Posts Tagged ‘Scenery’

Castle in the park

After a very full day of seeing Denmark we made it back to Copenhagen and headed to our hostel. We didn’t have any trouble finding it and quickly got settled in. The place was called Generator Hostel and I have to say that I had some mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it was very clean, very new, had wonderful comfortable beds, only 4 people per room, a bathroom for each dorm room, some of the beds were not bunk beds, and it was decorated really nicely. Those are some pretty big positives. But there was a strange vibe to it. They didn’t allow you to bring in any outside food and there was no kitchen facility. In a country where a sandwich routinely costs about $10, it was very annoying to not be able to stock up at a cheaper grocery store and eat in. The hostel of course had a bar that sold food ($11 for breakfast!), and they were doing their very best to get you to spend money there. The other thing was that they advertised wi-fi, but in reality, the only place you could access it was in this same bar area. It made me feel as though they were quite desperate for me to spend money there. But all in all, the comfy bed made up for a lot.

Hostel in Copenhagen (my bed!)

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My brother really came through for us in Amsterdam. Of all of the places we were looking at going we were the least satisfied with hostel options in Amsterdam. They were very expensive and very poorly rated. It’s one thing to pay for quality, and a totally different thing to pay 30 euros each per night for something that gets a really bad rating! So, my very kind brother got in touch with his friends and found us a place to stay! One of his friends lives in Amsterdam with her husband in a nice apartment close to the center of town. She was away while we were there, but her husband, Joel, was amazing and let us stay with him. You can imagine that we were feeling a bit shy about all of this, especially since Joel had not even met my brother, but it turned out so well and we enjoyed both Amsterdam and Joel’s company.

It was an easy train ride from Bonn to Amsterdam, with just one quick change in Cologne. The scenery was nice, and we got to see first-hand just how flat the Netherlands are. Once in Amsterdam we followed Joel’s very detailed directions and had an easy time finding his apartment. We chatted for a little and agreed to meet up for dinner after Justin and I had a few hours to walk around the city and see the sights.

The center of Amsterdam is a really nice size for walking around. We walked for about 3 hours and saw most of the central city. We especially liked seeing all of the canals and houseboats. It is a very pretty city and absolutely chock full of bikes, boats and other unique modes of transportation, like the mini car we saw! Because we were only spending one night in the city we just wanted to take in the atmosphere and get a sense of the place. Amsterdam has a really unique feel to it.

Justin with a mini car

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We left Luxembourg in the morning and had a rather slow train ride to Strasbourg, in France.  I’m not sure if there was something wrong with the train, but about every 20 minutes we would stop for five or ten minutes before continuing on.  And not at a station either, just in the middle of nowhere.  Still, it was pretty countryside and we were not in too much of a hurry.

Once we got to Strasbourg it about noon and we headed straight to the information desk in the train station.  They were very helpful and explained how to get the tram to the hotel we had booked, and what the best transportation options are.  Strasbourg has a really good tram system that runs at most hours of the day and it is possible to get a ticket (for about 5 Euros) that lets up to three people travel on the trams as much as they want for 24 hours.  This was so, so good.  We were able to see so much of the city and had no problems at all getting around.

Our hotel was called Cerise Hotel and was a big success.  Inexpensive, really clean, internet in the rooms (important because we still had a lot of planning we needed to do) and even had a fridge and microwave in the room so that you could eat in a bit.  We took pretty full advantage of that!

Our plan was to do a few hours of planning and work on updating the (very out of date) blog and then to get out and see something of the city in the evening.  Despite having a small setback with our internet not working, the hotel sent someone up immediately to fix it, and we were able to get a few days of plans finalized.  This calmed us down substantially and as we set out to see the city we were feeling so happy and positive!

We took the tram to the central area and then walked around taking it in.

Canal and "Petite France"

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Because of the stress we encountered upon entering Europe, we decided to remedy our poor planning as soon as possible and reserve 1 week or more of our upcoming accomodation and transportation.  Of course, nothing is that simple – our hotel, being the cheapest in Luxembourg, did not have internet available (but, interestingly, it did have an ashtray in the shared bathroom), so we went on a quest to find some cheap or free wifi in town.  This also afforded us a chance to sightsee along the way into town!

Valley and Bridge

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The next stop on our family tour of the UK was Durham, where my brother is working on his PhD. He recently bought a house, so we were excited to see him and to check out his new place. He gave us a wonderful tour of castle and abbey ruins and I had a blast taking tons of photos.

We started out with a bit of a walking tour of the town, cathedral, and the castle which is part of the university.

It was a beautiful walk along the river. The cathedral is in the background.

Walking along the river into town

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From Oban we had a quick overnight stop back in Edinburgh, then took the train south to visit my gran in Doncaster. It was so good to see her and her husband Ken and they very kindly let us stay in their very deluxe motor home in their back garden. This motor home was better equipped than many houses I’ve lived in and was a really comfy place to stay!

We had several very competitive games of Rummikub, saw my aunt and uncle, ate lots of tasty food, and really enjoyed hanging out and chatting. We stayed for two nights, so we had bits of two days and one whole day there. Gran and Ken offered to take us to see one of their favorite castles in the area, so of course we couldn’t say no to that!

They took us to Castle Howard and it was spectacular! The grounds were beautiful and the house/castle is absolutely huge. This castle has been used twice for filming major productions of Brideshead Revisited and part of the upper level had an exhibition about how the filming was done.

We walked through the rose garden and the other beautifully landscaped gardens.

The roses were in bloom

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After seeing Edinburgh for a little bit, we decided to see my old college friend who now lives in Oban.  This is a small port town north of Glasgow on the west coast of Scotland, and not far from all the famed Scottish isles.  It’s a beautiful place!

Oban's Coastline

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So sorry to be so far behind in our adventures. We’ve had a wonderful time seeing friends and family and haven’t had much time for blogging. But, that does mean that we have lots of wonderful days to post about!

We arrived in Edinburgh after one of the nicest (read: least bumpy) flights ever. There was one slight mishap on the getting to the airport in Madrid. I woke up, in a panic that I had slept through my alarm, roused Justin and very sleepily hustled us out of the hostel, only to find out that my alarm hadn’t even gone off yet! We were about two hours earlier to the airport than we needed to be. But I suppose that’s better than two hours late.

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After a getting briefly lost on our way out of Barcelona (thanks everyone else for fixing that one!) we had a long but uneventful drive to Madrid and got rid of the car on our way into town.  Madrid has a really great metro system (the best one we’ve seen so far) and so it was much easier to get around that way than with the car in the city.

We were hungry after our long drive, so after getting our friends checked into their hotel we set out in search of something to eat.  We found a type of restaurant I hadn’t seen before.  It was a place where they had a bunch of sandwiches, pastas and salads all ready to buy and take home, but you could have them put it on a nice plate and eat it there if you wanted.  Genius!  After dinner, Justin and I headed over to the same hostel that we had stayed in on our first trip to Madrid and got settled in.

The next day was a sight-seeing marathon!  We saw parks, museums, buildings, the big bullfighting arena, and somehow still had enough energy to go out in the evening!

Really cool statue

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So even though we had just arrived in Madrid the day before we decided to take a little bus ride out of the city (about an hour) and head to Toledo.  We spent most of the morning running around to every bus station in Madrid, buying our onward tickets to Barcelona and then trying to find the right bus, but we eventually found it and had an uneventful ride out to Toledo.

And we were glad we went because the town was really beautiful!  We had a nice fixed menu lunch and walked around the town all afternoon.  We explored the Jesuit church and went up the bell tower to get some great views out over the town.  The town is made up of lots of narrow, winding streets with cool stone buildings lining them and was so scenic for a long walk.  The cathedral was pretty pricey to go into, so we ended up just walking around the outside, but we got some good pictures of the stonework.

Entrance to the town

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