Holiday....
In front of Buckingham Palace
Originally uploaded by kpalmer. Last night my mates and I all got together again for a trip to Origins to catch up with each other. It was great seeing everyone again. There are pics on Flickr if you want to check them out. Also, Kolby has started sending me the pictures of our vacation but be advised, they are coming in slowly because my e-mail storage capacity isn’t very big. I’ll post more when they come in but there are a few up there (like this one of me and Kolby in front of Buckingham Palace) right now if you want to look. Finally, after days of typing I have finished the narration of our holiday so get some cocoa and a comfy chair if you want to read on because it’ll take a while….
----Winter Holiday 2006, December 14th-January 4th---
London, England (2 days):
Got up early and caught a train to London from Canterbury. I wanted to check into our hostel before I had to go and pick up Kolby. His flight was a little late but all was well once we were together. The sun was setting once we got to the hostel and Kolby was understandably beat by the flight and the time change so he took a nap and I got Chinese take-out. Later that night we went to a pub near where we were staying and had some wine and laughed and chatted like the last 3 months were nothing.
The next day we saw Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Big Ben, Harrod’s, and took a ride on the Eye. We also saw a Dali exhibition at a museum along the Thames.
Scotland (4 days):
Took our first 6 hour train ride from London Kings Cross where we saw Hugh Grant (literally a foot away from Kolby and I) and platform 9 ¾. The train ride was long but we had bought snacks the day before and napped a little. We arrived in Glasgow that evening and made our way up a massive hill to our sweet hotel. We were hungry and left a little later to scrounge around for food but all the pubs were shutting down their dinner hours. I can’t remember what we ate that night but afterwards we saw a stand-up comedy show. We almost didn’t get in because they were sold out but some people didn’t show up. It was really fun. The room was packed and most of the comedians had such heavy accents we couldn’t understand them. I just laughed when the others laughed.
The next morning we had our best hotel-sponsored breakfast of the whole trip: the traditional Scottish breakfast. It was awesome: a fried egg, toast, ham and (for whatever reason) half a tomato. Also, we got a pot of tea and different kinds of cereals. That day we took a train to Edinburgh and walked around there a bit. Saw the castle (but didn’t go inside) and some reindeer at a Christmas carnival. Stayed that night in a hostel in Edinburgh along the Firth of Forth.
The following morning we took a walk along the Firth and touched the freezing water. It was a nice day, no rain or snow yet actually. We caught a train from Edinburgh to Dundee (where Marc is from) and spent about 30 minutes in the town before deciding it was kind of boring and heading back to Glasgow for our final night. We took some pictures of Marc’s old school in Dundee though. That night we stayed in the same hotel as our first night in Glasgow (mostly for the free breakfast the next morning).
Dublin, Ireland (2 days):
Flew from Glasgow to Dublin and settled in at our hostel in Temple Bar (the drinking and partying area of Dublin) before setting out to find a pub that was playing live ‘traditional Irish music’. After a disappointing first go at one pub we found another one that had real Irish music and free sandwiches (no lie).
The next day we had a great time at the Guinness* brewery where they gave us a couple free pints of delicious Guinness and took part in a beer-tasting demonstration. At the brewery there is a wall where you can write down your name on a card and stick it up so others can see who has been to the brewery. I wrote on a card ‘Kolby and Kristin from California!’ with a little palm tree on it. Crazy enough, Alison and Neil were at the brewery a week ago (I didn’t even know until today) and saw our little card on the wall. Yay!
* I just spelled Guinness wrong and the spell check on MS Word fixed it for me. Ha.
That day we also tried finding the Dublin Castle which was on our map as a tourist destination. When we found it, we didn’t believe it was a castle at first because the thing was painted like a damn Crayola factory. Every section of the outside was painted either red, green, yellow or blue. It looked awful. You’ll see the pics soon enough I’m sure. And the add insult to injury the ‘castle’ wasn’t even a castle at all, it was an office building.
That night we went back to the same pub as the night before to hear more Irish music (and get more free sandwiches). There were more people there than the previous night and the both of us were set upon by a group of older Irish guys who thought we were worth talking to because we were from California. They bought us Guinness after Guinness and in 3 hours many things happened:
1. Kolby was treated to ‘The History of the Rape of the Irish Lands by the English’ as told by a drunken Irish guy.
2. Another guy named Jim tried challenging Kolby to a discussion of global politics. It was almost an argument but not quite.
3. I spilled a pint on Jim accidentally.
4. Both Kolby and I were taught how to dance ‘Lord of the Dance’ style.
5. A member of our group started throwing coasters at the band because he thought the percussionist was off beat.
By the end of the night it was obvious that we had chosen (or rather were chosen) to hang out with the rowdiest group of blokes in the whole pub. We were pretty drunk when we left and paid for it the next morning.
Back to England (1 Day):
It was a bad idea to go out drinking the night before a 9am flight and we knew it. The next morning we both had headaches and had to get to the airport by 7am. After a slight hiccup involving a late bus and a nice cab driver we made it to the airport on time and flew back to London.
From London we caught a bus to Canterbury so Kolby could see my flat and my school. It was nice to be back in my room again. We did laundry and watched BBC in the common room. For dinner that night I made ravioli and for dessert I had bought 2 traditional English Christmas dishes to try: Mince pies and Christmas pudding. Mince pies are pretty good although very sweet. They are little pastries shaped like cupcakes with a cinnamon/fruity mixture inside them. Christamas pudding however….I have no words. I had been hearing about this stuff and seen it in stores in the months leading up to Christmas and all of my English friends were telling me about how delicious it is and how it’s a traditional part of the Christmas feast. As far as I am concerned, Christmas pudding is probably responsible for America’s revolt against Britain. Forget about ‘taxation without representation’, I would declare war on anyone who was shipping this crap across the Atlantic. For starters, Christmas pudding looks like, as Kolby finely put it, ‘a troll crapped in a football helmet and turned it upside down’. Also, it is stuffed with fruit, bran, and brandy and then aged over 6 months. Before you eat it you are supposed to stick it in microwave so when you take it out is really does look like a STEAMING pile of crap. For a visual, follow this link:
http://www.ukstudentlife.com/Ideas/Events/December/ChristmasPudding.jpg
Overall we had a nice, relaxing evening in my flat in Canterbury
Paris, France (2 days):
Ashford International is only about 20 minutes by train from Canterbury so I had booked us Eurostar tickets in November for a ride to Paris from Ashford. Eurostar is nice because it’s the only way (besides flying) to get from England to Paris in under 10 hours (only 2 hours actually). I do have a problem with their security system however. Eurostar treats their security as if it was a plane but doesn’t allow you to check baggage like an airline does. Kolby had a really nice Swiss Army knife that they confiscated at Ashford (with no hope of ever getting it back). On an airplane you would just be able to slip the knife into your checked baggage but on Eurostar it just gets taken from you completely. It’s partly my fault for not reviewing the guidelines when I booked the tickets but I still think that if you are going to treat a train like an airplane then you should be able to check baggage or at least put “unsafe” items in a secure area on the train. It seems a little archaic to just confiscate them completely, right?
Anyway, Eurostar isn’t exactly the luxurious ride it claims to be (unless you are travelling first class…more on that later) but I guess the time-saving aspect is worth the money (about $100 for the two of us). We got to Paris, found our hotel in Monmarte, and set off to explore a little. Kolby saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time and we were both completely blown away by the effects it had adopted for the holidays. The Effiel Tower is amazing at night anyway but that night it was literally glittering with thousands of lights flickering on and off randomly. Kolby took some pictures but they’ll never come close to portraying exactly what it was like to stand beside it. After that we walked along to Champs Elysse to the Arc De Triumph and then made our way back to the hotel. We watched some French-dubbed American cop show before going to bed.
The next day we spent the morning at the Louvre lost in a sea of Japanese tourists on some kind of mass tour. There must have been at least 500 there that day. We were at the Louvre for about 3 hours and only saw about 1/6 of the exhibits. That museum is just so massive there is no way you could see it without a good 4 days. For lunch I took Kolby to a nice café I like that is situated behind the Sacre Coure. I like the look of the Sacre Coure but it seems to be THE place to be if you are selling tourist gifts. There are these guys that stand at the foot of the steps leading up to the cathedral and practically attack you with their bracelet selling and if you show any kind of hostility they get really offended. Also, once you get up to the cathedral there are these older folks with large clipboards claiming to be part of a portrait class who try and get you to pose for a picture and then charge you for it. I’ll bet more people would fall for the tactics of these peddlers if they all didn’t hang out together, 10-15 strong, in one area. I don’t like to be mean to these people but they really do run with it if you are nice to them. Last time I was in Paris with Neil and Alison, Neil (who is just by nature a nice guy) actually stopped to consider the bracelet-seller’s lines. Once he gave them an inch, all of them descended and I literally had to drag him away. After lunch Kolby and I went to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It was Kolby’s first time and my third (I’m a lucky gal). In the previous times I have been, it’s always been really cold and windy up there but this time it was quite nice and peaceful.
We spent the rest of the day figuring out where we were going the next day (Christmas) and for Christmas-Eve dinner we ate at this cafeteria-type place across from our hotel. It was nice but I was sad to see all the old men sitting in there eating alone. Then again, it was ignorant of me to not assume they might just be Jewish, right?
Interlaken, Switzerland (3days):
On Christmas day we got up really early and spent 6 hours on a train to Interlaken. The first night in Interlaken we booked a hostel that was called ‘Balmers’ but should have been called ‘America in Switzerland’ because every kid there was American and a snowboarder. We opted out of the 16franc/person Christmas dinner they were having and ate crackers, cheese, chocolate and champagne for our dinner while watching The Matrix (The hostel had a little room for movie-watching). It was really a nice evening. We had to stay in a dorm room because that’s all we were able to book and we subsequently treated to the mind-numbing conversations of our roommates while trying to fall asleep. What they were talking about isn’t even worth repeating it was so lame.
The next day we had a nice (free) breakfast and took a trip to the top of Jungfrau mountain. It was a beautiful train ride up. The whole ride takes about 2 hours but there are stops along the way where you can get out and look around. Kolby and I got off at the wrong stop once and had to hang out by the train stop in the middle of nowhere for 30 minutes. We just played in the snow the whole time. At another stop up the mountain we got off the train to have lunch in a little tourist town. Kolby bought me a nice red/white striped Swiss track jacket as my Christmas present. He got the guy version for himself but we vowed never to wear them on the same day. There were a ton of skiers and snowboarders around. On the final leg of the trip up Jungfrau you can really feel the altitude affecting your senses. I just napped the whole way up to the top. It really is amazing once you get there. They have a little compound with a restaurant and there’s an area where you can go outside and look around. We went outside for about 2 minutes because it was so cold. My face was burning from the wind and the freezing. It was something like -15 degrees Celsius outside.
When we got back down the mountain into Interlaken we got our luggage from the hostel where we had left it and found our way to our new hotel in a little town near Interlaken.
The next day we took a walk and hiked around the snowy hills near Interlaken. It was beautiful day. Everyone in Interlaken seems to have a dog of some sort. I like that. It was a pretty relaxing day after that. We were pretty travel-weary but that point.
The day after that I can’t remember all that well. I think we spent some time planning out the remainder of our trip and getting train tickets and such.
Munich, Germany (2 days):
Spent the next day on another 6 hour train to Munich. When we got there it was snowing crazy. We had decided the day before to spend only a l night in Munich and then take a night train to Amsterdam for Kolby’s birthday (AKA: New Year’s Eve). We got the night train tickets and then found an internet café to make reservations at a hostel in Amsterdam. All the hostels were booked so we splurged a little and booked 3 nights at the Amsterdam Airport Sheraton. After that it was time to find our hostel in Munich. The directions were really messed up so we ended up walking about a half mile up the road (in snow and wind) just to turn around and go back to the train station to check the directions again. We decided that we were in fact heading in the right direction so we went back up the street and found our hostel about another half mile up from where we had stopped the previous time. We found our hostel, dropped our stuff and headed across the street to a pub for some much needed refuelling. We were seated at a table with a couple American girls and an Australian couple who were really interesting. I think my next vacation will be to Australia. Anyway, we had some German beer, some German food and went to bed.
The next morning we had to check out of our hostel at around 10am but we were able to leave our luggage there for the day. We took the S-Bahn to Dachau and saw the first German concentration camp. It was really interesting and (as expected) quite sombering. Kolby and I are funny kids, but we know when making a joke might be a little out of taste so we kept our mouths shut for the trip to Dachau. The pictures Kolby took are really amazing. It had stopped snowing for the day but the entire camp was covered in a thick layer of snow from the night before.
After Dachau I was a little grumpy girl because my shoes had gotten wet and my feet were cold so we headed back into Munich to quell my irritability with some food. Our night train didn’t leave until 10pm so we decided to go see a movie to hide out from the cold night. We ended up seeing the first half of King Kong but had to leave early to get our luggage and catch our train on time. The movie was in English, which was nice. I still want to see the end though.
Amsterdam, Holland (3 days):
The night train was really cool. Kolby slept on the bottom bunk and I slept on the top. There were two other guys who occupied the other two bunks in the coach. They were both from Germany and on their way to Amsterdam for New Years like we were. We had a nice chat with them for a little bit and then went to bed. I slept pretty well actually and when we woke up the next morning we were in Holland. We got into Amsterdam at around 10am and found our way to our hotel at the airport. The airport is about 15 minutes by train from the central station in Amsterdam. I was so pleased to see our room when we got there. It had a nice, big bathroom, a minibar, a television and everything. It was a welcome change to the hostels we had been staying in the past couple weeks. We went back into Amsterdam that day to check out the red light district. I was funny if anything. Most of the ladies there were well past their ‘sell by’ date. Yuck. I can’t remember what else we did that day. All I know is we spent the evening inside our hotel room because it was way too cold to go out.
The next day was Kolby’s birthday and New Years Eve. We had planned on going to the Anne Frank House that day but the queue to get in was way too long so we resolved to come back the next day. Went back to the red light district (I know, we’re sick, curious people) and then to a flee market. That night we checked out our hotel’s spa and enjoyed some time in the steam room and lying around on the nice lounge chairs. At around midnight we went down to the bar near our hotel and counted down to New Years with free glasses of champagne. Holland is an hour ahead of London so once we got up to our room we watched the amazing fireworks display at the London Eye live on television.
The next day we saw Anne Frank’s hideout (called The Annex). Now, I don’t want to be rude or anything and anyone who has seen The Annex will agree with me, but Anne Frank wasn’t exactly living like a sardine. The Annex is a pretty big place with at least 5 different rooms and 2 floors. Still, it was a very cool museum and anyone who pays a visit to Amsterdam should see it.
The rest of the day was spent figuring out how to best get back to London by January 4th (when Kolby leaves for California). We still had a couple days left on our Eurail passes so we decided to spend the whole next day (January 2nd) taking trains back to Paris and then take the Eurostar from Paris to London that same night. We spent our last night in our fancy hotel in its fancy spa and slept in our big, fancy bed for the last time.
Holland, Germany, Luxembourg, France (1 day):
January 2nd was train-hopping day. The fun started in Amsterdam at 7am and ended (after about 5 different train changes) in Paris at around 7pm. When we got to Paris Nord (where the Eurostar leaves from) we found out that all the rest of the Eurostar trains to London for that night were booked and the following day all they had left were First Class return tickets available. So, we swallowed our pride and shelled out 300 euros for the 9am Eurostar to London on January 3rd and a random return ticket for London to Paris on February 5th (anyone want to go to Paris with me on the 5th?).
After the Eurostar fiasco I called the hostel in London that I had booked for that night and the following night to cancel and let them know that we’d be in London tomorrow instead. The guy still charged me for the night that I cancelled even though I was going to be staying there the next night as well. I was pretty upset but Kolby made me feel better by just being the nice guy that he is. That night we slept in the same hotel as our first few nights in Paris and watch Laurence of Arabia on tv.
London, England (2 days):
The next morning we had our first class train ride from Paris to London and I have to say even though it wasn’t worth what we paid, it was still pretty sweet. We had a full breakfast and got hot towels and everything.
When we got to our hostel in London we were received very coldly by the guy at the front desk with whom I had exchanged choice words with the night before. I think the smell of our room (“absolute hostel funk”) was deliberate.
On our last full day together Kolby and I decided to visit the Tower Bridge. I was stupid and wore some high-heeled boots because I hadn’t got to wear them the whole trip. My feet were screaming about an hour later and we had to drag my dumb butt back to the hostel to change into some better shoes. That night we saw The Cronicles of Narnia at a cinema near our hostel.
The next morning we went to Heathrow so Kolby could catch his plane home at 11am. Even now it’s hard to look back on how sad it was to say goodbye again so I won’t go into detail about it. I had tears in my eyes all the way back to Canterbury.
So wow, that was it. That was our lovely little winter holiday. I can’t believe I remembered some of the details so well but I’m sure I left a few out so Kolby, you can leave a comment on this entry if you want to add anything to my telling. Have a great day everyone. Cheers!