A quick review of my year of travels!

Well I started doing updates on my bus trip with expat explorer and I will get back to finishing that off. But I thought I would give everyone a quick update since I have not done so in awhile! I am now back in Canada and have been for almost 2 weeks now. It is really good to be back at home but I really did enjoy my time in Europe. I got to see a lot in a short amount of time, I visited 13 different countries in 10 months. I do wish I saw more, but I know I will be back one day. The places that I visited were:

• The U.K

• France

• Denmark

• Switzerland

• Italy

• Germany

•  Holland

•  Norway

•  Greece

•  Slovenia

•  Slovakia

•  Austria

•  Czech Republic 

The places that I would have loved to go to are Spain, Portugal and Turkey. There are some spots that I was lucky enough to visit twice (Paris, Lauterbrunnen, Rome and Amsterdam) and there are some countries that I would love to go to again and spend more time such as Austria and Greece!  

I will try to update my blog but now that I am home, I can share my travels in person more easily then before! I am working on making a slideshow (as Peter wants me to) from my last bus trip. As well I will be making a scrapbook of my travels so I will be busy doing those...while I am job searching  so I wouldn't hold your breath for too many blog updates anymore. If you want to hear from me just shoot me a message! 

I hope to do more travels around the world though, so this blog will still be put to use in the near future!T

Expat Explorer...Switzerland!

The next stop on on bus trip was Switzerland! We stopped at lunch time in Geneva for a quick bite to eat, after some searching of course...gotta find the best bang for your buck...er I mean euro no swiss francs! Thankfully Switzerland was the only country that we had to get different currency, having the euro really is helpful when traveling to different countries in a short period of time. During our lunch break we could find a ATM and get some money out so a bunch of us got different amounts out. Normally ATM's give you a variety of 20's this one gave me 2 bills 1 one hundred bill and a fifty bill. When my friend Babu took out 350 swiss franks for him and his wife it only gave him 3 bills! He said that he was holding a lot of money in his hands but really didn't feel like it with 3 bills that looked like monopoly money.

We didn't have much time to site see around Geneva as it was mainly our lunch break, but after we had some delicious pizza we walked around the shopping area and got some pictures with the Jet d'Eau. Which is one of the crowning symbols of Geneva, a fountain of water pumped 140m into the air. The spectacular plume was once an occasional pressure release for hydro-power generation on the Rhône River, but people liked it so much that in 1891 the city created a permanent pumped fountain. Thank you wiki travels for that tidbit of information, our tour guide gave us a quick synopsis of the city when we first got there but couldn't remember it all so wiki travels helped me out. On a side note there, if you are ever going anywhere type in the place with wiki travel beside it into google and the website like wikipedia but just for traveling comes up. It gives a quick history of the place and then has the major sites to see and do. It also gives you information where to eat and has a break down of cheap, moderate and expensive and the same thing for where to stay. So check it out before you travel somewhere as it has been a good help for me and my travels...I threw away my travel book and just use wiki travels!

Geneva

Jet d'Eau

Lunch on the steps!

Tourists pictures..Emily!

Dad

And Mom!

After some more time driving in the afternoon we arrived in Lauterbrunnen. Which is a small unspoilt village nestled between the towering walls of a sheer-sided valley. Our accommodations that night and the next was in a beautiful old wooden building (no smoking...don't want to set it on fire!) Just looking around at the surrounding areas by our hotel was beautiful. There was a waterfall near by (that I didn't get a chance to walk to...next time!) and beautiful snow covered mountains! It was just beautiful all around in Lauterbrunnen!

Bus & Hotel

View 1

View 2!

The next day we had the whole day to explore the area. There was a train that you could take that brought you up to the "top of Europe", called Jungfraujoch. You could explore different areas up there and apparently do some snow sports as well.  I thought this sounded good and thought "when would I have a chance to do this again? Might as well do it while I can!". My parents thought differently and decided to take quite a few cable cars up and look at a different area which looked almost better than my experience (and cheaper too!).  It was really beautiful at the top and loved seeing the mountains covered in snow even though it was getting close to summer it was still there. The whole place I felt was very commercialized for tourists and almost everything was inside (because being outside is too cold...haha come to Canada to experience cold!). Having it all inside and connected by tunnels and stairs just didn't seem like the way to experience the snow and mountains. When I came back and talked with my parents about their day, it seemed like what they did would have been more worthwhile and their pictures looked beautiful.

The highest railway

The plateau

So beautiful!

Back inside

Hanging with the crows at the top of the sphinx

On our "glacier walk"

After 45 min of hiking we ended up here...overly expensive food and disgusting washrooms. But beautiful views!

Walking back was more fun!

Through the tunnel

Ice palace round 2

Ice palace

Jungfrau..Top of Europe!

It was cool to go to the top don't get my wrong. But if I were to do it again I would go with my parents and see the different waterfalls etc that they saw. Switzerland is a beautiful country and would love to explore it more! Our next stop on our bus trip Italy....leaning tower of Pisa!

For more pictures click here ----> Switzerland Pictures

Expat Explorer...France

So after our Holland adventure Mom, Dad and I jumped on a packed bus with about 45 others and traveled around Europe for 12 days! We were to see 7 different countries: France, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Italy, Belgium & Austria (although I would not count that last one) so it was a very busy trip.

We took the ferry (instead of the tunnel) from Dover across to Calais, France. From there we headed straight to Paris!

Dover!

We started off with a walking tour of Montmontre and got to see a beautiful church called Sacre Coeur from there we walked down towards the 'sex district' and saw where the Moulin Rouge was. It is outrageously expensive to actually go and see a show so no we did not see anything.

Sacre Coeur

Moulin Rouge

The next day we had another walking tour from our guide in the morning and we got to see lots of different things including the old opera house (where phantom of the opera originated from), place de la concorde, arc de carrousel, the Louvre, the ponts des arts, pont neuf, and Notre Dame! It was really cool to see all the different sites in Paris but then we had the afternoon to explore it ourselves (and of course see the Eiffel Tower). So we headed off with what seemed like half our bus (10 people including ourselves) and had an entertaining lunch, walked up the Champs Elysees (which seemed to take our whole afternoon...note to self maps may deceive your walking distances!), saw the Arc de Triomphe, and finally of course the Eiffel Tower! The que to take the lift up was outrageous and none of us wanted to wait in the line so half our group decided to take the stairs to the 2nd level (cheaper and faster!) and the other half wandered around the area. It was some beautiful sites once we were up but we weren't quite up to the top. We got in the que to take the lift up to the top only to realize that you would have to pay again to go to the top and that the wait would be about an hour as well....we decided to vito the idea of going to the top and just had fun taking pictures of the view and the tower. It was a very packed day full of walking and site seeing but it was really nice to see as much as possible of Paris!

Old Opera House

Place de la Concorde

Arc de Carrousel

The Louvre!

Pont Des Arts

Eiffel Tower!

Eiffel Tower @ Night!

After Paris we headed to Chateau Versailles and fell in love with the beautiful gardens there! We could not go inside the palace as it was closed on the day that we were there, but we could see all of the massive gardens that surrounded the palace. The gardens were fully manicured and looked perfect..the pictures do not do the gardens justice! 

Me

Mom & Dad

Gardens

Mom & Dad

After we visited the gardens of Versailles we headed to Burgandy region in France to explore a local winery. There was a ton of traffic that day and we ended up being quite late to our wine tasting, but it was sooo nice to get off the bus finally and to enjoy some yummy wine as well! It was really good and I think almost everyone bought a bottle of wine to enjoy with our dinner that night! 

Winery

Trying some wine

Yum wine!

Dad

Me!

Mom!

I will be updating my blog from time to time about the rest of this trip so keep checking to see more about it!

Click here to see more pictures from France---> Pictures (sorry they are out of order)