Venice, Budapest, and aaall the bits in between, Part I

Where I’m sitting currently at a restaurant in Budapest, post consuming a delicious burrito and listening to Elvis-like versions of songs like ‘Candy Shop’ and ‘Crazy Right Now’ playing on the loudspeaker. 

Ok, so over three weeks later and I have FINALLY sat down to write another blog post. Whooops. Oh well, I’m sure it’s really a good thing, as it means that I’ve been so incredibly busy with my travels that I haven’t had even a moment to spare to write a blog post. Or maybe it just means that I’m lazy…. Anyway. I will do my best to summarise three and a bit weeks without writing a thesis for you guys. So! I last left off in Florence, which was one awesome week I have to say. Although the only Italian I really remember now are things like uscita (exit), nuovo (9) and ragazzi/ ragazza (boys/ girls) – all really useful things that will help me out with any future conversations in Italian I’m sure. But anyway, after Florence I headed over to Venice to have a look around by myself for a few days before joining up with a 9-day tour that headed back up to London. Honestly I was really glad to have those few days in Venice by myself to start with, as it enabled me to spend a good 4 hours in the Peggy Guggenheim museum – probably my favourite museum of the whole trip. I managed to listen to every single audio tour, and it was also air-conditioned to the perfect temperature, which was heavenly when compared to the disgustingly humid conditions outside. Ahh. I also bought a beautiful Venetian mask from a place called Tragicomica, although for the life of me I can’t remember what it looks like (because as soon as I purchased it it was wrapped up safely in bubble wrap so it wouldn’t get damaged during the remainder of my trip). I do have a sneaking suspicion that it has diamond shaped triangle things on it though. Maybe. Oh well I’m sure I will get a nice surprise when I open it next week!… Anyway I met up with the tour group at a place called Camping Jolly, which aside from its cold showers and air-conditioning stuck on full blast was a surprisingly nice place. Met a few nice people from my tour group and also other tours like Busabout; it was cool to be in a more social environment again as I had seriously been quite the nana up till that point (sightseeing for long hours during the day makes you tired okay…). From Venice we headed over to Munich to see Dachau, the concentration camp (which was thoroughly depressing) and to consume some German beer (to cheer us up after Dachau). We weren’t there for long though, as the next morning we were up early off to our next stop, Prague, in the Czech Republic. A beautiful place, although I felt it was a bit overrun with tourists and souvenir shops, which honestly ruined the experience a little bit. Like you don’t really want to go to a place just to see gimmicky postcards and ashtrays and mugs and people with cameras constantly in your face…. sorta ruins the point of travelling really doesn’t it! But who knows, maybe I just didn’t go to the right places when I was there. We did go to an interesting absinthe bar though on the first night that served up all sorts of interesting absinthe dishes, like absinthe salmon (?) and of course a large variety of different absinthe shots. Not sure of the name of the one I ordered, but it certainly was not very pleasant (it actually wasn’t as bad as I expected though, as generally I am the biggest wimp when it comes to shots). Anyway, not sure if it was this wretched shot that did it or my lack of immune system but on the morning of leaving Prague I woke up with an awful vomiting bug that had been going around the bus… joyful. Hence I was seated near the toilet on the bus so I could dart to it whenever I could (which was generally every fifteen minutes or so for four hours). YAY. Don’t know why I’m saying this on my blog, but I guess its the reason why I don’t really remember much of the next stop of the tour (the Rhine Valley in Germany), as basically as soon as we arrived I got into bed and went to sleep for 10 hours until we got back on the bus again and headed over to Amsterdam. Thankfully by the time we got there I was basically fully recovered, so I had enough energy to be referred to as the ‘happy lady from New Zealand’ by the crazy man at a Dutch shoe and cheese factory we went to (which I suppose was better than the name ‘sexy hairy’, as given to one of the boys on the tour by the lady in the cheese workshop.. not kidding). Anyway, also had enough energy to take a trip to a shop called ‘Happy Feelings’ down the road from our hostel (which is pretty self explanatory really) and then head out to a sex show that evening with the tour. Aside from being a tad vulgar at times, it was actually hysterically funny, especially when they got some of the boys from the tour on stage whose faces basically got pummeled by fake boobs and butt cheeks. My trip to ‘Happy Feelings’ before the show probably made it a bit funnier too. Anyway this is turning into quite a long entry and my computer is dying so might have to do this in two different parts, and try not do the second part 3 weeks later! Please take a look at my photos on my Tumblr though as that is where I have put all my extra photos that I didn’t put on Facebook: http://ximenachristine.tumblr.com/

Thanks for reading ragazzi and ragazza, next post shall be up asap!! xxx