Europe Posts completed!

Be warned. My posts on europe are a day-by-day, detailed summary of the trip...skim at your leisure. :) They're located on my old blog, post-dated to the actual trip dates (March 30 - April 10), and if you haven't seen them yet, the photos are all here.

For those who want a short version, here you go!
Europe was a lot of fun and travelling with Riza & Christine (here on, R & C respectively), 2 relative strangers...actually turned out really well. We got along just fine so that was a big blessing. And altho rain was forecasted for nearly everyday, it only really rained once and that was in the one city that wasn't forecasted to rain!! so we pretty much got the exact opposite of the weather forecast which was great. :) We mostly followed Rick Steve's guide to Eastern Europe (from here on, RS) since that's the only guidebook we had for restaurants and walking tours.

R & C soon realized (much to their amazement) ... that about every 2 hrs i'd say "are you guys hungry?" They always answered no & not really... but me? it was always snack time!! =P

Thruout the trip it was a running joke about how i was always struggling to close my suitcase. R & C had to teach me how to pack (roll up my clothes to get rid of the air) in krakow before i could get everything to fit without using the expander. (i'd like to claim that it was the 2 things of coffee we were bringing for dayna that took up so much space...but i'm not sure how truthful that would be =P but it's really not like i brought that much clothes either!! i was a total minimalist when i packed! i wore everything i brought except for the 1 nice, just-in-case outfit that we never needed.) of course, the joy of being able to fit everything without the expander (with the expander the suitcase always tended to be front heavy & tip over when left alone) lasted only a couple of days cuz by i went a little overboard shopping in vienna & frankfurt. :) hehe

Since one of my dreams is to be a contestant on TAR, I thought this trip would be a perfect chance to test my eligibility. Ummmm...I think i'll have to rethink the whole idea. I don't know how they do it, but i always felt soooo lost! and we wasted a lot of time figuring out who to ask and then looking for the place often took a lot longer than it ought to have! How discouraging!

The main lesson I learned? Don't try to do too much. Yes, I know how much the plane tix cost and how hard it is to get vacation. But I woulda gotten a lot more out of each place if I was able to take my time and only go to a few places (and places that are close to each other...i advise against overnight trains! but if you must, do 1st class).

Ok. I know that was supposed to be short, but how to you condense an action-packed period of 12 days into less than that???