My Grey World : Europe, here I come..

Posted by sylv in May 3rd, 2008

Well if you’ve known me for quite some time you’ll realize I’m more a “home girl”. I don’t go out much unless really necessary, and I prefer to cuddle at home with my boyfriend rather to going out dating.

And sooooo, is it a big surprise that I will be going on a trip.. To Europe!

It’s just a 6-day trip, but still.. It’s Europe! It’s at least another continent! The farthest I went was to Hong Kong, and that was when I was still 2 years old or something, so don’t count it.

Aaaaanyway.
I’ll be joining a choir competition/festival (with my SMU Chamber Choir of course) in Poland called Mundus Cantat. It actually only lasts until May 25th and my choir will come back on the 26th, but I decided bravely to extend my stay!!

I mean, come on. I’ll be in Europe already and I’ll have nothing to do on this freaking 4-month-long holiday (I won’t come home this holiday… More of that later). And soooo I made the decision. I came to that travel agency again and said I wanted to extend. The lady said I would need to pay some extra. It’s actually only SGD 200 so I think it’s still great.

I delayed writing this happy blogpost (I was literally jumping so happily when my mom allowed me to extend my stay in Europe!) coz I haven’t really planned my trip. And well, I’m quite a plan-addict person, whatever that means, and it’s kinda worrying me not having a plan at all.

I had many choices. I wanted to visit a lot of places. Well unfortunately I only have 6 days. I need to be back at Paris on 2nd of June to catch the plane back to Singapore. And so here’s my planned itinerary for now.

May 26 - Arrive in Paris
May 27 - fly/take train to Rome to visit my dear friend Maegan. She’s currently on exchange there and totally loving it! Hope she’ll have time to show me around her city (she said it’s hers now).
May 28 - still Rome
May 29 - Rome.
I decided to spend a lot of time in Rome due to the recommendation of my travel buddy Krishna who won’t be going with me to Rome (he’ll be going to Amsterdam instead). He said Rome is just amazing and all that and judging from Maegan’s story about it (read it in her blog), I’m pretty convinced that Rome is indeed amazing. Hope I can go around Rome to taste all its beauty! *nudge Maegan* Oh and!! I want to taste the real pasta in Italy!!
May 30 - Fly/take train to Amsterdam to meet Krishna. He’s going to visit many relatives there so when I’m in Rome he’ll be in Amsterdam instead. I found this cool IAmsterdamCard that offers free public transport ride and free entrance to museums. I want to visit Madame Tussaud! And I want to visit the “nightlife”. Wonder if 19 is already considered legal there?
May 31 - still in Amsterdam
June 1 - fly/take train to Paris. Most probably I’ll be taking train though. Will be arriving in Paris at about 1 PM.
June 2 - Will still be in Paris looking around and checking out things. My flight will be on 23.15 PM so, yeah. I’m gonna visit my high school friend Lila who’s currently studying in a conservatory there. It’s gonna be exciting and loadsss to catch up. I hope she doesn’t cringe seeing my obvious weight gain though T_T
June 3 - Supposedly back in Singapore.. hahaha.

I have booked accomodations in Paris. Initially I and Krishna wanted hostels, but then we found out that hostels’ rooms are usually 4 bed/6 bed/8 bed… Well in other words we’ll be sharing with some other unknown guys. So we decided to book budget hotels instead, so it will be a 2-bed room. It was quite a disaster at first, coz I almost booked the Double Bed room (I booked through hostelworld btw). Double bed means one large bed, not 2 beds, ladies and gentlemen! No matter how much I love Krishna (platonically of course), I don’t want to share my bed. Mwahaha!
But anyway, we already got rooms booked at 2 hotels.. Montmartre and Luna Park. Hope that they get our reservations though..

Now I have several questions to ask you readers that might have some experience travelling in Europe..

Should I bring my laptop there?
Well you know.. I wanna be such a hard-core blogger to bring my laptop there and, you know, maybe liveblogging. Hahaha. However it would be quite heavy though to bring it.. And I heard it’s not so safe in Europe. So how? Any suggestions?

What should I take from Paris to Rome to Amsterdam and back to Paris?
I know there are many budget airlines available but it’s still kinda expensive.. The cheapest I could get (Ryanair) is about 90 EUR.. Should I get train tickets instead? Train tickets (Thalys) should be about 70 EUR.. Or should I just get Eurail pass instead.. I don’t know whether I can get Eurail pass for Paris-Rome-Amsterdam though, since Rome to Amsterdam is quite far.. Well I don’t know.. Suggestion? I would like the journey time not to be too long, as I can waste precious hours that can be used for sightseeing instead.. Suggestions please?

Will you guys be willing to donate me some money to buy me some camera?
As you guys know, I don’t have any digital cameras yet and what I have is a CMI (cannot make it) 2 MP phone camera. Will you guys be willing to donate just a little to buy me a digital camera? Even when the donated money is not enough, I will still use it for my Europe trip. Ok? Please donate… Please.. =P I promise you exciting blog posts with marvelous pictures!
You can donate via the button below…

That’s all today!

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