Europe Photos
All right, some of you have waited and waited. And I'm not sure this is worth the wait. But it's what will have to do. Enjoy!
First morning in London. Just fried.
Seeing sites after a shower, but no clean clothes, due to lost luggage.
Pimping it on this man-made bridge over the Thames
Taking Edinburgh, like a couple of WWII generals
The place we stayed at in Edinburgh was the first of several cool hostels. Here’s us in the common area,, with a bunch of the residents.
Earlier that day, we went to a bagpipe festival with some people from our hostel. It was right next to a mountain, so Russ, Chris and I climbed halfway up and took this picture.
Thereafter, Russ climbed to the top. My lack of proper foot attire forced me to make other plans.
Probably the coolest and prettiest girl at the Edinburgh hostel was this German medical student named Christine. This is us doing dishes with her.
A bunch of us went out our last night in Edinburgh. Gashed my foot up pretty bad as we were coming back. Here’s an after shot. Ugh.
After Edinburgh, we went to Berlin. Here’s us at the Brandenburg Gate.
It’s legal to drink on the streets of Berlin. It’s also legal to have beers in each of your pockets.
Chris on the night train to Warsaw, from Berlin
Taking Warsaw by storm
So we took a walking tour of Warsaw the day we were there. The guy in the maroon jersey was named Nathan. He seemed pretty cool during the day. Then at night, he took us on a pub crawl and was shot down by five different girls in our group. This was also the night I got very drunk and had to be escorted out of the nightclub.
Locals call this “Stalin’s Penis”
To leave Warsaw, we rented a car to drive to Krakow. It became a ten-hour odyssey as we stopped at two cities including this one, Lodz. We’re actually inside of a famous nightclub, although I’m hungover.
After we got to Krakow, we had the car until 2 pm the following day. Thus, we drove down into mountains in the south of Poland and then turned around and drove back. This is Russ and I, right before we turned back.
Near where we got out of the car, there was this cool old lady selling cheese. We tried to have her take our picture, but she didn’t really understand what was going on. Chris wound up posing with her, and we bought some cheese to smooth things over. We thought it was part-bread when we bought it, but it turned out to be all cheese, smoked and almost meat-flavored. Pretty damn good stuff.
The cool thing about Krakow was that we knew a lot of people. We met up with a girl from Berlin, and we also knew a ton of people from Warsaw, as our hostels in both that city and Krakow were owned by the same guy. These three cool girls are from Newcastle, England. We met them in Warsaw, saw them in Krakow (where this picture was taken, in a bar), saw them in Prague and Chris met up with the two on the right (Vicki and Deborah) in Croatia.
In the bar in Krakow, with a beautiful girl, Rajvi from London, who we had met in Warsaw. Actually wound up having lunch with her in London, along with her cousin, Shrena (who was also in Krakow), and Russ.
Inside of a giant salt mine outside Krakow with a bunch of peeps from our hostel.
Posing with this cool guy Nick on our train platform in Krakow, before the night train to Prague. We met Nick through our hostel and actually kicked it with him a lot in Krakow. Went to the salt mines and Auschwitz with him, kicked it around the city too. He’s one of the few Americans we met on the trip, and he actually did grad school at Stanford, so he has a California connection. We’ve talked about maybe going camping the next time he’s out here.
Kicking it with the Newcastle girls in Prague. We had one of our most awesome dinners of the trip for all of 15 bucks apiece with them there. Talk about a cheap, cool city.
The shithole we stayed at in Prague. 36 beds to a room, graffiti on the walls, all for 9 Euro a night.
From Prague, we took a day train through Slovakia, all the way to Budapest. Here’s us in our destination city.
Leaving Budapest. Our hostel was awesome. “The Backpack.” I recommend it.
So from Budapest, we flew to Geneva, then took a train the next morning to Chamonix, France, where some friends of my family live. By the time I got to Chamonix, all I wanted to do was sleep. And that’s what I did, right on the family friends’ living room floor.
We also washed my disgusting shoes in Chamonix. Note the four plastic bags around them. That’s what I was keeping them in to mask the smell. Also note how Russ and Chris are holding their noses/
The buses don’t run so well in Chamonix so we actually got around by hitchhiking. This is while we were inside of a British van.
Our ride took us to a mountain trail that we then hiked.
As far as we hiked
After our hike, we said our goodbyes to some of the family friends and caught a ride from another to nearby Martigny, Switzerland, to catch a nighttrain to Florence. All in all, we were in Chamonix for 32 wonderful hours.
So we actually only spent 13 hours in Florence, between getting in, in the morning, and taking an evening train to Rome. I still squeezed in a nap in Florence.
I also squeezed in a bath.
Oh yeah and here’s a normal picture from Florence.
At the Forum in Rome.
My Birkenstocks finally gave out in Rome. Note the huge hole and big stains. They were also coming apart at the sides. I literally had to duck into a shoe store and buy a new pair of shoes and throw the Birks out. The garish white shoes cost me 15 Euros. Everything in the store cost that much.
So here’s an odd photo-odd because I’m sitting on a wet street and odd because there’s a speck of yellow near my face. Well, there’s a story behind that. We were on our way to the Vatican, in fact already inside the Vatican City, when we got caught in this massive downpour. We wound up taking cover at this point in the street, underneath a building overhang. The rain finally let up and Chris got up to snap a few photos of Russ and I. He had snapped one when I got this idea that it would be funny to take a photo of me with a forlorn look on my face. Chris paused for a moment, and then Russ had a funny idea too. Right as Chris was taking the photo, Russ chucked a banana peel at my face.
Last night in Rome. Not sure what this is, but it’s beautiful, probably my favorite thing I saw in Rome.
First morning in London. Just fried.
Seeing sites after a shower, but no clean clothes, due to lost luggage.
Pimping it on this man-made bridge over the Thames
Taking Edinburgh, like a couple of WWII generals
The place we stayed at in Edinburgh was the first of several cool hostels. Here’s us in the common area,, with a bunch of the residents.
Earlier that day, we went to a bagpipe festival with some people from our hostel. It was right next to a mountain, so Russ, Chris and I climbed halfway up and took this picture.
Thereafter, Russ climbed to the top. My lack of proper foot attire forced me to make other plans.
Probably the coolest and prettiest girl at the Edinburgh hostel was this German medical student named Christine. This is us doing dishes with her.
A bunch of us went out our last night in Edinburgh. Gashed my foot up pretty bad as we were coming back. Here’s an after shot. Ugh.
After Edinburgh, we went to Berlin. Here’s us at the Brandenburg Gate.
It’s legal to drink on the streets of Berlin. It’s also legal to have beers in each of your pockets.
Chris on the night train to Warsaw, from Berlin
Taking Warsaw by storm
So we took a walking tour of Warsaw the day we were there. The guy in the maroon jersey was named Nathan. He seemed pretty cool during the day. Then at night, he took us on a pub crawl and was shot down by five different girls in our group. This was also the night I got very drunk and had to be escorted out of the nightclub.
Locals call this “Stalin’s Penis”
To leave Warsaw, we rented a car to drive to Krakow. It became a ten-hour odyssey as we stopped at two cities including this one, Lodz. We’re actually inside of a famous nightclub, although I’m hungover.
After we got to Krakow, we had the car until 2 pm the following day. Thus, we drove down into mountains in the south of Poland and then turned around and drove back. This is Russ and I, right before we turned back.
Near where we got out of the car, there was this cool old lady selling cheese. We tried to have her take our picture, but she didn’t really understand what was going on. Chris wound up posing with her, and we bought some cheese to smooth things over. We thought it was part-bread when we bought it, but it turned out to be all cheese, smoked and almost meat-flavored. Pretty damn good stuff.
The cool thing about Krakow was that we knew a lot of people. We met up with a girl from Berlin, and we also knew a ton of people from Warsaw, as our hostels in both that city and Krakow were owned by the same guy. These three cool girls are from Newcastle, England. We met them in Warsaw, saw them in Krakow (where this picture was taken, in a bar), saw them in Prague and Chris met up with the two on the right (Vicki and Deborah) in Croatia.
In the bar in Krakow, with a beautiful girl, Rajvi from London, who we had met in Warsaw. Actually wound up having lunch with her in London, along with her cousin, Shrena (who was also in Krakow), and Russ.
Inside of a giant salt mine outside Krakow with a bunch of peeps from our hostel.
Posing with this cool guy Nick on our train platform in Krakow, before the night train to Prague. We met Nick through our hostel and actually kicked it with him a lot in Krakow. Went to the salt mines and Auschwitz with him, kicked it around the city too. He’s one of the few Americans we met on the trip, and he actually did grad school at Stanford, so he has a California connection. We’ve talked about maybe going camping the next time he’s out here.
Kicking it with the Newcastle girls in Prague. We had one of our most awesome dinners of the trip for all of 15 bucks apiece with them there. Talk about a cheap, cool city.
The shithole we stayed at in Prague. 36 beds to a room, graffiti on the walls, all for 9 Euro a night.
From Prague, we took a day train through Slovakia, all the way to Budapest. Here’s us in our destination city.
Leaving Budapest. Our hostel was awesome. “The Backpack.” I recommend it.
So from Budapest, we flew to Geneva, then took a train the next morning to Chamonix, France, where some friends of my family live. By the time I got to Chamonix, all I wanted to do was sleep. And that’s what I did, right on the family friends’ living room floor.
We also washed my disgusting shoes in Chamonix. Note the four plastic bags around them. That’s what I was keeping them in to mask the smell. Also note how Russ and Chris are holding their noses/
The buses don’t run so well in Chamonix so we actually got around by hitchhiking. This is while we were inside of a British van.
Our ride took us to a mountain trail that we then hiked.
As far as we hiked
After our hike, we said our goodbyes to some of the family friends and caught a ride from another to nearby Martigny, Switzerland, to catch a nighttrain to Florence. All in all, we were in Chamonix for 32 wonderful hours.
So we actually only spent 13 hours in Florence, between getting in, in the morning, and taking an evening train to Rome. I still squeezed in a nap in Florence.
I also squeezed in a bath.
Oh yeah and here’s a normal picture from Florence.
At the Forum in Rome.
My Birkenstocks finally gave out in Rome. Note the huge hole and big stains. They were also coming apart at the sides. I literally had to duck into a shoe store and buy a new pair of shoes and throw the Birks out. The garish white shoes cost me 15 Euros. Everything in the store cost that much.
So here’s an odd photo-odd because I’m sitting on a wet street and odd because there’s a speck of yellow near my face. Well, there’s a story behind that. We were on our way to the Vatican, in fact already inside the Vatican City, when we got caught in this massive downpour. We wound up taking cover at this point in the street, underneath a building overhang. The rain finally let up and Chris got up to snap a few photos of Russ and I. He had snapped one when I got this idea that it would be funny to take a photo of me with a forlorn look on my face. Chris paused for a moment, and then Russ had a funny idea too. Right as Chris was taking the photo, Russ chucked a banana peel at my face.
Last night in Rome. Not sure what this is, but it’s beautiful, probably my favorite thing I saw in Rome.