Weekend #4: Stuttgart and Oktoberfest

I was really excited for this weekend because we got to go to the 200th anniversary of the Oktoberfest Festival (aka something to tell the grandkids)!  The planning for this trip was a little complicated because we didn't want to spend the night in Munich since the hostel prices were well into the 100 euros/night bracket.  We decided to visit Stuttgart on the way to Munich and spend the night in a hostel there instead, which was much cheaper!  We left Metz very early in the morning on Friday and spent the whole day and night in Stuttgart.  Early Saturday morning, we trained to Munich and spent the entire day and part of the night at Oktoberfest before taking the couchette back to Metz.

Stuttgart is the home to the Porsche and Mercedes-Benz empires.  We visited the Porsche museum on Friday.  For someone who doesn't like cars that much, I enjoyed the museum.  We made our way back to the main shopping area and grabbed some much missed Starbucks.  The Starbucks we went to asked if you wanted your drink for here or to-go because drinks that weren't to-go were served in a REAL mug.  Crazy!  Next, we visited the museum of modern art.  Unfortunately, we just missed the new exhibit about food and art by one day, so I felt like there wasn't that much to see.  There were still some really interesting pieces and I enjoyed the museum.  We headed back to our hostel (Inter-Hostel)  to ask where a good place to grab dinner was and they directed us down the street to a typical German restaurant.  I've never been a big fan of German food and let's just say that I'm still not, haha.  That evening, we took the train up to the observatory tower and got to ride the elevator all the way up (130+ floors) and see all of Stuttgart at night.  The path to get to the tower was a lot of fun because it was not lit well and through a creepy forest.  We had a lot of fun scaring each other (playfully, of course!)  We were exhausted by the time we got back to our hostel and all went to bed.

Early the next morning, we walked to the train station to catch our train to Munich.  Once we got on board, we realized that our seats we in a compartment (much like the ones from the Harry Potter movies!)  We excitedly took a lot of pictures of our home for the next few hours.  We arrived in Munich around noon and immediately set out for Oktoberfest.  After walking around for awhile, we realized that we should go back to the train station and ask for directions or a map.  The tourism office was really helpful and we purchased tickets for the S train and made it to the festival, finally!

Arrival at Oktoberfest!

We took awhile to get beers because it was too crowded to find a table to sit down and order.  Eventually, someone yelled over at us and asked if we were from Canada because one of us (Curtis) had a Canada shirt on.  The group that yelled was a hockey team from Italy, but most of the players were from all over the world...including Canada.  The team let us borrow their table to order beers and the drinking funtimes commenced!  It was pretty awesome that we got beer because of Curtis' Canada shirt because he made a point to wear it on that particular day so people wouldn't think he was American.

After 2 L of beer and a few trips to the bathroom, we went to the carnival area and paid way too much money to ride some of the rides.  We ran into some other GTL-ers at the Ferris wheel and we hung out with them for the rest of the night before catching an S train to the main train station to get our couchette back to Metz.

I'd say that Oktoberfest was a little overrated, but it was definitely an experience to be there and I had a lot of fun regardless!

Click here for pictures from this trip.

-JChamp

Weekend #3: Nice, Monte Carlo, and St. Paul de Vence

I have a feeling this post will be kind of long, so I'm going to break it up into pieces according to the day of travel.

Thursday - Friday (September 2nd - 3rd)

A few of us traveling have French class until 8 PM on Thursday nights, which doesn't work out well because the buses stop going downtown after a certain time.  Our French professor was nice enough to let us out half an hour early and she drove the 3 girls in the class to the train station.  We took a couchette (sleeping compartment with 6 beds) from Metz to Nice.  We left Metz around 8 PM and arrived in Nice around 8 AM.  The beds are fine to sleep on, but it's hard not to think about all the germs that are in the couchettes.  We stayed up pretty late chatting with everyone in our couchette plus a few others.  The space is pretty small, but we made it work and had some real bonding time.

Once we arrived in Nice, we immediately found our hostel because we could store our luggage there.  After leaving our luggage, a few of us set out to find the beach.  We were happy to find that the beach was really close to our hostel.  After seeing a few topless women, we ventured over to the fruit and flower market.  Later on we found Le Chateau Hill and climbed to the top.  There were amazing views and  A LOT of stairs.  Unfortunately, my camera started malfunctioning at the top and I didn't get any pictures (later on I accidentally dropped my camera on the floor and it started working again, haha).  There was an awesome playground and a pretty waterfall at the top of the hill.  My mom would have loved the climb and views from there.

After all that climbing and sweating, we all decided to go back and change into our bathing suits and hit the beach.  We immediately picked an area on the (rock) beach and struggled down to the water (the rocks really hurt your bare feet).  The water was pretty cool, but not uncomfortably so.  It was also very clean and pretty easy to see down to the bottom.  The boys had a lot of fun swimming out to the buoys because there was little to no riptide.

After showers, we went to dinner at an Italian place very close to our hostel.  I had an amazing pizza that I couldn't finish.  It is almost considered rude to not finish your plate at restaurants in Europe, so the rest of the table helped me out.  We decided we wanted to go back to Le Chateau Hill to see Nice at night and ran into the other group from GTL that was in Nice that weekend as well.  They joined us on our walk back to the beach.  Amanda, a BME/ME from Duke, and I walked much farther ahead of the group in order to update each other on the activities and drama from the day.  Le Chateau Hill ended up being closed, so we settled for sitting on the beach and chatting.  A lot of young locals and tourists were chilling on the beach too, so we felt like we were getting the true Nice experience.  We headed back early-ish because a lot of us were going scuba diving early the next morning.

Saturday (September 4th)

11 of us woke up early and made our way to the docks.  We had trouble finding the scuba diving company and were worried because the hostel front desk told us that the boats left at 9 AM sharp and they would leave us if we were late.  I think it was a few minutes after 9 when we found the scuba shop and saw the scuba divers unlocking the door.  I guess they aren't as punctual as the hostel thought.  We got suited up in our wet suits and set out into the ocean on a pontoon-like boat.  Our boat docked pretty close to the shore near a private swimming area (where there were at least 5 fully naked men sunbathing).  The French scuba system allows beginner scuba divers to dive while tethered to an instructor.  There were only 3 or 4 instructors, though, so we had to take turns diving. I got to go down near the end of the morning.  My instructor was really nice and made me feel very comfortable.  He made me practice breathing with the air mouthpiece on while just floating on my stomach, which was a great way to get used to breathing only through the mouthpiece.  It is a very strange feeling to only be able to breathe through the mouthpiece.  Once he felt like I was ready to go down, he deflated my life jacket and we started to sink into the water.  I started to breathe through the mouthpiece, but kind of hyperventilated a bit and had to put my mouth above the surface for a second to calm down.  I stopped freaking out and went down with my instructor.  We saw lots of coral, interesting fish, and other scuba divers.  Scuba diving was an amazing experience and I would definitely suggest it to anyone brave enough!

After a long morning, we grabbed some lunch at a restaurant near our hostel and made plans to go to Monte Carlo, Monaco for the afternoon and early evening.  We caught a train (3 euros each way without a EurRail pass) to Monte Carlo which only took a half hour.  It was pretty simple to find the Monte Carlo casino and we spent at least 45 minutes taking pictures of crazy expensive cars.  Some of the boys wanted to go in the casino, but I went exploring with the other half of or group.  We walked to the other side of the port and climbed up the mountain/hill overlooking the city.  I have some amazing pictures from the fort/castle and surrounding areas up there.  By the time we climbed down, it was time to grab our train back to Nice.  We got into Nice just in time to catch a fireworks show and festival at the port.  The fireworks in Nice were not as good as the ones in Metz, but still enjoyable.  We met up with the others from GTL and tried to find a discotheque, but failed and went to bed instead.

Sunday (September 5th)

Sunday was museum and art day.  We visited the Marc Chagall museum and the modern art museum.  I really enjoyed the modern museum and I can't wait to visit the Centre Pompidou here in Metz with my LCC class.  I really enjoyed Niki de Saint Phalle's works.  There is a sculpture of hers at the train station in Metz.  My camera died before we got out onto the roof of the modern art museum, but there are some great views of Nice from there.  After a quick lunch, we hopped on a bus to St. Paul de Vence (an hour away from Nice) to see the artist commune.  The little shopping and art gallery area reminded me of Diagon Alley from Harry Potter, but I don't have any pictures to illustrate that.

We had to catch our couchette back to Metz around 8 PM that night and by that time my allergies were crazy horrible and I took a Benadryl and slept all the way back home.

Click here for pictures from this weekend.

-JChamp

Weekend #1: Brussels and Bruges

This past weekend I traveled with 8 other GTL-ers to Brussels and Bruges in Belgium.  I packed most of my stuff the night before because I knew we would have to be up at the butt-crack of dawn the next day.  I packed my smaller backpack, but I think on my next weekend trip I will probably take the larger one just so I have plenty of room for everything.  I was definitely stuffing my Northface to its breaking point on the return trip.


We caught an early train out of Metz to Luxembourg and then caught another train to Brussels-Midi, but we ended up getting off early at the Brussels-Centrale stop because more of the things we wanted to do were closer to that station.  Once we were off the train, we spent awhile getting oriented before making it to the Comic Strip Museum.  We were dying of hunger and thirst by then, so we ate at the restaurant there.  I had a "gaufre sucre" (waffle with sugar).  It was decent, but not the best food I've had so far.  After that we ran into the other half of the group that traveled to Brussels and visited the cathedral together.  James, Ethan, and I decided that we wanted to find Delirium, a bar that was highly suggested by others.  We hadn't been able to locate it all day, but Ethan and I wandered off into an indoor shopping area and stumbled upon some cool alleys and eventually randomly found Delirium.  So, we hurried back and brought James and we all settled down for 3 rounds of beer.  The bar was underground, so it was nice and dark and cool down there and the 3 of us had a good time just chilling out for a few hours.  After that we wandered around Brussels some more and ended up in the park in front of the cathedral and laid down for a sunbath.  James and I dozed off for a bit, haha.  After visiting another park, we were starting to get hungry and we decided to try Belgium's famous fries.  They were good, but nothing mind-blowing.  The fries came in a paper cone and you could choose a sauce (ketchup and mayo seemed to be the most popular).  They also gave you a tiny plastic fork to eat the fries from the cone while you were walking.  It was basically a to-go cup for fries.  Before heading back to the train station, we bought some famous Belgian chocolate so we could say that we had tried all the famous foods and drinks (aka beer).


The next train we caught was to Bruges, a romantic medieval little town near the coast.  The train ride to Bruges was fairly entertaining mostly due to the insane man that was sitting across the aisle from our group.  Unfortunately, Ethan had to sit across from him for at least 30-45 minutes of the journey.  This man would mumble to the air while making violent hand gestures and then he would slump forward and fall asleep and then wake up and take a swig from his soda and start the process all over again.  He didn't seem to be very threatening, so I wasn't worried...just amused.


Once we were in Bruges, we used our Use-it map to navigate to the hostel, Charlie Rockets.  Our hostel used to be a movie theater, but now it is a bar with a hostel above.  It was an interesting place and definitely not one of the shittier hostels.  It was a little sketchy because I was in a room with some random people, but nothing bad happened.  I stayed at the hostel and had a drink or two with some of the guys before taking a shower and heading to bed.  Sleeping was hard that night because people in our room would come in at all hours and the room got very hot during the night so I would wake up periodically.


James, Ethan, and I started the next day by climbing the 366 steps to the top of the Bellfry.  There was a great panorama (as they say here) from the top and definitely worth the effort of the climb.  Once we were back on the ground, we sat and listened to a large band rehearse in the middle of Markt Square and they played one of my favorite Mika songs, "Grace Kelly."  We walked over to a canal and saw the lace map of Bruges (lace is famous here and sold in many shops for way too much money).  The canal was very pretty, but filled with boats of tourists.  We checked out the Gruuthuse and the neighboring Church of Our Lady, which housed Michelangelo's "Madonna with child" before getting some lunch.  I had a kid's spaghetti with bolognese sauce and I couldn't finish it because it was so much food.  Nevertheless, we stopped by an ice cream shop shortly after lunch and had some of the best ice cream I've ever had in my life!  We found a cool park to chill out in and the boys had a lot of fun on this spinning merry-go-round type of playground equipment.  Since it was still early in the afternoon, we decided to rent bicycles and try to bike out to the beach to chill out.  We biked for an hour and a half and never saw the ocean, so we had to turn around so we wouldn't be late to turn in our bikes.  I had a lot of fun doing this, but my ass is still sore from the bike seat.  We had dinner at Nicky's Bed & Breakfast.  Soup, salad, and a main dish for 9.35!  It was a good deal for dinner and very good/satisfying.  We visited an underground bar later that night and had a few drinks before hitting up the Irish pub.  We made our way back to the hostel, I showered and went to bed.  I slept really well that night :)


The next morning we checked out the exhibit underneath the Crowne Plaza hotel.  The foundations of Sint-Donaas church are built in with the foundations of the hotel and there is an entire exhibit in the basement dedicated to the excavation of this church.  Our map suggested a game of hide and seek be played in the ruins, haha!  We walked around some more before grabbing some awesome crepes and ice cream yet again. We checked out a few more parks and some other smaller sights from our Use-it map before heading to the train station to catch our train to Brussels-Nord.  We made it back to Metz without any troubles and took a taxi back to Lafayette because the buses weren't running anymore.


Click here for pictures from this trip!


-JChamp