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kirei_dakara2007-08-13 07:59 pm
annapeace.livejournal.com) wrote in kirei_dakara2007-08-13 07:59 pm
Entry tags:
Europe
The trip began with a mostly uneventful flight. There was an unexpected stopover in San Francisco for all of twenty minutes, which I still don’t think was necessary, but oh well. We arrived in London around 7 AM – a perfectly lovely time to be in Heathrow, honestly, because it was the least congested I’ve ever seen it. Then we took to tube to Westminster, as we were informed our hotel was right near there. Which it was – except somehow, it took us nearly two hours to find it. We circled the damn thing a million times, lugging our bags, cursing stupid London alleyways and the elusive Vincent Square, until finally we got it right.
Okay, so this time in London, I call it the Neil Gaiman tour. After reading Neverwhere I was insanely amused by being at all the places, even though I am aware that Earl’s Court is really justa tube stop. Whatever. I was happy to take the tube all over the city and hang out in Soho Square and buy London jeans. I love how the city is clean and proper, although the air quality could still use work.
Two days later, early in the morning we took the Eurostar to Paris. Arriving in Paris, we promptly got lost in the metro system for four hours. I am not joking. Apparently in Paris they aren’t too keen on informing everyone which stops have been closed off recently (I assume the natives must find out somehow, so it’s just us tourists that get caught up) so every time we finally figure out which stop to ride to, it would of course be closed (and we’d only find out after getting ON the train) and we’d have to detour all over the fucking place. On the upside, afterwards we were pretty much pros at riding the metro.
The metro made me miss London dearly though, because it is hot and smelly and dirty and not on any timetable I can figure out. One train will come in five minutes, the next in fourteen, and…what? Yeah. Plus Parisians have a habit of jumping off the train while it’s still moving, and I had to start doing it too to avoid the “you stupid tourist” looks. It wasn’t that bad, but on the whole I wasn’t looking to lose a leg in Paris.
In Paris we also got lucky and hit a new attraction, the beach at the Seine. They had set up tents and beach chairs and game areas and stuff, and it was in fact a very beach-like atmosphere. I really love walking by the Seine, so that was fun to explore. My other favorite thing to do in Paris is walk A LOT, which I did at La Defense because THEY WOULD NOT LET ME GO. I just wanted to explore a little bit but that stupid area is a fucking maze! It turned out okay because I escaped by following a tour group back to their hotel, and from there found the metro and went to La Fayette for some shopping. Yay shopping in Paris, it’s just not a trip to Europe without that.
From Paris it was on to Amsterdam. There, we ran into the only Mexican woman in the world who would approach me for help in a foreign country, experienced the Heineken experience, and ran into the gay parade, which nearly screwed us out of a place to live the second night. Seriously, the whole city became a giant block party with beer and weed and a bunch of extremely hot men hot for each other. So if nothing else, the parade made that city totally worth it.
Amsterdam to Berlin was a six hour train ride, and I spent most of it hiding from smokers. Most cars got divided up as half smoking, half non-smoking, and uh, there was no barrier so that didn’t actually work. We got to Berlin early evening and found out our hotel was smack in the Middle Easterners neighborhood, which was kind of amusing.
The next day Denise’s friend showed us around the city, which was a good thing because most of what we had planned in Berlin was the Reichstag and trying to see Knut (I am lame, yes!) and Mezzo Mix (advertising works, folks, but Mezzo Mix was disappointing!). So we got to chill on the banks of the Spree, check out sites we probably would have ignored, and oh yeah there was a street fair selling pig’s feet. We had just eaten so none of us could actually eat any more, but that didn’t stop us from drooling at the food. It smelled so fucking awesome. And I was sad I did not get to eat pig’s feet in Berlin.
Then it was the night train to Malmo from the Hof (because we got tired of trying to pronounce Hauptbahnhof correctly all the time), where we got squeezed into a compartment with six people. We got middle bunks, which was both good and bad – the people above us SMELLED LIKE GANGRENE and the boys beneath us were super hot. Apparently at some point during the journey the train was carried by ferry (I think this is the part from Copenhagen to Malmo) and we in the cargo hold roasted for about an hour. In Malmo we took the next train for Stockholm, and on that ride I think we saw pretty much all Sweden’s countryside has to offer.
It was gorgeous.
Stockholm is a fantastic city, despite the fact that I didn’t get to explore it fully. We visited the world’s largest Ikea and SoFo and mostly stayed in Gamla Stan. And of course Stockholm would be the only city to rain on us: we got caught in a freak thunderstorm and had to hide in a restaurant for all of twenty minutes. Anyway, I feel like Stockholm is a city I want to go back to and spend some serious time walking around it. It’s pretty but urban and altogether kind of cool, except prices are ridiculous, even with the exchange rate. Plus I can actually still pronounce street names and stuff in Stockholm: this was totally not the case in Helsinki.
We left Stockholm by ferry – which was really a cruise ship – for Helsinki. I can’t say much for it because we didn’t do anything, EVERYTHING cost money. But! There was this Muumimama mascot running around the ship that I tried to get a picture with, alas to no avail. The thing was fucking speedy, for a hippo-troll.
Speaking of Moomin, I had no idea what it was until we got to Helsinki and asked a lady at a store. I was so confused, like we were in Finland and there were fucking hippos everywhere, wtf? But the very nice lady clarified it for us, and I ended up buying a ton of Moomin crap because understood or not, it’s all very fucking cute. Sadly, that was the highlight of Helsinki (well, and the sauna, you can’t go to Finland and not use a sauna). Other than shopping, there wasn’t much else to do. It was disappointing.
And then we spent the night at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport, as we heard it was a safe place to do so and we were too cheap to book a hotel in Helsinki, especially when our flight was at 7 AM anyway. It wasn’t that bad, except I didn’t have a blanket or anything and my jacket wasn’t quite enough to ward off the chill and I basically slept on a glorified bench.
The flight back was spent actually trying not to sleep, or we’d have our time turned all around. But that all worked out okay and we got back, more or less in one piece, arriving earlier than the scheduled time (WTF I KNOW) in mucky Southern California, still missing Kinder candy and rivers and paprika Pringles and being able to ride the tube and a whole lot else, can you tell? Still, it’s nice to be home. (Because I have to leave again so soon!)
P.S. I managed to make it through 90% of the trip unscathed, but apparently Scandinavia needed me to pay a toll. Since entering Sweden I got so beat up, I am still finding bruises on myself!
Okay, so this time in London, I call it the Neil Gaiman tour. After reading Neverwhere I was insanely amused by being at all the places, even though I am aware that Earl’s Court is really justa tube stop. Whatever. I was happy to take the tube all over the city and hang out in Soho Square and buy London jeans. I love how the city is clean and proper, although the air quality could still use work.
Two days later, early in the morning we took the Eurostar to Paris. Arriving in Paris, we promptly got lost in the metro system for four hours. I am not joking. Apparently in Paris they aren’t too keen on informing everyone which stops have been closed off recently (I assume the natives must find out somehow, so it’s just us tourists that get caught up) so every time we finally figure out which stop to ride to, it would of course be closed (and we’d only find out after getting ON the train) and we’d have to detour all over the fucking place. On the upside, afterwards we were pretty much pros at riding the metro.
The metro made me miss London dearly though, because it is hot and smelly and dirty and not on any timetable I can figure out. One train will come in five minutes, the next in fourteen, and…what? Yeah. Plus Parisians have a habit of jumping off the train while it’s still moving, and I had to start doing it too to avoid the “you stupid tourist” looks. It wasn’t that bad, but on the whole I wasn’t looking to lose a leg in Paris.
In Paris we also got lucky and hit a new attraction, the beach at the Seine. They had set up tents and beach chairs and game areas and stuff, and it was in fact a very beach-like atmosphere. I really love walking by the Seine, so that was fun to explore. My other favorite thing to do in Paris is walk A LOT, which I did at La Defense because THEY WOULD NOT LET ME GO. I just wanted to explore a little bit but that stupid area is a fucking maze! It turned out okay because I escaped by following a tour group back to their hotel, and from there found the metro and went to La Fayette for some shopping. Yay shopping in Paris, it’s just not a trip to Europe without that.
From Paris it was on to Amsterdam. There, we ran into the only Mexican woman in the world who would approach me for help in a foreign country, experienced the Heineken experience, and ran into the gay parade, which nearly screwed us out of a place to live the second night. Seriously, the whole city became a giant block party with beer and weed and a bunch of extremely hot men hot for each other. So if nothing else, the parade made that city totally worth it.
Amsterdam to Berlin was a six hour train ride, and I spent most of it hiding from smokers. Most cars got divided up as half smoking, half non-smoking, and uh, there was no barrier so that didn’t actually work. We got to Berlin early evening and found out our hotel was smack in the Middle Easterners neighborhood, which was kind of amusing.
The next day Denise’s friend showed us around the city, which was a good thing because most of what we had planned in Berlin was the Reichstag and trying to see Knut (I am lame, yes!) and Mezzo Mix (advertising works, folks, but Mezzo Mix was disappointing!). So we got to chill on the banks of the Spree, check out sites we probably would have ignored, and oh yeah there was a street fair selling pig’s feet. We had just eaten so none of us could actually eat any more, but that didn’t stop us from drooling at the food. It smelled so fucking awesome. And I was sad I did not get to eat pig’s feet in Berlin.
Then it was the night train to Malmo from the Hof (because we got tired of trying to pronounce Hauptbahnhof correctly all the time), where we got squeezed into a compartment with six people. We got middle bunks, which was both good and bad – the people above us SMELLED LIKE GANGRENE and the boys beneath us were super hot. Apparently at some point during the journey the train was carried by ferry (I think this is the part from Copenhagen to Malmo) and we in the cargo hold roasted for about an hour. In Malmo we took the next train for Stockholm, and on that ride I think we saw pretty much all Sweden’s countryside has to offer.
It was gorgeous.
Stockholm is a fantastic city, despite the fact that I didn’t get to explore it fully. We visited the world’s largest Ikea and SoFo and mostly stayed in Gamla Stan. And of course Stockholm would be the only city to rain on us: we got caught in a freak thunderstorm and had to hide in a restaurant for all of twenty minutes. Anyway, I feel like Stockholm is a city I want to go back to and spend some serious time walking around it. It’s pretty but urban and altogether kind of cool, except prices are ridiculous, even with the exchange rate. Plus I can actually still pronounce street names and stuff in Stockholm: this was totally not the case in Helsinki.
We left Stockholm by ferry – which was really a cruise ship – for Helsinki. I can’t say much for it because we didn’t do anything, EVERYTHING cost money. But! There was this Muumimama mascot running around the ship that I tried to get a picture with, alas to no avail. The thing was fucking speedy, for a hippo-troll.
Speaking of Moomin, I had no idea what it was until we got to Helsinki and asked a lady at a store. I was so confused, like we were in Finland and there were fucking hippos everywhere, wtf? But the very nice lady clarified it for us, and I ended up buying a ton of Moomin crap because understood or not, it’s all very fucking cute. Sadly, that was the highlight of Helsinki (well, and the sauna, you can’t go to Finland and not use a sauna). Other than shopping, there wasn’t much else to do. It was disappointing.
And then we spent the night at the Helsinki-Vantaa airport, as we heard it was a safe place to do so and we were too cheap to book a hotel in Helsinki, especially when our flight was at 7 AM anyway. It wasn’t that bad, except I didn’t have a blanket or anything and my jacket wasn’t quite enough to ward off the chill and I basically slept on a glorified bench.
The flight back was spent actually trying not to sleep, or we’d have our time turned all around. But that all worked out okay and we got back, more or less in one piece, arriving earlier than the scheduled time (WTF I KNOW) in mucky Southern California, still missing Kinder candy and rivers and paprika Pringles and being able to ride the tube and a whole lot else, can you tell? Still, it’s nice to be home. (Because I have to leave again so soon!)
P.S. I managed to make it through 90% of the trip unscathed, but apparently Scandinavia needed me to pay a toll. Since entering Sweden I got so beat up, I am still finding bruises on myself!