Italy: Relax | #Europe2015

If there was one word I would use to describe Venice, it's relaxation. While the streets of Venice were pretty crowded, we stayed at a hostel on a neighboring island. The whole vibe was incredibly calming - the sway of the water taxi we took from the airport to our hostel, the sky that was like a watercolor of blues, pinks, and purples, the dampness in the air. Outside the window of our room, we could see St. Mark's Square, or Piazza San Marco, from across the water. We wandered the length of the island in light rain, the weather still warm, and ate some pizza and gelato before the thunder and lighting hit. After four countries and four cities, Venice was a dream. 

We wandered around the city after taking a water taxi from our hostel. We wove up and down and through the streets, seeing what Venice had to offer. I was entranced by how fully the buildings had become one with the water, the doorways and steps that were half sunken, the streets that would just suddenly end with steps leading into the canals. We'd stop and get fresh fruit every so often, before winding down another street. We got lost a few times, ended up where we began, but we didn't mind.

Venice was a paradox. It's small but feels huge as you're wandering through the maze-like streets. It has moments of such simplicity, like the Peggy Guggenheim museum, and moments of such complexity, like the details on the many churches and in St. Mark's Square. It's prepared to calm you as quickly as it tries to overwhelm you. 

Venice had such a unique feel to me. Despite the streets and plaza being filled with tourists, there was such a intimacy throughout the city. Everywhere there were touches of the fact that people lived there, probably grew up there, called it home. Each building, packed so tightly together, leaning against one another and slowly sinking into the sea, had its own character. 

Venice for me just emanated this feeling of celebration and festiveness, a ferventness, while also somehow telling people to slow down, take a break, grab a cup of gelato, sit as the water laps against the steps, lift your face towards the sky, and feel the sun on your skin.

The Netherlands: Texture | #Europe2015

Upon arrival at the airport we had to find a bus that took us to this place (pardon the stain on the map). 

We had to ask the very nice bus driver to tell us when to get off, as it was getting dark and we couldn't understand a word that was being said over the bus speakers, or read anything on the screen that announced the stops. Our first night was to be in The Flying Pig hostel on the far coast from Amsterdam, a hip, eclectic, semi-famous hostel nestled in-between quaint Dutch beach cottages. Loud electric music and a game of poker welcomed us once inside, and a room with painted sea creatures was where we stayed. The next morning we ate our breakfast of yogurt and toast with jam (and they had Cocoa Puffs) and then got on the train towards Amsterdam, on which a man with recumbent bike made room for us in one of the cars.

In simple terms: Amsterdam was too cool for me. 

It exuded hip and green and vibrant and young. The first thing I saw were all these bikes and I knew that Amsterdam would have this kind of youth - one that had nothing to do with actual age - that I probably just couldn't hang with. Despite my lack of confidence at the leveling of my coolness with that of the city, it was like the buildings themselves were full of energy.

To me it seemed like so much of Amsterdam's identity was expressed through art. Whether it was the bunny figures or the giant statue in the middle of the fountain, or the park that was literally lined end to end with those boards where they have a cutout for your face and different figures painted below, there was art everywhere. And there was this almost defiant feeling to that art that it wasn't just for visitors or tourists but that it was for the community, the families and artists and people that live there full time and just thrive off the stuff. The city was a mix of textures - of dark and light, of bright and dull, of concrete and water, of brick and wood and grass.

We walked to the Van Gogh Museum, walking under the walkway pictured below and past most of the pictures above. It was on this walk that we passed the park with the rabbits and the flower garden squished between canal bridges. Every building was a different shape, color, character. 

 There were moments in Amsterdam where it felt like I was in some sort of Dr. Suess book or something, where it seemed like the buildings weren't exactly straight or they were leaning in or over. The streets are windy and sometimes narrow and all the street names were mostly indecipherable. At other times, it felt like I was in some other ancient place, like Budapest or something. 

The influences of so many places has little touches all throughout the city, but somehow makes it all the more colorful, interesting, alive, and distinctly Amsterdam.

England: Restless | #Europe2015

England was a whirlwind. If Edinburgh was made to feel familiar, London was made for a quick in-and-out trip to everyone and anyone. Strangely enough, one of my fondest memories of London was taking the Underground all around the city. The intricacies and the timeliness was oddly beautiful and fascinating, not to mention impressive. The city, while looking old, almost oozed sophistication and business, surging with a kind of hurry and focus that made me feel like there was no time to stop at take pictures, no time to slowly walk around the park, no time to really take a second to breathe it all in. Not to say I didn't enjoy England, because I did. The history and the... regal-ness? of the city resonated in my bones, as did the pride of the people who lived there. There was just a lot of competition between them and all the many, many, many people that didn't live there.

First up was one of my most anticipated stops during the whole trip: The Harry Potter Studio Tour. I, like so many others, loved and grew up with Harry Potter and I couldn't wait to take a look at the making of the movie and, most importantly, by a wand and try a butterbeer.

(This is an unemployed muggle with an English degree begging the Daily Prophet for a job.)

We took a bus trip out into Bath and then to Stonehenge. While the English countryside with pretty, the thing I remember most is how proper and off topic our tour guide got, at one point telling us all about her son's stinky rugby shoes and uniform. However, the city of Bath was quaint and adorable and beautiful. Janna and I tried the Curative Spring Water, which did not do anything that we know of except for leave the taste of a thousand minerals in our mouths. But who knows, right?

I never thought that I'd find a whole bunch of stacked rocks interesting. However, after reading all the displays and learning more about it, it's really everything we don't see that's interesting. The mystery surrounding Stonehenge is endlessly fascinating - much like the ancient temples in South America, we can only imagine how and why people so long ago made such a thing, and how small this piece could be in reference to the whole. While we couldn't get very close, due to shifting soil and such, it was still an impressive sight and an even greater mystery. 

We wholeheartedly embraced our inner tourist during the last few days in London, taking the tube to see Big Ben, the Parliament Building, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and the Globe Theater, walking around Camden Market and riding the London Eye. This was the first place that I really felt like I was sticking out as a foreigner, only because there were So. Many. Foreigners. But, as Janna dragged me to see the building used as 221B in BBC's Sherlock and subtly take pictures and we wasted time trying to find a museum and being asked directions by two British girls, I felt more comfortable in those few hours than all the days before. We wandered through a park because we thought it was a short cut before realizing there was no way out the other side, and then only had a few moments to walk around the lobby of King Edward the Seventh's Galleries. 

In those few hours, wandering haphazardly through mostly empty parks and streets, I felt like I was truly experiencing London. 

Scotland: Home | #Europe2015

There is no other way for me to describe Scotland than familiar. The moment we got off the bus with almost no idea where we were going, wandering through the streets of Edinburgh as the sun went down and it got dark, I just felt a kinship with Scotland. Even as we walked down the street from Castle Rock Hostel, a hostel tucked into an old stone building in the shadow of Edinburgh castle, in desperate attempts to find food, dodging past drunk older men, I felt strangely at home (maybe it was because the situation wasn't so different than a late night in Berkeley, I dunno). We ate pizza in Scotland and got the honor of seeing not one but two stag parties starring men in princess costumes. 

We walked to a farmer's market in the hopes of finding some world famous homemade marshmallows and in doing so traversed the streets of Edinburgh on a beautiful, early morning. The cobbled streets, the rows of houses, the perfect weather - I didn't feel like a tourist. I felt like I had returned after an extended time away, almost as if I knew where I was going. 

All the pictures above are from Edinburgh Castle, a castle that's also a museum that's also a beautiful spot to view the entire city. We got a nice tour but it was even more fun to just walk through all the many parts of the castle, including a war memorial, a tower with the crown jewels, and a war museum. The views were spectacular and the wind was powerful. There was a wildness in Scotland, despite the fact that there were cobblestones instead of grass, tall buildings instead of mountains. I felt like I was standing in the middle of history, that somehow nothing had moved in the last few hundred years. 

We took a day trip out to the Highlands. It's an interesting feeling you get being out there. There is mostly just one road and all around you sights like the ones below, just mountains, grass, and hundreds of small lochs. It's calming and refreshing. It's also wrought with turmoil and history. The whole bus ride was filled with stories of warring clans, of an unstable monarchy, of unwanted change and adaptation. 

No Nessie :( 

During a night tour, we learned all about the darker side of Edinburgh, of influential people gambling in hidden dens, of doctors that stole corpses in order to study them for research, their skin supposedly used to create a book that we later learned was housed in the The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. We went to the National Museum in the search of the book, and to clear up confusion about the shifts in power with the British monarchy. 

I had a moment when I saw the name "RITCHIE" etched into an old church pew that was housed inside. 

"This must be why I feel so at home," I had thought. My dad's name is Ritchey, named after my grandma's maiden name. While she was raised strictly German, I became convinced in this moment that somehow, somewhere, one of my ancestors was from Scotland. Real or not, I suddenly had a very real, very visceral excuse as to why I loved Edinburgh so much. Why it felt so familiar. 

Edinburgh was absolutely stunning. It was such a beautiful and indescribable fusion of old and new, of feelings of modernity mixed with a deep, ingrained sense of history. I bought my tartan scarf like a tourist and walked down the cobbled streets like I had lived there for months. There was just such a comfort walking in its streets, breathing the Highland air. I want to go back so badly, spend weeks there instead of days. I want to go back to make sure it wasn't a fluke.