October

Happy Halloween! I realize I am ridiculously behind. And I really have no good excuse why, just that I’ve been putting it off. I am going to try to keep this short and not turn this into a novel. We’ll see how that goes though, I don’t want to bore anyone.

So the weekend after Paris we took a road trip to Prague October 9^th-11^th since we had a 3 day weekend. We ended up just renting a car instead of the train because the train would have taken ridiculously long and it was only about a 5 hour drive. On the way we also stopped in the city of Dresden in Germany which was actually really cool. Prague was amazing though such an amazing city. The first night we got there we got lost for a few hours and couldn’t find our hostel or anywhere to park, it worked out fine though. Our hostel was great though, it was right in the middle of the main area of town. They also had a free breakfast of cereal, orange juice, coffee and ham sandwiches. Europeans are weird about breakfast. We also had to take out money once we got to Prague since the Czech republic doesn’t use the Euro, they use the Koruna (pronounced Crown). I US dollar is about 18 koruna’s. It was weird paying for things because it was ridiculously high numbers but things were actually pretty cheap. While we were there we took a free walking tour and we actually got a really good tour guide and enjoyed the tour. We saw all the main sights in Prague, did some shopping and went on a pretty fun pub crawl on Sunday night.

The following 2 weekends and this weekend we have stayed home. The week before we went to Prague Liz and I met some guys that live right across the way from us and we have become friend with them and have been hanging out with them alot. They are really nice and it’s nice to have friends out here. They have also been taking us to the commissary which is absolutely amazing since I have missed so many American food and food in general that is labeled in English. We’ve been going out with them to K-town which is fun and it’s about 30 min away. It’s nice just to sleep in too and actually get to relax on the weekends. Anyways, the guys are here working at the deployment transition center and are leaving around the same time as us. Except for 3 guys, they left this week unexpectedly. I am very sad about this, I didn’t want them to go home to the states already!

Speaking of going back to the states, I am already halfway through my time here. I only have 7 weeks left and I know time is going to fly by. I’m not really homesick, but I know I will be ready to go when December comes. I am very excited for November because we will be back to traveling and we still have so much to see!

Pub in K-town. Getting ready to go to Nach Schict, a club in K-town

Hostel in Prague. Halloween in Germany, going to Nach Schict!

13.1 miles...

The other day I made an impulse decision to sign up for a half marathon. This will be my second and i've been meaning to do another one for a while now. My sister and a few friends and had already signed up and when I got back from Prague the other day I just decided to do it, no looking back. I'll start officially training in a few weeks and I have a goal time of under 2:15, my last was was about 2:25 ish so hopefully those 1o minutes will be easy to shed. Wish me luck. (Especially since I will be training in Germany's FREEZING weather ahhhhh)

j'aime Paris

So this is one week behind, but I promise I will catch up this week! The end is a little vague since I couldn’t remember everything we did.

This past weekend we made a first weekend long trip to Paris! I had an absolutely amazing time, Paris is so beautiful! We took a ICE, fast train there and got to Paris around 10am on Saturday. We were greeted by Liz’s cousin Megan who happened to be vacationing in Paris at the time. Megan helped us buy Metro Paris and helped us find our Hostel. We dropped off our backpacks and went off to sight see for the day. We saw Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe, Moulin Rouge, Hotel de Ville, the Shakespeare bookstore, the Saint Michel fountain and walked down the famous shopping street Champs-Elysees. By that time we were exhausted so we went back to our hostel to rest for a few min and freshen up. Ashley Liz and I went to meet Megan for drinks and dinner while the other girls did more sight seeing. We to the Creperie des Arts for dinner, it was really good. We had both dinner and dessert crepes. I liked the dessert crepes a lot more but my dinner one was good as well. We also had some nice French wine. Megan was nice enough to pay and even show us to some cool bars. We found some fun places but no one was too nice. We walked around to bars for a while and finally made it to the metro around 2am we made one train, which was so packed but unfortunately we missed the last train of the night that went to our hostel. We walked around for a little bit but finally decided to just take a taxi. We made it home around 3 and passed out in our not so comfy bunk beds.

Sunday we woke up early enjoyed the free “breakfast” at our hostel. Which consisted of a roll and butter, coffee and orange juice. Not too excited. We visited the catacombs, which was super creepy. Pretty much just tons and tons of real human bones stacked 20 meters under the ground. Next we we went to the Eiffel tower which was amazing because the weather was PERFECT. We walked up the stairs which was way better than taking the elevator. We couldn’t go up to the very top though because of congestion but we weren’t too disappointed. Next we went to the Louve , but just to the outside, it was still really cool though. We did a little more sight seeing and napped at a park and then we had to make it back to the train station.

Overall it was such a fun weekend! We got really good at taking the metro and weather ended up being perfect. I was so scared it was going to pour the whole time and be miserable. I just felt like we had so much to see in such a short time and all we did was go go go. Not so fun. I definitely like to relax and not be rushed.

Next up, PRAGUE. Which was even better than Paris!!

I have SO many pictures, here are just a few. The rest are on facebook!