SPRING BREAK

Good morning,
I am back, we made it. This was definitely the best but most stressful spring break yet. Good news: I found my camera cable (it was in one of my purses) so check out webshots. Muenchen pics will also be up.
Anyways, I will start with Paris:
We started out trip Friday, the 14th, with some Doener at the place next to the Temple of Apollo. The Doener-man took forever and a day, so we had to eat while running to the Interbus stop to catch the bus to the Catania Airport at 1 pm. Our flight was supposed to leave at five. So we pretty much had 3 hours to kill at the airport. We bought cannoli and hung out at our gate, freaked out other people with our weirdness, etc. At around 4 pm we noticed that our boarding time was pushed back... and back... and.... wtf?
When the screen finally showed that our flight was supposed to leave at 7:30 now. That meant we would miss our connection flight in Milan. BUT, "in Texas we don't fly that way" (thank god!) so Ashley and Brie made their way to the Alitalia reps to see what's up. It turns out, their customer service is ridick. Apparently, they had called our names "a million times," even in ENGLISH, to get us on an earlier plane, and they thought we had just "left the airport." Weird only that none of us (4 people) heard anything, but we had been sitting at our gate (which has room for about 30 people) for 3 hours. Not to mention that the entire airport only has one row of 12 gates. After some angry hickhack, they agreed to have us fly out at 7:30, put us in a hotel in Milan, and fly us to Paris on the earliest plane the next day. They would notify Milan of these changes immediateley. BS. When we finally arrived in Milan, the Alitalia people had no clue and it took 45 min and several phonecalls for them to give us our new tickets and send us on the way to the Hotel. That meant waiting for a bus. The bus didn't leave until 11 or so, and we expected the Hotel to be fairly close to Malpensa (which is roughly translated "bad thought" - hmmmm), because delays always happen. Nada. We were driven 45 min away, in some outskirts of the Milan, and our so advertised **** Hotel was in the back of a Carrefour -supermarket, and looked like a 2 star. Not that it mattered to us, and no, we didn't want to be rushed to Dinner at midnight, because the Bus would be leaving to the Airport again at 7 am. Our flight would leave at 8:30. The next morning we made it to Paris relatively smoothly, if you don't count the fact that in Paris they couldn't find one of those rolling stairs for our plane and we couldn't leave it for another 40 min....
At this point nothing could stop us and we soon disembarked the RER B at the station Saint-Michele, and - tadaaa - there was the Notre Dame. We went inside, outside, took tons of pics, etc.. and got hungry. The prices of the cafes around were absolutely not backpacker-friendly, and we moved on to find street food. We found a pretty good deal with a place, where for 7 euro, we got a "salty" crepe (with ham, cheese, and tomatoes), a sweet crepe (with suga) and a drink. He also gave us free tee on top of that. We took our food the the Pantheon and just sat there and ate.
I took pictures of the impressive columns of the Corinthian Order, Pendentes (also known as "arch cleavage"), mullioned windows, pointy arches, and other shizznizz I learned in Art History!
It got later in the day, so we hopped back on the Metro and RER to scope oput our "Hostel". The "Hostel" was really the Hotel Balladine in Epinay sur Seine, one of those suburbs in Paris where you better be inside once it gets dark - if you know what I mean! For the price it was decent, and if we had booked earlier we would have found a better deal closer to the Center. BUt if you don't mind smokey air wherever you go, and mold growing in your bathroom (picture domumented!) then this is the Hostel/Hotel for you. Ashley decided to go to sleep, but the rest of us decided to check out the "mall." I was torn between buying a 10 euro pair of boots in one of those cheap-o stores and being afraid of the store/ the teenaged guys in it who wanted to speak German to me I was impressed with their "Wie heisst du?". In this part, you expect a burning car around every corner.... but either way, there was another "Carrefour" supermarket - they seem to have them everywhere in Italy and France - and we bought our dinner - boxes of Multi-vitamin juice, water, cookies, chocolate, little containers of black forest cake (DELICIOUS!) and chips. Hey, we were going to stay in for the night with nothing to do. Might as well eat junky.
The next morning,all our eyes were puffy. I don't know what exactly was floating around in that air.... we took advantage of a breakfast deal, 2 euro 50 for a croissant, juice, and coffee. Luckily, it was a buffet breakfast situation, so we made that two croissants, baguette, coffee, juice, marmalade and nutella each. Ya know.
So Sunday was our Eiffeltower/Champs Elysees/Arc the Triomphe day, which we enjoyed although it was raining off and on. I bought a beret, partly as a souvenir, but also keeping next Halloween in mind. With my Eiffeltower necklace and a baguette in hand, I might just go as a French person. At night we realized that we had no food and that it was Sunday night, so we ran to the only pastry shop that seemed to be open. Dinner: Baguette and Brie. Not our Brie, French Brie. Our Hostel for that night was a real hostel, a queen sized bed, and showers that needed to be paid for, bloodstains of the blankets, you have it.
Monday we also did some walking around and decided to tackle the Louvre. Stefania decided not to go in, and Brie and I did the fast walk since we're not Museum goers. Nevertheless, we admired statues, paintings, mummies, etc. I saw and was not too impressed with the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, etc... but I saw them!
At 5ish we made our way to Amanda's Dorm and the University. Paris dorm rooms are big but still just dorm rooms. We could use the computerlab to book and print out tickets for the Bus to Amsterdam the next morning! Around 9, we went out to an Irish Bar. It was Saint Patty's Day after all! I had a "Magners," Cidre and way more delicious than Guiness! When we came back, Amanda was a sweetheart and left us her bed and an air mattress! We only slept for a few hour though, and then it was time to take the Metro to the Bus station.

The Busline is called Eurolines and you can pretty much take it to any major city in Europe. In our case, the Bus was way cheaper (72 euros buy you the roundtrip Paris-Amsterdam, and Amsterdam-Berlin is advertised as 9 euro one way!)
The Bus was one of those tall ones where you sit on top, and thanks to Dramamine and my sleeping mask I was sleeping through most of the trip. On the Bus, we met a young Greek god named Perikles (an Athenian studying Management and Finance) who was taking the bus to Rotterdam and tried to tell us to visit Rotterdam also. But Amsterdam was much prettier so we decided to stick to our plans. We had a nice talk with him at one of the Rest stops until one of the Rest stop cafe ladies tried telling us in Dutch that our Bus was leaving. No kidding, it was gone. With Brie's passport and money. We ran out of the Rest stop and saw that the Bus was now parked at a gas station 100 m away. Bastard.
The Hostel was pretty new, part of a chain. It's called "Stayokay" and I recommen going there. In fact, after we checked in we cancelled our other hostels to stay in the same place the entire time while in Amsterdam. The room was spartanic, but clean and chrome, everything was new, and the sheets came wrapped so we knew they were clean. They had an Internet place (although 1 euro fifty for 15 min is pretty expensive) and a bar and food area. Never mind that the other people staying there were probably between 12 and 15. We decided to get food at a close-by Kebab place, and it was delish. We even got free Turkish Tee. What's up with all this free tee on the trips? After, Ashley decided to sleep, and the rest of us decided to walk a little bit towards Downtown. The walk seemed to not end, and after two hours or so we were back in the Hostel for a good night's sleep. The next morning we took the Tram into the downtown area. Amsterdam is beautiful. My kind of city. There are probably millions of bikes in the city, and you constantly have to watch out for bikes coming from all directions (it's not their fault, you'll most likely be walking on the bike lane). The Dutch are tall, many are blond and beautiful, but mostly just tall (very few guys under 6 ft) and I probably saw 3 overweight people. But they might have been tourists. One of them was the fishman at a fishsandwich place where the others had Cod Sandwiches. I didn't have one, I had packed a lunch. Another good thing about the hostel is that an all you can eat breakfast buffee is included. In Hostel-language that means that you can eat as much as you can and also make three lunches to go.
The rest of that day was spent walking around. It was sometimes sunny, sometimes it poured. We raided the H&M and I found a top to go under my vest. And I also found a cute dress at the market. The line to the Anne Frank House was probably 3 hours long so we decided to do that the following day. We met a nice man from South Africa who was lost on the way to his Hotel. His name was Kevin. We also got a sms from Amanda and Angela, who saw Ashley and me walking across a bridge. We met up with them later at a coffeeshop, "Baba," which sported several human-sized Ganeshas. A Tee and a muffin later, we headed over to the Grasshopper, another Coffee shop, and then A+A gave us a tour of the redlight district, where their Hotel was (conveniently) located. Hahaha. Kidding. We took a wrong turn and landed in a seedy establishment. OK, that's not entirely true. We followed a crowd through a street until we realized that the street was a one way street and the crowd consisted of just men. "That's not where I parked my car" is probably an acceptable phrase for this situation. We turned and made our way out asap.
Overall I do have to say that Amsterdam seems like a safe city. The redlight district is a tourist destination, so unless you're an idiot (taking pictures of scarcely clad women in red windows is a no no!) its not dangerous!
We made our way back to the Hostel, but stopped for another Kebab, a chocolate bar, and a bag of chips. Wow, amazing how much you can eat if you think there is need.
The rest of the night was uneventful (when you run around all day a good night's sleep is important!) but the next day we made our way to our Canal Cruise. Amsterdam is, after all, the Venice of the north. We learned some handy tidbits, but were still tired and the weather got worse. In any case, when I was paying attention I learned that Amsterdam is 2.5 m below the sea level (I'm afraid of what Global Warming will do to that!) and in the summer, the water in the canals is swictched 2x a week and clean water is led in. There are also 2500 registered houseboats (Mama und Papa, wie waer's?) and wayy more illegal houseboats.
After the boat tour it started pouring so we stayed at a tiny cafe until the owner kicked us out. Well, not really but I could understand that she said that no one would come in because it seemed like her place was now a hair salon (Ashley was combing Brie's hair). Dutch and German is pretty similar and with a little but of immagination I can understand a lot of what the Dutch are saying. Wet and miserable (not gonna lie) we made our way to Anne Frank's house and did the Museum tour. It was definitely worth it. Still wet, we made our way back to the Hostel and I fell asleep/read Der Spiegel while the others had the cafeteria food in the Hostel. Wow, my nights in Amsterdam were really not too exciting. But backpacking is not a smooth ride and I like to have energy for the day.
The next day, our last day, we locked our bags in the Hostel and made it downtown one last time. Bad idea. It started snowing. WTF? At this point we all admitted to missing T shirt weather Ortigia, especially since there weren't really public places to go and relax in. Our Bus wasn't leaving until 10 at night, and using the bathroom costs you 50 eurocent. We ended up escaping the snow by hanging out in a Burgerking. For 2 hours. I kid you not. I bought a cappuchino but had no desire for any of the other junk. Well, maybe for onion rings. But not really.
When the snow finally stopped we hit the souvenir shops where I got a couple of post cards (because my pictures didn't come out great - in the snow?) and -- a Lukas Podolski jersey for 15 euro in this Chinese souvenir place. hehehe. I feel like I need to represent in Italy, esp. with 2 soccer lovers in the house (Brie and Stefania).
Because the day would not go by any faster, we checked out our bags and had a farewell-Amsterdam dinner - Kebab again. I probably had my fill for a while (not the healthiest of choices) even though I can always get it in Ortigia if I want.
We took a Bus to the Station where our Eurolines Bus was leaving, and the Bus driver didn't even want us to pay. Huh.
In the Bus, we had to put our backpacks in the luggage part, and I didn't have time to pop a dramamin and get my sleeping mask in time. This proved to be a fatal mistake. Another mistake was sitting in the front. Our busdriver was slighltly insane. Disregarding the fact that we were on a nightbus, he started blasting Techno and Europop form the 90s. I even heard "Hijo de la Luna" (remember?) and he was singing and tapping along with Melanie C's "I Turn to You." Mind you, with a Dutch accent. But I don't even know if it was really Dutch. All I heard was "blabberadatsch Bulleridutsch blim blamb bahh" with an amazingly rolled "r" I'm always jealous when people have amazing "rolling r" skills. At some point he explained to us "Blibberboo blabberba rabberabaa 500 Euro werberibbi" I deducted that we can import goods worthless than 500 euro. They made a huge deal out of French customs, which I never got to see. Maybe in 5 of the 10 min total sleep I got, we passed customs.
Crammy and grumpy and needing to pee (which only costs 20 cents in France) we arrived in Paris. We had a couple of hours to kill once again before our plane, so we headed to the Notre Dame, where Ashley walked around some more. The weather was sucky and rainy, and everything was closed. We matched the mood with our grumpyness. There is a reason I don't do all-nighters. For the well-being of society, of course. If you know me, you know that to me sleep is sacred. We tried to find the Crepe guy from before again, but he was closed. Luckily we found a market, and I bought 2 apples, 3 mandarines, a salmon-spinache quiche, and at a supermarket, couscous with chicken in a little dish.
Ready for some Sicilian Sun, we hopped back into the RER B, off to the Airport, where we chilled for another couple hours with the Financial Times Weekend Europe Edition before flying to Milan, and making it to Catania w/o compliacations. Alitalia is just weeks away from bancruptcy and Berlusconi - if elected - wants to block the merger of Alitalia and AirFrance-KLM. Hmmm. We noticed the financial troubles because the soda cans you get in airplanes are the tiny ones now and if you're lucky, you get a teeny weeny pack of cookies. That's it, I'm going back to Airmalta and Lufthansa. They feed you at least.
In Catania we waited a while and then found Guiseppe, our Taxidriver back to Siracusa. We got in at 11 at night, and the next bus would have run in the morning. So 15 euro each is not a bad deal, especially since Giuseppe drove us all the way to Piazza Archimede (pretty much to our door) and only took 45 min because he drove like a maniac.
I took a shower and went to bed. There goes spring break. As I said, pretty good. I'm proud of Brie and me, because we were pretty much the organizers and brains behind the operation, and except for the Catania thing it went smoothly.

The French as well as the Dutch were super nice to us and went out of their way to help us figure out public transportation, hostels, destinations, etc. We also had a multi-lingual group (between us we have English, German, Italian, Spanish, [and ancient Greek and Latin]) so yeah. Good times. After all this typing I'm going to lean back and read Cosmo.