life in frame...: europe trip: beer, wine, arcade fire, castles, countryside, new friends and old {travels}

“to awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”
- freya stark

so i wasn't entirely alone...i had the lovely cortnye and paul for parts of it but we did go to four different countries and many new cities and this quote definitely embodies much of what i felt on the trip. it had been a while since i had traveled internationally. this trip was big for me in terms of adding to my list of the 30 international cities i want to reach by april 23rd. this trip is way past due for blogging!

brussels was quaint and beautifully quiet. cortnye and i were able to meet up with a friend of mine (mark that i met in fiji). he is completely insane at times..but in a good way. the first day i think we only tried out different belgian beers, waffles and fries. i am not complaining!!! we met some great people and much appreciated the history and architecture in this old city. you can see most of what you need to see in brussels in two days and we did just that.

and then we were off to the netherlands. after a quick train ride we arrived in the city of bicycles to meet up with paul. there are more bicycles than there are people in amsterdam (fact). the juxtaposition of amsterdam compared to brussels was almost too much to handle. all i can say is what you see there and what happens there most certainly stays there. one day we took a boat tour of the city that was both educational and allowed us to start to grasp the breadth of it all. this was the first place that we saw arcade fire play on this tour. they definitely rocked it but the dutch weren't having it for some reason.

we also took a tour of the holland countryside....it was beautiful and well worth it! we went to a cheese farm and a wooden shoe farm (yes they call it a farm...)

from there we went to scotland. i wasn't prepared for the awe inspiring beauty of scotland and edinburgh (ed-in-burr-a). having been to ireland i thought it would be similar but it was not. the first morning we woke up in edinburgh was like a dream. i just wanted to wander for hours with my camera. the castle in the middle of city perched up on top of this hill is majestic and out of a fairy tale. this was the second place we saw arcade fire. they played inside the castle grounds!!! the show was phenomenal..again we met some great people. we walked ALL over that city up and down the hills...the hills are INSANE and at one point i thought my legs would fall off. we toured the queen's palace and hiked up arthur's seat. the views of the entire city from up there almost don't compare to anything else i have seen. after a few days in the city we ventured out into the countryside and went to see nessie. i didn't get a great picture of her but it was worth the trip to try to find her and hear the stories of the lochness monster. overall we were sad to leave scotland.

but we were off to paris....the first afternoon we went to the market and had wine and cheese in the park across from the eiffle tour. then we met back up with mark and also the other mark. i met mark and mark in '09 while they were traveling around the world for 10 months. there is nothing better when you're traveling then meeting up with old travel buddies. paris is another city that you can just spend days wandering aimlessly around and never know what you are going to come across.