Some Travel Advice

When traveling, few things influence your overall impression of a place more than the weather. In my experience, a frozen tourist is a grumpy tourist. Or maybe that's just me.

For most of my trips, I was lucky in the weather department. Munich was rainy but not too cold, Fes was hot but not terribly so...but Belgium (in late June) was worse than Dublin in November. The wind was so bad it broke my umbrella.

Antwerp was also the site of my weirdest hostel experience. Anyone one who has traveled on the cheap in Europe knows hostels are plentiful and usually pretty decent. We stayed at a women's hostel in Rome so when I was booking hostels for Antwerp and Ghent, I forgot to make sure the rooms in Antwerp weren't co-ed.

We arrived at the hostel in Antwerp and the first person we saw looked like he'd been a Rolling Stones' groupie who'd never made it to rehab. Yikes. Luckily KT and I managed to get a double room to ourselves that night (instead of the four person room I'd booked for us). The second night however, we shared a four person room with a very tall, steel-toe boot wearing bald Englishman who said something to me about how it was good to open the window because he needed to sober up. That night, I slept with the sharp part of my broken umbrella under my bed. Note to self and other budget minded female travelers: make sure the hostel has an age limit OR book a female only room. You'll sleep much better if you do.

*This picture is from Porto, Portugal...but you get the idea