Na Shledanou, Au Revoir, Auf Wiedersehen, Adios, Halo, Adijo, Arrivederci, Zbogom

Last Czech Meal- Fried Cheese

My journey is finally over so that means my blog posts are too. This semester has been one of the most amazing 4 months of my life, in the course of the 4 months I travelled to 30 cities, 13 countries, learned the basics of 8 different languages, and have made many new friends and memories! I fell in love with Prague and it is now a place that I cannot wait to return to. I wouldn't have changed anything about my experience and I am so happy I went to Prague. Prague has so many wonderful things about it such as: 1. the cheap costs of everything (one of the cheapest cities in Europe) 2. one of the most beautiful cities with some of the oldest in-tact buildings that in fact does look like Disney World or a fairy tale 3. convenient location- just a few hour bus/train ride to the many surrounding countries 4. variety of food- unlike many other countries there was Czech, French, Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Greek, and more 5. SO MANY THINGS TO DO!

Dancing House

Petrin Tower

Charles Bridge Tower View

Although I never ended up having a chance to blog about it, Cody and I had made a Prague bucket list with sooo much stuff to do and we didn't think we would be able to accomplish it all. By the end of the semester we finally did it all! Some things on our bucket list included: going to the dancing house (swirly building with artwork and a rooftop view); climbing up the Charles Bridge Tower, the Petrin Tower (mini- Eiffel Tower), and the Old Town Square Tower, finding the view where someone took the picture on the top of my blog, exploring the Royal Gardens behind the castle, going to the National Library to see the book tunnel, going to Vysherad- a gothic cathedral and castle area a little farther out in the city, seeing the massive TV tower that can be seen anywhere in Prague (and has babies crawling on it), going to various clubs and bars recommended by locals, seeing a play or musical, go to a soccer game, go to a hockey game, spray paint John Lennon Wall, watch the sunrise on Charles Bridge, going to the zoo (rated one of the 10 best zoos in the world), seeing the gardens outside the city, and much much more. I loved having this bucket list because every single day we would explore something new or find a new adventure. Not only that but I was so fortunate to have other friends who wanted to explore too. We named ourselves the "Wednesday Adventure Crew" because we didn't have class on Wednesdays so we would explore Prague. It worked out well since we were away almost every weekend, but yet we were still able to keep exploring our own city. Through our adventures, I met some wonderful friends and became close with them.

Sparta Soccer Game

Sparta Soccer Game

The Baby Tower

Spray painting the John Lennon Wall

Sunrise on Charles Bridge at 5 am

I learned more this semester than I have ever learned in school. There is just so much more to learn from studying abroad from learning to navigate foreign cities in foreign languages, learning to communicate in ways other than words, doing unit conversions between all the money, learning so much history and about many different cultures and ways of life, learning how to remain calm if lost, working with other people and becoming a team, learning about different religions, learning from the people you meet along the way and their experiences- you learn much more by keeping your mouth shut, and experiencing the world. You can learn as much as you want from a history book, but seeing things in person like Auschwitz can give you more of a history lesson than any book.

Now that I have been home for a couple of weeks, I have been able to re-adjust to America. One of the weirdest things for me was people speaking English! I was so used to not being able to understand anything anyone said and could tune people out or people trying to talk to me in another language and not being able to understand them. Also its been weird to stay in one place for more than a few days! It has been nice to relax and I have been trying to catch up on sleep. It's definitely been an adjustment coming home!

I am so grateful to have had this opportunity and wouldn't have changed a thing. So thank you to my parents for sending me, to Cody for being my amazing and wonderful adventure buddy and friend, and all you for reading my blog and keeping up with me. As the Czechs say Na Shleadanou - Goodbye!

Vamos A La Playa

After Paris I made my way to the last leg of the trip in Spain. After being in the city and on the move we took a day on the beach (la playa) to recover. Barcelona is beautiful and had great weather! Our hostel was a little ways outside of city and right by the beach. The next day on Saturday we set out to explore the city. Lucky for us we picked the best weekend to be in Barcelona. There was a huge Barcelona Vs. Athletic Fotbal Final game in the FC Barcelona stadium. As we were walking through the city there were hundreds of Athletic fans dressed up in their red and white gear cheering throughout the city. It was a crazy atmosphere and a lot of fun to be in. On top of that there was a huge concert called Primavera which added even more excitement to the mix. Barcelona to begin with is a very lively and wild city so with all of these other events it truly made it quite the stay. We also found the huge food market in Barcelona and it was amazing! It was filled with fruit, chocolates, and meat although I primarily stayed in the fruit section.

 

Away team soccer fans going crazy

Fruit market!!

In the afternoon we took a walking tour of the city on Gaudi architecture. Gaudi was considered both a genius and a madman. Gaudi practically designed Barcelona and had a very unique and artistic take on houses and architecture. We walked through the city looking at his many creations and learned about his background. He played such a significant role in Barcelona so I am happy that we got to learn more about it.

This house tells the story of a local Barcelona legend about a dragon eating all the eldest daughters in the town until he was going to eat the King's daughter. A knight saves the day by slaying the dragon ad the princess is saved. The balconies are the skulls of the girls who were eaten and the roof is the slayed dragon. 

The people of Barcelona called it the Melting Sandcastle or melting Wedding Cake

That night we watched the Barcelona Vs. Athletic game in a bar and Barcelona won (as expected)! But it was so awesome to be there in the environment even if we weren’t able to go to the game (cheapest tickets were 300 euros and sold out way in advance).

Barcelona is one of the biggest cities we have travelled to other than Paris and not only that I didn’t know much about Barcelona so Cody and I did a hop-on-hop-off bus tour that drops you off at all the main sites and I’m glad we did. Like I said the city is huge and transportation was confusing so it worked out much better to do the bus tour. We hopped off at Park Gruel, which is another one of Gaudi's creations filled with many mosaics and lizards and interesting architecture. We hiked around the park too which was huge and had great views of the city.

We then hopped back on and got off at the next stop which was way up in the mountains, but we ended up having to hike(!) a lot of it which I was not prepared for. Luckily there was a funicular to take us the rest of the way to the top once we got about 3/4s of the way up. The top was beautiful!! There is an amusement park overlooking the entire city as well as a church and a couple places to eat. The church was the tallest point on the mountain and one of my favorites that I have been in so far (and I've been in about 100 cathedrals/churches this semester). The mosiacs and ambiance with the candles and choir music as well as it being a smaller church helped make it so welcoming and beautiful. 

Both of those mini hikes wore us out so we pretty much stayed on the bus and listened to the guide as we drove around the city and saw the rest of the sites. Really happy we did the bus tour! 

The last day Cody and I went to see Gaudi's famous Sagrada Familia church. The outside has an very unique look to it (as usual), but there is a lot of symbolism and the inside was absolutely amazing. Sagrada Familia holds the record for being the longest building to ever be in construction- its been in construction for around 120 years I think. Once it is completed, it will be the largest cathedral in the world. They still have a lot of work to do though, so it might be awhile before that happens.. But as of now they have most of the inside part finished and it is so unique and incredible. Turns out to be another one of my favorite churches (on the inside). 

Front of Sagrada Familia

The rainbow stain glass inside

Inside of the church

We spent the rest of the day on the beach relaxing and headed back to Prague the next morning for one final day then made our journey home on Wednesday morning. Hard to believe my study abroad is already over! :(

Je t'aime

After our five hour train ride to Paris, we made our way to the hostel and booked it to the one and only Eiffel Tower. I took french in middle school and high school and have had a poster of the Eiffel Tower in my room so I have been looking to Paris for quite a few years and was actually trying to study abroad in Paris when I first looked into studying abroad so I was really excited to be there. Seeing the Eiffel Tower in person was breathtaking- it almost looked unreal. Its hard to imagine a steal structure being breathtaking, but I guess its one of those things you have to see in person to really understand. It probably could have also been due to the fact that I've been looking at a poster for so many years! Anyway that being said I took quite a lot of pictures there. Since we got there in the late afternoon we ended up hanging out at the Eiffel Tower for the rest of the evening and went back to see it light up at night. Unfortunately when we were leaving the first time my sandal completely broke- first one piece, then another piece broke and eventually it was no longer a sandal so that was interesting to get back to the hostel 25 minutes away on the metro! All my shoes have really gotten some miles this semester!

On Monday we took a three hour walking tour of the city which was awesome. Our tour guide was wonderful and I got to see and learn a ton about Paris. Paris was much more city-like than I was expecting it to be. I thought it would have more cute little french houses, artists, and musicians, but it was just really crowded with a lot of scammers. After the tour we went to the Louvre and saw Mona Lisa along with many other beautiful pieces of artwork. The Louvre is the biggest art museum in the world- bigger than the Vatican and I thought that was big. Probably wasn't the best idea to go to the Louvre after a three hour walking tour, but we got to see all the big things that we wanted to see.

The Mona Lisa is tiny, but she really draws in the crowds!! She has an entire wall dedicated to her and all the other walls surrounding the painting are massive and much more impressive, but no one even pays attention to them. Mona Lisa used to be a very insignificant painting in the Louvre high up on a wall somewhere that no one even looked at it. Someone stole the Mona Lisa I think around 1910 and no one even noticed for 3 days! Then when they finally realized that the painting was stolen, it was broadcasted all over the media "Where's Mona?" "Mona Lisa Missing" and so on so that it started becoming really well known and famous. When it was finally returned two years later everyone was so happy and since then the painting has grown in popularity and now is the most well known painting in the world although there is nothing remarkable about the painting itself!! Quite the story.

On Tuesday we went into Notre Dame and walked through the city to the Arc de Triumph which was actually wayyyy farther than we were expecting- definitely a lot of miles.

Notre Dame  ^

Arc de Triumph

View from the Arc

Wednesday we took a trip to Versailles - just an hour out of the city. Versailles is MASSIVE! We waited to get inside and then we walked around the gardens which looked liked it stretched for miles- one canal itself was a mile long and people can row boats in it.

 Front entrance

Hall of Mirrors

The Gardens

Once we made our way back from Versailles, Cody and I went up the Eiffel Tower! Normally the line is around 3 hours, but we went to the line to walk up instead of the elevator and we only had to wait in line for 10 minutes!  The top of the Eiffel Tower is way up there!

One night we stopped by the Moulin Rouge just to see it!

On our fifth and final day in Paris we went to the church Sacre-Coeur and the Montemarte district before we had our train to Barcelona that afternoon and boy was I happy we did!! Sacre-Coeur was really different than many of the churches we had already seen and Montemarte was the France I was always expecting- filled with little cute houses, crepes, artists, and flowers. I ended up getting a caricature (that doesn't look like me) but I was glad I got to go!! It was a perfect last day in France.

There is so much to do in Paris I probably could have stayed the whole week, but I think we did the perfect amount of time for our 12 days of travel. Au Revoir Paris!!