back from break!

Wow. It has been over a month since my last entry!! Weird. Apologies for my absence, I was busy, um... traveling the world!

Let's see. I went to Athens for a weekend with the Study Abroad group. I enjoyed it, it was early in the tourist season so it wasn't too crowded. The Acropolis and Parthenon were simply amazing. Before we left I was sitting in the cafe and I told the waitress Helen that we were going to Athens. Like most Greeks, she didn't seem to love Athens. She thinks of it the same way some Americans think of New York City: too congested, too crowded, too many tourists... I guess in a country with rolling hills and miles and miles of sky, the idea of a big city is not very appealing.

But if Athens is New York City, then Thessaloniki is Boston. I have heard this comparison many times, and completely agree (mostly because I love both NYC and Boston, and I love Athens and Thessaloniki in the same way!). It is this way because Thessaloniki is less crowded, less touristy.. it's got a small town feel yet its the size of a city.

On to what you really want to read about.... SPRING BREAK!

Our spring break was over two weeks long... aka 17 days of travel, in five cities. There is no way I can summarize my experience, nor do I want to relegate it to a lengthy blog post. If you ask me which was my favorite city, I will not be able to answer. My experiences in each place are influenced by the people I was with, the length of stay, and the order in which I went to each place. Needless to say, by the 14th day of travel (our arrival in our last city), I was pretty exhausted, and did not have the same energy in Vienna that I did in Prague. So in an effort to give you a glimpse of what life was like for the past few weeks, I am going to highlight some of the best/craziest moments from each city. Assume that I have been to most of the touristy places (who goes to Paris and doesn't visit the Eiffel Tower?), so I will not list the obvious.

So here goes, the most memorable events in each city:

Prague: April 18-April 21
- having to land in Dresden, Germany for a few hours due to the fog in Prague (missed a day)
- going on walking tours/making new friends on these walking tours
- living it up at a 5-story club, and watching a live dance battle!
- visiting a church completely decorated with human bones from plague victims (very freaky)
- our awesome hostel (Hostel Elf)
- eating fried cheese (yum)
- seeing a Black Light (Aspects of Alice) and Marionette (Don Giovanni) show
- sitting on the side of a highway in the Czech Republic at 3am waiting for the bus... when it started to rain... (ridiculous thing #1)
- second night sleeping at an airport

Amsterdam: April 22-April 24
- exploring Amsterdam on our first day unshowered and running on only a few hours of sleep (charming, I know)
- falling asleep in front of the lion cage at the Amsterdam Zoo while waiting for their feeding time (ridiculous thing #2)
- running into study abroad friends who were staying at the same hostel!
- visiting the Anne Frank House; it was extremely moving
- renting bicycles so we could look like the natives
- falling off said bicycle

Paris: April 24-April 27
- watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle at night = breathtaking
- having a gypsy woman poke her finger in my ear for not giving her money in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral (potential curse?)
- seeing the most famous works of art in person at the Louvre
- exploring the lush, green gardens at Versailles
- eating crossaints for breakfast!!
- sitting out in the sun at a park, watching families and children run around on a beautiful day
- ordering steak tartare without knowing what it was.. fyi: it's RAW MEAT ..and then having them cook it! (ridiculous thing #3)
- third night sleeping at the airport

Barcelona: April 28-April 30
- relaxing at the hostel on our first day
- walking down La Ramblas (pedestrian strip)
- shopping!
- having to revisit 3 sights the next day after my father told me what we should've seen but missed (Thanks Dad! - ridiculous thing #4)
- turning around after getting off the metro and seeing the Sagrada Familia for the first time (it is this very intense church that was designed by Gaudi and still being constructed after his death.. it is also the most visited construction site in the world)
- taking a cable car up to Parc Montjuic
- Park Guell and the longest park bench in the world
- walking along the beach (was too cold for swimming)
- making new friends at our hostel

Vienna: May 1-May 4
- wandering around Vienna our first day
- being mapped-out (I was the unofficial navigator of the trip.. but by Vienna I would just point to a direction and say "If that street is [insert name here] then we are going the right way..")
- accidentally taking a five hour nap and missing dinner (ridiculous thing #5)
- going to the amusement park and recording Erin on a roller coaster!
- the most beautiful church interior I have ever seen, at the Stephansdom Church (and trust me, I've seen enough churches in the last few months to last me a lifetime)
- walking down one of the longest outdoor markets I have ever been to (probably rivals the outdoor market in Barcelona)
- having our hostel roommates worry about us because every time they came into the room (whether it was at 4 in the afternoon, or 10 in the evening), we were always in bed. we had to explain to them: no, we are not losers, we are just extremely tired from traveling

All in all, my Spring Break experience was extremely enlightening. I am so grateful that I got to travel and see so many beautiful things.. thank you so much mom and dad, for making this trip possible. I do not consider myself yet a seasoned traveler... I know there is still so much out there to see and experience. But the last two weeks showed me simply a glimpse of what life was like, outside of my comfort zone and concept of home. The people I encountered, the history, the man-made miracles.. is it weird that a part of me still doesn't believe it's real? That I'm in Europe? When I return home, will I think that it was all a dream? The closer my return date gets, the more it sinks into me, everything that I have seen and done.

Time is running short for me. I have only a month of classes left. You can imagine the general mood around the school on our first day back from break. No one wanted to be there. Paper and project deadlines, presentations, and tests are creeping up and just around the corner..

And yet, there is more traveling to be done!! If it doesn't rain this weekend, I will be climbing Mount Olympus (I find out today what the plans are). After that I will be going on my first relaxing trip: laying on a beach on the island of Santorini. And in only a couple of weeks, I will get to reunite with my best friend in Ireland!