Don't come back..... Alive!

These past two weeks have been such a great experience. However, I am glad to be back in Olomouc. The part that I am going to focus on is the group field trip. To start off our trip was a little bit earlier than I would have like but that is okay. Skye and I woke up at 7am just to do a double check of what we were taking and to shower. Then at the bus before 9am. The first stop was Vienna which was a three hour bus ride from Olomouc. This drive was fairly easy, well at least I think it was since I was asleep the entire time. Once we got to our hostel we had about half an hour to just settle and this is where miscommunication happened. Three friends and I took that as we had time to go and grab food since we were really hungry, so we went and grabbed food. We were back in the 30 minutes but our group had already left. It was a miscommunication and it happens. So the first day we really did not do much. Then the next day we went to the Habsburg’s summer castle. What is really interesting about this family is the story behind them. So they were the ruling family over this area for a long time, which meant that they had lots of fortune and historical items. When the family was overthrown it was a fleeing in the middle of the night kind of thing, which meant that they had to leave almost everything that they owned. Of course I was not mad at this because like all historical items there was a museum with everything that was found. The family even tried to recover some of the items, but this failed miserably. If I was this family I would be seriously upset, the photos below will explain a little more. The agreement with this family was that they could leave with their lives and only come back in a coffin. So at least you could be buried with your family but you can never go to the land that they lived on…alive.

Just a small section of their summer house.

The royal set of jewels.

After this we got to go to a natural history museum. This was a great experience just because we have gone to so many art museums, which is awesome, but they were starting to all look the same. Here we got to look through tons of rocks, dead fish (which I was dragged to), and dinosaurs. This is also where our new traveling companion Clooney was bought. So now George has a friend named Clooney. Yep we are great at naming things. After this we were free to ourselves and like awesome women we shopped.

This is Cassie's friend, Mr. Bird.

Cassie is a professional photographer.

Cassie's boyfriend, really excited they
get to eat.

Outside the Natural History Museum.

The next day we were off again, this time to Venice. I honestly thought that the bus ride there was never going to stop. It took 7 hours for us to get there. Also they have a law here that if a bus has more than 8 people then it had to stop for 45 minutes after 4 hours of driving. So this was a great time to stop and eat. I will put a picture of where we stopped because it looked unreal. Venice I will speak about briefly about because it is late and a good majority of the time there we spent trying to figure out where we were. Venice was beautiful and I would not recommend for anyone to go there unless they are ready for stairs. It was built of little islands which were connected by bridges so no matter where you went there was at least one bridge you had to cross. I will post some pictures just so that way I can make up for not speaking much about it. Until next time. :-)

Just a section of the Duke's Castle.

A hallway in the Duke's Castle.

The morning in Venice we decided to dress up.