The Dreaded...HOSTELS!

Back when I was studying in London, I DREADED hostels. The first two we booked in Italy were not ideal, to say the least. But since then I've learned a few key things to look for in booking hostels. To start off, I find that Hostel World is an excellent site, not only for booking your hostels, but also gives some great tips on traveling and things to do and knowledge about different cities.

1. BATHROOMS!
I know this may sound silly, but it's really an important thing (especially for girls!). After a day of wandering around a foreign city, a place to get clean, (or at the very least, go to the bathroom! In many European cities, toilets don't have seats for you to sit on, gross! So it's nice for you to have one at your hostel!) is very comforting to know if it is clean. You can always tell from the user reviews what the bathroom situation is going to be like. How many there are, are they clean, are there ones for boys and one for girls, separate toilet and shower rooms, etc. Don't just look at the cleanliness level, actually go through some reviews to see what people say.

Also something I look for in bathrooms is if you have to pay or use a coin for showers and towels. Some hostels might say this in their blip about the hostel, but most won't. Users hopefully will mention it! I say this because I once had an ok hostel in Paris that gave me and my friend two coins for the shower, but they didn't tell us how long the coins lasted. 5 minutes into the shower, the water turned off, my friend still had shampoo in her hair, and the front desk was closed so she couldn't get another coin.

2. LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!
This is also something that the first time booking hostels I didn't think mattered much, but later found out that it SO does! On Hostel World, each hostel will show you on a map where they are located (If they don't, I wouldn't book it) and often will say "in the heart of the city" or "a short walk from an underground." This was something I also learned from my first booking experience. "A short walk from an underground" doesn't exactly mean that it's in the city! In Rome we booked a hostel that said this and it ended up being a 45 minute ride into the city. It was a very nice hostel, right on the beach, but was no where near anything we wanted to see or do!

On the other hand, we switched to a different hostel the next day that was right next to the Terminini, right in the heart of the city. Now, something that one might not know about this in Rome, but that is NOT a good neighborhood. And not just that it wasn't a good neighborhood, but it will still remain the WORST hostel I've ever stayed in.

Again, the reviews by users will always say how it was located, what they were able to walk to.


3. READ The User Reviews!
The moral of the story is read the reviews! If someone didn't like it, someone is going to want to say so! If someone loved it, someone is going to want to say that too! Hostel World sends emails a day after you check out to ask you to review, and you bet your bottom I have reviewed all the hosteled I booked!


The main different between my hostel experiences from when I was studying in London, to this past trip to Europe was that I took a little more time and read the reviews. If there was a doubt in my mind that I wouldn't be happy there, I said no! And the two hostels I stayed in this time around, were EXCELLENT! I'm not the only traveler who loves talking about the great hostels and wants to warn people of the bad hostel.

A post of actual hostels I've been too will be following soon!

My Contiki Tour

The deal I made with my parents was if I was traveling on my own I would do a tour for part of it. After a bit of research, I settled on Contiki.

The main reason I picked Contiki was because they had the most cities I wanted to go to in one trip. I had originally planned a trip with a friend, but after a series of unfortunate events, I realized I was going to be doing a bit on my own. I changed the itinerary (took out Italy and Paris since I had already been there) and prioritized the cities by how important they were for me ted to go to them. Unfortunately, money and time were on my side so Copenhagen and Bruges will have to wait for another trip. But with Berlin, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest, I found Contiki had a tour with those four cities, which would have left four on my own, and three of those I had friends and family to stay with. I also liked that it was a youth trip, ages 18-35.

I don't regret doing Contiki. I made some good friends and got to go to some other cities I would have otherwise not gone to (Dresden I fell in love with, Kunta Hora and Bratislava were also very nice). It was also very convent to have a bus take us everywhere and not have to worry about checking luggage.

The major down side was that I was excepting a walking tour in every city, and I while we did have one, I had to pay for it in most of the cities, which was very disappointing. The tour was pretty pricy as it was and they kept on hitting us up for extra "excursions" that I really thought should have been included, or at least the walking tours.

A lot of people ask me if there was a lot of partying, which Contiki has a reputation for. We did go out most nights, but for the most part everyone was able to get up on time for the next day and put in a full day of sight seeing and culture and then still go out for a few drinks and dancing at night. I took a couple of nights off, which I think most people did on my tour, but I found out from the people that have done other Contiki tours (there were at least 5 other people on this tour that had done a few others, Australia, Egypt, North America, another European one) said that their other tours weren't like this one. They said that their previous ones were often one day in a city and that it was very much party party all night and sleep all day on the bus.

Would I do another Contiki tour? Under very certain conditions.

1. I would make sure that we'd stay at least three night in each city. We only stayed two in Vienna and it was NOT enough time! We were scheduled to stay two in Budapest, but myself and a lot of other people stayed longer, but I could definitely see myself not spending enough time there if it were only the two nights.

2. I probably wouldn't do it during the summer or during a major college break, just to avoid the college aged crowd. This trip really hit up the whole age range which was very nice, but I could definitely see if it were in the summer that It would be a younger group that would be a little less mature and wanting to party more and not so much caring to see the world.

The Skeleton Church in Kutna Hora

Kutna Hora isn't your typical spot to go to while traveling through Europe. And it was because of Contiki that I actually went here, and was pretty happy I did too!

Kutna Hora isn't far from Prague, on the way to Vienna (by bus). And what it's known for is the Sedlec Ossuary, the skeleton church.

What is a skeleton church you might ask? It pretty much explains itself... It's a church filled with skeletons!! What happened here, in Kutna Hora, was back in the early 16th century the grave yard was overfilled and more room was needed. So it was ordered to dig up old graves (creepy!) and with the remaining skeletons they were placed in the church.

Some people were a little creeped out by all of the skeletons, I sort of thought it was cool. Klutzy me, I set off the alarm because I got too close to take a picture (The first picture above, oopse!)

The Food Festival in Prague!

When we got to Prague, we had a little time before dinner, but sure enough we were starving. Our guide showed us to the center of the town where the astronomical clock was about to strike the hour and we watched the show.

After we set off for a little snack before dinner, which we were in

luck that there was a food festival in the town square of Prague the week we were there! There were all sort of different stands that had cheese, candy, chocolate, different pastries, and other yummy delicious treats!

First we got this potato with sauerkraut snack that was much sweeter and filled with spices than we had expected! Then we got this pastry that was wrapped with cinnamon and was so delicious! I also sampled a few cheese throughout my time in Prague, I often came back here to get a few snacks here and there.

If only every where could have a food festival like this!

Pictures from Top to Bottom: 1. The Yummy pastries being baked! 2. This guy at one of the meat stands had a pretty good sense of humor, I hope you can see the knife! 3. LOTS OF CHEESE! When we took this picture, my friend Ellen said "Say Cheese!" 4. The Potatoes cooking in a ginormous wok! 5. Ellen, myself, and Chantel enjoying a pastry!

Auschwitz and Auschwitz Birkenau

It was important to me to go to Auschwitz and Auchwitz Birkenau during this trip to Europe. As I am Jewish, it is apart of my people's history, even though I have no direct family members that were actually involved in the Holocaust (all of my family was already in America by that point, but if you go to my more distant family there were those that weren't here).

Once back in high school, I had almost done a March of the Living tour with my youth group, which goes throughout Europe to the concentrations camps and then after a week of doing that goes to Israel for a week to celebrate the New Year there. I got myself pretty excited for it, but I can't remember why I didn't follow through. But I knew that one day I would go to Europe and I would see some camps (I also had the chance to see Sachenhausen outside of Berlin).

I didn't just pick Krakow for Auschwitz. I had picked it also because it was supposed to be a beautiful city filled with culture, have a lively night life, and there were supposed to be some good bagels there. When I was looking up hostels, I found one that set up daily tours Auschwitz, so based on that and other reviews I figured that this hostel was a good one.

The bus ride was over an hour long to Auschwitz. When we got there we were broken up to two groups (Don't worry, I got to stay with my friend, Jess) and we were assigned a tour guide. Because it was so crowded, we had headphones so that we could hear our guide. That was something I was very surprised with, how crowded it was. It was very quiet, but often hard to walk through the buildings and stairways because it was so packed.

Everyone gets hit differently, is what I'm told. Jess and I were both pretty effected by this one room that showed all of the hair that was cut off from the victims. It was behind this glass and it went on for too long. The other one that really got to me was the room that was filled with kitchen supplies that were taken from the Jewish people and other victims before entering Auschwitz. I know how many my house hold has, and we have a lot. Our's don't equal to the smallest percent of what was there! They had many different rooms filled with different belongings of the victims. They had these in "Canada Buildings," and they called them that because Canada was thought of as a good place.

After this part of the tour, we went over to Auschwitz Birkenau. Because it was bigger, we didn't need the headphones, and it wasn't as crowded. We went into some of the housing that still stood and then walked the way to the memorial, which is the only unchanged part of Auschwitz Birkenau (In Auschwitz there is a "main lobby") as it is a resting site for thousands of people. The walk was pretty long, it didn't look long but once I was walking that you notice that without good shoe that it's not an easy walk.

Something I couldn't get over was how it was such a beautiful day. It was late October, the sun was shining, and it was probably about 60 degrees fahrenheit (15-16 C was what we were getting at that time). I never think of the concentration camps to ever have a beautiful day, but when I think about it now, they probably had many sunny days with lovely weather. I think that was the saddest part and that part that will stay with me.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words...

..But I'll leave a few words for each one.

A Statue that I liked by the Waterfront District in Zurich, Switzerland and my roommate,

Carol, and I at the top of the Cathedral Dome, with a cute little heart in the grass!

The Chapel at the Prague Castle and the view of Budapest's Parliment from the Fisherman's Bastion, one of my favorite views!

The Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, Elizabeth liked yellow and wanted her palace yellow!

And a Chopin piano in Krakow, Poland.

A new sculpture piece in Kensington Gardens, London (and by new I mean since the last time I was there).

Oopsey

So I never got to post much while I was in Europe. It's hard! I wasn't in my hostels/hotels/friends' places much besides to shower and sleep and often when I was there was no wifi or I had to pay too much for it.

Therefore I've decided to post little tidbits and stories from my travels, not just this past trip but also from working on cruise ships and tips that I've learned from traveling.