Cinque Terre

On our way from Rome to Marseille we stopped at a little place called Cinque Terre. Ever heard of it? We hadn't, but after the advice of a couple of backpackers who crashed at our house in Paris, we decided to make it a destination on our trip. Cinque Terre is 5 little villages located along the coast of northwestern Italy. They are each incredibly beautiful and you can go to each one either by train or by hiking. You can even choose the difficulty of hike you want to get to each village.

It was a very relaxing stay which was nice after spending so much time in so many different big cities. A couple of highlights from Cinque Terre were walking along the coast to different Islands at sunrise and hanging out on the rocky beaches. Our pictures don't really do it justice but it truly was incredible!

When in Rome...

Eat pizza, of course.

As well as visit the Sistine Chapel, in which picture taking is forbidden... thus the lack of pics.

Look at dead people buried in famous churches
Pose with(ish) the vatican guard
Look at amazing paintings all over the insides of awesome buildings (aka the vatican), and take washed out pics of them
Get your gangster on
Take pics in front of buildings that were in movies such as Angels and Deamons (the vatican)
Eat Gelato

Then, go to the fountain where you can make a wish... I think it has something to do with love

Take pictures of the collaseum

Croatia

We both really wanted to go to Croatia during our trip, but we couldn't quite decide where. There are two cities that sounded interesting to us, one is very touristy and beautiful and in the south of croatia, and the other is near a national park with all these amazing beautiful lakes, neither of them however are very accessible by train. After some thought and consideration, we decided to go for the lake park town. We took trains all night long to get there, and when we arrived we realized that we were in the wrong city. Yup. We decided to make the best of it, so we walked around for about 1/2 an hour, and then decided to just jump on the next train and get out. We ended up in the capital of Slovenia. Neither of us ever figured out how to pronounce the name, but it is spelled Ljubljana. We spent the day just walking around and enjoying not having an agenda. We found a really cool castle, and it turned out that there was some sort of city festival going on in downtown, so we listened to a big community band play michael jackson hits. It was awesome. The city was clean and beautiful, and everyone was kind and pleasant. It was a little hidden gem that are glad to have discovered.

Hope you enjoyed these few pics from the day!

Budapest!~!

This fun city was not in our original plans, but when we left Prague, we found ourselves sitting in a Mcdonald's in Vienna, trying to find an affordable place to spend the night... and well, we couldn't. So we thought "why not go to budapest?" We found a super cheap hotel, and hopped on a train, and could not have been more pleased with the results. Our budapest experience went like this:
We woke up at 8 a.m. to get ready to go to church. We then walked about 3 1/2 miles to the chapel, in our church clothes, and wearing our backpacks. We got there just in time, and slipped into the back row right before sacrament meeting started. After church, we headed out, with a free map we had picked up at the hotel, and several land-marks circled by a very kind missionary. We started out thinking that Budapest was just a dirtier version of the rest of the European cities we had seen, but when we got to the top of castle hill, we fell in love. It was probably my favorite site we have seen so far on the trip. I know that words aren't really going to relay the message as well as I would like, so here are a few pics to give you a taste. Remember that pics don't do this place justice.
This is us getting off of the train. We are tired and have no idea what we have gotten ourselves into:)

This is us walking to church. We had to walk VERY quickly, because google-maps told us it was going to take 1 hour and 20 minutes to get there, and we only had 1 hour. FYI we made it:)

On the way up castle hill. Things are starting to look more promising

At the top of castle hill. Not yet to the castle, but this building had some pretty awesome roof tiles.

Cool church with awesome roof tiles

The CASTLE wall things. Awesome.

View from the castle

A view of the parliament building from the castle

Beautiful Hungarian countryside. Seriously so beautiful.

Cool bridge

A view of the castle from below

Clay found a new friend

Prague

We were excited to leave Berlin and head for Prague because it is a city a lot of people have told us alot about, and we have really looked forward to going there to visit. Right before we left Berlin we booked a hotel in Prague and hopped on a train. We were a little nervous about getting to our hotel because we didn't know anything about Prague and we weren't getting in until 11h30 at night. We met a bunch of really great people on the train, one of which, a scientist from Prague, offered to help get us to our hotel. He helped out so much because it would have taken us much longer to find it without him.
We were amazed to find that our hotel was located right in the Old Town of Prague. Literally perfect location. It was also really cheap, but the room itself was a ton better than we had expected. It was so nice that eating the breakfast buffet the next morning we decided to stay a second night.

Prague was something unlike anything we had ever seen. Having only one building really be destroyed during the second world war, most of the architecture dates back hundreds of years. A few highlights were the Atomical clock

The Tyn church

The Castle (everything you can see on the hill is the castle. Its HUGE! The biggest in fact.

And, the castle at night. Amazing!

We wandered around the whimsicle parts of town all day, and when we were too tired to wander any more, we went to a restaurant and had some typical Czech Cuisine. I had dumplings, and Clay had schnitzel (There is a lot of german influence in the czech republic, in case you are thinking to yourself that schnitzel sounds german...)

We took about a million pics, but they just don't quite show how beautiful it really is. If you are ever in the area, make sure you stop by.