Barcelona, Budapest, Prague

Okay, so I decided it would be better to split up April and May because otherwise the post would be far too long, and no one likes that. It's like when you're reading a book and all of a sudden there's a paragraph that's freaking 2 pages long. Really, how am I expected to read something so painfully long?

That being said, here are the highlights from the first half of my May travels.

Stephanie, Carson and I took a train to Barcelona, where we met up with Katie and her lovely parents, on May 3rd. We had a great dinner of paella, sangria and various tapas in front of La Sagrada Familia (can't put into words how cool this thing is) and then returned to our hostel. Since we were exhausted, it was unlikely that we were going to go out even though we were in Barcelona on a Saturday night. When the slightly older girls staying in our hostel learned that we were 21, they insisted we go out and "burn it from both ends." So, we did just that. We ended up at a night club on the beach, where you could go out to the shore and find a plethora of sketchy men walking around and selling beer for 1 euro. I think this should be a thing that exists outside of every bar.

The next day we all met up with Carmen, who was studying abroad in the North Pole (basically). We went to Park Guell and had a great time catching up. After that, Barcelona consisted of sitting in plazas, eating tapas and staying out far too late. It was by far the most fun place I have ever been, but there's no way I could keep the Spanish lifestyle up for more than three days.

Not the best picture, but captures our excitement pretty well and shows that Carmen
and I actually have the planning capacity to meet up in a different country. Take that, world. 

Luckily, after three days, Carson and I headed off to Budapest. I knew virtually nothing about Eastern Europe and was therefore extremely excited to see what it would be like. I was an instant fan of the city after realizing how much there was to do and how cheap all of these things were. With my monopoly money in hand, I felt like I could actually buy and take over the entirety of Hungary. Instead, we went to a bath house, where there were 22 different baths of varying temperatures, and a whole gang of the hairiest, largest men I've ever seen. It was really fun and I would recommend it to people of all ages, sizes and amounts of hair.

Playing it cool 

Sean and Abby met up with us shortly after and we went on a free walking tour, checked out some ruin pubs (old buildings in the Jewish quarter that have been converted into the COOLEST bars I have ever seen in my life) and had a really incredible time. If I could have, I would have stayed in Budapest for weeks.

Shot of the Danube/city/us

Our next stop was Prague, which is a beautiful city filled with all sorts of cool old stuff. The first night we met up with Isabelle, one of my best friends from boarding school, and caught up over a flight of beer (because it is actually cheaper than water in the Czech Republic). The next day we went on a castle bike tour, where we were once again given no helmets and didn't have to sign anything. Our tour guide can only be described as an actual crazy person who throughout the tour said things like: "Well, this is definitely important, but uh, I'm not really sure why" and "Yeah I would really love to verify all the stories and facts I give on this tour but like, it's just not on the internet." When we looked at our cameras later, we realized that while he was taking pictures of us, he also took it upon himself to take about 15 selfies. Anyway, all in all it was a beautiful bike ride and extremely entertaining.

In front of the castle

The poster child of crazy

That night, after eating a meal of meat, potatoes and 2 euro liters of beer, we met Isabelle at a jazz club where Bill Clinton once played called Reduta (I think). Isabelle and I decided it would be a good time to try absinthe for the first time, so following the crazy tour guide's suggestion, we ordered some B-52 shots, which consisted of Kahlua, some other white liquid, and absinthe. The bartender handed us our shots, lit them on fire and then distributed plastic straws, which seemed a little impractical considering the fire. However, I didn't question her because surely they had done this a million times before and somehow the chemical reaction between the plastic and the fire and the alcohol wouldn't result in everything bursting into flame. Of course, science is science, so when we started taking our shots everything started catching on fire: the bar, the straws, probably some hair, etc. Meanwhile, the bartender is just taking pictures of us as if this is completely okay and normal. After a few frantic seconds of putting out all of the flames, we finished what was one of the more painful shots I have ever taken. Overall, it could not have been more hilarious and the pictures are absolute gold (but can not be posted in order to protect the identity of those involved).

Beer. Glorious beer.

On our final day in Prague, a staff member at our hostel suggested renting a paddle boat on the Vltava river. He claimed that there was a place that you could ride up to, push a button and have pints of beer handed to you. I was certain nothing so perfect could exist. But, we wanted to ride in a paddle boat regardless, so we went down to the river. It was utterly gorgeous, and after about 10 minutes, we found the mythical boat bar. Only in Europe can you drink endless amounts of beer on a river without life jackets or signing anything.

Getting to ride a paddle boat without actually having to paddle is indeed the dream

Evidently, Budapest and Prague allowed us to have some of the most epic double dates of all time. It goes without saying that the first part of the trip was incredible, and I intend on wrapping up May with a post on Greece and France tomorrow. (Hopefully someone will hold me to this).

April: Part two...?

I said I would post again soon enough, and from my subjective point of view I would argue that this still counts. I got back to the States two days ago after traveling around all of May, so there's a good bit to cover. I'm going to try to summon all of my motivation to catch you all up 100% instead of trying to break it up into two posts, which would ultimately result in my laziness taking over and another month long delay.

SO. We'll start with the end of April. After exams, everyone was pretty confused with what to do with themselves. No work? No school? What the hell can we possibly do with all of this ridiculous time on our hands!? It took us a week to figure out that we were in the south of France and had an infinite number of awesome things to do. This immediately sent us into a panic and made us try to fit every possible activity one can find in the Languedoc region into 4 days.

It had ALWAYS been a dream of young Rachel to return to the Pont du Gard, a gignatic (maybe biggest?) Roman aqueduct. I visited this site when I was 11ish with my grandmother and all I wanted to do was be one of those cool teenagers down on the shore of the river drinking wine and laying out and being cool and old. Finally, this dream was fulfilled and it was everything I imagined it to be. Young me would be proud.

Although, admittedly, I thought I might be a little cooler at this point

Before we left for our travels, we also decided to go on one last hike. Saint-Guilhem, a beautiful, mountainous place with various hiking trails, was the obvious choice. We took the bus a town over to catch a connecting bus to Saint-Guilhem. We were in our best attempt at hiking clothes, had a months worth of food packed, and were prepared to hike the crap out of this mountain. Unfortunately, since it's France, the bus either didn't come or had an invisibility feature, and we ended up waiting for an hour before we realized it was a lost cause. Discouraged and extremely full from having eaten all of our hiking food out of sadness, we took a bus back to Montpellier and decided to just go to some park that Maggie knew about. Luckily, the park was beautiful and filled with sprawling fields and flowers. We walked around a bit, and serendipitously stumbled across a 26 km hiking trail that pretty much went around the circumference of Montpellier. The walk was gorgeous, and we were shocked that no one had suggested it to us before. The path led us by a long river, through the zoo, and into a giant field of yellow flowers. By the time we were tired, we had more or less no idea where we were. We ended up asking a family with two children how to escape this hidden nature fairyland, and they told us we had to walk about 20 minutes and then we would hit a road that we had to walk down for about 1 or 2 hours before we hit the nearest tram. This was not good news, considering we were all exhausted, but since there was no other way we headed out. When we finally hit the road, everyone was silent and the only thing on our minds was reaching Le Petit Comptoir and immediately drinking a bière pêche (might have already mentioned this since it's one of my favorite things, but it's just beer with peach syrup. I am determined to make it catch on in the States). When I was about to lay in the middle of the road and call it a day, the same couple who gave us directions drove up in their tiny car. The man quickly jumped out of the front seat and into the backseat, put one of the two kids on his lap, and they insisted that all four of us get in. We were hesitant (especially Maggie, who forgot that we had talked to these people and thought we were willingly getting in a car with complete strangers (even though, I guess, they were complete strangers)).BUT that's beside the point. We all piled in and they drove us down to the nearest tram stop, where people stared in awe as we tumbled out of our veritable clown car. A few minutes later I got my bière pêche and we reflected on what was one of those magical days that only ever occur by chance.

So nature

Stephanie was too adorably excited to frolic in this field

Learning how small European cars really are

The last few days were surreal and nostalgic. On our last night before leaving on a train to go to Barcelona, a bunch of us went to the program director's house for dinner. It was sad to say goodbye to Carol, as she is an angel of a woman and the reason the program in Montpellier is so great. When we left her house, we all rode the tram to our respective stops. Stephanie and I live in the same direction and were waiting for our connecting tram line. Somewhere in the 20 minute wait, we started getting emotional to the point that we were crying and detailing all the things we would miss. The conversation took a turn for the weird when we started sobbing over how much we would miss the tram controllers (who had giving me a 33 euro fine just the week before), the homeless people and their dogs, and the dog poop that lines every street. We ended up opening the bottle of wine I conveniently had with me and reminiscing for over an hour while all the French people stared in disgust at our open display of emotion. There was no better way to spend my last night.