Post Semester Travels

Hi! I have spent the last two weeks seeing Europe! As I said earlier, my trip took me to France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic. I’ll try to sum it up as best as I can! My boyfriend, Clayton, joined me on this backpacking excursion once we were both done at our universities. Day one brought us to Strasbourg. This was by far our most hectic day as far as trains go…we got stuck at one of our connecting cities due to trains not running properly with the recent snowfall. So we spent 7 hours getting there, rather than the 3 and a half that was planned! Nevertheless, Strasbourg, France is an amazing city. My overview of it would combine the houses of Germany, the quaintness of Brugge, and the canals of Amsterdam. One of my friends from Uni Koeln lives there so she gave us a short tour of the city before we headed off to Karlsruhe to stay with my relatives for Christmas. We stayed there for two nights and enjoyed our first German Christmas…which ended up being pretty similar to an American Christmas. We attended mass at their church, had a wonderful fondue dinner, and were able to join my family while they opened their presents. We headed out on the Christmas morning to our next city, Zurich. The city was really nice and we were able to see the main sites in a few hours. It was pretty cold, and barely anything was open because of Christmas, so we ended up keeping our sightseeing to a minimum and ate at an American bar. Not exactly the Christmas feast I would have liked, but it was still nice J We only spent one night in Zurich before continuing onto Florence. Our next 3 days and 2 nights in Florence were absolutely wonderful. This was my first time to Italy and I was just stunned by the quaintness of the town and the unique architecture. We visited the Duomo and climbed the bell tour for an amazing view of the city, visited a bunch of other churches, walked along the river, and enjoyed our first taste of authentic Italian food. One highlight for me of this city was seeing Michelangelo’s sculpture of David at the Academia gallery. The statue is absolutely magnificent; we spent at least an hour just looking at the statue! Our next stop…Rome! We were able to spent three nights in Rome; we visited the Coliseum, the Roman Forum, the Trevi Fountain, Vatican City, San Angelo Castle, the Spanish steps, and many other places. Rome was my far my favorite city…it is so unique in the aspect that there are so many randomly placed fountains and statues around the city that I feel like I am constantly walking in a museum! Along with Edinburgh, it was one of my favorite cities in Europe and I HIGHLY recommend going to it! It was also our warmest cities, with temperatures in the high 40’s, so we definitely enjoyed that! We next headed to Venice. Venice was a very nice city, but I wasn’t a huge fan of it. Except walking around, we couldn’t find that much to do to fill our time. We took our one and only night train between Venice and Vienna, which we quickly found out was not worth the money that we saved on not getting a hostel. Once we got to Vienna, we visited Schonbrunn Palace for a few hours, then headed back to our hostel and rested for the remainder of the day. The next day, we visited the Zentral Friedhof, where Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss, and Schubert are buried. We did our own walking tour of the city and were able to see the Opera, town hall, the Freud Museum, and a bunch of other stunning buildings also. Vienna is so clean and the buildings all look so new that we were both amazed! Clayton and I were also able to meet up with another one of my friends from Uni Koln and spend the day with him. We of course ate Wiener Schnitzel for dinner, which was pretty good! After Vienna, our last stop was the Czech Republic. At my high school, we had an exchange student named Erika, who is Czech and currently lives in Prague. She brought us to our hostel, gave us a walking tour, and accompanied us for most of our time spent there. It was a real treat to see her and to be shown the city by a native Czech. We visited the Prague Castle, the old town, Wenceslas Square, the astronomical clock, and a few churches while we were there. Prague is a beautiful city and I would highly recommend it! Overall, the trip was very tiring, but that means we saw as much as we could. I was very glad once I didn’t have to stay at hostels anymore! I spent my last 2 days in Cologne with my relatives. They were so gracious to let me stay there and I’m going to miss them so much! A word to the wise…Clayton and I both agreed that we aren’t sightseeing in winter anymore! We had some pretty chilly days…brrrr! Either way, it was great and I saw more of Europe than I had seen all semester. I apologize for no pictures..AGAIN! If you have facebook, check out my page :)