. Literally, a truffle with champagne. The guy leading the chocolate tasting handed these out and said, "This is my way of saying, welcome to Interlaken!"

These were chocolate shots. Yep, I said chocolate shots. A shot inside of chocolate, chocolate being the chaser. The guy leading the tasting said, "Don't operate a vehicle after having three or four of these."

The freezing yet beautiful walk back to our hostel after the tasting. 

Helloooo Bern, the capital of Switzerland! The four of us took a day trip to Bern, and surprise surprise, it was beautiful.

Apparently Albert Einstein lived in Bern for some time, and his apartment where he came up with his theory of relativity is open for the public. So of course, we checked it out! Here's the inside of his apartment.

Albert Einstein and his first wife, Mileva. He married his cousin after him and Mileva split up.

Albert Einstein's living room.

The clock tower in Bern!

Just to illustrate how cold it really was. There were fountains like this all over Bern, and they were all completely frozen.

The (frozen) fountain with the clock tower in the back.

Bern, Switzerland!

So long, Bern!

The four of us went out to a local club that night, it was pretty epic. Anywhoo, I really liked this picture of the four of us. Travel buddies for the weekend!

This is the view of our hostel, the Funny Farm (yes, that's the name) the next morning, the day we left. The pictures below are all from Interlaken.

I kid you not, I turned a 180 degree angle from the previous shot of the hostel and took the picture below. That was the view from literally, right outside of the Funny Farm.

Pictures don't do justice the size of this massive mountain. It was massive, literally all you could see.

And that's all, folks! Thanks for taking part in my virtual tour of Switzerland. Next up, the Venice Carnival.

I'll sleep when I'm dead,

Julie