Easter Break

First off my thoughts and prayers go out to those affected in the Brussels bombing over Easter break. It was pretty eery being in the Amsterdam airport bordering Belgium at the time of the disaster. It seems like this has been a weekly occurrence during my time oversees. Everyone here preaches to keep doing you, because otherwise they win. However, there were some good experiences that were had in light of this. I’ll run through quickly a few moments in London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Prague.

London started off with a long St. Patty’s day night at the bars. The British accents were awesome and I had to keep myself from laughing a few times. This city is absolutely massive and when we took a ride on the London Eye you couldn’t even see where the buildings stopped. The clock was cool and the canals were green. I was constantly thinking about James Bond and The Bourne Ultimatum series the entire time. I’ve never seen so many selfie sticks in my entire life at the Buckingham Palace and so many impatient people on the left of the escalators. We escaped the tourist madness on the last day and had a second to walk across Abbey Road and reminisce about the Beatles.

Next stop was Amsterdam. I was excited for this one. This city is literally entirely built on the water and every single canal was flooded with bikers. I got the chance to meet up with two of my best buds Pete and Sam, as they were heading back to the States a few days later. We of course went straight to the Heineken Factory and learned how it was made, and may have had a few beers. We got flagged down for the Heineken canal tour after, and may have had a few more beers. Walking around this city was an awesome experience and The Red Light District is definitely one of a kind.

The most live able city in my opinion had to of been Copenhagen, Denmark. This place just got voted the happiest country in the entire world. I could see why by the end of the trip. It was a sunny Saturday and we headed out to the abandoned paper factory which sits out on an Island. After going to Christiana of course. The factory is filled with any street food you can imagine and it was incredibly good. We all grabbed a couple of cold ones with our food and sat out on the dock with the hundreds of other Danes. It was rare to be sunny out and we were there for probably two hours, it was honestly one of the best days of the trip. On the way back to the hostel you could see the streets packed with people drinking beer and hanging out with family and friends on benches by the canal. Awesome city and I’m definitely coming back here.

Lastly was Prague. This place looked straight out of Shrek! A huge castle sits up on a hill overlooking Old Town and all of the buildings surrounding on the canal. We were here on Easter and were treated to some of the best priced food and beer I’ve had. We ate at a microbrew for lunch one day, the home of the original Budweiser. They asked us if we wanted dark or light and kept the half liter mugs coming. Heavy set bald guys speed walked around the brewery refilling beer after beer. They would then go back behind the counter and blatantly swig their mugs the entire day which was comical. The meals would come out to about 20 USD for a full plate of food and around 4 liters of beer. We finished off the trip at the John Lennon wall and a pub crawl that has drawn crowds of up to 500 people.. So much history in this place and the prices are unbelievable.

Opening Day for Seattle baseball today. Sco M’s!