Oh Prague. Where do I even begin? Prague is like that cool kid in your class that knows he's cool but will never admit it. People will ooh and ahh as he walks by but he'll always act like he doesn't care. With the exception of Budapest (duh) Prague is THE coolest city in Eastern Europe. The entire city has an old feel to it, but everyone there is super young and the nightlife is killer. Before I recount the days' events I would like to give a special shout out to my brother, Matthew. He spent a semester abroad in Prague and pretty much everything we saw and ate was recommended by him. THAAAAANKSSSSSS MATTHEWWWWWWWW.

During the first day there we checked out the Old-New Synagogue in the Jewish quarter, walked across the Charles Bridge, took way too many pictures at the John Lennon wall, drank beer on top of a hill at this old monastery turned brewery, and went to a rad bar with live music. I ate this potato dumpling dish for lunch, garlic bread at the monastery for a snack, KFC (!!!!!!!!!!!) for dinner, and a fried cheese sandwich for another snack / dessert. Lots of hot wine was also consumed that day, because that's apparently a thing sold on every block.

Here's a picture of me in Prague. The rest of the pictures included in this post will be of food. You've been warned.

If you are looking at this picture and you know what this delicious dish is called please let me know.

A little taste of home<3 also please note the fact that there are REAL french fries and not just potato wedges! Sorcery!

Fried. Cheese. Sandwich. Need I say more?

On day two I was graced with the opportunity to travel around by myself, due to the fact that I caught a flight to Lisbon that afternoon while my travel companions stayed one extra night in Prague. Before we split up we had a delicious breakfast at Bohemia Bagel and I ate my first bagel in just about two months. Then I headed back to the Jewish quarter by myself to see the other things there besides that one synagogue we went into on the first day. The thing that stuck with me most was the inside of the Pinkas Synaguge, where close to 80,000 names of Holocaust victims are written on the walls. After bumming myself out I decided the only way to make myself feel better was to eat a large amount of food, so I headed across the city to Radost FX (some club / lounge / bar / restaurant where Rihanna filmed a music video) and ate the most delicious nachos in the entire world. To anyone out there from Boston who may be reading this, I kid you not these nachos are better than Sunset. Major, major props to my good friend Rachel for convincing me to eat there. Without your constant nagging I would have never made the trip out there, so thank you for being persistent.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

YUM

Overall, Prague was a real winner. Sad to only have a day and a half there because I felt like there was still so much more to see, but it was really great to be able to see exactly why Matthew loved living there so much!

Anddddd she's back with another post! This one's about the second leg of my Fall break trip i.e. Vienna, Austria. I registered for Spring semester classes recently and decided that I'm going to take creative writing, so I'm feeling inspired to write this post in the form of haikus. I anticipate that the first two will be entertaining and then after that they'll just get annoying, but please humor me and try to stick it out until the end.

For those of you unfamiliar with haikus, the format is
5 syllables
7 syllables
5 syllables
and in my opinion it's the easiest and most fun style of poetry to write. Here goes nothing...


Vienna is cool
We didn't do a whole lot
But the food was good

First we ate sausage
From this tiny old lady
And it was yummy

Then we ate schnitzel
It was bigger than my head
Thanks for the tip, Bruce

Steaming hot chocolate
Was also present that trip
Once it had rum, yum!

We didn't just eat
Although it may seem like it
We saw cool stuff, too

Things we saw include
But are not limited to
A huge ferris wheel

Modern art was viewed
At some place called the Mumok
And then we ate more

Vienna is missed
We had a relaxing time
I will be back soon

Hope that wasn't TOO annoying! Check out the pictures below and stay tuned for updates about Prague and Lisbon. If you're (un)lucky I might stretch my creativity even more and try my hand at limericks.

I'm a firm believer in the fact that Figlmuller genetically engineers its schnitzel.

Hot chocolate with rum. Not pictured: the blanket I snuggled up with while drinking this bad boy.

No haiku could do this omelette justice, but this baby was from a cute place called The Breakfast Club.

My apologies in advance for taking so long to update this thing. Time flies when you're having fun! It also flies when you're starting your first 9-5 job and would rather spend your evenings lying in bed watching Netflix with no pants on instead of updating your blog.

I went to four countries over fall break and I think I'm going to go ahead and type up a new post for each one. That way you don't feel like you're typing a novel and I don't feel like I'm writing an unnecessarily long post that no one will read. Win win situations for the win!

First up: Budapest. Let me start by saying that even though we only spent two full days there I LOVE this city so much. I think the fact that it's in a country called Hungary might have something to do with it, but beyond that the atmosphere is perfect for young people and there was never a dull moment during our time there.

We arrived at our hostel (MAJOR shout out to the Budapest Bubble - the staff was so nice and friendly and we had a great time staying there) early Saturday morning and immediately hit the ground running. Here's a list of things we did on the first day:

1. Ate a delicious brunch at some cute cafe. I had eggs with cheese mushrooms tomatoes and basil and they were yummy. Unfortunately I was so hungry that I immediately started eating without taking a picture first (sorry Nikki).

2. Walked around the Grand Market Hall in a single file line because everyone and their grandma was there and the aisles were way thin.

3. WENT TO THE ZOO AND GOT UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH SLOTHS. THIS DESERVES TO BE IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE I LOVE SLOTHS AND I'M STILL EXCITED ABOUT IT.

I like to think that our happiness levels were equal in this very moment.

4. Had a relaxing dip in the thermal baths and saw a bunch of fat naked old people.

I like this picture because my feet look super big

5. ate bacon-wrapped chicken stuffed with cheese in a creamy corn sauce (NOM)

welcome to Nom City, population: this piece of chicken.

6. got a full night sleep because we woke up at 4am that morning to fly to Budapest.

So even though we were absolutely exhausted by the end of it day one was an overall success. We spent most of day 2 on the Pest side of Budapest (more info can be found here). The day's events went something like this:

1. Ate a cheeseburger for breakfast at this rad place called Good Bar Good Burger. Don't worry mom, it was a small burger AND it came with a side salad.

pancakes are SOOO last year

2. Watched a bunch of sweaty Hungarian people run a marathon and pretended like it was marathon Monday

3. Crossed the bridge into Pest and walked up a huge hill / walked around the top of said hill most of the day.

4. Did archery for the first time since like 2005 (hi Camp Pocono Ridge miss ya) and hit the bullseye!!!!! Just kidding... I failed almost as miserably as I did when I was 12.

I volunteer as tribute

5. Ate yummy sausage for lunch and converted my vegetarian friend to a meat-eater for the rest of our travels.

6. Visited the Dohány Street Synagogue aka the largest synagogue in Europe. It was super amazing and was by far the biggest highlight of Budapest (besides the sloths of course)

In this moment I was incredibly thankful that I had my Bat Mitzvah in the cafeteria of an elementary school and not a giant synagogue that could hold 3,000 people.

7. Ate authentic Hungarian goulash and rabbit in a red wine sauce for dinner. I'm pretty sure I'm allergic to rabbits, so eating them is my way of getting back at them for making me sneeze.

This is goulash

This is rabbit

8. Went out to a ruin bar with our new friends from the hostel!

Look mom I have friends!

So in summary: Budapest is amazing, sloths live there, the synagogue is ginormous, the food is delicious, and I'm incredibly confident that I will be back there for an extended period of time some day. It's 11pm here and I have work bright and early tomorrow morning (my internship is going really well by the way!) so I'm going to hold off on posting more about my trip. But to those of you who have been asking for me to update this thing - enjoy.