Minor Updates + Cancún, Mexico + Medellín, Colombia

So I highly doubt anybody reads this anymore, but I figured it could use a quick refresh anyways. I tried to update the pictures that weren't displaying due to outdated links, but Facebook is smart and decided to save bandwidth by changing links to photos every few weeks so you can't permanently link to them. Anyways, I figured I'd also write a post about Cancún, Mexico, and Medellín, Colombia, both places I've been to within the past 3.5 months. Looking back, it's pretty sad that I hadn't been to another country between May 2011 and May 2014, but at least my time has been well spent in traveling throughout the states (+ Puerto Rico!).

Cancún/Playa del Carmen, Mexico (May 22, 2014 - May 26, 2014)
Cancún was a trip that was a long time in the making. My friends from college and I were always considering a beach trip, but coordinating with 5 other people who live in different time zones isn't always the easiest thing in the world. Eventually, we found a weekend that worked (for most of us) and booked our flights. The plan was to stay at an all inclusive resort and really just relax and unwind. Here are a couple of stock photos of the hotel from their website:

As I was flying in, I remember being super impressed with the color of the water. I've been to Cozumel before, but I think seeing the water in the air versus on a boat (was on a cruise) is a completely different experience.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon, and since we were all flying in from different places, it took a while for everyone to meet up. In fact, we couldn't even find one person in our group, so after waiting for a couple of hours, we ended up leaving, only to find out that she had already made it to the hotel!

Getting a taxi was an interesting experience - it's been a while since I had been in the negotiating mindset, and getting a taxi to Playa del Carmen definitely required negotiating. We finally agreed on a rate, but of course, the people there, who do this all the time, had a trick up their sleeve. Once we got out of the airport, a "cop" stopped us and gave us a ticket because we didn't prepay the rate we had agreed upon (note: this is not actually required) . The result was to pay an extra $10... but unfortunately for the cab driver, he didn't realize that we knew of their tactics, so we just took that out of his tip.

Anyways, once we finally arrived to the hotel, everything was perfect. We met up with the person we had lost and began our relaxation time. Here are some highlights:

Random sign outside a bar when we ventured into the city:

Medellín, Colombia (July 17, 2014 - July 20, 2014)
When I told people I was going to Colombia, I generally received one of two reactions:
1) Oh cool! I've never been!
2) You're going WHERE? Isn't it really unsafe there?

The funny thing is that those are the exact two things I thought when I decided I was going to Colombia as well. My previous roommate in Atlanta decided to make everyone really confused by getting an internship in Colombia (country), then going to Columbia (school). Because I had never been to South America, I decided to take advantage of knowing someone down there. In order to avoid any immediate concerns regarding #2, I waited until I knew he was alive for at least a month before deciding to make my trek down there.

This was a trip I was pretty excited about, because I've always wanted to go to South America. Unfortunately, Delta doesn't fly to Medellín, so I had to cheat on them for the flights (sorry!), but it worked out because flying American, I connected through Miami, so I used it as a way to mentally transition from English to Spanish (just kidding). But really, the trip was a great time to practice my Spanish, meet some really cool people from all over the world, and get called an American (as I later found out, the giveaway was that I was wearing shorts... despite the fact that I had just come back from playing soccer). Here are some things I noticed on my trip.

Thing #1: Malls in Colombia are way cooler than malls in the US. Here's a giant ball pit in the middle of the mall!!

Thing #2: There are some weird advertisements in Medellín

Thing #3: The city is located in a really scenic spot

Thing #4: When playing futbol, bring more Gatorade... and better shoes. Shoes not pictured here.

Thing #5: They like pirates. Here are hats they made us wear at a bar.

PS - Just noticed I still do this thing where I start every post with "so"... I guess some things never change.

Amsterdam and Versailles

The next weekend was Amsterdam. I was really excited about this for a few reasons (in no particular order). 1) Queen's day (Koninginnedag). Basically, this is a huge party in the streets (and canals) with EVERYBODY wearing orange. 2) Last weekend of travel. 3) I got to visit Vincent again (my French roommate from sophomore year). 4) I'd get to see a couple of my friends who'd be there for the festival as well. The only thing I was kind of bummed about was because it is such a huge festival, I wouldn't get to see the real Amsterdam; rather, I would see the super crowded Amsterdam, which meant I couldn't see all the normal touristy things (i.e. museums, Anne Frank house, enjoy city without people everywhere, etc.). While this proved to be the case, it was still most definitely worth it. I would honestly go back there every year just for this festival - it was that good.

Friday, I met up with Bill, one of my friends from Georgia Tech and met a bunch of his friends. Friday night was Queen's night, so we did normal Queen's night activities... So Saturday was Queen's day. I don't know why they do it that way, but whatever. It was packed, as you will see below. There was stuff going on everywhere - it took us literally 10 minutes to walk about 100 yards in some places. Music, dancing, eating, drinking, people selling stuff in the streets, free concerts (one by Armin van Buuren, aka the #1 DJ in the world for the past 4 years), people partying on boats in the canals... you get the picture. It was great. And there was the incident with the Portuguese dude that talked a lot and the nice Russian guy. Anyway, the following day, we basically just relaxed, and on Monday, I returned to Metz to take my two finals on Tuesday and go to Paris on Tuesday night.

LOTS OF PEOPLE

Even at the concert...

So, in Amsterdam, bikes are a very important mode of transportation. How important, you ask? Well, you can easily get run over by bikers in the city. Don't believe me?

Finally, in the city, they had a bunch of random urinals. These are placed all over downtown. Apparently they used to have girl versions, but they don't anymore... [2014 update: couldn't find this picture to update]

Anyway, since my flight was on Thursday and I hadn't been to Versailles yet, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to go. The gardens are beautiful and both the palace and the gardens are ridiculously huge. You'll have to go there to fully appreciate what I mean. People get lost there. They have golf carts you can rent. That was basically it for the trip. Thursday morning, we took the train to CDG and flew home. One cool thing was that in the US Airways terminal at CDG airport, they had two PS3s for people to play while they're waiting for their flights. Unfortunately, I didn't notice this until 5 minutes before my flight boarded, but I thought it was a pretty cool idea.

This is the Château de Versailles. Bad picture, I know. But, in order to get all of it in one picture, I had to go this far back (and I still missed some of it). Unfortunately, there was random construction going on right in front..

Easter Weekend - Rome and Cinque Terre

So the weekend after Croatia was Rome and Cinque Terre. Unfortunately, a bunch of people like going to Rome for Easter, which meant that it was really, really crowded, but as that was my only opportunity to go to Italy, I figured it had to be endured. We saw a lot in Rome, a bunch of which I can't even remember anymore - the big things, though, were the Pantheon, Colosseum, the ancient Roman Forum, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica.

Also had a BUNCH of gelato, some decent pizza, and some decent pasta.

On Sunday, we stopped by Cinque Terre for the day. Here's a map that may help.

We took a train to Monterosso, hiked through the mountains to Vernazza, took a train to Corniglia, but had to go back before we got to see Manarolo or Riomaggiore. The northern two cities are on the beach, while Corniglia is 382 steps above the ground, and the last two are somewhere in between. Here are a couple photographs:

Okay, so this basically leaves me with Queen's Day in Amsterdam and Versailles, so hopefully those are coming soon.

Croatia

Ok, so I figure the few people who normally read this before probably don't read this anymore, but I'll write these posts anyway for the sake of completeness, and so I don't forget anything more than I already have. Croatia was incredible and I definitely recommend going there if you ever get a chance. Our trip was jam-packed. I basically took a van at 1:15 AM (which I almost missed because I thought it left at 1:35 AM) from Metz to Luxembourg and met up with the others on a bus at 2:20 AM from Luxembourg to Frankfurt-Hahn airport. We got there at like 4:45ish, and our flight didn't leave until 9ish. So, what did we do?

Anyway, a brief overview of what we did: we flew RyanAir into Zadar and rented a car. Drove to Krka, explored, and drove to Dubrovnik. There, we slept and explored the next day. We left and drove to Split, then slept and explored. We then drove to Zadar, explored for a little while, and slept to wake up early to go to Plitvice Lakes (on the map, called Plitvicka jezera). Went there, then drove back to Zadar airport to fly back to Frankfurt, where we would bus/van back to Metz. Here's a map.

So Krka was awesome. You were allowed to go into the water wherever you wanted, but it was still a little cold. Here are some pictures.

Yeah, I think you get the idea. It was beautiful. And I have a bunch more.

So after Krka, we drove to Dubrovnik. A little bit of trivia for you - Bosnia has one port. This port is surrounded by Croatia on the north, and Croatia on the south. Dubrovnik is pretty much the only important city on the south. The rest of Croatia is on the north. (Look at the map.) So... we had to drive through Bosnia, a country where a war recently ended, where they hate Americans, and where there are still land mines in some parts of the country. Anyway, we did that, and nothing happened, and we got to Dubrovnik at night. This is what it looked like. It took us 20 minutes to find out hostel because the GPS was dumb and was telling us to drive up stairs, we saw a random fire in the street, and drove around in circles for like 20 minutes, but we eventually made it. Once we did, we went out and stuff, explored the city at night, and went to sleep.

We woke up to notice we had this view outside our hostel:

Pretty incredible. Dubrovnik is basically a city on a hill. Not on the top of the hill, but on the hill, so basically everything has that view, but it was still crazy. The 'old city' still has its walls intact, so we went to the top and walked around it. 

Anyway, we drove home (through Bosnia... again, this time stopping just so we could say we stopped in Bosnia) and on the way back, we encountered this:

My camera doesn't really do it justice, but you get it. Our drive was literally along the coast pretty much the entire time, so we got like 20 minutes of that view. Anyways we arrived in Split, met a Norwegian dude, went out, encountered a violent cigarette-beggar, and went to sleep. The hostel we stayed at was awesome; it was managed by an artist lady from Norway who literally gave away/burned all of her things, and hitchhiked to Rome with nothing. She somehow ended up in Split, Croatia and knew it was the place for her. While we were there, we just looked around the city, played a local game called picigin, jumped on some trampolines, and took off for Zadar.

Zadar is a relatively small city, but the one thing it does have is a sea organ. We literally sat there for like 30 minutes to an hour and just talked because of how relaxing it was - sitting in front of the ocean and just listening. We went to sleep shortly afterward because we had to wake up early to get to Plitvice Lakes - the original reason we came to Croatia. 

There are a bunch of different paths to get around Plitvice, and unfortunately, we only had time for the shortest. Afterwards, we went to the airport and headed home. I'll leave you with some pictures of one of the most beautiful places in the world (I read this on multiple articles):

DONE

I know I haven't updated in a while and for good reason. I have been very busy. BUT, I will update the world on Croatia (amazing), Rome and Cinque Terre (pretty), and Amsterdam (awesome). But first, I will go to Paris tonight. I will leave for Atlanta Thursday afternoon. I will graduate Sunday.

Interlaken

Since I'm waiting here for my laundry to finish (hopefully for the last time here) and I have nothing to do for the next couple of hours, I might as well post write a blog post. I'm pretty excited about this weekend, except the timings really suck. I have to take a bus from downtown Metz at 1:35 AM and wait at Frankfurt-Hahn airport for like 4 hours until our flight leaves at 10 AM. But other than that, it should be a really cool weekend in Croatia. We're planning on renting a car and driving to some cool places.

Last weekend, I went to Interlaken. It is a really pretty place. The name Interlaken roughly translates to between lakes, and that's because the city lies between two lakes. It was really fun - we met a bunch of people the US and a guy from Switzerland. I had some Swiss chocolate and some fresh Swiss cheese, both of which were really good. The highlight of the weekend was probably paragliding. It was a really cool experience, but it wasn't at all what I was expecting. It was literally like you were just floating in mid-air, relaxing in the sky, above an amazing view, for 15-20 minutes. If I ever come here again though, I'm pretty sure I want to go canyoning. And maybe, just maybe, I will go skydiving one day. We also went hiking through the mountains, but we didn't have enough time to get to a real hiking part, so it was more like a leisurely stroll with, of course, really good scenery. See for yourself below.

Oh, and the Swiss Franc is a really weird currency.