The Final Day

Well, today was the last full day of my 10 month journey. I pulled out the last couple dollars in my checking account yesterday and now I think my balance is around $3. That was a brutal feeling. Ted and I are currently in London and spent the day doing another tour around the city on one of those open roofed double decker busses. Ted hadn't seen any of London so I figured it was something we had to do. We also met this funny French guy, Mathieu, who came with us as well. He is here studying English and is stayin in our same hostel room. Since my last post, in Budapest, we flew to London, then took a bus to Belgium, then a train to Holland, and yesterday flew to London. Budapest was a really awesome place. It was pretty rainy for the majority of the time we were there, but I still had a great time. The place is full of culture and history, but also has this wild side where people just love to go there and party. People were saying how they have been there for months or years because they just couldn't leave the place. I really enjoyed it, but I had no trouble moving on. One cool thing we did there was go to the Hungarian public baths. It is this massive establishment that has something like 10 indoor pools, each with different vitamins and minerals in the water at different temperatures, and then 3 massive outdoor pools at varying temperatures. It was pretty crazy to see. It cost about $15 USD for the day to be there, but it was so worth it. I hadn't been in a spa since I don't know when. Though, I must say it was a lot more than just a spa, it was the experience and all the people, and laughs that came from that which made it so fun.

From there, as I said, we went to Paris. Paris is easily one of my favorite place I have traveled to, not only on this trip, but all over the world. Actually as a whole I love France. The whole deal about French hating Americans has been a total fallacy to me. They have been awesome to me, both times I went there on this trip. Even Ted agreed with me on how great the people were. We were lost looking for this hostel and some random French couple stopped just to help us and wouldn't quit till we found where we were going. Just one example, but that was pretty cool to me. We did most all of the touristy stuff in Paris; the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Champs-Ellyse, Notre Dame, and a few others. Ted and I spent my birthday in Paris, which will always be memorable for me. It was a funny day, we rented bikes and rode all over Paris and had some laughs. I was just stoked on being in France for my birthday. It was so cool to me.

After France we went to hop the train to Belgium, but the train tickets ended up being almost three times more expensive in the train station as opposed to buying them online beforehand.. so we opted to take the bus instead. That ended up to be a 7 hour waiting game in the bus terminal. We had all of our stuff with no real place to store it, so we just decided to hang out and relax. The bus was much cheaper too, so that was awesome. I never had to really worry about the prices of the trains before when I had my eurorail pass, but now since it got stolen, dealing with that has been brutal. Oh well though, it is all part of the grand adventure I guess.

Belgium is a pretty awesome place. Belgium is home to two of my favorite things; Belgian Beer and Belgian Chocolate. We settled in Brussels for the short amount of time we were there and fortunately the worlds largest collection of beer in one bar happens to be in Brussels at this bar called Delirium. The place had some of the best tasting beers I have ever had. They are a lot different than anything I have ever had. The thing is though, you cannot test too many because they have 8-10+ % alcohol content. So it would take a long while to taste them all. I believe at the bar they had some 2,500 different beers. The world record for a single bar. It was pretty cool to be there. The Belgian chocolate was a whole other glorious thing. There are so many chocolatiers all over the place, and almost all give you free samples. Ted and I did this chocolate tour, and that was pretty interesting and delicious. I gave myself an awesome stomach ache before the day even really began. We didn't have to to do it until the morning we left too, so we had to get up early and rush to this museum to do the tour before our train to Holland. Regardless, it was great. On the way back from that too we stopped and had Belgian waffles that were insane. That just added fuel to my sugar coma though. The train ride to Amsterdam was heavy. I was still not feelin to good when we got there. May have been the Belgian beer from the night before or the chocolate, but probably the mix.

Going back to Holland was cool. I made it to the Heineken brewery this time, as well as the Van Gogh museum and the Anne Frank House. Those were all interesting to see. Ted is very into museums and those things so it is good having him here to drag me along. I feel museumed out very much of the time, but something like the Heineken brewery really gets me excited. History was never my thing, though I know its important, museums make me so tired most the time. The Van Gogh Museum was pretty cool, though I was expecting a bit more I think. He has some really amazing pieces, and when you look at them upclose they look so simple but the further away you move the crazier the whole picture gets. Good stuff. The Anne Frank house was crazy to see, but depressing. It was a lot bigger than I thought. To see the actual diary too was insane. I couldn't read a word of it, but looking at it was wild.

And yea, that takes us London. Showed Ted around Camden Town a bit yesterday and went out in Soho and Picadilly for a bit in the evening, and today we did the bus thing. We did get to see the changing of the guards today too, which was extremely long, and what I felt to be very uneventful. I couldn't really see too much of what was happening, so that might have added to it.

Tomorrow I will be flying home. I am so excited to see my family and friends again and not share a bedroom with 10 other people every night. It has been a magical journey. I still know I have a lot of learning and growing up to do. I am curious to see what comes next, and where life will take me. I wish I had something wise to say at the end of this, but I don't. Thank you guys for reading this. -AJ

I cant believe its November.

Hey all. Apologies for my absence. I am currently in Budapest, Hungary, with Ted. Since my last blog I had gone to Prague, Czech Republic, and then continued from there to Germany where I picked up Teddy and caught a couple sights in Berlin. Prague is such a beautiful place. I really enjoyed it there. The history, culture, and sights there are amazing. For sure one of my favorite cities. Berlin was great too. I was there for 4 days total and enjoyed it very much. I had gone there once before but only for one evening before departing to Holland. I am glad I got to see it again though. Germany is a pretty awesome place with amazing people. I was there the eveing before Ted got in so I got to wander around a little bit, and cruise before I received him at the Airport. It was pretty funny/awesome to see him. We were both semi lost in the airport I think and then when we finally saw each other we started laughing like little kids. It was so funny. He couldn't believe he was in Germany and I couldnt believe he actually was able to come! It was very good to see a familiar face in person. So we had some fun in Berlin, saw a couple sights and wandered around a bit. For the first day we figured we needed to do a bit of planning so we stared mapping stuff and figuring prices. And the final idea that we decided on was to rent a convertible Smart Car and drive down to Vienna then tour the rest of Europe. Neither of us had really any clue what we were getting ourselves into, we just thought it was going to be hilarious. So we basically put all our eggs in that basket and decided it was the right thing to do. That evening we met up with some other friends, Sophie and Julie, in Berlin that took us out for the evening. Apparently they had been living in California while I was traveling and had met Ted and few other friends of mine. So it was fun to hang out with them and go around town with a local. Very lovely Germans. Ted and I also made friends with this guy who shared our dorm room with us, Emmit, who was a total character. Awesome guy and super funny. We had a blast with the guy. Nonstop laughs. Of course Ted and I figured we had to see the Berlin Wall, since we were in Berlin so we did that of course. Pretty gnarly to see.

So our last day in Berlin we go to pick up our Smart Car from the rental place. For those of you who might not know what a smart car is; its pretty much the worlds smallest street legal car. It is as long as it is tall, seats only 2, only goes about 70 mph and looks like a pod. But they are hilarious. So we get to the rental place and start asking questions and learn that if we were to take the smart car on the Autobahn we would be miserable. So we ended up getting a BMW r as the Germans call it a "BMV." It was only a couple bucks more and we would be able to riproar on the Autobahn with it. So it was an easy call. We were kind of bummed that we couldnt get the Smart Car but once we figured out how long it would have taken us to get down there and how boring it would be, we figured we had made the right choice.

The Autobahn was pretty sweet. Ted drove the whole way. We were going to rock, paper, scissors for who drove but I haven't driven stick in years and letting me relearn on the autobahn was most likely suicide. So I got to nap and play DJ while ted gunned it down the Autobahn. I played the role of checking to see if any Ferarris or Lamborginis were coming up on us fast. Couple of times things got close. But we didn't see any real sports cars ripping down the road, which was kind of a bummer. But it was still cool to see it. We didn't break any land-speed records but we definitely had the thing going. It was super fun.

When we got to Vienna we met up with Peter and Susan, two awesome Austrians who let us crash at their place. Ted had met them back in the States while I was gone and had planned to make his way down to see them. I was onboard, he had told me they were awesome people, and he didn't lie. They were so cool and so fun. We had some great laughs. They took Ted and I to a soccer game between these two huge rivals and it was such a gnarly game. The fans were insane! People lighting off fireworks in the crowd, throwing stuff constantly, and they even had the riot police out and read all over the stadium. I guess there has been some insane battles between fans in the past. It was great to see though. Very intense, but very fun. They took us also to get some real Wiener Schnitzel. Which really means schnitzel from Vienna. Vienna in Austria is referred to as Wien. And a person/thing from Vienna is called a Wiener. Yup. I never knew this. We had some laughs. Peter and Susan were so fun. The next day I took Ted to the Vienna Zoo to show him how awesome it was. He dug it. It was just as cool the second time for me. There was no attempted baby attacks, but it was still great to see the tigers again. The whole zoo is so cool, and it was crazy to see that just in the short time that I had been gone, how the seasons had changed so much. Most of the trees were bare now and it felt like winter was really getting a grip. Seeing the seasons is so cool and beautiful. I would love to see the first snow fall. That would be so epic. There are already Christmas things going up all over too and that makes me indescribably excited. I love Christmas lights in the cold.

So the next step was to drive to Budapest, but wildly enough, rental BMW cars are not allowed in Hungary and numerous other Eastern European countries. Also, we couldn't afford to pay for the gas for the car... so we both decided that ditching the car early would be a good call. The first time we filled up cost us $90 USD. And we complain about $2 a gallon!? $90 to fill up a BMW 1 series. Insane. We lost a bit of cash in the deal but calculated that we would still be saving a ton of money taking cheap trains and flights everywhere. So it all worked out. It was fun while it lasted though. And I never had to drive. So I was stoked. I would like to relearn driving stick though and then hit the Autobahn.. when I have more money too so I can afford fuel.

We are now in Budapest, Teds sleeping, I was going to nap but figured I should blog for you guys. I feel bad that I was bad about it recently. The trip only has 2 more weeks. I am kinda bummed about it, but I am going to make these last two weeks amazing. I am very happy to see my family and friends though. And I am so stoked Ted could be here for the final days. This trip has been so good to me. I feel so blessed.

Well I am out. I will try to soon, hopefully a couple more times before I get back. -Bye.