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.