Kaledo Art
tannertan36
blake kathryn
Discoholic 🪩
titsay
if i look back, i am lost
#extradirty
occasionally subtle
taylor price
KIROKAZE
Misplaced Lens Cap
Xuebing Du
Three Goblin Art
Not today Justin
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
@theartofmadeline
dirt enthusiast
ojovivo
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@abbieland7
they played “i’ll stop the world and melt with you” in stranger things and my mom was like “i love that song” and i was like “me too!” and she was like “how TF do you know that song?!” and i didn’t have the heart to tell her it was from the cinematic masterpiece of our time, Sky High (2005).
cool girls are everywhere but its such a challenge to find one guy thats like mildly interesting to talk to……. it’s like they all have the personality of an actual adidas sandal
Maybe you’re a bitch
i mean i definitely am but youre still boring
i’m so done with the way girls in twenties are treated. i’m so done with people who literally create timetable for us. 20- 24 find a guy, 24-26 make him propose to you, 27-29 get married. i’m so done. i’m do not want to get 2 a.m texts from my best friend who is freaking out that she is gonna die alone. i do not want see my 20 years old friend wasting her time on some guys who are not even interested in her. i do not want see us falling for every nice guy who does not look creepy. i do not want to see girls get sad or paranoid just bcos they do not fill in the schedule. you are ok. you should enjoy your life at its fullest and one day you will find 10/10 so do not pursue 6 just because you do not want to be single. it is ok and one day you will find someone. do not split your love with people who does not deserve it. keep it for yourself and when time will come you will know. i know it hurts. i know you wish u could just open part of yourself and release the buzzing love. but not every kind of love is romantic. show it to your family, friends, plants, yourself.
Getting a week to travel at the end of my program was amazing. My group decided to sleep in Friday and get in a taxi, then train then plane to go to Italy! We were going to have the opportunity to see so many things we have studied or heard about for years. I must admit, I did watch the Lizzie McGuire movie to prep for Roma.
We first arrived in Rome, and after much stress prior, arrived to an awesome apartment. We needed to get food so we went down to a cute little place about a block from our apartment. Our waitress spoke minimal English, but enough for us to figure out what we wanted, and explain some dietary restrictions. After eating Caesar salads the size of our heads, we turned in for the night to prepare for a day full of religious experiences. The next day we went to the Vatican City and St. Peter’s Basilica. A few tips for the Vatican, order your tickets online well before you go so you won’t be forced to get a tour guide when you’re not sure if the tour guide will make the tour last an hour longer than she was supposed to (ours sure did). The only upside to getting a tour guide is that we didn’t have to wait in a line outside the Basilica that the vendors told us about which we never saw.. Also make sure you have clothes that cover your shoulders and knees (or at least is close to your knees) so that the annoying men selling scarves don’t shake them in your face. Once we started on our Vatican museum tour, it was nice to see everything but I’ll admit I could have Googled the few questions I had. Seeing the sculptures I’ve studied in art history classes was so cool. The Sistine Chapel was a great experience but for those of you who cant go, I recommend going and doing a virtual tour, here.
Going inside the Basilica was phenomenal. We got to walk through the Holy Doors, which are only open every 25 years for the Jubilee. All debts are to be forgiven when you walk through the doors. Inside, we saw La Pietá behind a glass wall and I would be lying to say I didn’t tear up. Overall, the Basilica was beautiful and I would recommend to go, regardless of your religion.
We spent the rest of the day walking back to our apartment, stopping at the Trevi Fountain and for dinner at a very cute restaurant with great people watching and ivy growing up the side of the building. It was very affordable and about a block away from the Trevi Fountain. Yes, Italy can be expensive but if you look for it, you can find cheap but quality places to eat. The next day we had to carry our backpacks, and boy was that a sweaty mess. Although, when we did get to our destination of the Coloseo, it was free! We happened to show up on the one day a month (first Sunday, I believe) entrance is free. I would also recommend going to the counter up the hill by the ruins to get tickets. For us, it just made the line go quicker since we had our own line and security check point. Once inside, it was amazing to see things that have been around for so long. I can only imagine all gathering inside to watch gladiators and animals.
We then hopped on a train to go to Florence. Once we arrived we went to our Air BnB flat and it was so cute. We had a nice back garden with seating and shade as well as a fully stocked kitchen in case we wanted to take cooking classes with the owner. My group rather enjoyed staying in residential areas to get more of the feel of a city and get away from the tourist traps. Despite it having to be about a 20 minute walk, none of us minded when the view is that beautiful. In Florence, we saw the outside of the Florence Cathedral, which is famously known as the Duomo. We wanted to shop around and see the leather market, which we did. It was a lot of the same purses and if you know how to haggle, do it. If you don’t know how, learn. Finding good deals of real Italian leather is always amazing. Since this was Independence Day back home and another travel group from our program was in Florence, we decided to meet up for dinner and gelato. It was nice to have different people to talk to because, after all, once you’re with someone for so long 24 hours a day, you run out of things to talk about. We decided to go to Ponte Vecchio, which is a bridge that has shops built onto it. We had to take pictures with the little United States flag we brought. The best part was people saying “Happy Independence Day!” to us as we all were getting pictures with that flag that means so much in a city that is forever imprinted on our hearts. Finding other Americans that were asking if they could use the flag for some pictures was a really neat experience.
As we got gelato for the billionth time, it was then that I knew that I loved this city. We parted ways and our group stayed one more full day of exploring, shopping and falling in love with Firenze. We went inside the Duomo, and that was a breath taking experience, not because it was as ornate at the Sistine Chapel or as modern as some churches back home, but as a place that is one of Italy’s largest churches and felt in awe. The history really hit me, since the church began construction in the 1200s. I mean, how cool is that?!
Wednesday morning, we got up and got a train to go to Venice. Pro tip: get a train ticket to the island, not Venice City. For a city that is going to have water levels rise to swallow it up in 70-80 years, it is fantastic. All the canals were great and the AC in our apartment was not too shabby either. The fact that out our back window was a canal, was hard to wrap my brain around. We did go on a gondola ride and since all the gondolas are regulated by the city, its a flat fee of 80 Euros for a 30 minute ride, with up to 6 people. That meant our 4 person group, it only cost us 20 Euro each for a once in a lifetime opportunity. We learned a lot from our gondolier and was throughly impressed by the skill it takes to drive one of those boats with the little space there is.
All the shops around were adorable and duh, we got more gelato. After eating dinner where my spaghetti was black (no worries it was a black sauce that stained my teeth and lips black for a bit), we just sort of wandered. We accidentally went to the other side of the island but saw a beautiful bridge that we watched boats and reflected on our time abroad. The next day we went and got water taxi tickets to go the airport and then spent our time enjoying the sun. Sitting next to the water with my feet hanging over the edge, I realized I didn’t want to leave. The peace and serenity water gives people is everywhere on this island. I have been on a few islands in my time, but this one was special. Also, no matter what anyone says, the city does not smell bad!
I will admit that Florence and Venice are interchangeably my number 2 and 3 on favorite cities, and I cannot wait to go back.
When in Rome… and Florence… and Vencie Getting a week to travel at the end of my program was amazing. My group decided to sleep in Friday and get in a taxi, then train then plane to go to Italy!
Surprises in Vienna
Let me first start with explaining that getting to Vienna was one of the most interesting times of my life. We were packing the night before we were to leave early in the morning, we get an email from the airline saying our 6:30AM flight was cancelled. After 30 minutes of panicking and looking up other flights, we were informed that we had been rebooked to a flight that put us 88th on the standby…
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An Irish blessing in itself
An Irish blessing in itself
May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand. -An Irish Blessing Going to Ireland was blessing. Connecting with my Irish roots was fantastic. Seeing things that I could connect with and talk to my family about was a nice reminder…
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The Spanish Sun
I will start this with that I am in love with Spain. I have loved its people for years and the culture is so interesting. Being able to go to Barcelona and then Madrid was a dream. We left Liverpool Thursday afternoon and arrived in Barcelona in the evening and made it through stand still traffic to our cute apartment that had a view of the whole city. The little terraces were so great, not to…
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TRUE
“This is a story about America then, told by America now, and we want to eliminate any distance between a contemporary audience and this story.”
- Lin-Manuel Miranda
Ever heard of those crazy people who do back to back traveling from different countries and providences? I have become that person.
My week of traveling started getting a cab after seminar to the Liverpool Lime Street Train Station with my travel group and another group of four. We got a series of very crowded trains to go to Scotland. Since the following Monday was a bank holiday, that incidentally coincided with Memorial Day/50th running of the Indy 500, so many people were going places. Once we arrived in Scotland, we got a bit lost looking for our hostel, despite it being so close to the castle and train station. We then met back up with the other group for a pub crawl. We walked a lot and had enough laughs to last us for a while. We got back late, obviously, and then got up the next morning to hike to Sir Arthur’s Seat, which is 251 meters high according to Wikipedia. It was a rough walk but we all made it. Special shout out to Kirsten who made it despite having asthma. You did it girl!
Protip: Listen to your mom and bring tennis shoes, converse are not meant for hiking
We just shopped around for the rest of the day and then part of our group had to go home due to no hostel vacancies in the whole city. That night we had a relaxing time enjoying the square outside our hostel. Some lovely Scottish ladies came up to us and asked us if we were Americans. Then proceeded to ask us about 3 more times, in case anything had changed.
Behind me was our hostel and this is the castle where Queen bloody Mary once lived!
We came back to Liverpool for a quick interlude so we could travel with everyone in the program to London. Once we arrived, we all got our 3 bedded rooms in the hotel. Next up on the agenda was a hop on, hop off tour of the city. I highly recommend to go, you get to see all the big sites and go at your pace. I loved the hustle and bustle of Piccadilly Circus and Buckingham Palace was so amazing! We even got to see the changing of the guard. The history in the whole city is stupendous. My actual favorite part was the little concrete triangle next to Hyde Park where there are 3 trees to signify the place where the public executions were held way back in the day.
Site where the public executions were held
Buckingham Palace
We then, as typical college students, went to a place called the Ice Bar. The Ice Bar is a permanent bar made up of ice! The cups are even made of ice. To accommodate the makeup of the bar, it’s all kept at -5 degrees Celsius. The next day, I could not wait for 3PM. That is when I got to see “In The Heights” and my inner theatre nerd died on The West End. I cried, I laughed and fell in love with the actor that played Sonny.
Watching British people pretend they were from New York was pretty great
We had to cancel our original plan to go to Paris due to urging from the State Department, our professor and parents. There were planned strikes by public transport employees. Our whole group was sad and I’ll admit I cried. We then stayed in London for one more night, but this time in a southern area near Borough Market, a cute place underneath a train station with food galore. Everything from fresh fruit, to cookies, to fish and everything in between was there and not too expensive. We walked along the River Thames to see the London Eye and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Despite it being cloudy, it was sort of relaxed and fun!
The next stop was Amsterdam, where we went a day earlier than planned and I left my heart. While most people think of drugs and prostitutes when they think of this city in The Netherlands (not Norway, like some thought), it has a rich history in trading and art. There is the Van Gogh Museum and many others with pieces by Rembrandt, Banksy and more. We first arrived and made the mistake of taking a cab, as it was SO expensive. Even though we got Tesla! The next morning was a perfect cloudy day for a canal tour. I learned so much about the role Amsterdam and the East India Company had in the discovery of the world, how they revolutionized shipping and living on a series of canals, and the role in WWII Amsterdam’s citizens played. The Anne Frank House was enlightening to see and I was awestruck. Near there we saw the largest flea market in Amsterdam, what are called the Dancing Houses and the bench from The Fault in Our Stars. The houses there lean forward towards the canals and lean right and left due to the rotting of the beams underneath that were supposed to support the houses that were limited by law on how wide they could be. House boats here are everywhere and so cool! I might move in.
My friend Kara got carded in a place that you have to be 16 for beer and wine and 18 for liquor, even though she is fully legal to drink in the United States! We spent the next day wandering and getting lost due to my directions (sorry y’all!) but it was so sunny, no one minded. On Sunday we had to wake up at very early to get on the ferry to the train station at 4:15AM to make sure we bought tickets for our 4:45 train to the airport. We arrived at the airport at 5AM with time to spare of our 6:30 flight. After that plane, a train and cab with a broken handle, we got back to Hope University at 10AM in time for showers, naps and laundry.
If anyone wants to find me, my heart will be in Amsterdam.
Dancing house and house boats
Edinburgh + London + Amsterdam in 8 days Ever heard of those crazy people who do back to back traveling from different countries and providences?
