There’s no denying that Europe is a great place to travel. With everything being so (relatively) close, and the abundance of low budget airlines, I have been able to take advantage of my time here and have traveled somewhere almost every weekend. Travel has also been a great motivator for me when it comes to my analysis, as I work hard during the week in order to take weekends off.
As I mentioned in a previous post, my first weekend here I took a day trip with some of the other Penn State girls to visit the second biggest city of the Netherlands, Rotterdam. We spent the day walking around and exploring and taking way too many pictures.
My second weekend, Amy and I went to London for a short stay. In just a couple of days we explored the city, seeing iconic things like Big Ben and the Buckingham Palace.
The weekend after, three of us went off to the islands of Mallorca and Ibiza in Spain to celebrate Amy’s birthday. We spent our time relaxing on the beach and it was so much fun for me to be back in an environment where I could speak Spanish.
For my fourth weekend I hopped on a train and took a day trip to Brussels, Belgium where I met up with my two best friends from my exchange year in Ecuador after three years apart!
The next weekend, four of us Penn State students decided it was time to go explore Amsterdam, since we are in the Netherlands after all! We loved walked around and seeing the cute buildings and all the canals, and ate the best chocolate cookies ever.
My sixth weekend the four of us once again headed out but this time we flew to Italy. Lina and I had a quick stopover in Milan and Lake Como, then we all met up in Rome to visit the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Vatican City, and much, much more.
This past weekend I was able to meet up with another friend from my exchange year in Ecuador. My friend and her family came to Amsterdam, so I spent the weekend exploring more of the city and staying in a houseboat on one of the canals in center city, which is one of the coolest places I have ever stayed!
I only have two weekends left in Europe now, with no definite plans yet so we’ll see where I end up. For right now I’m focusing on finishing up some parts of my analysis as my time with PIRE ends in a few days, and there is a huge festival (biggest festival in Holland) in Nijmegen right now, so I’m also trying to just enjoy my last few days here!