Praha

St. Wenceslas Vineyard

St. Vitus Cathedral 

We traveled to Prague on Saturday and The train arrived around 7. Our hostel was super close to the train station (we've been lucky with that). Our hostel seemed more like a hotel. It was very nice and full of young kids it had a rotating bar called 360 which was neat and the overall decor was very modern. We ate dinner at the hotel because we were really tired. I had classic Czech food that was really good. It was duck, cabbage and gnocchi. Our hotel had accidentally put 5 girls into our room instead of four, so they moved us to a six girl room for the night and upgraded us to a private two person room for the second two night The girls that were in our old 4 person room were from Australia. They were really cute and nice. We met them in he bar for a little after dinner and decided to try to go to the famous five story club. We all hated it. It was not our scene. We only stayed for about 10 minutes.

Bohehmia Bagel

The next day we switched into our private room and explored the city. We saw the famous astronomical clock tower strike an hour. When it does this, some skeleton looking things automatically ring bells. It was interesting but over rated. Then we walked to the Charles Bridge and up the bell tower on it. The view from the top was beautiful and Joanna and I were strangely the only people up there the whole time. We walked across the bridge and up a hill to the Prague Castle and into the Saint Vitus Cathedral. We got another great view of the city! Our friends recommended a vineyard by the church where we could get a glass of wine a some snacks. The terrace sat over the whole city and we sat there enjoying the view and nice weather all afternoon.

Lennon Wall

Dancing Building

The next day we went to a bagel shop for lunch to get our American Food fix for the trip. It was very good an had been recommended by a lot of our friends. After, we went to a mall to find a Topshop, then went to the John Lennon Wall. Some people had extra paint, so they gave to to us to paint something of our own! I could not get very creative as usual, but we got to make our mark. After, we walked to the Dancing Building. We were planning on going up to the cafe at the top because it was supposed to have a Great view, but it was closed for renovations.

That night we had dinner with our Australian friends at a really good Italian restaurant across the street from our hotel. We all got different pastaS, pizzas and salads and ate them family style. It was one of the best meals of Europe! We went out to a neat underground bar where we all split one giant Mojito! Prague was a wonderful city!

Vienna

Butterfly Garden

Inside of the Butterfly Garden

St. Stevens Cathedral 

We made it to Vienna at about 730 in the morning. We left out stuff at the hostel and went out in the rain to walk around. We saw the huge and elaborate Hofburg palace and went into a butterfly sanctuary which was attached. The butterfly place had them flying all around felt like we were in a rain forest. We went to a Viennese restaurant for lunch which was really good. Finally, we were in a city where the prices were "cheap" compared to everywhere we had been! We were able to budget ourselves very well in Vienna. The lunch was very heavy an we went back to take a nap at the hostel (Ley Ley recommended this hostel). It was nice to be in a "real" bed where I didn't even feel the need to use the sheet thing I brought to sleep in. Joanna and I shared a double bed, and the room was big enough for just about that. My huge suitcase barely fit in the room! After our nap, the weather had turned into cool air with the sunset. We went back to the area with all of the famous palaces and architecture. We went to a gothic cathedral called Stephansdom. They were having mass inside so we won't in a watched that for a few minutes. We walked all around this area. It was so pretty at this time of night! We ate at the Swarovski crystal little pop up café in the middle of the street (Austria is the home of Swarovski). We sat there for hours people watching. After, we went to the famous/ historical hotel Sacher get their chocolate torte that Ley Ley told us about. Joanna and I split one with a glass of red wine and it was so good. The hotel was super fancy, so it was exciting to eat in there. Thankfully the prices of the torte and wine were not high at all! We took the metro back to our hostel to get a good nights sleep.

Dinner at the Swarovski Cafe

Chocolate Torte

Schonbrunn Palace 

On Saturday, we woke up and took the bus to the Scholob Schönbrun palace. It reminded me a lot of Versailles. We got ear guide machines and went through a lot of the rooms. That was about all we had time to do in our short stay in Vienna. The architecture there was beautiful but I feel like we got to see most of the things we wanted to see. The only thing I wanted to see that I didn't was the Gustav Klimt art exhibits. Right now I am on the train to Prague. We had an open ticket which meant we could pick any time to leave, so we decided to leave on the 2 pm train to get to Prague around 7.

Interlaken

Interlaken was even more than I expected it to be! When we arrived at the train station, we took a bus that was only about a 10 minute ride to the Balmers tent village. We got our tent, named Mexico City, and walked down the street to a pub to get dinner. We were so excited to get out of Paris where every meal was over 10 dollars, but we were disappointed to see that every single restaurant in Interlaken was the same if not more expensive than Paris. We tried our best while we were there to shop at the grocery store across the street and eat wisely. That night they had a band in front of our tent. It was so relaxing to sit on the lawn chairs in the cool, mountain air and listen to the music. The temperature drops about 30 degrees every night. The days get up to about 85, but at night its about 55. The tent is not very good at keeping us warm but thankfully they gave us a lot of blankets.

Seilpark

The next morning, we went to Seilpark, a high ropes course. I had never done something like that before and it was terrifying but fun! They gave us a harness and gloves, and a quick tutorial on how to use all the equipment. Basically, we were up really high in trees and used the clip things
On our harness to attach us to ropes when we crossed wires. There were also a bunch of zip lines that we attached ourselves too, which were my favorite part. It was really fun and forced me to forget about any fear of heights that I had. After that, we walked what seemed like all the way around Interlaken. We sat in the hammocks the rest of the day and night and read.

Cayoning!

On Wednesday we woke up early and went Cayoning! It was so much fun and involved so much adrenaline. So much of Interlaken reminded me of camp/Cashiers. There was a group of about 8 of us taken by 2 guides up a mountain in a van. Our gear included, two wetsuits, a harness, a live vest, a helmet and shoes. We reached the waterfall/stream/river where we were going to jump/slide/walk down. The water was the coldest I've ever felt. We had to slide down rocks and jump from rocks from super high (like turtle falls high) into TINY deep areas with rockers all around us. One of the guides would always do it first to make sure it was deep enough. We just had no margin for error! The experience was thrilling and I want to do it again! They gave us two free beers when we got back to the Outdoor Interlaken shop. One of the guides had a camera on his helmet the whole time videoing us. They offered us a personalized video of all of it, which now I really wished I had gotten. At the time, I didn't want to spend an extra 30 francs, but the experience was so cool I wish I had had this to remember it by. Oh we!ll!
Interlaken houses all of the extreme sports. Almost everything you can think of they have. I really wanted to go parasailing or skydiving, but it was
More expensive than cayoning, which definitely was a bang for the buck. After cayoning, we got really good cheap and huge kabobs by our hostel and went back to read for a little. We were really hitting it right on our independence days, because it was Swiss day that day! It was so hot reading so we went down to anothe hotel's pool where we were allowed to go and uses their pool. They had this awesome slide that was so fun and a DJ. I think I would have never gone

Warning Sign for Slide!

On the slide if I hadn't been on the high ropes course and cayoning previously. I am so glad I did! I did it 3 times!

That night they had a big fireworks display for Swiss day. I think that the Swiss are very fond of their fireworks, because we heard them going off non stop all four days we were there. They had so many kinds I had never seen before! Also, before and after the show, it was a free for all on setting off the fireworks. Everyone was around this huge grassy square, and so everyone was setting them off all around it. It was kind of frightening, because they would come out of no where. We met some people from South Carolina who both go to mUSC. We sat with them the whole fireworks show. We walked back to the hostel just in time to miss a giant thunderstorm. The weather had been perfect since we had gotten there, but it was relaxing to go to sleep in the tent to the sound of rain.

Swiss Day 

Thursday we woke up and rented some bikes with some friends we had met. We took our bikes on the bus up a mountain. We cruised all the way down, which was a very scary experience for me. It was SO steep and I was scared the whole time that my breaks were going to give out because I had to use them so much! But the view the way down was beautiful, overlooking a huge lake of turquoise water. We stopped at a restaurant that was recommended to us by a guy who works at the tent village. It was overlooking the mountain, and the food was so good!! We went back to the hostel and showered, getting ready to make the train. The night train was not the most ideal situation. Thank goodness two of the girls in our 6 person cabin were normal Americans are age from Raleigh. Sleeping was impossible due to a German man also in our cabin, who snored and took up all the bed space that was created by the 6 chairs pulling out strait. Next time I will go for something above the lowest class night train seat... All in all Interlaken was awesome and I could stay there for ever! There was so many activities to do! It was a great transition into traveling outside of Paris.