红酒·绿茶 / Red Wine & Green Tea / Vin Rouge et Thé Vert

I arrived at Antwerpen at night. This time I did write down the directions to my hotel, Etap , a budget hotel for poor students like me, but once again I over-walked. The Centraal Station was, what are the odds, under construction so walking was a little bit scary. The next day I got up early in the morning, headed to the Station, bought the ticket by a combination of hand-gesturing and foreign-word-guessing. About one hour later, I was biking in Brugge . However, it turned out that biking was unnecessary for me. Like I said, most European cities were not up to my walking ability. So what would happen if I had a bike? You guessed it: I was out of map in no time. Provinciaal Hof Originally uploaded by yisu With a medieval street plan, the city was centered at two open spaces: Markt (Market) and Burg. I reached the Markt first and there was the richly ornamented Provisional Court. But that's just the center part of the building. Over the years, they added the left and right...

According to my original plan, I would fly directly from Detroit to Bruxelles, then take a train to Amsterdam. However, the Northwest Airline abruptly rerouted me to Amsterdam with a stupidly short connection from Amsterdam to Bruxelles. I immediately realized it was a completely waste of time for me to take this last leg so I tried very hard to talk to Northwest, asking them to simply let me go in Amsterdam. The answer was, surprisingly, always "impossible without affecting the whole itinerary". Disappointed as I was, I thought things might be different in Amsterdam. KLM Aircraft Originally uploaded by yisu And they were. KLM , the Skyteam partner of Northwest, was much more considerate. Once I made myself clear that I would like to give up my last leg due to change of plan, they were willing to unload my luggage. I was happy because I saved almost six hours of my precious travel time. Schiphol Train Station Originally uploaded by yisu My first encounte...

There are two kinds of travelers: Those who are organized, planing everything ahead of time, knowing exact when she/he will be where and those who are spontaneous, changing trip plan at will. Which kind am I? You'll see. Basically I traveled from North to South by train, taking day trips for places that's not on the main line, then flew back: Baltimore ⇓ Detroit ⇓ Amsterdam ↓ Antwerpen ⇄ Brugge ↓ Paris ⇄ Versailles ↓ Nice ⇄ Monaco ↓ Milano ↓ Venezia ↓ Firenze ↓ Roma ⇄ Vaticano ⇓ Bruxelles ⇓ Detroit ⇓ Baltimore Where ⇓ denotes a flight connection and ↓, train. Here's my original trip plan, down to minutes for critical connections: Aug 23 Thu: 10:00 am Start from home (H.) 12:47 pm Leave Baltimore (BWI) 02:24 pm Arrive at Detroit (DTW) Detroit day trip --- Cancelled 09:50 pm Leave Detroit (DTW) Aug 24 Fri: 11:40 Arrive at Amsterdam (AMS) 13:30 Arrive at Amsterdam Downtown; Check plug adapter Aug 25 Sat: Aug 26 Sun: 18:56 Leave Amsterdam 20:55 Arrive at An...

00 Prelude 01 Table of Content 02 Trip Itinerary Chapter I Cities 03 Amsterdam 04 - Brugge 05 Antwerpen 06 Paris I II III IV 07 - Versailles 08 - Monaco 09 Nice 10 Milano 11 Venezia 12 Firenze 13 - Vaticano 14 Roma I II III 15 Bruxelles I II Chapter II Museums 16 Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam) 17 Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) 18 - Heineken Experience (Amsterdam) 19 - Sexmuseum (Amsterdam) 20 - Provinciaal Diamantmuseum (Antwerpen) 21 Rubenshuis (Antwerpen) 22 Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Antwerpen) 23 Musée du Louvre (Paris) 24 Musée d'Orsay (Paris) 25 - Hôtel des Invalides (Paris) 26 Château de Versailles (Versailles) 27 Palazzo Ducale (Venezia) 28 - Palazzo Medici Riccardi (Firenze) 29 Galleria degli Uffizi (Firenze) 30 Galleria dell'Accademia (Firenze) 31 Musei Vaticani (Vaticano) 32 Musei Capitolini (Roma) 33 Centre Belge e la Bande Dessinée (Bruxelles) 34 - Brouwerij Cantillon (Bruxelles) 35 Koninklijk Paleis (Bruxelles) Chapter III Churches 36 Catholic Churc...

"You understand how to have fun with others and to enjoy your solitude." --From a fortune cookie I have been daydreaming Europe for a long, long time. For starters, a beautiful map of Europe from National Geographic Magazine was put up in my bedroom two years ago. I have become so familiar with the map that when my friend Raymond started to draw it in order to deliver the word "France" in a word guess game, I recognized it immediately, which surprised even myself. Added to the craving was the fact that I almost had my first trip to Europe six years ago. But looking back, had I made that trip six years ago, I wouldn't have had so much fun as this time for many reasons, one of which is that I hadn't learned to enjoy traveling alone yet back then. In fact as my friend David, an avid traveler, had told me, you are not really alone. Because unless you are really rich, you would stay in hostels, where you can easily find like-minded people to talk and to hang out ...

Before I even started to write about my trip, which is surely going to waste me a LOT of time, I would like to thank the following people or things for making it a memorable experience: Thank Jennifer, Hemad, Thomas, Mihai, Milan, Anne, Vivian, Natalie, Dan, Chris, Sydney, Roxana, David, Ryan, Matt, Max, Sylvia, Susanna, Miiga and many more people whose names I regrettably forgot for making this trip much more fun! Thank JanSport for making "Odyssey" , the greatest daypack I've ever used! Thank Converse for making the "Chuck Taylor All-Stars" , K-Swiss for making the "Classic", two of my favorite sneakers which are so comfy to wear that you don't even feel them! Thank Advil for providing fast pain relief!

For those of you who ACTUALLY read my blog (you must be a really close friend of mine or you have way too much spare time), you might know there's going to be a major update coming up for my Eurotrip. In a typical American way, I present you a teaser and a trailer for starters. So here they are. Teaser: Digital camera with a huge lens: $645 Ridiculously spacious backpack: $98 Dodging numerous tourist traps, having pictures taken with so many people in the background that you don't even know which one is yourself, hosteling in Europe while you're still young, telling your own stories: priceless. There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's WhaterverCard. (Acknowledgments: MasterCard commercials) Trailer: 1799 pictures, 26 days, 13 cities, One man, One journey to remember, Coming soon... Septermber 2007!