I'm in Paris, still with an annoying cough (sometimes dry, sometimes phlemgy... mmm) and a sore shoulder. I really feel like I need to stretch - a body balance class would be great right now. Hope you're still going Neens and Jay! I really miss the gym, I feel so tired and sore but in a bad cramped awkward way rather than a good pumped kind of way.
Paris is nice, yesterday I was a bit out of it, but I made it to the Lourve and ran around seeing a bunch of paintings including the Mona Lisa of course (boring though). It was nice to have a lot of familiar places to walk past after the last trip to Paris - where we stayed was so great. This hostel is nice but it's in the 19th arondismont (sp) and it takes a while on the metro to get into the centre, but I'm off to check out different sights to last time. I did walk down the Champs-Elysses last night and remembered out night out to the Lido cabaret which was a great night - I remember we went for crepes afterwards and some girl tried to grab mine out of my hand! hehe Neens was to the rescue though.
Anyway, where was I .... well, two days ago I was in Stuttgart - a detour noone else on the BusAbout bus took, but it was definatley worth it. The Mercedes museum was great - not only the cars but they had a really interesting set of pictures and stories about the world at large over the decades, and how they influenced the car business and the greater economy. I bought a model of my dream car, doesn't look as good without the AMG kit though (Dad what's happened to my car? Have you sold it?). I was staying right near the mineral baths but instead I chose to go to the zoo (still sick and sometimes too much steam etc brings it out more) which is apparently the oldest zoo in Europe. I saw the new baby polar bear Willbar (who has stolen the lime light from Knut who I will also have to visit in Berlin) and also quite a few big cats were nice and close to the edges of the cages and got a good look at them. I haven't been to a zoo for a long time and it was great - the hippopotamuses swimming in bog laps right in front of the wall were amazing! The grounds of the Stuttgart zoo were also really well maintained - not a weed in sight and the plants were thriving. There were also a couple of food/wine/beer street festival type events in Stuttgart which were interesting to walk around (though the idea of a fish sandwich is too gross for me - but they were popular).
Munich and Vienna were fly-throughs on my way across, but I'll visit there with more time later. Nevertheless, in Vienna I was still hanging out with the Aussie girls from Cesky, and there was a summer music/film festival out front of the rathaus where we watched a filmed version of the Berlin Philharmonic's performance of a few pieces from earlier in the year. There were heaps of food and drink stands and I had some nice cherry beer (not as cherry-ish as the belgium beer cafe version).
Cesky Krumlov was good fun - a beautiful little Czech town in the countryside with fabulous rolling hills and pine and other trees, a winding river and cute little old town and (large) castle, with great manicured castle grounds (it's so nice to see gardens that are looked after and not full of weeds ala Greece). The second day there 12 of us went on a river rafting pub crawl - two rafts, a beer stop every 100 m or so and cheap beer (1€ per large beer) and obviously before long it all went awry - one girl was floating down the river, the others were half in the raft half on the bank and before I knew it I was swimming down stream myself and I LOST MY SUNNIES which I am still bitter about because they were awesome. So we continued on and eventually made it back cold wet and pretty drunk but it was heaps of fun (though my muscles the next day wern't very happy). Don't have any photos as it wasn't worth risking the camera but hopefully Kiara will send me some as she took a disposable camera for the ride.
My weekend in Prague was a little dampened by the onset of a cold, but otherwise it was awesome to hang out with Lisa, Darby and Jason for a few days and see a few sights, drink a few beers, introduce them all to Starbucks frappacinos (yum) and generally just enjoy (probably why I got sick - it really does happen when you let your guard down). We took a shit load of photos between the four of us and I've barely even started sorting through them.
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