London

After a great weekend exploring Merry Old England, an expired, 50 cent airport sandwich has left me bedridden for the day. There is nothing worse than being sick when you're far from home. But, it seems the worst is over and I'll be back on my feet tomorrow, which I'm grateful for. I'm not built to lay around all day.

So, this weekend. My last traveling weekend, which is heartbreaking and also a little exciting because I'm starting to really miss my Queen City and all the lovable humans that reside there. I spent my last weekend in London, where I was welcomed by friendly Brits, delicious beer, and best of all... English!! I didn't even realize what a luxury it would be to understand everything that was going on around me, or how much I'd missed eavesdropping.

On Saturday we woke up early and took the Tube (where we "Mind[ed] the gap") to the city. We embarked on a mission to do all the site seeing in the short period of time we had there. We tackled Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Big Ben, The London Eye, The Tower Bridge, The London Bridge, some other bridges, and, of course Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross. I love when I go to a city and it's exactly what I picture. London is a storybook. Rows on rows of fresh white apartments with little cars parked out front, red double decker busses careening around rainy street corners, subways bustling with business men and fashionable women, college boys drunkenly singing, arm in arm, after their soccer, ahem, their football team wins.

We met up with a friend of a friend who was studying in London and she showed us a few local pubs where we got fish and chips. London, unlike Barcelona, is a city that sleeps and we were home by 12:30. Home for this weekend was a terrifying hostel in which we were awoken both nights by a fist fight outside our door but it was remedied by free tea and toast in the lobby. I'll take what I can get honestly.

We had a perfect Sunday, starting with a stroll around town and a traditional English breakfast. It was probably the cutest dining experience I've ever had. A tiny, adorable woman took our order and offered us "cheers" as she handed us eggs and toast and poured our coffee. If you're ever in London, find the sunshine yellow awning over "Proud Mary's" and stop in for breakfast. We caught our flight, ate a regrettable sandwich and called it a weekend.

I am always tempted to say that each weekend is my new favorite weekend. London is the type of place I could see myself living one day, assuming I'd get paid enough to keep up with the absurdly high pound (seriously, that was not cool). My next two weekends I'll be in Luxembourg, which is okay. I'm starting to lose steam a little. Four months of non stop travel takes its toll on even the most adventure hungry people and it's taking it's toll on me. I'm craving the 80% of my wardrobe that is at home, I'm craving a good long run on familiar streets with the shoes I left behind, I'm craving a green vegetable, and I'm craving the company of my friends and my family. Missing home doesn't mean I'm squandering this trip or wishing my time away or saying Cincinnati is better than Europe. It just means I'm lucky enough to have had 19 years to set up a life that is pretty worth missing.

Although I'll be staying in Lux, the adventures aren't over. I have plenty of exploring to around here and once my stomach forgives me for my lapse in judgement yesterday, I'll continue the adventures and also, maybe do some studying.

Barcelona

Last night, after twelve hours of traveling, a cab, a plane, a bus, a train, a bus and two more trains, I found myself looking out the window, watching the sunset, being exhausted and starving and covered in a thin layer of the filth you only find in airports and train stations. But above all else, I was happy.

I'm desperately out of money, I'm tired of all my clothes, and I could really use a normal sized cup of coffee. However, I spent approximately 36 hours in Barcelona and again, like every weekend, it made it all worth it.

We arrived at 1am on Friday night and initially I was nervous to walk to my hostel. I quickly realized that 1am for people in Barcelona is like 2pm anywhere else. People were walking to bars, doing their grocery shopping, hanging out in parks and enjoying a nice meal outside. I felt the overwhelming urge to just run up to everyone and ask them if they knew what time it was. We safely walked to our hostel and spent a few hours walking along the beach crashing in our unfortunately gross hostel beds.

That day, we woke up and walked around a little bit before eventually being pulled back to the sand. Winter in Europe has featured a lot of grey rain, so it was pretty tempting to take advantage of this beautiful day on the sea. We soon ventured out again to meet up with a girl who lived in Barcelona and was an exchange student at my roommate Maddie's house in high school. She showed us around a little bit and we all got lunch. After seeing the Gaudi houses and the Sagrada Familia, we headed back to the beach one more time to enjoy a "siesta".

Unfortunately, Parc Guell requires reservations after some tourist supposedly cut the head off the salamander and took it home in his suitcase, and by the time we figured this out, they were all booked. I was a little disappointed by how expensive all the tourist sites were, and we didn't get to see many.

After our siesta, we met up with other students Maddie met in the exchange program. They showed us around all the old neighborhoods and took us to get drinks. We sat outside on a patio and drank cheap sangria and discussed their thoughts on America and our thoughts on Europe. It was really insightful to hear what they found interesting about America. My favorite thing about traveling is when you end up having time to sit down and talk with locals or with travelers from other countries. I feel like I am getting the most authentic experience through people. You can see the sights and read the books, but people tell you the most.

In Barcelona, people don't go out to clubs until almost 2am. At 11pm, we were all yawning and struggling to stay awake. But we powered through and made it to the club. We walked home along the beach around 6am and immediately packed and headed to the airport. "Tired" didn't even begin to describe how I felt on Sunday.

I desperately wish I could have had more time in this beautiful city, but I feel that way every time I go somewhere. The only way I console myself is by promising that I'll come back, and soon. You would really think that the endless train rides, headache ensuing ticket purchasing, and schedule making would grow old. And it sort of does, but it's so incredibly overshadowed by the good parts. When you spend the only remaining four euro you had for lunch on a bus ticket that turns out to be for a bus that doesn't even run on Sundays and you stand on the bus stop and cry a little, you just think of the time about 24 hours ago when you were listening to the gentle lap of the Mediterranean against the sand with some of the finest humans this planet has to offer.

I'm always tired, I'm always hungry, and I'm always ready for more. The late trains and the cancelled flights and the shocking 40 euro taxis don't scare me anymore. Because as disgusting as a hostel is, as long as a bus ride is, as shredded as my converse become, it's all worth it.

This weekend I'm taking some time to appreciate the country I'm living in. It took until April but I'm going to get acquainted with the Luxembourg countryside and get some sleep, so that when I'm jetting off to London the following weekend, I remember all the things I just wrote about.

Flor-ienna

I travel so many places in such a short amount of time, I can't keep up with the blog post per city like I was hoping. Hence the creation of my city hybrids.

Last night I got home from 10 days of traveling. Two fridays ago we had Easter break and my roommate and I left at 4 in the morning to catch a bus to the airport. We went through Milan with just enough time to grab a slice of pizza and then finally got to Florence, our final destination, where we met up with our other buddies who we were traveling with.

If you have never been to Florence, pack your bags right now. But maybe pack a few pairs of elastic waist pants while you're at it. I have never consumed so much consistently delicious food in such a short amount of time.

Saturday morning we slept in a little bit and then spent hours wandering around on the crowded streets, drinking coffee and eating pastries, dodging persistent vendors in the leather market and dragging the boys through every jewelry stand on the street. It's hard to give a full run-down of what we did each day because we did so little, and I mean that in the best way. If there was a sun soaked bench, rock, other sit-able object, we sat on it. We ate gelato, laid in the sun. Ate pasta, laid in the sun. Ate pizza, laid in the sun. It was perfect.

We did take a break from this lackadaisical lifestyle to visit David at the Academia. While the Mona Lisa in Paris was somewhat underwhelming, the David didn't disappoint in the slightest. My friend Rae is an art history major and was telling us why he was sculpted the way he was. The rest of the museum was quick to get to, which I appreciated because I was itching to get back outside.

On Sunday we went to an outdoor Easter mass that included the Florence tradition of "The Exploding Cart". It is exactly what it claims to be. Essentially a huge crowd gathers around and watches fireworks shoot off of a beautifully painted cart. While I didn't understand the religious element to it, as the mass was entirely in Italian, it was still an exciting experience.

On Monday, I took a 5 hour car ride, arrived in Milan at about 2am, slept in a Holiday Inn for approximately 2 hours before I woke up to catch a 630 flight to Germany, where I would eventually take a train to Salzburg.

Then this entire past week I spent with my music class in Salzburg and then Vienna, Austria. We toured Mozart's house (three of them actually), Beethoven's house (two of them actually) and Schubert's house (just the one). We attended an Opera at the famous Vienna opera house, dined at traditional Austrian restaurants which had us all singing American Pie in harmony on the train to the hotel. Our professor watched on proudly as his students, who normally cringe when asked to sing in class, willingly belted out song after song.

The weather was beautiful, the people were amazing, and while our professor had a tendency to be quite strict with us and just in general sort of unpleasant, all in all it was a great week where I experienced a lot of the city.

I'm relieved for a few days on no traveling but I leave Friday for Barcelona. I only have three trips and a few weekends hanging out in Luxembourg before I'm taking the ultimate trip back to America. I have mixed feelings about my return, I'm excited to see my friends and family, my bed, my shower, and just rest a little bit in general. But I'm nervous for the first weekend I realize every weekend isn't going to be a new exciting adventure. Hopefully I can make my own adventures in Cincinnati to hold me over until the next grand one.

But I'm not leaving yet, so for now I'm just gonna soak up my remaining time.

Copen-Pest

Surprise, surprise, I'm late with my blog post. So I am combining my last two weekends, which will be interesting because they could not have been more different.

Two weekends ago I spent one and a halfish days in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was a large group of 8 people, which has it's ups and downs. The plus side is I don't have to fear being murdered and robbed everywhere I go, although I usually still do. We arrived in the airport about 5 hours early for our flight so we paid 10 euro for a mediocre cheese sandwich and took turns using the weak airport wifi, scrambling to finish weekend homework.

When we arrived in Copenhagen, we were greeted with the smack of icy Nordic air. It was certainly one of the chillier weekends, which was perfect as it also happened to be the one weekend I didn't pack a hat or a scarf. After the traditional 30-45 minutes struggling to find the key and unlock the apartment we rented, we went looking for a relaxed local bar.

The first place we tried was so overbearingly smoke filled we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces. You sort of have to realize it's a culture thing as much as anything else is. Eventually we settled down at this odd and slightly frightening bar by our apartments.

The next day we got up early and immediately set out for coffee and pastries which, besides tiny coffee cups and expensive public restrooms, is the easiest thing to find in Europe. We drank our coffee as we headed to Trivoli theater which was closed until April. Then we wandered around and stared at the once copper roofs weathered over the years into a gorgeous green-blue which I now am promising to design my future home around.

We got on a boat tour of the canals and sat outside for the better view until the wind chapped our faces so bad we all agreed to sell out and sit inside. We saw the Opera house, Hans Christian Anderson's house, the Little Mermaid statue and a ton of colorful harbors. We walked around a street market and gorged ourselves on fresh fish and baked goods and then wandered around the rest of the day. By the time we made it around to getting dinner, we were so cold and so starving we settled upon slightly overpriced burgers and ate in silence while our hands thawed. Later that evening we hung out in the apartment for awhile and eventually wandered around to find a fun local club. Being the dorks we are, we left way too early and most places were still empty. So we settled on a small Italian bar and had a quieter night than we had hoped for. Probably for the best- as we caught a cab at 6am for our flight home the next morning.

Now, onto Budapest. Well, I actually had a week of school in between there, but no one wants to read a blog about that. So, Budapest. One of my favorite weekends. Do I say that every time? Well it's true here. Budapest was sunny and warm and welcoming and cultured and fun simultaneously. I traveled with a few familiar faces and a few people I haven't had the chance to get to know yet, and it was a perfect group.

Saturday we slept in a bit and then rented bikes to get around. Best decision of the weekend. Besides being ridiculously fun to bike around the city, we also got to see so much more than if we had been walking and saved our legs too. We biked to a park where we climbed tree and swung on a big wooden swing in front of some medieval ruins. After riding around for a few hours we went to yet another market where I loaded up on cheap homemade soap (everyone has their weakness). We went right to a walking tour of the Jewish Quarter which was interesting and chilling.

The main event of the day was to go to The Baths which is a large public hot tub. I assure you it's significantly more appealing than that description would lead you to believe. Picture a few hours of relaxing in a super warm pool, staring at a startlingly clear sky, and hanging out with awesome friends and a few hundred Hungarian strangers. It was awesome, ok?

We didn't get dinner until almost 11:30 when we fell trap to what ended up being a super mutually beneficial tourist trap. A random woman saw us wandering around and asked if we wanted to come to her bar and eat and drink. Turns out, we did! We ate traditional hungarian goulash and sat at a table with our own beer tap. Half the group stayed in to prepare for an early flight but others (myself included) were taking a later train and stayed out.

Turned out to be a terribly weird (but not weirdly terrible) night. We got turned away from the very famous Ruin Bar and ended up at a small karaoke bar full of drunk and costumed locals. We tried to join in the fun and belted out a Kelly Clarkson song but unfortunately Kelly's cure for teen angst doesn't reach quite as far as Hungary, and we were booed off stage. Worth it.

Some of us stayed through Sunday where we had a relaxing day going to the zoo and seeing some more sights. Hungary proved to be full of very friendly people, super accessible night life and rich, interesting history. We ended our trip on a low with a 15 hour train ride through the night to immediately hop off and go to our Monday classes. Not much to say there, it was as brutal as you would picture.

Standard note of how amazed I am at the speed this trip is flying by at. This weekend is Easter break and I'm headed back to Italy... Florence this time. I'm ready for some warm weather and cheap pizza. Italy, I've missed you.

Brugge & Ghent

Most of this blog is going to be setting the scene of this beautiful country I spent the past few days in.

We got to Brugge, Belgium at 10 o'clock on Friday night so when we got off the train and opted to walk the mile distance to our hostel, the streets were abandoned. In uniform with the rest of Europe (except Luxembourg, oddly) the streets and sidewalks blended together in a cobbled mess of grey stone and houses rose just barely over our heads. Gold street lamps cast shadows every couple feet and the occasional biker would ride by to remind us this country is actually inhabited. As we walked on and absorbed the quaint town around us, we heard music up ahead. We walked towards a crowded bar with people in their early twenties pouring out onto the street, drinking and chatting. We noted how fun that place looked, that we had found the popular place to hang on a Friday in Belgium. Turned out, that place was our hostel.

I stayed in a "dorm" style room with four other friends and had one empty bed. We hung out downstairs for a while, met the band that had been playing, an American, an Italian and a Belgian, and then headed up to bed to get some sleep before exploring Saturday.

Saturday morning we got up decently early and immediately began our search for good, cheap coffee. After weaving in and out of a few shops and bakeries, we headed to the square and people watched in the sun for awhile. The square is about the size of San Marco in Venice, but about a quarter less beautiful and half as crowded. Beautiful, nonetheless. All the buildings are bright shades of red and peach and gold. It was just touristy enough that there were things to do and see and reasonably priced food, but not so touristy that it was impossibly crowded and stripped of real culture.

We wandered around a street market, sampled some cheese, bought cheap jewelry that has already left a green ring around my finger, and watched the preparation for what appeared to be a bike race. I loved how many flower boxes were hanging from second stories windows, overflowing with red flowers and how many old dogs with gray faces walked, leash-less, right next to the their owner. I was certainly in no hurry to leave Belgium, I can't imagine these dogs were either.

We got some lunch at a nice place after a mean place lied directly to our phases, telling us they were full as we stood amidst a sea of empty tables. Then we went to the chocolate museum where I learned that chocolate was equivalent to champagne back in the time of Marie Antoinette... and just about nothing else. Thankful for free samples and cheap student ticket prices to make up for an otherwise skippable museum.

We headed back to our hostile and enjoyed to company of each other and our huge sunny window. Right before we were going to leave to head downstairs, our sixth roommate showed up. Another Canadian, we are meeting a ton of Canadians here! We ended up hanging out with him and his friends (students from all over the world studying in The Netherlands) for the majority of the night.

Sunday we woke up and took a train to Ghent. While I was in Ghent, I had the feeling that the walls were going to collapse around me and reveal I had been on a movie set. We thought Brugge was abandoned, that was nothing compared to Ghent. On the route we took from the train station, we didn't see a single person, no lights on, not even any cars driving down the stone streets. We did see plenty of frightening, anarchist street art. On one building, on the second story, there was a small bronze boy sculpted to look like he was being hung from the wall. Chilling, yet incredibly interesting environment.

When we got into the center of town, there were plenty of people milling around and we got lunch and wandered a bit. I am becoming an excellent wanderer. We saw the street famous for it's "graffiti" style art and climbed to the top of a tower for a city view. Then we took the next train home, exhausted.

Belgium wasn't my most active weekend or my most spontaneous, wild weekend, but it was still one of my best so far. It was cool to see where my family had come from (not the exact city, but close enough) and to just lazily meander through the streets. Not to mention we ate some seriously good chocolate.

This weekend I'm flying to Copenhagen! Ideally we will also be able to hop over to visit Sweden, but either way I'm very excited. It's crazy how fast time is going! I have the rest of my weekends planned and I'm visiting great places. I know I'm going to be on the plane back to America before I know it, so I'm going to make sure I'm really absorbing everything I can these next few weeks. I'm really learning a lot about myself, mostly how independent I can be and how capable I am of doing amazing things that are outside my comfort zone.

Interlaken

I've been home from Switzerland for two days and I'm only just now starting to recover from the grief of leaving. If you are ever given the opportunity to travel, put Switzerland on your list.

I traveled with just my roommate, which was a nice change of pace and made for an incredibly easy going weekend. We arrived in Thun, about 30 minutes outside Interlaken, to get to the apartment we were staying in for the weekend. After a somewhat frightening adventure getting the key and getting inside, we decided to just crash and get up early the next morning.

At 8am on Saturday, we packed our backpacks and grabbed a train towards a random mountain we had selected. We knew we wanted to hike, and it turns out, there's a decent amount of mountains to choose from. So we just picked one. We got off the bus and looked around and saw a path that appeared to be leading upwards, so we started climbing. It wasn't lost on us that it could have been a path to someone's house, a path that would end un 500 feet, a path that lead to a scary and dangerous place we shouldn't be, but we just climbed it anyway because it was right there.

Luckily it wasn't any of those things. About ten minutes in, it dawned on us how terribly out of shape we both were. We were pulling to the side, leaning on trees and exploiting the gorgeous view as a reason to stop and catch our breath. Eventually we found our rhythm (it took five tries to spell that) and climbed on without stopping. I could feel my heart slamming in my chest as the air got a little bit harder to breathe and the ground turned from sticky mud, to icy leaves, to a foot of clean, undisturbed snow. It was like walking through every season in a few hours. A few hours later we reached "the top". We stood in awe at the few of sparkling lakes and snow capped mountains every direction your turned.

We sat down and opened our lunch of swiss cheese and crackers and basked in one of those moments where you just stop and think "I'm here, I'm doing this right now." We slipped and slid all the way back down the mountain after lunch which proved to be almost more difficult than climbing up.

That night, we got picked up to go to night sledding. We climb into this van with about 10 of the loudest most obnoxious, alcohol fueled fellow Americans and cringed the entire way until they finally let us out. There we met other, significantly more tolerable college kids, from all over America and other people from all over the world.

In case you are wondering what night sledding consists of, because I was, it's basically a few experienced employees of Interlaken Outdoor taking you up to the top of a pitch black mountain in a cable car and dropping you off. There you pace and panic and stare at the hugeness of this mountain you're expected to sled down and if you can get past the pacing and the panicking, hopefully take a minute to look at the sky and see the most stars you've ever seen in one sky.

It took about an hour to sled all the way down this mountain and it was so incredibly exhilarating. Afterwards, we had a fondue dinner and sat around talking with other students about the differences in our study abroad experiences.

The next morning, we took a 45 minute walk from the train station to see the lakes only to turn around and realize had we gone the other way, it would have taken 5. But it was hard to be bitter staring into this water that was so blue I wasn't convinced they hadn't dyed it. We had to reach down and touch the rocks only to see they were underwater. We sat on the dock and absorbed as much of the view as we could before getting back on the train and heading back to Luxembourg.

Interlaken was by far the most beautiful place we've been and it broke my heart when the train pulled away from the mountains. Hopefully Belgium this upcoming weekend will make me feel better.

Paris

You would not think keeping up with one blog post a week would be as difficult as it's proving to be. By the time I get around to writing about my weekend, I'm almost ready to leave for my next one. So, I apologize as my posts deteriorate in creativity, I'm in a permanent sleep deprived state.

This week is a tired one. I'm concerned my travels are catching up with me a little bit. Thankfully, the universe sensed this and cancelled my early Thursday class, so I'll have some time to recoup before my next adventure.

Friday afternoon I left on a school trip to go to Amneville, France. We were supposed to be attending a "Hot Spring", which is significantly more glamorous than it turned out to be. More accurately, it was a heated public pool with access outdoors and a few steam rooms. But we didn't let the let down about the fact that it was not in fact a "spring" of any sort ruin the experience. After years of lifeguarding, nannying, and competitive swimming, I hadn't gotten to swim just for fun in years. Afterwards we were dropped at the Thionville train station where we killed time until taking off for Paris.

We arrived in Paris late Friday night and after a terrifying mix up where we forgot to tell our Airbnb host we were bringing an additional boy, we decided we couldn't wait until Saturday to see the Eiffel tower. We took the train and arrived at the lonely tower around 1am. It was nice to have the entire thing to ourselves, but it wasn't lit up. We promised to come back two more times, at least.

Saturday morning we took to the Louvre, spending at least 3 hours there, and seeing approximately 30% of it. It was an experience just to be there and we got through the Egyptian art, the Greek statues, and the French paintings. We saw the Mona Lisa, of course and personal opinion, it was just alright. Obviously it was a great painting, but it wasn't my favorite thing I saw while I was there.

After that we grabbed a quick lunch and went to see the Arc de Triomphe. Then we wandered around all the tourist shops and headed back to the Airbnb to rest for an hour or so before returning to the Eiffel tower. This time it was lit up and we got to see it sparkle. We also met some fellow travelers from Canada. They were on a battlefield tour of Europe and we all went out to a Canadian themed bar (that seemed like a regular bar) and after that an Irish bar next door.

It was really nice to meet new people and hear their thoughts on American culture. We didn't get home until almost 5am and immediately crashed. We were a little too tired to hit the Catacombs that morning and instead just wandered around the city and got lunch and coffee until it was time to catch our train home.

I think Paris was my favorite weekend so far. It was only me and three other people traveling, which was an easy number to make sure everyone was getting to do what they wanted to do. We also balanced sight seeing and activities with relaxing and actually getting to just sit and enjoy our time there. It can be hard to do that when you're trying to see an entire city in less than 48 hours.

Although the locals were a bit more rude than we've experienced in other countries, it was really emotional to experience Paris after all the awful events that have occurred there lately. We saw the memorial people had set up in the center of town and it was an intense feeling; even though I knew no one involved and had never even been to this city it was incredibly emotional to look at how desperate people were for peace, and how little they understood why such violence had been inflicted on their city.

48 hours was not nearly enough with the beautiful city, and I am sure to return someday. Until then, I have to buckle down in school for a little while (yeah, I'm actually in school here).

Friday I leave for hiking and playing in the snow in Interlaken, Switzerland. Can't wait for more adventures!!