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.

Budapest, Hungary

Everything about Budapest is cool. The landscape, the nightlife, the history . . . I was totally into Budapest. I took an 8 hour train ride through beautiful Slovenia and was shocked to find such an interesting city. I chose to do a free tour in Budapest since I knew nothing about Hungarian culture and was extremely happy to learn a thing or two. For example, the language is one of the most complicated in the world and if you said every swear word in Hungarian it would take you 5 minutes to get it through it all. I mean, there were more cultural (important) facts to learn but you'll just have to go to Hungary to find it all out.

One of my favorite activites was going to the Hungarian baths. Unlike Turkish baths, Hungarian baths have water and a million pools. I chose to go to the outdoor baths and hang out with a new friend on a beautiful spring day. Afterall, traveling is hard work!

After a few days in Budapest it was time to move on the Prague. As many of you have guessed, I've been in Prague for a while now and it's been a great place to take a breather before heading home. More to come on my adventures in the Czech Republic . . .

Ljubljana

Slovenia would have been an easy country to skip over. I could have just gone straight to Budapest from Zagreb but I'm incredibly happy that I decided to check it out for a few days. It's only a two and a half hour train ride from Zagreb and cost me all of 10 euros to get there. I had heard from tons of travelers not to sleep on Slovenia and to make sure I get to the countryside.

My initial reaction to Slovenia was "holy crap this place is gorgeous". I had no clue the country was so green and hilly. I was also incredibly impressed with the amount of public benches and places to sit around urban spaces. This is a rarity in cities and I appreciated the fact that I could just sit and people watch for while.

My second reaction to Slovenia and Ljubjana in particular is that there are more bikers than pedestrians. The bike lanes are everywhere and I managed to piss of more than one rider because I didn't see the red path painted in the side walk. I wanted to yell back to them, "I'm on your side, man, I just need some time to get used to all these bikes!"

My one excursion was visiting the caves just outside of Ljubljana. It's one of the biggest tourist attractions in Europe and they've had over 30 million visitors! The caves were super cold (about 45 degrees) and although I was inappropriately dressed, I still really liked the place! Check out some of the pictures:

Slovenia was, without a doubt, a great choice for stops on my trip. I will definitely visit again and hopefully get the change to see some more of the countryside. Next stop: BUDAPEST!

Croatia!

About 5 years ago I was researching buying a plane ticket to Paris and searching different travel agencies in New York to get me the best deal. One day I went into STA travel and while waiting in line to talk to someone I checked out all the different brochures. The pamphlet on Croatia, and Dubrovnik in particular, immediately grabbed my attention. I took it home and even though I was planning my trip to Paris and travel afterward I could not stop thinking about how much I wanted to go there.

I would actually say that the simple tiny brochure was one of the main motivators to get me saving for this trip . . . finally. Well, in all fairness, I didn't start saving until a couple years later but it definitely spearheaded the extensive research aspect of my trip. For some odd reason Dubrovnik would not escape my mind. Whenever I was doubting the possibility of the trip I would think of Dubrovnik, the Adriatic Sea and those red roofs and it would get my butt back in gear and saving.

When I was talking to my friend Ethan about this the other day he asked me if I was worried it wouldn't live up to my expectations and that it would be a big disappointment. It happens in traveling all the time - someone tells you about a must see spot and you get there and don't get all the hype. (My example would be Bali, as some of you have read in my post. I just didn't understand why people loved the place). Dubrovnik, however, was one of the coolest places I've been to on the entire trip. It was incredibly impressive and lived up to all my expectations.

The icing on the cake? I stayed in a great hostel and met great people. Sometimes, it just all works out. Not only was Dubrovnik great but I thought Zagreb was an interesting little city! It doesn't get much love but it was a fun place to stay for a couple nights and I met some Croatians there who introduced me to Croatian Master Chef.

Here are some pictures of Dubrovnik and the old city:

Most of my time in Dubrovnik was spent roaming around the city and enjoying the ridiculously good weather. For all you who don't know, Dubrovnik gets just about 250 sunny days a year!

Next stop: Beautiful Slovenia