Agus ansin chuaigh sí go hÉirinn

And then she went to Ireland...



As I mentioned before, my trip didn't end in England. Oh no, I flew from Leeds over to Dublin and spent 4 days travelling around beautiful Ireland. As I was flying over from England, I realized that I had no idea if the cars drove on the right or left-hand side of the road. So as the plane began it's descent into Dublin airport I eagerly looked out the window trying to find a car. And there they were... still driving on the left-hand side. *Sigh*... another 4 days with absolutely no idea where the cars were coming from. Crossing the road was an ordeal and a half!



I met up with my friend Julie and we drove back to her place and started the visit off with a midnight snack of rashers on toast (rashers being bacon of course). Now I'd heard over and over from my Irish friends Julie and Esther, that Irish butter is just absolutely the best ever! You may be asking yourself, what on earth is irish butter? How is it any different from other butters. Well, it's made in Ireland. Yep, that's it. But it really was yummy!



The next morning I toured around Dublin by myself, since Julie had classes that day. I got instructions on what bus to take, what stop to get off at, where we'd meet up later on and when. But we missed one crucial bit of information - namely, that the busses don't stop unless you stick out your arm and wave them down... Yep, my first bus just went a-zooming on by me.


When I got into town I saw all the local sights: Dublin castle, Temple Bar, Trinity College, the Spire...

This is a shot from the Trinity College campus - it was super pretty. They've got a ridiculously old and beautiful Library on campus, which houses the famous "Book of Kells". I didn't actually go in; it was a far too beautiful day to spend it wandering around inside.

I loved these signs. They had the most perfectly kept lawns I have ever seen. Seriously, you could have held a golf tournament on them - had they been about 500 yrds longer of course. But you couldn't walk on them, nor could you sit on them. What on earth is the use of a grassy knoll on campus that you can only look at?! Although I did get quite the chuckle over the hoards of students sitting on the very edge of the grass - a nice big square of people just hanging out and enjoying the sunshine.

After meeting up with Julie, we decided to check out the new Wax Museum in town. It was really neat, because it was pretty much entirely based around Ireland - Irish history, famous Irish musicians and athletes and so on.

As you can see, I know exactly what consititues appropriate behaviour when signing very important documents with a group of very important politicians at some very important point in Irish history (clearly everything I learned stuck with me).

Julie and I watching the sunset by the Ha'penny Bridge.

Guinness. It really does taste better in Ireland. Especially when coupled with a local duo singing Irish rebellion songs. Julie and I were fondly reminded of out days in Bamberg, whilst there - once again, Julie was just about the only Irish person in the Irish pub. The majority of the crowd was made up of a bunch of Dutch Civil Engineers, go figure!

These were great - just in case you forgot, this is where the traffic is coming from.

Yes dear friends, there is Tim Hortons in Dublin, Ireland. Oh what a wonderful thing that first sip was...

Later on that day I hopped on a bus to head to Galway for a visit with my friend Esther. Get this - in 3 hours I drove from one side of Ireland to the other. 3 hours! And I crossed an entire country! Europe is so small...

At the Promednade in Galway - I've now had my feet in the Atlantic Ocean on both sides!

On my last full day in Ireland Esther, 2 of her brothers and I drove off to check out the Cliffs of Moher. It was, without a doubt, one of the most stunning places I've ever been. See for yourself, although the pictures totally don't do it justice.

Looking right.

Looking left.

It was a pretty great place to end my 10 day trip. And the weather - couldn't have asked for better. Although it was Ireland, and October to boot - it didn't rain once! And the only fog I saw was at 5:30 am as Esther and I drove into Galway so I could catch the bus to the airport.

Very smooth flight home, marred only by the fact that I very nearly missed my plane... Whoops...

And when I got back to Germany, my mom was waiting at the airport to pick me up :) My adventure still wasn't over - I had a week of hanging out with my mom to look forward to.

More stories to come!

Sandy

7 days and 70 litres of tea

Ok... so maybe 70 litres is a bit of an exaggeration, but I did drink a ridiculous amount of tea. I mean, I was in England and all. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I've been on another fantastically amazing trip, and I need to tell you all about it!



The schools here in the province of Niedersachsen have a 2 week autum holiday. I asked myself, what would I rather do: sit at home for two weeks, or travel? Ok, so that's really not much of a question. I called my friends up in England and Ireland to see if they were around for a visit. Turns out they were home, and had couches to spare, so I jumped on a plane and did England for 7 days and Ireland for 4.



Now, the great thing about Europe is that it's just so darn small and the inter-Europe flights can be unbelievably cheap. My Ryanair flight from Germany to England cost me just 25 dollars! Only problem is, Ryanair is sneaky. So I had a backpack full of clothes to last me 14 days, and I had to travel waaaaay outside of Dusseldorf to get to the right airport (which I only found out about the day before I left. I was all set to go to Dusseldorf city centre. Eep!).



I spent the first day in London, checking out every touristy thing there was to do: Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square, Covent Garden, Westminster Abbey, the Horse Guard, London Eye, Shakespeare's Globe, Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, the Millenium Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral... It was one action packed day. And a lot of asking fellow tourists if they could take my picture, since I was by myself. Cheese :)



Here I am standing infront of Buckingham Palace - as you can see there are about a million bajillion other tourists there. And it wasn't even a very nice day - drizzly and sticky. I managed to arrive just in time for the Changing of the Guards... only it didn't happen cause the weather was too yucky. I guess those hats aren't waterproof. Shucks.







I spent the rest of the day hopping on and off the London Underground (which was a feat in and of itself, seeing as how I've only been on the subway once before in my life) as I made my way around the city, checking out the sights in no coherent order whatsoever.



I did see lots of those oh-so-famous telephone boxes. See?



Big Ben was right across the road from Westminster Abbey - both of which are beautiful buildings. Minus the oodles of construction going on...





I had lunch in Covent Garden, a fun market full of little shops and restaurants - and afterwards found a lovely little pub to try some English Ale. I believe it was called "Old Hooky". How can you say no to a name like that? And it was super yummy too.



Midafternoon and I was back in the city centre taking a look at Shakespeare's Globe (although I unfortunately missed the matinee show) and even peeked into the Tate Modern (it's a big art gallery in an old warehouse - right across the river from St. Paul's Cathedral giving). Then I took a gander across Tower Bridge to check out the Tower of London.




That was Day 1. And it was a loooong day. There are no lockers in the city because there have been problems with people blowing things up (something my small-town mind didn't quite know what to do with) so I had to tote my 10 kg bag around all day long. My back and I got in quite the argument over it.



Day 2 happened on the east coast of England. My Grandfather's Spitfire that he flew in WWII is on display in a tiny little museum in Kent. I figured, since I was in England I most certainly needed to check it out. To be honest, it was number one on my to do list.



When I first got to the museum - and it's kinda in the middle of nowhere - I thought I had ended up in the wrong place. I was very close to bursting into tears, thinking that I'd come all the way to England only to go to the wrong museum. After asking the gentlemen behind the desk, however, I discovered that I was indeed in the right place.



I then asked for a picture with the plane, having explained that my grandfather flew it in the war. Instead of standing infront ot it, they let me stand right up next to it. I was unbelievably excited! Check it out!





Ok, so the smile is a little small here, but it was a mile wide in reality! Then, to my utter surprise and delight they let me sit in the plane!!! I could barely restain myself from jumping up and down with joy! It sure was tiny inside... making it hard to avoid the buttons connected to the guns. I was warned not to accidentally shoot the windows out :)



Still - here I am in the plane! Woohoo!!




So. Cool.



Next stop of the day was the city of Dover. I wanted to check out those blindingly white cliffs. Too bad it was a depressingly grey and rainy day. When I walked towards the pier to get a picture I realized I couldn't even see the cliffs anymore throughout the haze. Then I decided it didn't really matter since I had been inside the cliffs in the "Secret Wartime Tunnels". During WWII the English built a network of tunnels in the cliffs to defend the English Channel.



So I didn't get the famous shot of the cliffs, but that's cause I was standing on them:


That's the shot looking up from the entrance of the tunnels.

I also tried some good old-fashioned Fish'n'chips in Dover - since I was right on the coast. Holy cow were they ever tasty! And I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that I was cold, soaking wet, and absolutely starving at the time...


Day 3 dawned much nicer - and how fantastic, since I was going to be outside all day long checking out the stone circle of Avebury. My friends back home told me it was much nicer than Stonehenge because it's much less touristy. And they were right - it was located in the beautiful English countryside. Lots of grass, loooots of sheep.

I had a great time with the self-timer on my camera that day :)

But the best part about my day in Avebury? The fact that I had to take the train to Swindon before grabbing a bus to the village of Avebury. Yes folks, Swindon. I was so excited! But it turned out to be an epic failure. No one was walking their dodo in the park, the mammoths weren't migrating through the city centre, I didn't run across the church "Our Lady of the Lobster", and I didn't get to meet Thursday Next. I guess Swidon is much more exciting in my favourite fictional books by Jasper Fforde... *sigh*

Next stop on the trip was a few days in Coventry visiting my friend Sarah at Warwick University. We trekked over to Stratford-upon-Avon to see where Shakespeare was born and have cream tea. For those of you who don't know, cream tea involves a raisin scone, jam, clotted cream and a cup of delicious English tea (and seriously, the tea in England is delicious!). Now I don't know about you... but I always thought that cream tea was some crazy English delicacy of sour milk. Boy was I wrong... It's really whipped cream on steroids! It's this fabulously dense, heavy whipped cream that I could eat all day long. Mmmm

My last stop in England was Leeds where I visited my friend Larissa. I took the Megabus up there, which turned out to be the biggest mistake ever. My 7:30pm showed up at 8:30pm. The bus driver had gotten lost. Always a good sign. It went downhill from there. We got lost again, then had to stop and fill up, then 12 miles outside of Leeds we had to stop for a 45min break because the driver had been on the go for 10 hours. On top of all that, I had no credit or battery left on my cellphone, I didn't know Larissa's address or phone number and we were an hour and a half late. However, Larissa was a super friend and waited at the bus stop for an extra 2 hours until I showed up. And the moral of the story: Don't travel with Megabus. :)

Leeds isn't the most touristy of towns - Lara's there for university. So we just wandered around and chatted. Although, we went to a milkshake shop that had over 200 flavours available. I was really torn between the Tic Tac Tropical and Ferrero Rocher (I went for the chocolate). I wasn't so tempted by the Marmite.

That's Larissa and I out for dinner shortly before I left for the airport and flew over to Dublin.

England was great - great tea, great clotted cream, great friends, not so great weather (but it is England, rain is to be expected). And that was only the first half of my journey! Soon to come: Ireland!

Cheerio!

Sandy

Tour de Schwarmstedt

Isn't this first picture here just a beaut?! haha

So, for all of you who don't know yet, I've moved from southern Germany to the north. I'm now living in the little village of Schwarmstedt. Population: 6000. Oh yeah. It's a good thing I'm not a big city girl, because Schwarmstedt is not a big city. But I really really like it here - it's cute, quiet and super friendly.

Plus, the surroundings are just fabulous! I'm living in farm country really. Head 5 minutes in any direction and you've hit a field. So I've taken advantage of the fact that I only work 12 hours a week to check out the local bike trails and nordic walking paths. Here's one below - nice and smooth and flat. And you can't see it, but it runs alongside a river too. When the sun's shining, there's nothing more fun than a jaunt in the countryside!



My first day back from my teacher's orientation course I decided to bike to Walsrode visit a new friend. Now, there are a few facts that you should know. First of all, I haven't biked more than 15 minutes ever. Secondly, Walsrode is 25 km away from Schwarmstedt. Thirdly, my bike is stuck on one gear - hard. But I decided all these factors were completely... well they didn't matter.

So off I went to Walsrode. Now it was a fairly leisurely trip - I stopped to take pictures all over the place. But when I finally reached Walsrode after about an hour I was royally pooched! And as I stood on the side of the road pondering the fact that I couldn't feel my legs, was only halfway through the journey, and didn't actually know where my friend lived in Walsrode... I came to the conclusion that I was in waaaaay over my head.

But what could I do? Other than turn around and bike back home, of course. Which is exactly what I did. At a snails pace too, I'm sure. But now I can say, I've sucessfully biked 50km! Go me!



Here's the windmill I passed about 15 minutes into my 2.5 hour journey.

And I also passed through the little town of Gilten about 20 minutes into my journey. The houses here are just incredible. The older ones are like something right out of a story. I have absolutely no idea what we call this style of house in English, but in German it's a "Fachwerk" house.

Well that was trip number one. A couple days later the sun was still shining and I figured it was high time for another excursion - ie. I could feel my legs again. So I grabbed my bike and hopped onto the nordic walking trail. I felt like I was back in Canada in the middle of a forest :)

I just love this picture... Not the most flattering maybe, but an excellent example of what happens when you tinker with the self-timer on a camera. I'm clearly quite puzzled.

Now, I know it said it was a walking trail, but it went through the woods and I wanted to check it out! I soon found out why a bike wasn't a good idea. As you can see below, the trails are all sand. Incredibly difficult on a bike.

So I went back a few days later to walk them. Much more fun - except for the fact that sand got in my shoes and I quickly developed blisters. Shoot.

But it certainly felt good to cool them in the water. I've found a couple beaches near me - the picture below is from Alhden (a town only 12km away). Give me a book and I could sit here all day! Which I did.

My lonesome purse chilling on the beach. See - it proves I was really there!

This next picture is me having "assumed the position" as my mom likes to say. After soaking my blisters, I sat on down and started reading my book. The best part of it all is that this beach is only a 5 minute walk from my house!

Aaahhhh

Back again on another day - I just can't stay away from the water when it's so nice out.

And, just in case you're starting to forget what my face looks like - one last shot in the woods before I say goodbye for now.

Hi all!

And now:

Bye all!

Checking out the land of clogs and cheese

Ta da!! I'm in Tilburg, Netherlands!

I spent the weekend in Holland visiting a friend of mine from Waterloo. Carrie is currently doing a semester abroad at the University of Tilburg. Since she was on the same continent as me, I thought it would be a super-de-duper idea to visit her. Turns out that whole "same continent" thing still meant a 6 hour train ride... It's a good thing I can read on the train!



Carrie and I spent the first evening wandering around downtown Tilburg checking out the local sights. First we ate dinner - at a pub which had a random rotating bar. It took a "are you seeing what I think I'm seeing?" question to be sure that it really was moving. There were also a couple really pretty churches (that played creepy bell music - think Tim Burton), a castle that no one actually lived in (he died first), and a statue of a Scotsman playing the bagpipes! That one made me chuckle.



Before we went back to Carrie's place, we stopped in at a local cafe for some spiffy hot chocolate - like you can see, it was a glass of hot milk with a block of chocolate on a stick. You stirred the milk with the chocolate, thus turning your milk chocolate-y! Mmm



We were up bright and early the next day to catch the train to Amsterdam. This time the train ride was only an hour! Phew. We wandered slowly from the train station, through the tourist district, to our hotel. Below you can see us hanging out in the central square. We saw Batman there - he fit right in with the old architecture. I mean, if you didn't look really hard, you couldn't even tell he was there...

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't so great that Saturday morning... The rain was on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, on-ag... well, you get the picture. But we killed some time during the on-again parts by walking through some stores. Most of them were very touristy, but then we found the flower shops.

Yep, that's me standing infront of about a bazillion different types of tulips.

But tulips weren't the only flower we saw there. They actually had Venus Flytraps... crazy!

And the best part about these stores was that although the store fronts were on a street, the majority of the store was actually floating on barges tied up to the side of the road. Check it out:

Amsterdam also had these really random elephant statues ALL over the city. And they all looked different. I think one of my favourites was the elephant covered with tomatoes... How random is that?! But we also like the Elephant of Many Faces. Can you find mine?? It's gonna be tricky...

Well, I'm either one of the faces, or the elephant is trying to eat me alive...

Once we checked into our unbelievably fabulous hotel (Carries boyfriend was super awesome and booked us a hotel - instead of having to stay in a hostel. Not only did we each get a double bed with more pillows than we knew what to do with, but there was a bathtub!! Bliss, absolute bliss :)

But getting back to the story. Once we checked into the hotel, we walked over to the Heineken Brewery for the grand tour. It was pretty sweet - you learned about the founders, the brewing process, saw the huge old copper vats, did a taste test and saw a whole lot of Heineken merchandise.

We're making beer!

One of the super cool exhibits they had was a "bottles throughout the ages" - they showed how the bottle design had changed since the beginning and had examples there. The coolest by far, was the WOBO (World Bottle). After it was empty, it could be used to build houses. I have no idea how many were actually built, but it was a pretty crazy recycling idea.

Oooh... green! It's like being under the sea!

Yep, Amsterdam, city of many many many many canals. Sure are pretty.

And here we see the oh-so-famous Holland clog. Built for a giant. I would hate to hear someone dance in that shoe!

The next stop on our self-guided city tour, was the Anne Frank House. Not the most uplifting place I've ever visited, but totally worth visiting. It was both incredible and awful. You get to walk through the entire house - starting in the workshop and offices on the first two floors. You also get to see scale models of what the secret annex looked like while they were hiding there. There are also random artifacts - like Margot's latin workbook, and the pictures that Anne glued to the walls.

I can't even describe to you, though, what it was like to walk out of the offices and see the bookcase that hid the door to the annex. And then to climb the stairs and walk through the rooms where they hid. It was really intense. One of the biggest things for me was realizing that they had to have blacklight curtains on the windows at all times. They lived without natural sunlight for 2 years. It broke my heart.

But I think it's incredible how her legacy - her courage and hope and passion for freedom - have lived on.

Here's a beautiful view of an Amsterdam canal at night:

We certainly appreciated this view. But about 10 minutes later, when we discovered we were lost, we were not longer concerned with how pretty the city was. We had to stop at a gas station to figure out where on the map we were. As luck would have it, we managed to get lost taking a short cut!

Over the course of the weekend, not only did we see shoes everywhere we looked (and I mean everywhere!), but you could find a cheese store every 10 steps. Oh I do love cheese...

Say "Cheese"!

We had some time to kill before the train home, so we wandered around what we thought was the shopping district. What we found instead, was a park and the "I Amsterdam" sign.

Carrie is Amsterdam!

And my initials were hiding within too...

I am ST!

Home again Sunday night. Neither one of us felt like cooking, so we ordered up a wonderfully north american pizza and wandered around the Tilburg University campus. It was quite nice - lots of green.

Carrie on the Tilburg campus

Then it was a peaceful nights sleep before a 6 hour train ride home. What a wonderful trip it was :) But boy was it nice to get back to Germany. Not only was the cost of living in the Netherlands quite expensive, but listening to Dutch was driving me CRAZY! I felt like I was listening to German underwater or something. The languages are just similar enough that I can pick out a few words here and there, but not enough to really understand anything. Bah! Although it did make watching "So you think you can dance - Netherland Edition" really interesting. I kept trying to interpret what the judges were saying.

But now I'm back in Germany, and I've only got a week left until my orientation course for my new job! eep!

Sandy

A taste of Bohemia

But probably not the Bohemia you're thinking of. Despite it's connections to hippies and unconventional living, the word is also the old name for the Czech Republic. Boy did that explain a lot of shop names...

Last week I spent 3 rather fabulous days in the capital of the Czech Republic - Prague! Now, let me fill you in on all my adventures :)

My friend Zach and I took off last Wednesday for Prague on a double decker bus - they're doing construction east of Bamberg and a lot of train routes have been replaced by bus routes for the time being - and it was fun to travel that high up. Once we reached Prague, we checked into our hostel and headed out to wander around the city. First stop, Old Town Square:

Please ignore the funny look from the passerby... Despite what you're thinking, doing the YMCA in the middle of a square really is a cool thing to do!

After buying lunch - including the first tasty Czech beer - we noticed the large crowd standing on the other side of the square.

So we moseyed on over to see what the big deal was. Turns out everyone was standing infront of the Astronomical Clock - the most visited tourist attraction in Prague. When the clock strikes the hour, Death rings a bell, the 12 Apostles do a parade, and at the end a rooster crows. Sounds pretty cool, huh?

All I can say is... junior burger.

But the clock itself is really neat looking. The top dial shows 3 different times on a 24 hour clock, as well as the current zodiac sign and where the sun and the moon are in the sky.

The bottom dial shows the current date - day, month and year! Very spiffy.

If you look closely, you can see Death - he's the inside statue on the top right. Moral of the story? Clock - very cool. Striking of the hour - not so much.

Next, Zach and I (that would be Sandy - the spelling will become very important later) noticed a Starbucks around the corner. After professing a love of caramel macchiatos and frappacinos, we decided to cave and buy something very north american, despite the fact that we were in Prague. The employees were super friendly (and I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that they were being evaluated...) and after taking our orders, asked for our first names. Quality service!


Boy did we laugh when we got outside and checked our drinks.

Look ma, I've got a new name!

No Sandy, "Henie" is just how the cool kids are spelling it these days.

At least I got a real name. They weren't too sure about "Zec"...

Next we snuck a peek of the old Jewish quarters from the road,

and saw the best parallel parking job ever:

Having concluded our tour of the old town (including a reprimand from a priest - apparently you're not supposed to take pictures in the churches without asking permission... boy was that awkward. Especially when he asked if we were catholic...), we headed into the park. We had some time to kill before dinner and wanted to check out the mini-Eifel-tower-looking-structure-thingy... But we got distracted by pear trees along the way.

Mmm mm tasty!

Nothing like wild pears before eating at a restaurant with a large statue of a goat-devil. And Zach had no idea!

But we ate like kings - Zach had duck, and I tried the rabbit.

Another one of the popular tourist attractions in Prague is Charles Bridge. It's a pedestrian bridge - lots of people selling knick knacks and you can usually find a group of people playing music. We ran across a great jazz group while crossing. Although nice by day - like our tour guide said a little later on: The city is much prettier by night. Don't you agree?

Charles Bridge by moonlight

The following morning we decided to take up the offer on our city map: "Present this map at our office and recieve a free walking tour of the city, or half price for any other tour offered"

We got a super enthusiastic and informative tour guide to show us around the old city. Starting by this lovely statue of Wenceslas in front of the National Museum. Ta da!

We got lots of history - including the fact that "King" Wenceslas of the Christmas carol was in reality only a duke. And for some odd reason, someone decided to create a statue of him riding a dead horse. Upside down. With it's tongue sticking out. Ya... that stop was bizarre. Especially because it was in the middle of a mall.



After the tour we went to Cafe Slavia for lunch and tried some of the original Budweiser Budvar. That'd be Budějovický Budvar in Czech. Don't ask me how to say it! In addition to great beer, we also got a great view of the castle on the hill. Which turned out to be the next stop after lunch.

This lovely view looks up a street in Prague towards St. Nicholas Cathedral. We didn't go in, but we did stop on the steps so I could rest my back. Walking on cobblestones in flip flops with bad posture is a recipe for serious back pain.

But it was pretty...

It got even prettier as we walked up the hill to see the Pražský hrad (aka. the castle)

View over Prague

When we went in to buy our tickets, we were shocked to discover that there were no guided tours. But, if we wanted to, we could rent an audio guide for an exhorbitant amount of money. But, audioguide rental included line-skipping powers. Instead of waiting in the 2 hour queue outside of St. Vitus Cathedral, you just got to walk right in. We didn't bother. Best decision ever. Our wait was roughly 10 seconds - only because we weren't sure which was the entrance and which was the exit. So much for the huge crowd...

Katedrála svatého Víta

St. Vitus Cathedral

(that's all you get to see... it was too big to get into one shot!)

After our castle tour, which included visiting the house that Franz Kafka lived in, we popped into the Royal Gardens (Královská zahrada) for a nap. I thought it was a brilliant idea, since I could barely walk anymore! Besides, what could be better than sleeping in the shade of a giant tree in the summer?!

Grr... I'm a Golem too

(back in the Old Town Square)

Last event of the day: Brewery Tour. With a group of 11 other people, Zach and I went to 3 different local pubs, tried 3 different local beers, and got a traditional Czech dinner! What a blast :) We got a Pilsner Urquell, a dark Czech Budweiser Budvar, and a Pražský most from a micro-brewery. All delicious. And to top it off, I got fried cheese for dinner - much better than it sounds.


Group shot in the micro-brewery. All the pubs were not ones you would ever find by yourself. The first one was located in a back alley, and looked really sketchy - until you walked down a flight of stairs to a huge underground hall that seated 300 people.

What a blast!

Na zdraví! (That's "cheers" in Czech - sounds kinda like "nice tv" in case you were wondering)

The following morning we checked out of the hostel and hit up the National Museum. Pretty good Paleontolgy, Archeology and Minerology exhibits. I think my favourite was walking down the stairs covered in red velvet - anyone else feel like a princess?


Another 4.5 hour bus ride back (I slept most of the way this time) and yet another splendid vacation was over.


Sbohem,
Sandy