Maynooth’s fall break was a couple of weeks ago and let me tell you, I took full advantage of that week.
My friend Ellen and I embarked on our ambitious #7cities10daysworldtour2k16 adventure on Friday with a flight to Rome, Italy. We stayed at a hostel there for 2 days and met up with Emily (fellow tar, hey em) and it was beautiful and wonderful and a great time!
Next up Ellen and I took a train to Florence and this may have been my favorite city. It was small enough to not be overwhelming but still had beautiful attractions, amazing food (aka gelato), and the bridges/river were beautiful.
After two days in Firenze, we took a train to Venice where we stayed for just one night. Venice is pretty small, so this was plenty of time. We met up with some kids from Ellen’s school in the U.S. (University of Dayton) and split the cost of a very romantic gondola ride through the small and grand canals.
For our final destination in Italy, we took a bus to Milano and stayed there for one night. After exploring the streets and churches, we ended up meeting up with my cousin and her boyfriend. They took us out for an aperativo (Italian happy hour) and showed us the fancier parts of the city that we wouldn’t have found otherwise.
City 5: Paris. To give a little bit of background, Ellen and I somehow messed up when we bought our plane tickets and booked our flight a day later than we had planned. Because of this, we only had about 17 hours in Paris. This resulted in 3 hours of sleep and missing a few attractions, but we did get to a bakery 10 minutes before it opened and got freshly made pastries, so really we won here.
Final country: Belgium. We took a very long bus ride from Paris to Brussels and had the best waffles, visited one of our favorite cities (Gent), and had the weirdest night out. All in all 10/10 trip.
Tune in next time and hear about how I chase my favorite musical artists around Europe. Much love.