Forty-Eight Hours in Florence

I’ve been incredibly lazy here. I wrote about my time in Venice with the intention of completing the rest of my Italian journey soon after, but it’s now been more than two months since I’ve been in Italy and I’m still trying to motivate myself to write. Alas, let’s see how long it takes me to finish this post!

Florence is a very art-y city. Italy was the site of the Renaissance and you can see much of the art from that period there. It is also home of the beautiful Duomo Cathedral, which is the place you usually see the skyline views over Florence from. We packed the entire Florence experience into two days there, but it was an experience of a lifetime.

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Venetian Days

My first stop on our Italian tour was to the breathtakingly beautiful city of Venice. It’s an intricate, small, city with so much history and adventure. I’m lucky to have had my friend as my travel companion who could read a map and navigate around the city with ease. Venice can be a bit like a maze because the canals chop up the streets, meaning you’re always having to turn in some different direction.

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Carnaval 2016

Carnaval is a very popular holiday celebrated here in Spain. Spain is home to some of the best celebrations in the world – particularly in Tenerife and Sitges. I did not see either of these carnavals, but I did get to see how the average family in Spain celebrates carnaval in their cities. I saw two different celebrations: Cos Blanc in Salou and Carnaval in Tarragona.

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Budapest: Always on the Wrong Side

My third and final leg of my Eastern European adventure was to Budapest in Hungary. I was excited, but also a little intimidated to go to Budapest. After becoming someone accustomed to the strange Slavic language, I was not thrown into one of the hardest languages to learn: Hungarian. It is not a Slavic language, but rather a cousin of the Finnish language in the Uralic family. Nevertheless, the city was still beautiful. And what made it even more beautiful …

SNOW!

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Warsaw: Rising from the Ashes

On New Year’s, I caught a flight from Prague, Czech Republic to Warsaw, Poland. I was not ready for what was about to happen. No one ever warned me that Warsaw in winter is comparable to the ice planet of Hoth – it was about 12°F every day, sometimes colder.

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Being Bohemian: A Prague Adventure

After Christmas 2015, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Prague in the Czech Republic. Prague always seemed like such a mysterious and exotic place to me. We learn about it briefly in history when it was referred to as Bohemia, but we never really know much more about it. In reality, we are exposed to Prague more often than we know. Prague is the backdrop for many movies and TV shows, but it is often disguised as another country. The TV shows Outlander and The Musketeers both recently shot in Prague with the setting in Paris in the 1700s and 1600s, respectively. The most recent version of Casino Royale was also shot in Prague, with the airport and a casino disguised as Miami and the National Museum disguised as James Bond’s hotel in Italy. Sneaky sneaky!

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Sight-Seeing London

There are honestly so many things to do in London. I was there for six days and there are still so many things I didn’t get to do. But here are somethings I did do that I recommend seeing (that weren’t a part of my Harry Potter, Royal London, or football game posts).

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Dos and Don’ts of Berlin

Last week, I got to check off another city that I’ve wanted to go to for some time off my list: Berlin. I found it to be quite an interesting city – the city is over 750 years old, but so much of recent history affects the way the city appears today. I kept thinking about how the Berlin Wall still existed just twenty-five years ago, with reminders all over the city. You walk through the city and see things that were rebuilt because of bombs dropped during WWII. You see DVDs with Nazi flags covering the landmarks of Berlin. It’s crazy to think that less than a century ago, people were actually seeing these things in the city I was visiting. Berlin is a great city, but there are definitely things you should do and shouldn’t do to maximize your enjoyment.

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Tarraco Tapes: Tapas Fiesta

I haven’t gone on any amazing trips yet, but I did do something pretty cool. Everyone knows that Spain is known for its tapas: little bites of food like appetizers. My friend and I went on a tapeo: going from restaurant to restaurant eating tapas. The city I live in, Tarragona, hosts “Tarraco Tapes” every spring and fall, perfect for bingeing on tapas.

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