this is the story of 4 penn state college grads adventure in europe....

Last week, I had dinner with my girlfriend Jayme. Now, Jayme can make me laugh all the time, even when there is not something specifically funny. But, when we start reminiscing about our backpacking trip to europe as college grads, we laugh until we cry. In fact, we even had a follow up text conversation about our trip the day after dinner. We had the most bizarre things happen to us in Europe.... partially our fault, partially random, and partially because we took an adventure that was planned out so well that something had to go wrong. Despite the trials and tribulations of the trip, if you ever get a chance to backpack europe as a recent college grad, do it. Take friends who make you laugh and as many clothes as you can roll up into a backpack.

Anyway, we hit London, Paris, Barcelona, Rome (by way of plane instead of train due to some "strike" issues) on way to Florence (home of many fake gucci bags and sunglasses), Rome, bus before ferrying (gross) to Greece, Athens, Corfu, and then back to Athens... We had an itinerary. It was the bible. We hated it by the end of the trip. But, without it, I think we may have slept on the streets and ran out of money before we flew home.

London. Our first stop. Our hostel was fine, except we shared a huge room with others. We locked our things under our beds and hoped they were there when we returned. We drank beer in the hostel bar and ate fish & chips. We explored. We argued over maps (My sense of direction has since greatly improved). We saw the crown jewels (sigh). We dressed inappropriately for the weather. We ate McDonald's (yes, yes we did eat McDonald's in Europe- and not for the last time either).  We saw a friend who lived in London at the time and explored the bar world. I broke my shoe in the middle of the street and had to buy a new pair at the Gap. The Gap. In London we did the two most american things we could: ate McDonald's and bought clothes at the Gap. Hello college tourists.

Train from London to Paris. Uneventful. LEAST eventful of our travels  should say.

Paris: I learned my 4 years of HS french & 3 years of college french meant crap. I could barely ask for "four train tickets" in the correct accent. I discovered my friends were as bizarre as me. I carried part of my blanket rolled up in my sleeping bag. Laurie had her taggie bracelet. Jayme saw her true love here, Conan OBrien (really any celeb would do). And Jess quickly reminded us this was a roughing it trip, and let's face it- she was better at it than the rest of us. Oh, also, time changes between London and Paris and if you forget that, you miss breakfast at your already shady hostel. We ate crepes. We got lost some more. This was one of the places the "itinerary" came through for us big time- we got passes to museums before going on our trip and they helped us skip lines and see things faster. And we even made it to the Eiffel tower.

Train from Paris to Barcelona.

Barcelona: Beautiful weather here and we welcome the sunshine. Jess gets her sleeping bag stolen en route. We all say "no big deal" and laugh it off. We get to Paris hostel. My sleeping bag is gone too... with blanky in it! Yes, post college in Europe I'm touring with my blanket. I guess that was a swift way to get rid of it. We went to bars. We shopped. We got lost some more. I experienced some GI distress and had to have Jayme help me figure out how to ask for "stomach medicine" in Spanish in the pharmacy. And then navigate public restrooms. THAT was roughing it. We had a beach day! I went in the ocean and a bum covered in grease (not dirt, grease) stole my beach chair. Jayme PLEADED with the bum, "Her chair" "my friend's chair" as I stood dripping salt water. We were beyond ourselves amused and mortified at the same time. Others started to help tell him to move.... but it took a relatively long period of time before said bum up and left for real. Our hostel here had the internet. We emailed boyfriends/exboyfriends/boyfriends. The drama. How much we've grown up (sort of) since then. We had almost no connection to the outside world. It was probably the best thing to happen to us.  Barcelona was also home of one of my favorite backpack europe dinners- a NON roughing it dinner that we ate on a rooftoop and devoured some amazing paella and sangria.

LOST again. But if Laurie has the map, we were trying to find Zara, not a guadi building.

And then... a backpacker's sorority girl's nightmare happened. I mean, if we are going to be honest here, it was not a backpacker's nightmare. A backpacker would have grinned, found another hostel, and rerouted plans. We had an ITINERARY. We got to the train station and Jayme's spanish got us this much knowledge: TRAINS ON STRIKE. What do we do? We go to the airport. Honestly looking back, as crazy as it all felt, I think we navigated this relatively well. We booked a flight (the next morning) from Barcelona to Rome. We would fly to Rome, take a train to Florence, and only slightly screw up our plans. We planned to stay in the airport overnight.
Do you know what happens in the Barcelona airport at night? First of all, not sleep... because you can't "check in" to your flight until something like 8 hours before. So you have to sit in the "pre check in waiting area".... where the bum who stole my chair came to visit. Okay, maybe not the same guy. But in all seriousness (and looking back sadness) the homeless congregate in the airport for shelter. And they are not the most mentally healthy bunch. After 1-2 hours of this (and let's just say some disagreements between the group) we booked a hotel and jetted from the airport to sleep in BEDS!! Real beds in a real hotel! We went to the hotel, and realized the guy actually charged us 2x what he originally said. But at that point, we were done fighting, trekking, and being awake. We slept for a few hours and hit the airport in the morning.  Before we went to the hotel, we took photos. They are some of my favorite photos from the trip.

Sleeping- or not- on metal benches.

Laurie was probabl hand sanitizing her pants for sitting on these dirty benches.

ITALY! FINALLY! We flew from Spain to Italy, landed in Rome.  Then took the train to Firenze.

Florence: I think that I have to say, our "hostel" in Florence was hands down the cutest. It was actually just an old lady's home and she rented our rooms. I felt like we were at summer camp. With curfews. Yep, we got in trouble (x2) for drying our hair "too late" at night. Too late was like 9:00pm before we ventured out to dinner. We adored Florence, but it was here we realized we wish we had wheels on our backpacks. Our hostel was not close to the train. Our bags were heavy. We complained. We bought SO MANY fake gucci/fendi/prada items in Florence. Bags, bags, and more bags. Sunglasses bigger than our heads. We shopped at the markets. We ate amazing food and lots of gelato. We took photos at Ponte Vecchio. We saw the David. We did NOT sit down to eat lunch -- to this day we crack up/bicker about this. Sitting down to lunch in Italy costs like you know, a whopping $3 more. We were supposed to be "roughing it" so we ate our paninis on the go.

We also apparently wore matching outfits?! Not on purpose...

ROMA: My return to what feels like home. When I went back to Europe after living in Rome the previous summer, I think my mom legit became worried I would stay and never come back. I do have to admit, even now, the thought of living in Roma with the art, history, food, and gorgeous people (albeit, it's true, sometimes smelly) lures me in. It's like a love story in one geographical stop. I want to bring J there in the near future. Maybe our first post baby trip. I digress. We got to Rome from Florence and I was sooooo pumped to show my friends around. Our hostel was "moderate", but the craziest thing?! One of the girls we met there (and shared a room with!), was a good friend of one of my college friends and knew her from growing up in Connecticut. Oddly, I can still remember the somewhat pungent odor of our lovely living arrangements and still wonder what it was. We made one mistake in Rome- we ate at the first restaurant we came to along the way because we were starving. It was a chinese italian restaurant. The owners were literally from China. Hilarious and not so great. Rome was H.O.T. Jayme got sun/heat poisoning which turned our night at the bar crawl into a night with a bottle of wine playing cards on the hostel floor. We drank BBCs at Magnolia. We visited all of my favorite places. I reminisced about my previous summer and nights in Piazza Navona. We ate the best food of our trip (in my opinion anyway). And I could navigate my way around as if I'd never left (for once we were not lost on this trip). We spent more time looking at history than living it up at bars and clubs, but we still packed every minute of this stop.

See look we even saw important things like the Vatican and wore long skirts to be respectful.

TO GREECE WE GO!!!

None of us had been to Greece. NONE of us speak Greek. Not one bit. However, I was spoken to in Greek multiple times. I guess dark hair + light eyes + tan means I blend in (or my obnoxious Euro style I'd picked up by that time in the trip). And our ferry.... oh my god. We took a ferry from Rome (or naples actually) to Greece. It was full of old stinky men and a child who projectile vomited. Here we are waiting for our ferry. I love that we have probably 100 pictures of "waiting" for transportation during this trip.

Jess' backpack probably weighed mor ethan she did...

Corfu: We had to take the bus from Athens to Corfu, Greece. Jayme's mother (holy hell, if I ever recommend a place like this to our daughter, please someone stop me) said she heard of this GREAT place in Corfu that was fantastic for backpackers. Some call it the Pink Palace. It should be called Hotel California. Umm seriously, you can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave. And not because you don't want to... because they trick you. On the website, I found this top 10 lies told at Pink Palace. Let's take a little look-see before we even start to get into our adventure.

Before you freak out mom, we did not sleep in other people's beds and we did not participate in lies #7-#9. None of us were interested in the hot mess of people that paraded in and out of the Pink Palace. We did meet some really nice, normal Australian guys who shared our disgust of some of the other happenings. If your child is 18 and just graduated high school, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, do NOT send them to the Pink Palace in Corfu. They will end up drunk on Ouzo and stripping their clothes off on a "booze cruise" while college grads sit apalled at the antics. However, #1, #3, #4 (it is just gross) and #10 all apply. Do you know why? What the Pink Palace doesn't tell you is that the bus only goes back to Athens every 3 DAYS. And this place is isolated beyond isolated. So you can't get their without their bus. We were literally stuck there. That being said, at least the food was included and the room was (sort of) normal. There were random donkeys on the property, the beach was warm, and the people were bizarrreeeee. It should absolutely have a reality show or movie shot there.

And those were not even the weirdest things that happened there. One morning, we woke up to a toilet seat on our balcony. Our balcony was on the 4th floor. With no other balcony next to us. We to this day have NO idea how it got there. Our thoughts of Greek nightclubs and an island adventure was hilariously wrong, but they are some of the most hilarious memories of my entire life.

Athens: Our last stop was Athens. To be geographically correct in mapping this, we went to Athens before Corfu too... If we thought Rome was hot, Athens was HOT. And also, we checked into our hotel (yep, on our last stop we stayed in a hotel, not a hostel woohoo and we watched one or two dumb american movies on TV) the guy at the desk kept asking if we were with Mrs. Flanders. But in Greek. Whoever that was, I think we said yes. He said we were in the wrong hotel. We went to the other hotel. We were not with Mrs. Flanders. We stayed in the original hotel. We toured, but kept it pretty low key. it was sooo hot and we drank more water than wine. It was the end of our adventure, and while we were not ready to leave the total surreal life of Europe, we were ready to go home...

Athens last day... lots of repeat outfits.

But.... don't worry... we ate McDonald's in the Athens airport before taking off again for the States. and Laurie bought a huge bag of Bounty candy. And we wore our Ciao shirts and spent the ride home journaling (what I'd give to find that journal and its lists... I will have to search), reminiscing, and sleeping.  The rest of the summer was a great one, but to this day I don't think I've ever had quite this kind of adventure. So if you're a graduating college senior this year, plan your trip to Europe. Bring good friends. Ditch the itinerary, but have one in case you need it. You'll likely never have three straight weeks with no responsibility to take a trip like this ever again in your young adult life.

And avoid the Pink Palace. Or you may neverrrr make it back to the States.