how to empty your bank account in 10 days

Copenhagen. Beautiful city. So freaking expensive.

Ryan and I flew to Copenhagen for a weekend in August. Generally, we have been trying to do driving trips while we have the rental car, but this was an exception for my friend, Suzie. Suzie is on a six month rotation with her company in Copenhagen. Her rotation ends at the end of September, so we had to seize the opportunity to visit her while she was still there. She picked us up at the subway stop near her house and was ready to play tour guide and host!

Guess who also decided to join us in Copenhagen? Our new nemesis, Rain.

Suzie, me, and about 50 other people huddled under a grove of trees for protection. Why not enjoy some Danish beers in the meantime, from 7-11 no less.

Our first evening in Copenhagen had some big potential. We were invited by a group of university students dressed in western gear to join them for a public dance of some sort. This sounded wildly entertaining and fun to me. But alas, as the rain came down harder, they canceled the event and we were left to normal tourist activities such as eating fish and chips, drinking beer, and trying to stay warm. Two beers and two orders of fish and chips later, Ryan and I were already out $75. Ouch.

When the rain let up, we did some city walking and explored the grounds of a castle. At least with rain comes rainbows!

We ended the day with some good old fashioned drinking games in Suzie's living room with a deck of cards and a 6-pack of Tuborg tall boys.

Saturday, Suzie really showed us her city. We took a great canal boat tour, and got to see the MOST overrated European tourist attraction, The Little Mermaid.

As you can see, there is a throng of people crowded around the tiny statue perched on a rock. We could only really see the mermaid from the back, but it wasn't worth our time to make a separate trip out to the rock to see the front. Other sights from the boat included the library which reflected the water and sparkled like a diamond, which prompted our boat guide to play Rhianna's "Shine Bright Like a Diamond." Plus, we passed under some cool bridges!

After the boat tour ended, we began our own private walking tour of the city with Suzie as our guide. We literally walked 7.5 miles that day, and luckily were fueled by the most amazing bagel sandwich I've had in my life (which probably cost us $15 each). We explored this area of the city called Christiania, which transported me back to my Eugene hippy roots. It is essentially a commune, governed under different law than the rest of Copenhagen, where they freely sell marijuana in little tents. They don't allow pictures, but I snapped a few during our entrance into the neighborhood.

After our walking tour concluded, we grabbed a couple beers at a really cool Pike Place-esque fish market (only $8 each, deal!), and then we headed back to Suzie's apartment to rest our feet and decide on dinner plans, i.e., is there any place in this city to eat for under $25 per person. We ended up grabbing pizza and beer, which was the most reasonable price we'd found all trip, and watched SNL clips for hours (like this gem). 

Our last day in the city, Ryan and I explored on our own. We finally remembered our real camera, and returned to a few sights to get some pictures. We also stopped by the Lego store (Lego is Danish) and window shopped the extremely expensive, but oh so appealing, clothing and furniture stores lining the pedestrian-only street.

Not shopping.

Town Hall

So. Many. Legos.

If Copenhagen was made of Legos

Way off in the distance, you can see the bridge to Sweden. 

Back at the castle.

The last stops of our trip included the Carlsberg brewery (Prague and Bavaria - you win) and grabbing $25 burgers. Despite the lightened load of our wallets and the excessive rainstorms, Copenhagen is a beautiful city and Suzie was the best of hosts and tour guides.  

Until the next post!

xoxo

L & R

the road less traveled

Here in Munich, Friday, August 15, was a holiday. Thanks, devote Catholics of Bavaria. Our first three day weekend - what to do?! I asked Ryan to surprise me with a destination, and I soon found out we were headed to the Czech Republic! His first choice was Cesky Krumlov, a small town in the south of Czech Republic, not too far from Munich. But, because everything was already all booked up, we had to "settle" for Prague instead. Damn.

Ryan booked three nights at an awesome downtown hostel, conveniently called Downtown Hostel, and we headed off on our first real road trip adventure in Europe. We were given a rental car for our first two months in Munich, so we have been taking advantage of it to the fullest. Our navigation system is not always on point, so we did a little exploring of the German and Czech countryside during our drive. The nav also kept trying to tell us to exit the freeway and take back roads and warning us about non-existent toll roads (well, we haven't gotten charged yet). We basically started ignoring that annoying little British voice completely and just followed the signs to Prague.

Ah, Germany, land of the Autobahn. Yet somehow our navigation tried to send us down a forested dirt road in order to get from Munich to Prague. Go figure.

Our hostel sent us to a sketchy little park-and-ride lot on the other side of town, which was completely worth it because it only cost $5 per day to park our car. Thanks to a friendly McDonald's employee, we were able to break our Euros for Koruna and buy some subway tickets to our hostel. Next step: get some cash out. Once again, navigation was not our friend, but this time it was Google Maps. We tried to find our German bank, which we knew we had seen while driving, but the map led us to a sporting goods store. After walking in circles, we finally gave up and got cash out of a random ATM with our US card, later discovering good ol' BofA charged us a lovely $15 fee. Now that we had money, we hit the town (i.e., immediately bought cheap, delicious Czech beers and ate some Turkish food). Oh man, the beer. I'll come back to that topic later.

That first night in Prague, we walked the streets a bit until we found a pub, U Medvídků, with several varieties of beer on tap. Added bonus, they were playing sweet throwback music videos... think: "It's Raining Men" by The Weather Girls (hello, how have I never seen that video before??), "Down Under" by Men at Work, and "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper. We loved this bar, its music videos, and its beer so much, we even revisited on Saturday night. Ryan's favorite beer: 1466; Lisha's favorite: Oldgott. YUM. We also, of course, sampled some Budweiser Budvar, the original Budweiser. Needless to say, we got drunk enough that we thought a selfie was a good idea.

Friday was a day full of free walking tours. After getting a 3 EUR breakfast at our hostel, which included hot dogs disguised as "sausage," we did a city tour. I'll include some pictures and let the captions tell the story of what we saw, as it would be far too lengthy to describe in narrative form.

The tour started at the Astronomical Clock, which is said to be one of the most overrated attractions in Europe.

Here's why. Every hour, some little statue dudes rotate through the open windows above the clock. What is cool, however, is that this clock is the oldest working astronomical clock in the world.

Old Town Square. The best part of this tour was learning so much about the history of Prague - not just seeing the buildings and attractions.

From afar, the Prague Castle. The tour did not take us over to the castle, which we later explored on our own.

Jewish Quarter. Each city in Europe has its own unique story to tell about the impacts from WWII, which I find highly fascinating, and also heartbreaking.

Great advice from our tour guide. Unpasteurized tank beer. 

Ryan was lucky enough to be selected as an actor in a historical reenactment. He is wielding a sword and cutting off a thief's hand.

After the walking tour, you'd think we'd be pretty tired and ready for a rest. But no, we thought, let's do some more walking! So we crossed the river and headed toward Prague Castle.

En route, we got completely side tracked by an obstacle course on an island. I would like to note that not only did I have to tackle the course first, I was also followed by a very annoying little girl who kept trying to make me fall off.

Here comes the little girl.

Ryan actually made this kid fall off by purposefully spinning the log. I think the kid liked it though. I mean, he didn't cry or anything...

And then we were joined by this cool bug.

After we thoroughly exhausted ourselves, we decided it was time to head back to the hostel and start drinking more beers. Speaking of beer, we tried many Czech beers, and even went on a free "beer tour" on Friday night. We had this awesome guide - a Brazilian puppeteer/mask maker who had been living in Prague for years. I honestly couldn't tell you the name of any beer we tried that evening, but we had a great time meeting other people from our hostel, including a brother and sister duo from Munich who invited us to their house party the following weekend. (Unfortunately, we had other travel plans for the following weekend and couldn't make their party.)

Saturday included another walk - this time we actually made it to the Prague Castle. Great butt workout - hell of a lot of stairs. Again, I will let the pictures tell most of the story:

We had no idea what this scupture/monument was, but we thought it worthy of a picture.

Public drinking again? Czech! Enjoying the Charles Bridge before the rain sets in.

St. Vitus Cathedral - incredible Gothic architecture. And oh hi! There's me!

Interior of St. Vitus Cathedral.

Ryan posing pretty on the back side of St. Vitus Cathedral.

This post is really dragging on, and I'm sure you've all really enjoyed your trip to Prague, so I'll leave you with one last nugget about our trip. Sick of all the rain that Prague was torturing us with (this is not Seattle rain, people), we did a fun little indoor activity on our trip. If you are ever in a city that offers an entrapment/spy sort of game, I recommend you do it. We had a lot of fun locked in a series of creepy rooms, trying to use word/number puzzles, and some slightly physical challenges, to unlock the door and escape. As a claustrophobic person who hates to be scared, I really enjoyed this experience. Plus, Ryan and I kicked ass and set the record for two people completing our challenge. BOOM. 

Until the next post!

xoxo

L & R