Christmas Vacation!

I am writing this from my hostel in Salzburg, Austria. This Christmas break, both of my sisters were able to come visit me for two weeks! Their first week here, I was still working, but on the weekend, we went into Paris and hit all the main spots!

The Louvre,

Notre Dame,

Champs Elysees,

Arc de Triumphe

and the Eiffel tower!

Gracie celebrated her 21st birthday here - so I threw a little party for her! The girls on my STINT team came as well as 4 of my French friends. We had a lot of fun playing card games and celebrating Gracie.

At the end of the week, it was time to start our vacation of backpacking through Europe. Thursday night, the 23rd, we made our way into Paris with all our gear in hopes to catch our night train to our first stop: Venice, Italy. I say in hopes, because we assumed with our EuRail passes, we did not have to reserve seating - which was not true. Fortunately, there was room on the 8:30 pm train and we were on our way to Italy! The conductor liked us and made sure we were safe by showing us how to lock the door properly and hiding our money just in case. It was great! We had our own 6 person triple bunk bed to ourselves.

We arrive on Venice [it is an island] around 11:30 am the next day. It was beautiful, but rainy. Almost EVERYONE was wearing rubber boots! Restaurants on the main canal were flooded!

We enjoyed all the fun things to do in Venice, including a gondola ride!

On the 26th, we took another night train to Vienna, Austria and stayed there for one night. Gracie and I went on a tour of the catacombs in one of the cathedrals. There were a ton of HUMAN BONES! It was pretty interesting...

December 28th, we took a day train for 2.5 hours to Salzburg, Austria. I think this has been my favorite place so far... We have seen a couple of the places they filmed the classic film 'The Sound of Music' which I have watched growing up. It was so cool!!! The castles, mountains and little shops are really cool too.

More to come!