puszysty

A fun little reflection on Europe.

Best City: London
Worst City: Naples

Best Food: Czech. Hearty and delicious
Worst Food: I didn't have anything spectacularly bad this semester. Kangaroo wasn't that great though

Best flavor of Fanta: Green Apple. available in Latvia
Worst flavor of Fanta: the brown kind they only have in Italy. I don't know what flavor it is exactly, since I don't speak Italian. This stuff was so bad that I took one sip and got rid of it, then got something else to get rid of the taste. It was horrible

Best flavor of gelato: Papaya
Worst flavor of gelato: Melon. But I don't particularly like melons in the first place

Best thing about Freiburg: It's fairly central in Europe. France is only an hour away, so is Switzerland. Belgium is darn close, and Italy is about 6 hours.
Worst thing about Freiburg: the weather

Best Currency: Euro. What's not to love about a currency you can use in 12 different countries?
Worst Currency: Pound. All because of that exchange rate.

Best roadside snack: Crepes. Find them on nearly every corner in Paris, and they're like 3 times the size of any crepe you'll get in the US
Worst roadside snack: Polish mountain cheese. It has another name that I can't remember. It was ok, just not the best thing I've had.

Best pastry: Schnecke. aka the German cinnamon bun. mmmmm
Worst pastry: Custard croissant. Italian pastry. Once again, it's ok, but there is way too much custard in it for me. The plus side was that after one, I wasn't hungry for hours

Best field study trip: Eastern Europe. How else was I going to see Latvia?
Worst field study trip: Geneva. I spent the majority of 2 days in the same damn room at the UN buidling. I barely saw anything of Geneva, and even then it was in the dark.

Best Airport: Amsterdam Schipol
Worst Airport: Riga. what kind of airport installs one person bathrooms?

Best Train: Eurostar (Rome->Naples) I was in Naples in an hour and twenty minutes. This train hit a max speed of something like 250 kph. Yay for speed
Worst Train: Trenitalia (all over Italy, but the worst I was on was Milan->Torino). Italian national trains are always late. Always. Not to mention the creepy Italians sitting next to you.

Best cultural experience: Olympics. by far, hands down
Worst cultural experince: hiking the Schlossberg in Freiburg....in a foot of snow. Hiking up a mountain in snow...well frankly, it's just asking for disaster. Besides numerous pratfalls and practically sliding down the final strech, we all made it back ok.

Best Museum: the Louvre. all that art for a mere 8 euro.
Worst Museum: Uffizi in Florence. One ridiculously long line, a 10 euro entrance fee, and I think I only recognized like 2 paintings



Double decker bus!

A model of Francis Drake's ship

The London Eye

What kept me from being run over. :)

Tower of London

Tower again.

Again. I couldn't really get a good angle of this castle

Tower Bridge

Tower Guards/tourist assistants

Westminster Abbey

View from the side

She loves you yea yea yea

I'm a slave for you

John Wayne. My grandpa loves John Wayne movies. When I grew up, playing cowboys and Indians always included a guy named Big Jake

I was blessed by the pope.

Do you smell what the Rock is cooking? *whatever it is, it's burning...*

That's my hat and my beard, I am Abraham Lincoln! (bill and ted moment)

I hate snakes too.

Phone booth

Piccadilly Circus

The top of St. Paul's.

The mall.

The Monument. Seriously, that's what it's called. Someone was lacking in imagination

Buckingham Palace

Quack

I want to be in band again. Just so I can march with these guys

Palace guards

Again. They were being inspected before a change of the guards.

Horse guards

Wouldn't you hate to be this guy, standing there stiff all day while tourists took pictures of you?

St James Park

Big Ben

House of Parliament

River Thames


Have you ever wondered how they take postcard pictures that never seem to have any people in them? Seriously, I want to know how they do it.