Just for you, Dad! (p.1)

By popular demand (ie our father) we are now releasing previously unpublished journal entries about the trip. This is a once in a life time event (or maybe twice or three times), people, so hold on to your horses, tighten your tie, and sit back! This is going to be amazing. No Joke.

So I thought that it might be a good idea to just go through and remember things that happened in various cities, what the people were like, how cool it was, or things like that. Im not sure how this will turn out, because like you, I have not yet seen what comes to follow. If it is boring and terrible, I apologize ahead of time. It sucks for you, but at least I didnt have to read it myself. And we can all take solace in knowing that fact. So lets begin maybe?

Dublin...
"We just got back from a walking tour of the city with Paul, one of our dormmates. It took us about 9 hours or so, but was quite nice and worth it. We found a park and as we were wandering through it heard snippets of music playing. So we wandered over to find out what it was and found a small orchestra getting ready to play- it was sunny out, so we stayed on the lawn and listend to 5 or 6 songs, until the sun got covered and we decided to wander off. We wandered through all of the tour that would have taken us through the various sections of the city- such as the Cathedral area, the medeival, etc. And instead of paying to see it, we just walked it ourselves. Dublin has some good character to it, but Ill admit it, Im tired"
Dublin was a nice city, but theres not much to pull me back to it. The people are quite friendly and multiple occasions strangers stopped to help us with directions, not because we asked for them but just because we had a puzzled look on our faces. Plus, who doesnt like an irish accent? It has a nice mix of city and park, of new and old, but really there are other cities that, in my opinion, do it better.

Edinburgh...
Because there I dont have anything really coherent in my journal, Ill just plain out tell you that this may have been my favorite city so far. The city itself is beautiful, filled with old buildings and history. We had another adventerous entrance into the city, which is both fun and scary, knowing that our opinion of the city was dependent on how smoothly we could find our hostel. We arrived by plane, with no idea how to get into town, and once there, where our hostel was. Luckily for Edinburghs sake, we were able to find a bus to town, and it only took asking 2-3 Scottish men where to find our hostel. This was good for us thus far. We were mesmerized by the town we were in, not expecting our hostel to be right on the Royal Mile, like a castle itself. I defintely suggest doing the free walking tour... it gives a good sense of the history of the area, plus you only have to pay as much as you want (good for us, bad for our tour guide- ok, not really, we liked our tour guide and gave her the most we have given any of them). I honestly wish we had spent another day there, 1 and a half probably wasnt enough. Lauras rating: 2.5 thumbs up! If anyone choses to go to Scotland and see Edinburgh (which we recommend), we also recommend the Scottish Highlands and the Isle of Sky, two places we have not been, but most people we came across in Edinburgh had, and they recommend it to us. We plan to go and see those in the future ourselves. (Also, this is for another post because we DID go there, but the Lakes District is just a short distance away, and therefore is easily easily easily included in the same trip- but well tell you more about that later).

Rostock
Im going to describe the town as if you havent read our previous post on Rostock, seeing as I havent read it since I wrote it! The town of Rostock is on the northern coast of Germany. From the center of town, it is a short train ride to the actual coast (a town called Warnemunde), with sand and water and everything. In the center of town, there are docks and a boardwalk. As we heard later in Berlin, "Rostock is where the Germans go for vacation, not foreigners". We definitely noticed this as true, seeing as there were very few non-Germans. The town itself doesnt have that much to offer, and we would not recommend a stay here. A day trip to the beach in the north of Germany definitely sounds like a good idea, and therefore Rostock could be a good destination for a day trip. Maybe, maybe you should look up stuff on the internet instead of just relying on us.

It was rainy and overcast during most of our stay, and began to rain while we were on the beach. We personally did not mind, in fact we thought it nicely reminded us of home. To get a feel for the area: "We took the train to Warnemunde to go to the beach. The town, about 15 minutes north of Rostock, is cute. It has shops along the wide sidewalks with clothes, smoking fish, crepes, and more. We bought raspberries for €2 and made our way to the beach. It was an actual beach! Dunes and kms of sand!"

A quick unrelated excerpt from Lauras journal:
"Tonight Amy and I got to freaking ourselves out by thinking of people hiding in the bathroom, or movement out the window or in the hall. We shouldntve gotten ourselves on that, but its hard to stop once you start. Like Pringles. Which are delicious"

Amys explanation...As you may remember we arrived into town around 9 or so pm, this is late for check in to a lot of hostels and we were worried that it may be closed. What worried us even more is that we had no idea how to find our hostel. We asked a woman at information, a couple with a young son, and eventually and old man who spoke a few words of English who walked us to the door. By the time we had arrived it was dark, and check in had already closed. Luckily the man still checked us in, and showed us to an empty room. We had been alert while walking outside, because it was dark and we were lost...reasonable. Therefore when we got to the room, we joked about people in the windows, strangers, noises, etc. Then we walked through the empty, large hostel to the bathroom. Luckily we have yet to watch that backpackers hostel horror movie, imagine the nightmares wed have then!

And on the pringles- were addicted. Theyre expensive here, but they are oh. oh. oh so delicious. This needs no further explanation.

Ok, so here is our first attempt to give a further in depth feel into the places weve been, as requested. Tell us what you think and if this isnt what you had in mind, tell us and well write something new!