Our first evening in Rome was fun. We made our way to the hotel from the train station and then set out for dinner and a walk across the city.
Rome Part 1: Night walk
Florence
We met Lyle’s friend, Jessica, at the Venice train station. From there, we headed south to Florence, Italy. After some slight problems checking into the B&B we started exploring the city.
Venice
Today was a very busy day. We arrived in Venice from the night train at ~9am. After checking into the hostel, we started exploring the island. Our first stop was St. Mark’s Square.
Versailles Day Trip
Today we checked out of our hotel and made our way back to Versailles. With the Paris Museum Pass in hand and the week day crowd there was a considerably shorter line this time.
Paris Part 3: Louvre and Eiffel Tower
Today we woke up early to head over to Sainte-Chapelle. This is an incredibly awesome church that was built in the 13th century.
Paris Part 2: Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur
Matt arrived in Paris today. After meeting up with him at the hotel, we started our tour of the city. First stop on the list was Versailles. However, the line was absurdly long so we decided to come back for the full experience on Tuesday.
Paris Part 1: Arrival
I haven’t updated the blog in a while. This isn’t because of lack of wifi, but rather we have been very busy in Paris. We’re leaving Paris tonight for Venice, so here it goes from the beginning.
From Amsterdam, Lyle and I had train troubles. A lot of train troubles. The high speed train we were supposed to be on was overbooked or something so we had to catch another train to Antwerp to switch. We missed that train so we waited an hour at the Amsterdam train station before finally leaving for Antwerp. From there, we took a train to Lille-Flanders station (south Belgium) and finally a high speed train to Paris Nord station. There it goes downhill.
Our hotel is on the SW corner of Paris and Paris Nord is NE corner. We decide to take the underground metro to our hotel. The people at the visitor center don’t speak English so they write down a list of stops and changes we need to take. We end up getting on the wrong subway a couple times and end up on the East side of Paris. 17 stops and 4 changes later, we arrived close enough to our hotel to abandon the subway and walk. There is a slight language barrier here that makes it difficult sometimes.
Enough complaining; here’s a picture.
Our hotel is very near the Eiffel tower and just looking out the window it feels like we’re in Paris.
Amsterdam
Sorry for the long break between blog posts. Our hostel in Amsterdam did not have free wifi. Lyle and I are now settled into our Paris hotel and I now have a good opportunity to share our Amsterdam experiences.
Dublin
Today was our first full (and very busy) day in Dublin, Ireland. It was also Lyle’s 23rd birthday. We woke up around 8am and started the day by taking a tour at Dublin Castle.
Dublin to Kilkenny to Dublin
We successfully met up with Lyle by accident. We were supposed to meet him at the B&B in Kilkenny. However, his flight to Dublin was delayed and he missed his train. We ended up running into him at the Dublin train station. We had a couple hours to kill before catching the train to Kilkenny so we walked around Dublin for a bit.
