The last city on the European leg of our journey was Prague. At this point we were starting to get weary of the winter weather in Europe and were looking forward to the warmth of southeastern Asia. And the lack of sleep was catching up to us. So we decided to take it easy, and just hit some…

After spending a couple of days in Venice we hopped on a night train to Vienna. The sleeper bunks were all booked, so we ended up in second class seats for the eleven hour ride. It ended up being okay though, because we ended up in a train car that had separate little rooms for the…

Out of the cities that we were visiting in Europe, Venice is the one that I was most looking forward to. It was also the city that I was most worried about our accommodations. We had rented a small apartment on AirBnb, but we didn’t have an address to the apartment. Our train arrived late…

The first international stop of our round the world trip was Milan. In truth I wasn’t really looking forward to Milan. There were other people who got our crazy flight deal that had to fly into Milan as well, but they decided they would skip touring the city and flew out the same day. Tim…

From Milan I took the night train to Rome. I shared a two bunk room with three strangers, one German traveling solo (at least I think he was speaking German) and two Japanese guys. It wasn’t the most comfortable accommodations– the bed was pretty hard and narrow and the ride was bumpy and noisy, but…

My train arrived in Milan late in the evening, around 10pm. I had booked a room from a couple on AirBnb. I was a bit worried that I was disturbing them arriving so late at night, but it turned out that it was the wife’s birthday, and they had gone out for dinner, and so…

From Paris I took the TGV high speed train to Zurich. I didn’t really have anything in particular I wanted to see in Zurich per se, it just happened to be a good place to stop on my way towards Rome because both the French and Italian train lines connected in Zurich. The Paris Gare…

While in Paris I bought a museum pass that was good for four days. I ended up visiting a couple of museums each day, except for one day which I dedicated to the Louvre. The museum pass is kind of expensive, but it allows you to bypass the entrance lines. For me the price was…

Paris is a city that I’ve been wanting to visit for a long time. And so I decided that since I’m already in Europe, I figured that I should at least spend a few days in Paris, seeing the many famous sights and visiting the world famous museums that I’ve heard so much about. And…

From Brussels Jack, Anna and Alexia flew back to California. My flight back home would be out of Rome, but not for almost another dozen days. I hadn’t planned my route to Rome, but I wanted to visit at least Paris and Zurich. Before heading out to Paris though, I decided on a whim to…

After London we took a short flight across the English Channel to Brussels. To be honest I didn’t really know what to expect from Brussels. I know Belgium is famous for waffles and chocolate, two things that I’m not too interested in. Belgium’s also famous for beer, and for that I was somewhat excited. One…

After Barcelona we flew into London. Since London is not part of the Schengen area we had to go through customs. When asked by the customs agent why we were in London, someone in our group responded with “the food.” “Sorry, you’re in the wrong country…” the custom agent replied. I had heard that British…

From Madrid we took a Renfe AVE high speed train to Barcelona. It ended up costing us about 100 euros per person– if we had booked ahead of time online we probably could have saved a good 30 or 40 euros per person. If I could do it all over again, I think I’d take…

There are many reasons why I’ve wanted to come to Spain. First and foremost is the food. I’ve heard the food in Spain is ridiculously good. The second reason is the ham, which I suppose is still food. Iberico ham is supposedly the best in the world. Third, there’s the culture and history (which is…