I woke up this morning in a bit of a sweat after dreams of saying goodbye to all of my London-based friends. I rarely cry in real life, but in my dream I was bawling. When I realized that today is, in fact, my last day in London, it hit me hard. Despite the shoebox of a room and the fairly shitty weather, I love London, I love my flat, I love my friends and I love that area that I live in. I’m going to miss it; I’m going to miss it all. After running around and packing up every last bit of my life into a suitcase and a carry-on, S. and I were ready to depart. After checking out and leaving luggage in our LSE storage room, we headed out to enjoy our last day in London before our month of traveling.
We grabbed brunch at Fleet River Bakery (best brunch in the area) and headed over to Lincoln’s Inn Fields to enjoy the weather and the quiet London morning. After we were fully caffeinated, we headed over to one of my favorite places: the British Museum(read about previous trips to the British Museum here, here and here). Though I don’t go there that often (despite the fact that it’s a five minute walk from my flat), I always find it to be a great place to take visitors. It’s beautiful, it’s massive and it’s free!
After we explored the museum for a bit, we popped over to Covent Garden to explore the market. During the summer the market is amazing, if a bit crowded. Stalls for foodies, jewelry fanatics and fashionistas (though I use that term loosely), there’s something for everyone. Plus, during summer months (and most of the year, actually), there are performers to entertain and musicians to make the strolls all the more pleasant.
After our stroll through the markets and food stalls, we headed home by way Rock & Sole Plaice to grab fish & chips for lunch. The weather was incredible, so outdoor seating was perfect on Endell Street; great for people-watching and fish & chip eating. We split a delicious order (expect it to run you £11 – £15 per large fish & chips order) and headed back to my flat.
Now, we’re relaxing for a bit before we have to head to Heathrow to board a plane to Malta. Our flight leaves around 730P tonight and we arrive in Malta around midnight. Shout out to my amazing family in Malta for actually picking us up at that ungodly hour! I had expected that we’d need to take public transport, but being the amazingly generous crew that they are, they’ve arranged to pick us up and drop us off at our beach-front hotel in St. Paul’s Bay.
Oh the excitement! See you all tomorrow from the beaches in Malta!
Though my Irish friends may stone me for saying such a thing, I must preface this post with the following: I have never had a desire to visit Ireland. Well, perhaps in my high school years it sounded appealing, but since I made the big move to London, Ireland has never really been on my must-see list and – quite honestly – I never really thought I’d actually end up heading over that way. Well, while my cousin, S., and I started talking about our Eurotrip, Ireland was on the top of her list. At the very tippy top, in fact. Though it wasn’t on the top of mine, I am a firm believer in compromise and cooperation. Considering we’re going to Greece and loads of other places on the top of my list, I figured Ireland was something I could accept.
Well, now that we’ve actually started planning the Irish leg of our adventure, I am getting really excited! I definitely didn’t foresee this madness. I’m pumped. We’ve been considering renting a car (though it’s asininely expensive…) after our two-day stint in Dublin and heading over to Galway (where we could take a ferry to the Aran Islands), and then down around through Shannon(to see the Cliffs of Moher), Tipperary and Kilkenny by way of Cashel (to check out the famous Rock of Cashel) before coming back up to Dublin. Needless to say, it would be a super packed 5 day stint, but I think seeing other parts of Ireland (outside of Dublin) is important! Though I’m sure Dublin is an awesome city, it seems quite international which, in a sense, takes away a bit of the Irish quality; it seems that the smaller towns would be a bit more culturally rich. In any case, we’re still trying to solidify an itinerary. Since neither of us have been there, we’re going off what we’ve heard and our research to help us pick places.
We obviously won’t be able to fit all of those in, but they’re places that we’ve been considering. The more I talk to people from Ireland, though, the more confused I get! Some people stress Tipperary over Cashel or Waterford above Kilkenny. I’ve heard of all of these places, but I don’t know which places would best be part of a fun-filled road trip.
For anyone who’s lived in or visited Ireland — what cities do you recommend?
Are we leaving anything out? How would you spend 5 days in Ireland?
Today is truly momentous. I took my last exam of my masters career (and I think it went well — icing!), the US beat Algeria 1-0 in the 92nd minute of their game this afternoon and I just booked our hotel in Nice for next month! We’re going to be popping over to Nice after our stint in Florence and we’ve been scouring expedia for deals to find a reasonably priced hotel in a good area (a difficult find in the French Riviera). Nevertheless, S. and I waited, patiently, knowing that a deal had to come along at some point… right? Well, after my exam (half way through the England-Slovenia game) I got an email from S. on my iPhone. Pertinent message: Expedia is having a 24 hour sale. Let’s book! Needless to say, as soon as I got home, I jumped online and began scouring.
It was only a few minutes before I stumbled upon the Residence Nice Fleurs, an apartment complex renting out studio apartments 400 meters from the beach, near the heart of the city. Plus, kitchenette, flat panel TV and free internet? Could this place be any more perfect? Of course, the reviews are mixed, but with it’s location and it’s amenities, we had to give it a shot. After inputting our dates, it notified me that a 2 person studio was going to run me about £75 a night. Not cheap, but definitely not expensive for Nice standards. But wait! Not only is it £75 a night, the third night is free?! Cha-ching! Needless to say, it was the fastest decision we’ve made yet. For £165 pounds, we booked three nights in a central location in a more-than-decent hotel, keeping us right at budget. In Nice!
Happy, happy, happy. That’s what I am right now.
Exams are done. I have a lot to do, yes, but the really rigorous, mind-bending work is done and I made it out alive. I am so excited to begin this madness. Let the adventures ensue! Stay tuned — this summer is going to be an intense one.
June 30 – 31: Road trip with SPD girls! Location TBA. July 3 – 7: Malta July 7 – 12: Athens, Delphi and Hydra, Greece July 12 – 15: Amalfi Coast, Italy July 15 – 18: Florence and Siena, Italy July 18 – 21: Nice, France July 21 – 23: Carcassonne, France July 23- 27: Barcelona, Spain July 27 – 31: Dublin, Ireland
With the term coming to an end (my last final is tomorrow!), a few girls from my program and I have been throwing around the idea of a road trip! I know the notion of a road trip sounds very… American, but I can certainly see the appeal of a British road trip so I’m more than on board (and clearly spreading myself way too thin with the million other things I need to get done by July 3rd).
We initially considered doing a Stonehenge/Bath/Cardiff road trip with Cardiff being the final destination before heading back. Despite the fact that Wales is super close (relatively speaking; it’s about two hours driving), I still haven’t made the journey out there. I’ve heard good things about Cardiff: laden with history and a unique culture while having a vibrant, young feel. If I’m in the business of ticking boxes of newly- visited countries, certainly this is as good as any? Plus, I tend to feel that Wales is neglected. I mean, why is the Union Jack a composite of England’s flag and Scotland’s flag? Does Wales not count? (I’m not going to even mention Northern Ireland… poor neglected countries.)
While I was daydreaming about said road trip, another idea popped into my head… what about heading north into the heart of England? For having lived here for nine months, my journeys around England itself have been limited (sadly). Stratford, Warwick, Oxford and the Cotswoldsare all pretty close to one another and could make for a great two-day adventure. Four places is too much, so Oxford would probably get knocked off the list, but Stratford is a quick stopover before heading to Warwick Castleand then ultimately to the Cotswolds to spend the night! If you’re not familiar with Warwick Castle, it’s probably the most bad ass of the castles that I’ve seen, in the sense that it’s really well-preserved. The trip would have an entirely different feel, I presume, but would still be an awesome road trip!
Any thoughts? Has anyone been to any of those cities?
We’re planning on (tentatively) going Sunday – Monday or Monday – Tuesday so any insight would be stellar!
I’ve been having mini blog withdrawals since I’ve been less than regular in updating this bad boy within the last week or so. Exams have effectively taken over my life and I’m finally starting to regain a bit of it back (although I still have one more exam to go). With three exams under my belt, I’m starting to finally get things together and get really pumped for summer! My travel adventures with S. had seemed but a lifetime away with exams, moving and doctors visits taking up the in-between time. With my vaccinations scheduled, exams nearly done and my rooms slowly being torn down I feel like I’m finally able to look a head a couple of weeks!
S. and I have already booked our places in Malta, Athens, Amalfi and in Florence and (get this!) have stayed under budget at every location! The costs of living in London, as most can attest, is exorbitant. Even living in student halls, my shoebox of a room with a shared bathroom and kitchen costs me around £170 per week. When I broke down the costs on a nightly basis, I rounded up to about £25 per night for my current room. Surely I could find hotels/hostels around Europe for less than that? (Mind you, I’m not paying rent in London for the month of July which makes this entirely realistic for a student on a budget.) Well, I was right! More than right, actually. Since I’m traveling with a buddy, we’ve essentially set an upper limit of around £50 per night (£25 each) for hotels as we travel. Our hotel near Amalfi is the only one so far that actually reached our limit — our place in Malta was about £35 per night total, Athens was the same after discounts and Florence was about £40 total. With the discounts we’ve gotten, we’re now prepared for the more expensive French Riviera (where hotels are more realistically in the range of £60 – £70 on the lower end) and don’t have to feel bad about overspending! I’m kind of flabbergasted by how inexpensive it is to travel through Europe. Hostels can, of course, be found even cheaper but since they charge per bed, the savings isn’t really enough to sacrifice privacy when traveling in twosomes (or larger groups).
So after booking our first four spots, we’ve begun looking at oh-so-glamorous Nice (shown above), nearby Monaco (which sadly doesn’t stamp passports despite being its own country) and the TBD stop between Nice and Barcelona. The train ride between Nice and Barcelona is looooong. Very, very long. If my memory serves, it’s roughly 10 hours depending on the number of changes and the time of departure. Though I’ll be using train time to work on my dissertation, 10 hours is killer. We knew immediately that we needed a city (any city!) to break up the ride. First, we considered Marseille. Alexandre Dumas had dubbed Marseille ‘the meeting place of the entire world’ so it had to be eclectic at the very least. Indeed, after we researched a bit, it had a unique charm and seemed like the perfect stopover. That is until we realized that it’s only 2 hours from Nice and still another 8 hours from Barcelona. For two people looking for a city to ‘break up the ride’… that wasn’t going to cut it. We needed something further, something closer to the Spanish border.
Within a few hours, S. got back to me (ever so diligently) with a new idea: Montpellier! Well, I have of course heard of Montpellier by name (I assume that the US capital of Vermont took a cue from its French counterpart) but I had no idea what there was to do there. Well, Montpellier is a much smaller city than Marseille (p. 225,000 vs. 820,000), but still bustling enough to be interesting. We’re only looking for the city of choice to be a stop-over essentially — a place we can stay for a day (maybe two) en route to Barcelona. After reading more about it, I found it charming… While people think of Paris when they think ‘French’, I would argue that big cities lack a bit of the character of the smaller towns. Not that I didn’t like Paris and not that I don’t love London, but despite their unique characteristics, they don’t necessarily embody the culture quite the same as out-of-the-way towns (think: Stratford, Oxford, the Cotswolds, etc.) With that in mind, I started liking the idea of Montpellier.
Then, while reading my Let’s Go Europe guide (which I absolutely love and 100% recommend), I stumbled upon Carcassonne. You haven’t heard of it, right? Yeah, I hadn’t either, but as I started to read, I started to love. For a stop off point, this seemed perfect! It’s a small town (p. 46,000) but it’s like something straight out of a Disney movie. Actually, according to this site it was the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty. After seeing the pictures, I hardly doubt it. It’s a UNESCO heritage site and is home to a castle, drawbridges and cobblestone streets that transport visitors back to medieval times. With my dad’s love of all things medieval, it was inevitable that some of the intrigue would be passed down… I so wish he could be here to see this place! Mind you, this is slightly out of the way for our Nice/Barcelona since it’s slightly inland, but I think it’s worth it! (Read the Let’s Go review here.)
As for now, we’re still debating between quaint and medieval Carcassonne and its livelier counterpart, Montpellier. We’ll only be in in town for one full day really, but we want to pick a great place.
Has anyone been to Montpellier? Carcassonne? Both?
What are your thoughts?
While S. and I had planned on winging a lot of our trip, we’ve discovered that planning just comes naturally. We haven’t booked the trip in its entirety, mind you, just the first few stops. We had initially decided to take a ferry from Patras in Greece to Brindisi in Italy, followed by a train from Brindisi to the Amalfi Coast. How long could a ferry take, right? 5 hours, maybe? 7 hours max? Well, apparently my geography or my mathematical calculations are off (or both!) because the ferry ride is more like an Adriatic cruise at fifteen hours! And that’s only to Brindisi! From there, we would still need to take a train.
I’m all about adventures — the more experiences the better, I say, but this? This is not an adventure. Fifteen hours on a boat was just a waste of time. Three hours is pretty. Five hours is doable. Seven hours is maximum. Fifteen hours is beyond the scope of my imagination. Additionally, the premium for a bed on the 15 hour paradise that is a ferry boat (through HML or Minoan Ferries) is over $100 per person. It only took us five seconds of talking to decide that a flight would be better, provided the costs were reasonable. Quite honestly, I was expecting a discount airline to cost around 150 pounds for the trip since it’s only a month away. Luckily, I found a flight through Expedia with Alitalia for $160! For a two hour flight directly into Naples, the extra $50 was well worth the 15+ hours that we’ve saved.
So now, though it wasn’t our initial intention, we have the first three section of our trip worked out. The Amalfi Coast was an area that we both agreed on from the get-go and it makes a perfect starting point for our Italian adventures. After doing some research (I realized that I don’t know much about what there is to do in the area), I ran across something that I couldn’t resist: Senteiro Degli Dei, the walk of the gods. The hike starts in Bomerano and winds through the coast, ending up in glamorous Positano. The views are astounding and it has been ranked as one of the best hikes in the world! I hadn’t even heard about this until I did some in-depth research, but I am thrilled that I ran across it! It seems that the hike isn’t necessarily fit for kids and fitnessphobes, but for anyone with a decent level of fitness and mobility, it’s the perfect way to see the coast the way it should be seen and I would wager that it’s safer than renting a car and driving. Click here for a map of the Amalfi Coast and Sorrento Peninsula.
Interested in the walk of the gods? I was, too, so I consulted some fellow bloggers. Check out their experiences here and here.
In reality, S. and I were tads ambitious with our travel plans for July. We had grandiose dreams of hitting up a million cities in our 27 day European excursion (only a slight exaggeration). After talking yesterday, we narrowed it down and came up with a more realistic plan of attack, allowing us to enjoy our trip while seeing as much as possible. I’m a firm believer in enjoying and understanding the nature of a city when you visit– trying to get a feel for the city itself; it’s peculiarities and it’s culture to the extent possible. Stopping in a city for 10 hours does not allow that. So, lo and behold, here’s our newly designed (although amenable) itinerary. We’ve only booked the first two legs of our adventure, but at least we now have a good idea of our plan of attack!
We have Malta and Athens booked already, so that will take us from July 3rd through July 12th, with us leaving Athens on the 12th. Luckily the Eurail pass includes not only trains, but ferries! We’ll be taking a ferry from Greece over to Italia’s east coast and catching a train to Amalfi from there. After a few (3) days exploring the Amalfi Coast, we’ll head up to Tuscany, exploring Florence and a neighboring city for 3 more days. Though we had though about hitting up Switzerland afterwards, we ultimately thought it best to cut out the travel time and up the exploration time by spending those extra few days in France! From Florence, we’re headed over to Monaco(or Nice) and then over to Marseille for a few days. Spain will be the last bit of our mainland excursion, hitting up Barcelona (from Marseille) and then going up to San Sebastianvia an overnight train. We’ll head to Bilbao from there to grab a plane up to Dublin for the last bit of our European excursion!
Our schedule is crazy! It’s hectic and it will definitely be hellish at times, but I have no doubt that it will be the best summer excursion ever! Plus, with train travel involved, I’ll have time to work on my dissertation and get some readings and outlines done before finalizing stuff during the month of July when I return to the UK!
Anyone else doing a fun summer excursion? Please share!
Love from London,
Click hereto see photos of my previous excursions!
As my cousin, S., and I continue to plan our whirlwind adventure, I can’t help but think of all the traveling that I’ve been able to do this year. It’s been such an incredible 9 months that I wouldn’t have traded for the world. I mentioned a few days back that we planned the first two legs of our trip, wherein we will be hitting up Malta and Greece. We decided to kind of play it by ear and book as we go since we’ll be traveling by rail, but decided to have a rough sketch of the cities that we want to see, with a rough outline of the time that we want to spend in each. Of course, no Euro trip would be complete without seeing Italy. It’s just seriously impossible. After all the wonderful places that I’ve been able to see this year, Rome is still one of my favorites, if not at the top of the list. With it’s rich culture and history, delicious food, and wonderful people, it managed to somehow surpass my admittedly high expectations. Since S. is doing some solo traveling in August, she’ll be hitting up Rome without me then. Though I loved (LOVED!!) Rome and would love to visit it again, I can’t help but be curious about the other Italian cities: Florence, Amalfi, Cinque Terra, Milan, Venice, Naples, Genoa (etc., etc.). We decided that it would be best to skip Rome during our excursion. I had mixed feelings… part of me wants to head back to Rome where just a few short months back I tossed a coin into the Trevi Fountain to ensure a swift return. Certainly the coin was calling me back? Probably. Either that or the gelato, but I had to think clearly about our situation. We have but a short amount of time to get in as much traveling as humanly possible and to spend three days in a city that I’ve already seen (and fallen in love with), would take away from time in Tuscany and other cities that I have yet to explore. And who knows? Maybe they’ll end up being even better than Rome! Doubtful, I realize, but possible! I am so excited for next month’s adventures and so excited to return to Italy. It’s such a fantastic country with such incredible regional diversity. This is going to be the best summer ever!
Thinking of going to Italy? Here’s some Roman inspiration:
After getting thoroughly pumped writing yesterday’s post, I realized that I needed to further investigate a proper outing for a day trip from Athens. Greece is, of course, home to many great ancient cities, but how are they today? Which cities are worth visiting and which make the most worthwhile day trip when you only have one day to spare? I’ve looked through Frommer’s, Lonely Planet and a number of other random guides that dot the internet, but I can’t seem to decide. An island trip will happen on a separate day, but if we’re looking for a mainland excursion (1 – 2 hours away from Athens, preferably), what’s the best spot to hit up? New ideas and stories are more than welcome!
As you already know, I have planned to spend the month of Julytraveling around Europe with my cousin, S., whilst working on my dissertation. I’m so incredibly excited to be able to take advantage of my time here, and doing it with my cousin is just icing on the cake! We decided to get Eurail passes for the majority of our unplanned travel, but the first two legs of our trip involve flights, so we decided to get those pinned down while flights are cheap!
After trying to map our journey (country by country; we’re going to figure out the cities as we go!), we decided that Malta would be a good starting point for our excursion. A few days in the Mediterranean sunshine, a bit of sightseeing and a bit of family. [Check out my previous Maltese excursion here, here and here.] Plus, as it’s an island, we decided to get the flights out of the way initially and then stick to rail for the remainder of the journey. We booked our flights to Malta through AirMalta and got a pretty decent deal: £120 from LHR to Malta. Now, I realize that EasyJet has much better deals (I found a one way ticket for £80ish, but I took the following facts into consideration when booking:
1) Easy Jet flies out of Gatwick (or Stansted or Luton) vs. Heathrow. Heathrow has the added bonus of having a tube line that drops off there. For £5 I can take the tube to Heathrow vs. the £18 that I would have to spend taking the tube to Victoria and Gatwick Express to the airport.
2) Luggage! EasyJet allows one piece of hand luggage and everything else is charged (£9 in advance, £18 at the airport) which is inconvenient; AirMalta will allow the extra luggage that I’m bringing and save the headaches.
3) Flight time: The flight times with EasyJet weren’t so great. Mind you, our flight with AirMalta gets us to Malta shortly before midnight but it’s better than a 5A flight the day after my cousin gets to London.
In any case, between the flight times, luggage, airport issues and added benefit of not having to fly a discount airline for once, we went for it! We snagged a great hotel in Buggiba, Malta for the four nights (three-and-a-half days) we will be in town. Total cost for a four star hotel near the beach? £149 for both of us; less than £20 a night each! That’s less than I pay in London for my current shoe box of a room! After getting the Malta trip nailed down last week, we decided it would be best to get the second leg of our trip under control as well. After discussing countries that were on our must-see list, we both agreed that Greece was a must! Since it’s the furthest point of our journey, we decided to make that the first stop of our mainland trip and the departing point for our Eurail adventures! For a mere $112 we snagged a flight on Aegean Air from Malta to Athens. What a steal!
I have heard amazing things about Greece: from the history and culture of Athens to the serene island of Santorini and the party haven that is Mykonos. Certainly, if we had the time, we would see everything! Unfortunately, time is of the essence and we needed to be able to see as much as possible in four and a half short days. We decided to book a hotel in Athens for the entirety of the trip, using it as a sort of home base for the rest of our Greek sightseeing. Though we’ll likely spend two of the days exploring Athens, we want to allocate at least one day to Santorini to get a feel for the islands. If we feel semi-fulfilled with a couple of days in Athens, I’m hoping to use that extra day to hit up a nearby city (though I’m not 100% sure where that’d be yet… Delphi, perhaps?) or another island. Like I’ve mentioned before, Greece was one of the top 3 places I wanted to see in my time here (along with Rome, Italy and Istanbul, Turkey) and I am so incredibly stoked to actually have this booked! I have fantasized about this trip for years (probably since I was eight) so I’m hoping that it’s half as amazing as I’ve imagined! Another bonus: for five nights in Greece, I snagged a great little hotel (3 star about a mile from the Acropolis) for£173 total! Again, talk about a steal. Can you beat a Greek excursion for £18 per night? Did I mention that breakfast and wi-fi are included? Cha-ching!
Less than one month until this madness begins and I can’t wait! Until then, I’ve gotta stick to studying for my exams (they start in 10 short days)! It will be such a relief once this craziness is over…
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