Arrivederci Milano

So I’m sitting at the Zurich airport and I can’t believe that exactly 128 days ago I was at this same airport about to begin my study abroad experience. Within those 18 weeks I’ve somehow managed to see 28 cities and 15 countries. Of course my final exam grades show exactly what my priorities were this semester. I’ve never felt shittier after finals week, and I’ve never actually had a fear of failing my classes until this semester. Experience new things, I guess. The worst part about studying abroad is leaving. I’m really dreading going back to the US because I know that once I step off the plane, this entire semester is going to feel like a dream. Everything’s going to feel surreal and I hate that feeling. It only really hit me a couple of days ago that I was studying abroad and that this semester was not going to last indefinitely. I just lived in Milan for an entire semester, and that’s going to be it. There’s a big chance I’m not even coming back to Milan, and I may never have the chance again to spend this much time in Europe (except now I REALLY want to work internationally, at least for a little while). I need more time to take all of Europe in. Yea there were a lot of things I hated about Milan, but I’m really going to miss it. Already getting nostalgic and I haven’t even left yet. This is going to be rushed because my flight is boarding soon.

MADRID, SPAIN

This city really just reminded me of a dirtier NYC, but Europe edition. There’s not too much to do here, but the highlight of the trip was the tour of the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. I love those soccer players. It was also pretty cool seeing the Guernica.

LONDON, ENGLAND

Since I had already been to London before, I thought that two days here would have been enough. I was so wrong. We spent one day to tour Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, and the Roman Baths, but then the next day we were running all over London trying to see all the sights. I definitely needed more time to take everything in. The only reason I really wanted to go to London was because Harry Potter was coming out that weekend. When will I ever get the chance again to see Harry Potter IN London on opening weekend?? I know London isn’t known for good food, but I love their pasties. I can definitely see myself living in London.

OSLO, NORWAY

Oslo is known for having the highest standard of living, so everything was super expensive. After living in Europe, I’ve decided that I can never live in cold weather. Yea there’s snow, but snow’s only fun for the first hour and then after that it gets annoying. Especially if you have to walk around in the snow all day and you can’t feel your toes because your socks are soaked. I don’t understand how people survive in this type of weather. I really never thought I would make it up to Oslo, but it was pretty cool seeing this city, even if the high was 20 degrees. I also saw The Scream. I’m just getting cultured in all types of art in Europe.

PARIS, FRANCE

Third time coming to Paris, but this time the Christmas Markets were up! And The Champs Elysees is gorgeous lit up with Christmas lights at night. I tried my first macaroon from Laduree, the famous Macaroon shop. Mmmm delicious.

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

Didn’t really know what to expect from Budapest, but I thought the city was pretty interesting. The city’s actually really gorgeous. Explored an underground Labyrinth, which was really scary. Budapest was my first introduction to legit Christmas Market food, and that stuff is delicious.

KRAKOW, POLAND

Oslo’s weather was nothing compared to Krakow’s. The high was around 8 degrees and the lows reached 2 degrees. Because of the massive snowfall, our plane ended up bringing us to a different airport and we had to take a 5-hour bus into Krakow. It was not a fun experience. I was also not prepared for the snow. I mainly wanted to go to Krakow to see the Auschwitz concentration camp. It was so eerie and I can’t even imagine what it would have been like living there in the winter.

FRANKFURT, GERMANY

Germany is known for their Christmas Markets, so I couldn’t leave Europe without seeing one. That’s about all I did in Frankfurt. Spent the entire day at the Christmas Market pigging out and shopping. I love Christmas Markets! They’re so festive and feel like carnivals. 

Hello America

To the land of Harry Potter

I should be studying right now, so of courseeee I’ve decided it’s the perfect time to update my tumblr. I’m seriously pretty exhausted from all this traveling and cramming for classes in between, but I only have two more months left in Europe, so I need to make the most of it! I’ve been feeling kind of homesick recently, though. I guess it just kind of hit me that I won’t really be back home in Tennessee anymore…

BARCELONA, SPAIN

I LOVED Barcelona. I spent five days there and it still wasn’t enough time for me to see and do everything that I wanted to do. I think I could have spent forever exploring the city. Barcelona has everything I could want in a city. It’s so full of culture and life, it has perfect weather, and I love the landscape. If you want to be inspired by art and architecture, you definitely need to go visit Barcelona. Gaudi’s designs are amazing. His architecture is really organic and he based everything from nature. Sad news he was run over by a tram, which is apparently why they don’t have trams in Barcelona anymore.

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

So we go from beach weather to about 30-40 degrees lower in Stockholm. I never thought I would make it up to a Scandinavian country while studying abroad, but I guess it worked out. Stockholm is really different from the other cities I’ve visited this semester. I didn’t know anything about this city before going, but the city is actually made up of a bunch of islands, which is interesting. The city’s really clean and the people are EXTREMELY nice and so willing to help. Everyone here just seems more classy and sophisticated. Pretty regal. I got a taste of being homeless here, though. Due to my misreading of the bus schedule, we missed the last bus to the airport so we were stuck roaming Stockholm for about three hours in the coldest weather I’ve ever experienced. Of course in this freezing weather everything closes really early, so there is nowhere to take cover. Oh the things I do to see Europe.

ISCHIA, ITALY

Back to warm weather! We originally were planning on going to Capri, but when we booked the hotel, we accidently booked it on Ischia instead of Capri. Ischia’s a resort island in Italy, and it was pretty cool seeing it. We rented a car and drove around the island to see all the tiny towns. Climbed up the tallest mountain on the island… right into a rain cloud. Just our luck it would only rain while we were at the peak of the mountain. The house of an ex-hermit sits at the top of the mountain, and it’s pretty creepy seeing it when it’s all foggy and deserted at the top.

AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

Met up with Christina Lee to have some fun in Amsterdam! :] Apart from what everyone usually thinks of when they think of Amsterdam, this city is actually interesting and really pretty. Apparently Amsterdam is one of the most romantic cities in Europe. My favorite part was seeing Anne Frank’s house. It’s just really eerie being somewhere where history like the holocaust was so recent.

NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND

Yes English accents! Except the accent in Newcastle is really strange. It’s called the Geordie accent, and when I first heard it I swore the guy was speaking another language. It’s supposedly the most attractive accent in England, but idk, it didn’t sound too attractive to me. I loved hearing English accents everywhere though! Why is it that the trashiest person could speak with an English accent and they would sound proper? There’s not much to do in Newcastle. The Gateshead Millennium Bridge is a pretty big deal. To let ships pass, the bridge tilts up.

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

The inspiration for Harry Potter! It was pretty cool to see the places that inspired JK Rowling and the lochs in the highlands where they shot scenes for the Harry Potter movies. Edinburgh has been one of my favorite cities and I really wished I had spent some more time there. I loved how a lot of the city still looks really medieval with all the older buildings. Arthur’s Seat had the most amazing view of the city, but the hike up was exhausting. Spent Halloween in Edinburgh, so I went on a haunted tour of one of the world’s most haunted cities. Also took a day tour up to the highlands. I LOVE the scenery. The mountains and lakes are so breathtakingly gorgeous. I got to see Loch Ness, but sadly didn’t see Nessie.

DUBLIN, IRELAND

The main thing to do in Dublin is to drink beer, so the biggest attraction here is the Guinness Storehouse tour. The Guinness Storehouse is actually really interesting, and weirdly enough, kind of inspiring haha. Other than the storehouse, there’s not really much to do in Dublin. We did see a student protest, though. College students from all over Ireland went to Dublin to protest the increase in tuition.

Adventures Around Italy

The past three weeks have been filled with classes, or at least the one class I have to attend (I will fail my other three classes if I don’t start studying soon) and exploring Italy.

CINQUE TERRE

Cinque Terre is made up of five coastal towns. We decided to try the five-hour hike between the five towns, and I seriously thought I was going to die. Hiking up mountains covered in mud in flip flops is not fun. We did the entire hike in one day, so we didn’t really have too much time to enjoy each town, but the view from the mountains was SO GORGEOUS.

ROME

I loved Rome! It’s super touristy, but really pretty, especially at night. We went to the Vatican, and I couldn’t believe I was there. St. Peter’s Basilica was so breathtaking. I could not get enough of it. I’m not surprised people actually cry when they first see it. I really don’t know how to explain why I loved Rome so much.

VERONA

Setting for Romeo and Juliet. There’s not much to do here, but I really liked walking through Verona, and it had an amazing view of the countryside and mountains surrounding it. I mainly chose to visit Verona because Letters to Juliet was filmed there, and it looked so pretty in the movie.

NAPLES

Really dirty and sketch. That’s about all I got from it. I’m sure there’s more to the city, but I didn’t stay long enough to see it.

POMPEII

It was really cool climbing up to Mt. Vesuvius and seeing the actual ruins of Pompeii. It was actually pretty eerie walking around Pompeii, like walking around a ghost town. I’m jealous of Europe because there’s so much history everywhere.

FLORENCE

Florence reminded me of Prague, so of course I loved this city. I actually wasn’t really expecting too much from Florence, but it really surprised me. We saw Michelangelo’s David, which is A LOT bigger than I thought it would be.

VENICE

Wow it’s so easy to get lost in Venice. It’s really confusing trying to figure out the tiny streets and the canals because there are SO MANY. I really liked walking around Venice, but after a while, it just gets frustrating because you can’t figure out where you are and how to get to where you want to go.

Ok I want to write more about each city, but I really don’t know what to write without being really repetitive and boring. My parents came to Milan today! Which of course means I was fed delicious Chinese food. 

I’m Surprised Europeans Aren’t Fat

Seriously, there are so many delicious foods here. Belgium is home to chocolate, waffles, fries, muscles, and beer! It was extremely hard not to eat everything in sight. Brussels is actually a lot better than I expected. It started out as pretty gloomy and not exciting at all (probably also because we had been traveling for about 12 hours straight and it was rainy weather), but Brussels is actually really full of life. We also took a day trip to Bruge, the Venice of the north. Bruge was really beautiful, and didn’t feel like a real city at all. It seriously felt like the whole town was just built for tourists and no one really lived there. Kind of like Disney World. I’m in love with the architecture and the cute quaint houses in Bruge. The nightlife in Brussels was INSANE. Delirium is a three-story bar and holds the world record for having the most types of beers in one place. 2004 beers all in one place! And Fuse is just indescribable. The trip ended perfectly with an amazing light show at the Grand Palace.

So I had my first class today. Hellooo late nights with my book because there is no way I’m going to learn anything in class. I tried for the first half to pay attention to the professor, but after a while I just got tired of trying to understand her accent. Oh well, this semester doesn’t feel like a real semester anyways. I’ve already been treating it as a super extended break. I can’t wait for my next trip to the gorgeous beaches of Cinque Terre!

CIAO!

So yea, I suck at updating blogs. I’ve been in Milan for about a week now and it’s all a little overwhelming and nothing really feels real. My two-week adventure around Europe was AMAZING! I definitely want to go back to the cities we visited.

First Stop: VIENNA, AUSTRIA

Honestly, our visit to Vienna feels so long ago that it doesn’t even feel like I went there. After DAYS of traveling, we finally arrived in Vienna and got lost for about three hours trying to find our hostel. What a miserable start to our trip, but it was only the start. Getting lost in foreign countries will just be my new thing this semester since it’s happened so much in just the three weeks I’ve been here. It didn’t even feel like I was in Europe when we were in Vienna. What I really liked about this trip was that it was basically a review of what I learned in high school European History (the class I took second semester senior year. So you knowww, I didn’t learn anything). The Schonbrunn was GORGEOUS, especially the garden behind it. It seriously looked like a painting. I really liked just walking around Vienna because it was my first taste of Europe, and I really loved the narrow streets with buildings just towering over you everywhere.

Second Stop: PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

I think that out of all the cities we visited, Prague was my favorite. I’m not really sure why, but when I imagine Europe, Prague fits the picture. I think it’s all the brightly colored buildings lining the streets. Our hostel was right next to the river, so it had a really nice view and we could walk everywhere.  There weren’t really too many touristy attractions in Prague, but it was really fun just wandering around and finding new things. The astronomical clock had a breathtaking view of Prague.

Third Stop: BERLIN, GERMANY

Berlin was pretty industrial. The buildings were pretty modern and the city didn’t feel as old and authentic as Vienna and Prague did. It was really eerie walking around Berlin, especially the concentration camp, because of all the history behind the city and just how recently it had all happened. I tried some German food, and it was… interesting. I thought I was getting a steak but it turned out to be whipped blood that looked like a sausage.

Fourth Stop: PARIS, FRANCE

Wow Paris is expensive, and everything is so spread out that it’s difficult to walk anywhere. The metro system in Paris is probably the oldest and most disgusting metro system I’ve seen so far. This is where I wish I had actually remembered something from my four wasted years of French in high school. I got a few phrases, but definitely not enough to get around. Paris was REALLY touristy, and of course we went to see all the sights. We saved one day to go see Versailles, which was so gorgeous, but packed with people so that kind of ruined the effect. The gardens around the palace were so huge and went on for what looked like miles. The red light district was pretty interesting. Never have I seen so many sex shops just lining the street, but the red light district wasn’t as sketch as I thought it would be. We went at night, and there were still elderly people out just relaxing on benches.

Fifth Stop: NICE, FRANCE

Nice was kind of a trip for us to relax and unwind after two intense weeks of traveling. All the beaches in Nice are rocky beaches, so it was kind of painful walking around. It felt so amazing to lie all day on the beaches and relax, though. Too bad I forgot to put on sunscreen and got completely tomato red from head to toe. And yes, nude beaches in Nice are real.

Final Stop: MILAN, ITALY

I actually really like Milan. I’ve just spent the past week exploring the city and getting lost. The shopping here is INTENSE and fashion week is coming up! My university’s pretty ridiculous. They sponsored a clubbing event for international students with FREE alcohol. And never in America would a university write in its welcome packet that a welcome cocktail is included in its welcome activities. Mmmm I’m waiting for that cocktail.

Sorry my post was probably really boring and not specific at all. I promise I’ll get better at this. Classes don’t start for another week so I’m taking a trip to Brussels, Belgium in a few hours! I can’t believe I’ve only been in Milan for a week and I’m already off on another trip. Just thinking about all the cities I want to visit, this semester is already going by too quickly!

CIAO!

I want to be a world traveler

So I already really miss this

but I can’t be sad for too long because I have this waiting for me

(Venice not Milan, but it’s still Italy!)

HELLOOOO

So I’ve decided to start a tumblr

1) because I have run out of things to do at what I like to call an internship

2) because I’m about to begin an epic (I hope) semester in Europe and want to record my adventures through tumblr

I don’t know whether frequently updating would be a good or bad thing. Updating could either mean I have so much I can’t wait to share with the world! Or it could mean I am absolutely bored out of my mind and have nothing better to do. Let’s hope it’s the first.