Greta's Trip in Numbers

Countries Visited: 21

Days traveling: 256

Number of flights: 28

Number of miles traveled in the air: 49,261

Number of hours spent in airports: 112

Number of bus rides: 23

Number of hours spent on buses: 165

Number of train rides: 7

Number of hours spent on trains: 45.5

Number of boat/ferry rides: 15

Number of hours spent on boats: 34.5

Number of metro/trams systems: 15

Number of hostels: 37

Number of hotels: 11

Number of VERY generous friends that let me crash with them: 11 

Number of beers tasted: Eh, a lot. (Check out some pictures here)

Number of near death experiences: 2

Trips to the ER: 1

Number of languages I can say "Thank You" in: 15

Number of oceans and seas I've touched: 16

Number of items lost: 1!!! (sunglasses in Costa Rica)

Number of books I read: 21

Number of days I worked: 0

Total budget: $15,500

Number of times I thought I was the luckiest woman on the planet: millions!

My hope is that someday soon I'll truly be able to reflect on what a trip like this really means but in the meantime enjoy the post on numbers and please comment if you have other questions or categories you'd like me to quantify. Stay tuned for my plans for my next trip . . . it could be sooner than I expected!  

The LAST stop: Amsterdam

I expected Amsterdam to welcome me with open arms since it was my last stop and I had worked so darn hard to get there. Unfortunately the weather was crap and I had to wear shoes for the first time in 2 months. Amsterdam was actually the only place I had been to before on my entire trip so the pressure was off to see the sights and get in all the touristy stuff. Instead, I just hung out with my incredibly cool friends living in the area.

So for fours days I chilled with my high school friend, Sean and his girlfriend, Helen; saw my old college roommate a good friend, Moulsari; and visited and stayed with my old boss and overall great person, Dana. It was a perfect way to end the trip - just hanging out with old friends instead of running around the city trying to pack in all the sightseeing.

Dana and I did squeeze in one touristy activity: The Heineken Experience. Check out me and Dana being Dutch:

Many of you know that I'm home in NH hanging out with my parents for a while. It's hard to make sense of a trip like this and fully understand the past 9 months but I'll soon post some thoughts about the experience as a whole and try to break down my trip in numbers! More to come . . .

Vienna, Austria

Everything in Vienna is huge. It's a fairly big city with enormous buildings and every single one of them looks really important. It was difficult to find things to do other than just walk around and see enormous buildings and appreciate the pretty cityscape. That's exactly what happened and with the exception of seeing The Belvedere, I didn't do much at all. Klimt is one of my favorite artists and his work is featured in the museum that looks much more like a French Chateau than anything else. I visited the museum with two other cool American women travelers and we sat infront of one of Klimt's most popular paintings, "The Kiss" for about half an hour.

Check out the beautiful museum:

Some other big, possibly important buildings:

With two weeks left in my trip, I realized I was exhausted of traveling and seeing different places. I was quickly running out of money and decided I'd rather save and head back to Prague to crash with some friends for a week before heading to Amsterdam. Yes, there were more factors which influenced this decision, but I prefer not to write about it on my blog. So back to Prague I went and spent an awesome week just living and not moving. Turns out it was a great choice.

Next blog post: MY LAST STOP!!!

Prague, Czech Republic - the first time

I arrived in Prague with the expectation of staying for about a week and moving on to Vienna, Bratislava, Brussels and then Amsterdam. That's not what happened at all and I ended up staying for while and heading back. I planned on meeting up with my friend Ethan once again and meeting his friend who was living and teaching English in Prague. Ethan and I spent four days of sightseeing and meeting up with his friends there. Here are some of the pictures of the city:

Charles Bridge



 Prague Castle

 The old city:

Ethan and I also took a trip outside the city to Kutna Hora, a small village that's main feature is a church decorated with bones. Back in the day someone was actually hired to use the bones from 40,000 people and create fixtures around the church. Some weird stuff that I wasn't surprised to see at all in the Czech Republic . . .  

Some creepy pictures:

After about a week in Prauge it was time to move on (or so I thought) and go to Vienna.