“Would it be crazy to spend Thanksgiving in Dublin this year?”
I mean, a little? It was an idea I had while I was planning travel with my friend Alan, who lives in Ireland. We’d worked together for a few years but never met in person, and with my company still on full-time remote work, I’ve been trying to maximize this unprecedented flexibility since I know we’ll be back to hybrid work eventually. My family has never cared about Thanksgiving as a holiday, since it’s just my parents and I and we can do a family dinner any weekend when flights aren’t 4x as expensive as normal.
Colin decided to join me and we booked an Airbnb for a week in Dublin. We had three days of working remotely from Dublin and meeting our colleagues who work in Ireland, which was so fun after so many months of Zoom. We had a team dinner and a couple great nights at the pub, and a few days to properly explore the city! Obviously we went to the Jameson distillery and did a whiskey tasting. We saw the amazing library at Trinity College, walked along the river, and drank lots of Guinness (which, for the record, is SO much better in Ireland? I won’t even drink it in the US). Alan brought us to a comedy show. It was fantastic.
On Thanksgiving, we headed out to Howth. It’s an easy day trip from Dublin, only about half an hour on the train. We got fish and chips (or in my case, just chips) and did the cliff walk. Fun fact, Colin had not read the itinerary I had sent him or the links about the cliff walk, so he didn’t expect it to be a multi-hour endeavor and discovered that in real time. The views were stunning!
The next day, we went up to Belfast! I do not pretend to be an expert on the Troubles, but I had always wanted to learn more about the history of Northern Ireland. Beyond what you can learn in Derry Girls, that is. I signed us up for a black cab tour, where they take you to the various neighborhoods and talk about the history of Belfast. I was stunned to see how many murals there were around the city. I think I was expecting it to sort of be like the Berlin Wall, where there are some peace-related paintings in one area, but here there were memorials to the dead all over the place. On street corners, in neighborhoods, in alleys. The picture of us there is next to one of the peace walls. It was a really interesting experience. We also went to the Titanic Museum, which was an excellent museum and definitely worth a visit.
On Saturday, since Alan was also off work, he drove us out to the Cliffs of Moher! It was an adventure getting out there, as the drive goes through some very narrow roads, and it’s disconcerting being on the other side of the road. The cliffs were so beautiful. I also hadn’t realized that was where they filmed the exterior shots of the cave in the sixth Harry Potter movie, so that was cool. We had dinner in Galway, which had a ton of people visiting for the Christmas markets and was wildly busy. It was great to get into the countryside a bit more. Next time I visit Ireland I will definitely want to explore more beyond Dublin, but it was such a fun Thanksgiving week!
I’ve wanted to go to Iceland for ages. It was starting to get popular while I was on study abroad, and living in Scandinavia made me particularly aware of it. So when Sam and I were looking for travel options for a week long trip, it was one of the first places that came to mind!
We drove the Ring Road in a week. Several people I talked to said that was too fast, which is dumb. Could I have spent more time there doing tours? Of course, it would have been fun. But it was super doable in a week, and no one day was too much driving. It’s such a small country compared to the United States. I don’t think we had a day over about 4 or 5 hours of driving, and it still felt like a relaxed experience.
We flew into Reykjavik and had a day of exploring and trying to recover from jet lag. I didn’t sleep well on the plane and spent the morning exhausted, but I still felt like we got a good initial sense of the city. It felt rather similar to Copenhagen, with nice pedestrian streets in the city center.
The next day was the Golden Circle and driving down to Vik! The Golden Circle is a famous tourist trail of attractions near Reykjavik, including Gulfoss, Thingvellir National Park, and Geysir, which is where the word geyser comes from. Around Geysir it started pouring rain. We lucked out overall on weather, but every so often we would get caught in a freak storm. Iceland is very unpredictable when it comes to weather. The locals often say if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.
We also visited Kerid Crater, which was a beautiful walk, and Seljalandsfoss, which is my favorite of the waterfalls we saw in Iceland! The trail goes behind the waterfall, which is a magical experience. From there, we made our way down to Vik on the southern coast.
Vik is well known for its black sand beaches and proximity to the glaciers! There are tons of things to do in this area, and if we’d had more time, I would have tried to spend more of it in this region. There’s a hike out to an abandoned plane that we passed but didn’t have enough time for, but I guess I’ll just have to come back!
The next day was a major highlight for me – we went hiking on a glacier! It was one of the best travel experiences of my entire life. We met up with our guide and got set up with helmets and crampons and ice axes. I’ll admit, I got concerned when they handed us the axes. This was listed as easy on the tour website, did I get myself in over my head? But no, it was easy to walk on the glacier, and I never felt unsafe. The only advice I have is to really be confident walking in the crampons. Some of the other people on our tour kept walking gingerly, and at that point it was less safe because they weren’t letting the spikes dig into the ice. This particular glacier rests on a volcano. The black veins of ash have helped protect it and mean that it is melting slower than some of the other glaciers in Iceland. Still, it is melting, and they showed us where it used to end a few years ago. Sad to see the results of human activity on such beautiful nature.
We also went to the glacier lagoon a few hours away. While we were there, we got to see seals! But the highlight of that area was called Glass Beach, which is an area where pieces of ice wash up along the beach and it is absolutely beautiful. From there, we headed a little farther east to our Airbnb. As soon as we got past Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon, there was a major drop off in the number of tourists! There were not many people out on the east coast, which is a shame, because it is gorgeous.
There weren’t many places to stop or specific sites once we got to the east coast. Instead, it’s just a stunning drive along the coast and through the fjords. We stayed at an Airbnb at a tiny town, where the nearest grocery store was nearly half an hour away, and it looked out over one of the fjords!
One of the strangest quirks about an Icelandic road trip were the one lane bridges. This is something I’d never really encountered before, but the south and east had lots of them. It was fine during the day but a little scary at night – I don’t love going over a bridge not knowing if there’s someone waiting on the other side to collide with me head on.
Our first real stop of the day was Dettifoss, which is decently far off the Ring Road itself. It’s the second most powerful waterfall in Europe, and it was very impressive! It’s part of the Diamond Circle in the north part of Iceland. We went there and to Lake Myvatn, but with more time, I would’ve liked to hit the whole loop. Our destination, though, was Lake Myvatn, which is packed with cool things to see!
We started at the Hverir geothermal area, which was gorgeous and had this orange soil around the geothermal features. We also went up to Viti Crater, which was very windy and very turquoise and we had to drive past a power station to get there. We also hiked up the Hverfjall Cinder Cone, which was a cool look out point. It was also very windy. We were lightly worried about being blown off the edge. The last stop of the day was the Dimmuborgir lava formations, which had a nice path that we could wander through for as long as we wanted. After getting dinner in the area, we drove on to our Airbnb in Laugar so we could get a head start on our next day.
On our next day, we started with our last official waterfall of the trip, Godafoss. Iceland has so many waterfalls that I was pretty selective on what we stopped for – I didn’t want us to get “waterfalled out” so to speak. Godafoss is a horseshoe-shaped waterfall and was definitely worthy of inclusion, the multiple lookout points gave us a great perspective on the landscape. It was still a fairly quick stop and we were on to Akureyri!
Akureyri is the second largest city in Iceland. We started with our COVID tests at a drive-through clinic. This was at an annoying time when the US was requiring COVID tests for all re-entry, but before they restricted it to one day before travel so we were able to do ours a few days in advance. Predictably, getting tested in Iceland was very efficient.
Our travel logistics done, we were able to explore the city, which was super fun. One interesting cultural quirk of Akureyri is their parking system. Most residents have clocks where they set it in the window with the time they parked, and the zones are all based on how many hours you can stay in any one space. As foreigners, we didn’t have a clock, so we just had to write our time on the back of a piece of paper. Sam tried an Icelandic hot dog and we stumbled on some sort of festival for high schoolers where they were all dressed up in team outfits like superheros and Pippi Longstocking.
We couldn’t stay forever, though, because our Airbnb was still about 2 and a half hours away. After a beautiful drive, we found ourselves on a farm. The host told us to be careful on the road, because “it can be sheeps on both sides,” which is our new favorite saying and applies to a surprising number of situations.
On our last full day in Iceland, I’d scheduled one more tour! We had a three hour drive to get to Thingvellir National Park so that we could get to our tour and snorkel in the Silfra Rift. Outside of the glacier tour, this was the other thing I’d been most excited about. The Silfra Rift is the place between the American and European continental plates, and you can swim through it and touch both continents at the same time, which is amazing. Our guide suited us up in a truly comical amount of neoprene, including neoprene lobster-claw-looking gloves, which was good because it was absolutely frigid water. He told us we should try taking a sip of the water and it froze my lips to the point where it was hard to get the snorkel resituated in my mouth. But almost freezing was 100% worth it, because it was gorgeous clear water and I had a magical time swimming through the place where the continents meet.
Overall, I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday trip! The only thing that could’ve made me happier is if we’d seen the Northern Lights – I have terrible luck when it comes to trying to spot them, every time I’ve been somewhere it would be theoretically possible, the sky is overcast. But I guess I’ll just have to travel back above the Arctic Circle, how terrible….
Fun fact, this is my 100th post! I started this in the form of a Tumblr back in 2014, which is absolutely wild. It’s been nearly seven years, which I think might be roughly the amount of time it takes for every single cell in the human body to be replaced? Seven years ago I was in my sophomore year of college. A lot has changed since then, both in my life and in the world. Since 2014, I went on study abroad, traveled alone for the first time, graduated college, moved halfway across the country, started a job, got promoted (twice), started a masters degree, and bought a house. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next!
It’s also been over a year now since I was on a plane. The world changed completely last March, practically overnight. The last trip I took out of the country was Cuba (which I will be posting about at some point soon). The one I wanted to talk about on this post, though, was last Thanksgiving. In November 2019, my parents and I visited Europe together. I am so thankful that we went before COVID. I can’t just get on a plane and visit for a long weekend anymore. Seeing my family now requires quarantining and driving, planning to minimize as many risks as we can. It will probably be a long time before we’re all vaccinated and can travel together again, so I’m glad the last trip was a good one.
Highlights from London: – Going to the Tower of London in the rain and trying to imagine what it must have been like in the Tudor period – Staying in Trafalgar Square in a beautiful boutique hotel – Visiting Christmas markets and drinking mulled wine – Going out to pubs with my friend Will and getting a tour of some of the more off the grid places – Getting to go on the Harry Potter Studio Tour with my parents, who read me the first book back in first grade – That amazing Italian pizza place near our hotel – Going to the Shard and having cocktails as we look out over the city
Highlights from Paris: – The charming café that we found near our hotel! The waitress heard me reading the menu and came up to my parents and started speaking French to them because she assumed we were all French speakers, which, not going to lie, I’m a little proud of…. – Wandering around the Louvre during their night hours – Going on a dinner cruise down the Seine and seeing the city at night – Taking a day trip out to see Chambord and Chenonceau, which I’ve been wanting to see for ages – Dad trying escargot for the first time in that lovely little bistro
Highlights from Copenhagen: – Showing my parents where I went to school! Copenhagen was my first big trip on my own, and so it was amazing to get to show them all my favorite places – The Christmas market at Nyhavn. I used to stay away from Nyhavn when I lived there, because it always felt touristy, but all the little stalls were so cute and we had a favorite mulled wine place by the end of our time there – The fabulous restaurant a few doors down from our hotel with some of the best gnocchi I’ve ever tasted – Tivoli’s Christmas season – Just being back in Denmark. Copenhagen is one of the cities I love most in the entire world, and I have so many happy memories associated with it. I met one of my best friends in the world there, I learned so much about myself and about traveling, and I love being able to walk around and revisit my favorite places again <3
It was the first time I got to go to Europe with my parents, but hopefully it won’t be the last! I’m excited for all of us to get vaccinated and be able to take more trips together in the future.
Venice was amazing. We had a long day of train rides, so we didn’t arrive until the early afternoon. It was raining as our train pulled into the station, and the light fog gave the city an otherworldly look.
Megan and I stayed in a hostel on Giudecca, which is an island slightly south of Venice. This meant that we ended up taking a lot of water buses. Blogs I read seemed to see this as a negative, but I loved seeing Venice by water and that gave me more of a chance to do so. We got an unlimited transit pass for the three-ish days we were there.
After dropping off our stuff, we headed to St. Mark’s Square. I wanted to see Doge’s Palace, which is where the leaders of Venice used to live back when Italy was a collection of city states. We also got to cross over the Bridge of Sighs and see the old prison from that time period.
From there, we wandered around Venice for a while in search of the Rialto Bridge. I’ve never been as lost as I was in Venice. I have a very good internal compass, so even if I can’t find specifically where I need to be, I can at least figure out the general direction I should be going. Not so here. I would be walking in a direction I was convinced was correct, and then I would look at Google Maps to find that I had somehow turned around completely. It’s a good thing they put signs up to point you toward St. Mark’s Square and the Rialto.
We did eventually find the bridge, and got a good sense of the city in the process. With a lot of cities, there will be one scenic area, and all the pictures you see come from those same places. In Venice, everything is the scenic part. You’ll turn down a side street and find yourself crossing the bridge of the loveliest canal you’ve ever seen, until you see the next one. It’s amazing. I can’t imagine why anyone would build a city entirely on water, but I’m glad they did.
The next day, we headed to Burano, which is north of Venice. It’s known for tiny colored houses, and you’ve probably seen it on Instagram. We had lunch reservations at a place I’d found online. Or at least, I thought we did. Turns out I’d booked them for the day after. The restaurant staff were bemused, saying that no one ever comes early for a reservation. I assumed we were out of luck, but they had an extra table for emergencies and they sat us down there without missing a beat.
The restaurant was incredible. Our meal started with bread and prosecco, and when we ordered the house wine, a sommelier came out to pour it for us. It specialized in seafood, so Megan tried something with clams and I had pasta with red sauce, which was one of the best pasta dishes I’ve ever had. We both got tiramisu as well. Again, absolutely delicious. I had a lot of wonderful meals in Italy, and this was among the best.
We went back to Venice for the afternoon and decided to take our gondola ride. I had bought a small group option, where you could show up at any of the available times daily. The gondola would have up to six people in it, which seemed like a fair trade for about 70% savings on the cost of a gondola ride. True to Italian fashion, they were not ready at the time they said they would be, and we ended up killing time by visiting a bookstore I had seen on Instagram.
The gondola ride itself was super cool. Everyone is right, that’s absolutely the best way to see the city. I wish it had lasted longer!
After our gondola ride, we got gelato and headed back to Giudecca to explore that island. That area is significantly less touristy. One of my coworkers studied abroad in Venice and said that’s where a lot of students live. At sunset, it has gorgeous views of St. Mark’s Square.
The next morning we spent a bit more time walking through the narrow streets of Venice, and then headed off to the airport for our flight. We had a long layover in London, although our flight was fairly delayed and we didn’t get to see as much as we’d planned. Apparently a bus caught fire in front of Stansted and it messed up all the flights. We did still have time to go to the Shard and have a few cocktails though! All in all, it was an amazing trip, and I cannot imagine a better end than Venice.
Yes, you read that correctly in the title. 129 flights of stairs. And all of them were worth it.
I have wanted to go to Cinque Terre ever since my family did a puzzle that had a picture of the houses of Manarola. I couldn’t imagine that such an adorable seaside village could exist in real life. It took me a long time to learn how to pronounce it correctly, because I always wanted to use a French accent, and it was only in researching for this trip that I learned about each of the five towns.
Our train got in to Riomaggiore, which is where we were staying. After dropping off our stuff, we explored the city center and then headed out to the other towns. We hit all five by train, which was fairly doable in a day. It took us pretty much the whole day, and it was somewhat tiring, but both of us agreed that we saw everything we wanted to.
After Riomaggiore, we went to Manarola, which is where the most famous pictures are from. It is so beautiful. It’s almost embarrassing how many pictures I have of those houses on my camera!
The third town is Corniglia, which is the only one that isn’t directly on the coast. Instead, you have to climb a lot of stairs to get up to it. The views were great, and it also felt way less touristy than the other villages. Luckily, we were there in off season, but this one still felt more authentic.
Fourth up was Vernazza. At this one, we were starting to flag a bit, so we stopped and did a wine tasting! We had two white wines and a dessert wine. It’s fun to be able to taste locally sourced wine. We also picked up a bottle of the limoncello cream, which we had tried in Sorrento and absolutely loved.
The last town was Monterosso al Mare, which is the only one with a beach. This one was a bit larger than the others, and felt less touristy as well. We split a pizza here before heading back to our Airbnb.
This particular Airbnb was a splurge for me, as I fell in love with the views from it. In classic fashion, I picked one with about a million stairs, not thinking about lugging our stuff up or getting back up after a long day. We checked on our phones, and our Airbnb was 22 flights of stairs up from the ground level of Riomaggiore. The views were worth it, though!
We left Rome early so that we could catch a train to Florence, where we were based for the next two days. After checking in to our Airbnb, we headed to the main tourist attraction, the Duomo.
We had reservations to climb the dome, which I would highly recommend! First of all, the views are spectacular. It gives you a clear view of Florence, and it also lets you see the inside of the church without waiting in the long line. Plus, you get up close and personal with the frescos on the ceiling. These featured dramatic scenes of sinners being pulled into hell.
There are a ton of stairs, and the staircases get fairly narrow at times. I believe when I bought the tickets, it gave a warning to people who were claustrophobic. The ticket also allowed us into all the other buildings in the church complex, although we opted to not wait in line for most of them. We did go into the museum, which had religious items and information about the architecture of the dome. One room had some bones from John the Baptist, so that was kind of cool.
We had a little extra time to explore Florence before we had to meet our wine and pasta tour, so we wandered around through the narrow streets. I generally have a good sense of direction, but it was a challenge in these streets! We got gelato and found the courtyard, where our tour guides came to pick us up.
From there, we were whisked into the Tuscan countryside. Our first stop was a winery. We got a quick tour of the villa, and then had a wine tasting. There was a white and two reds followed by a dessert wine. Unlike the other wine regions I’ve visited, it seems as though Italian wineries see the production of dessert wine as a status symbol. It’s fairly expensive, as it uses significantly more grapes than traditional wine, but we saw it here and at the wine tasting we did in Cinque Terre.
After we had all drank wine and shipped some back to the U.S., our guides brought us back to their family villa for a pasta class. We ended up with one of the founders of the whole operation, and she told us about how she had started the business. They were high up on a hill, and the views from their villa were stunning. They poured more wine and started the lesson on pasta. It was easier to make than I expected, although I did end up breaking my egg almost immediately when we started. Oops. We made ravioli with cheese filling and fettuccini, and they whipped up sauces to go on both. Once we were done making everything, we all sat down for dinner. It was such a delicious meal!
The next morning, we left our Airbnb early to head to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. From previous research, I knew there wasn’t much else to see in Pisa, so we just grabbed breakfast at a bakery along the way, took some kitschy pictures with the tower, and headed back to Florence for the rest of the day. Like Stonehenge, it’s one of those monuments where I’m glad I’ve seen it, even if it isn’t all that exciting. And after seeing it in person, I’ll admit it leans much more dramatically than I thought it did!
After Pisa, we walked back and explored more of Florence. I had booked timed tickets at the Uffizi Gallery, so we were killing time until that. We walked across the Ponte Vecchio, which was swarming with tourists, and walked along the river. We tried to go around the Boboli Gardens without realizing how large they were, which meant we got a very good look at the charming side streets in that area of the city.
The Uffizi Gallery was less busy than I expected it to be, considering the crazy lines outside. One of the coolest parts of it was walking into a room and ending up right in front of The Birth of Venus. I also think Renaissance art is hilarious, because every person they ever painted is in awkward positions and the babies have faces like old men, so I entertained myself that way throughout the gallery. We had an early night again, since we were getting up for another early train ride the next morning.
My main takeaway is that I would definitely love to come back and spend more time in wine country. Florence was gorgeous as well, especially when wandering the streets that aren’t adjacent to the Duomo and the big museums. It’s fun to get lost in the side streets as they wind through the city.
You know how when you’re in school, there are events in history that aren’t that important in the relative scheme of things, but you still learn about them a bunch of times and watch videos and write papers and then you grow up and realize that no one will ever talk about that event again? Pompeii was one of those for me. Along with the Titanic sinking, Custer’s Last Stand, pretty much anything I ever learned about dinosaurs…. Anyway. I still remember sitting in 7th grade social studies and watching a somewhat horrifying reenactment of Pompeii being buried in ash.
In short, it was high up on my list to go here. We got up early to take the train from Rome to Naples, which had some amazing views of Mt. Vesuvius on the way. From there, we switched to a regional train to get to Pompeii. For some reason, our train compartment had a bunch of French people on it, which was nice because there weren’t any announcements about what stop we were at so I could ask around to see how close we were getting to Pompeii. After storing our luggage, we headed over to the ruins.
The ruins were much larger than I imagined. It’s essentially an entire city, and you can find houses, amphitheaters, a colosseum, and marketplaces. If I’d had more time, I would have loved to go to the Archeological Museum in Naples, because that’s where most of the objects they’ve recovered are. The ruins at Pompeii are mostly the structures themselves. I also would have liked to go to Herculaneum, which is supposed to be better preserved. But. I loved seeing the ruins at Pompeii, it was so interesting to walk through a town that had once been entirely wiped out by a volcano.
When our feet got tired of walking through the ruins, we headed into Pompeii for pizza. I tried Google maps to find a good place. Since everything near the train station was overpriced and touristy, we picked a place that was about a 15 minute walk away and had great reviews. We set off into Pompeii, walking through a field and down a small side street. This took us to a market, where I asked a local where the restaurant was. He pointed it out to us and we ended up in a truly hole-in-the-wall pizza place, Pizzeria La Bella Napoli. It was family-run place, and it had the best pizza I ate in Italy. We each ordered a full pizza and watched them make it in front of us, and then sat down in the restaurant. Our total came out to 6 euro for two large pizzas. As we ate, the father came out from the back, where he had been making dough, and tried to speak to us in Italian with his son translating. It was an amazing experience, and one that I will absolutely cherish when I think back on our trip to Italy.
Once we had gorged ourselves on pizza and walked back to the train station, we headed down to Sorrento for the night. It took us a while to find our hotel. I had splurged and we had an ocean-room view, which was absolutely stunning. I would stay there again in a heartbeat. We tried to walk down to the sea, but there was a gate because it was still off season so we couldn’t actually get all the way down to the coast. The below pictures were taken from our balcony.
From there we headed into the town of Sorrento. We went into tiny shops, where they offered us tastings of limoncello, and killed time until our dinner reservation. It was lovely, and I would have loved to spend a little more time in Sorrento.
I had booked dinner at La Basilica Sorrento, and when we got there, we were one of two tables in the restaurant. This is what happens in Italy if you go to dinner at what would be a normal time in America. We both tried tasting menus, so I tried the vegetarian one and Megan got the seafood one. I’m usually not adventurous with food, but it paid off here.
My meal was: a half bottle of red wine, a piece of cheese pizza, a mozzarella and tomato salad, a pesto zucchini pasta course, a parmesan eggplant dish that tasted mostly like cheese, and a very strong rum-soaked cake. It was delicious, and the owner of the restaurant kept coming out to make sure we liked our food. The pesto zucchini course was my favorite. All in all, a great day for eating. We headed back to Rome the next day to visit the Vatican, but I would love to come back to this area and explore more.
After my night at the IceHotel, I flew down to Stockholm and then took another flight from Stockholm down to Rome. While flying over the entirety of Europe, I got to see the Alps from the plane, which was a nice bonus. I met my cousin Megan in the airport, and then we took the train together into the city.
After checking into our hostel, we walked over to go see the Colosseum! It’s a classic symbol of Rome, and it’s one of the wonders of the world. It was pretty magnificent to see it in person. We walked through a park and turned a corner, and it was suddenly there, right at the bottom of the hill. After marveling and taking a few pictures, we headed over to a wine and cheese bar I had found, Beppe e i suoi formaggi. We were there at a weird time so it was quiet, and we each drank some wine and tried a wide variety of cheeses. It was a fairly early night, because both of us had long days on planes and we were getting up early the next day for Pompeii and Sorrento.
We got back to Rome after our train back from Naples on Saturday. From there, we headed over to Pizzarium, which was in a lovely area of the city near the Vatican. It kept showing up on lists of good restaurants in Rome, so I wanted to try the pizza there. It was delicious, although it wasn’t the best I had in Italy – see my post in Pompeii & Sorrento for that story. We headed over to check in for our tour of the Vatican, and ended up walking around that area for a while since we were early.
When our tour started, we began by walking down the main road toward St. Peter’s Basilica. There’s a line on the cobblestones that marks the barrier between Italy and Vatican City, which is technically a separate country. Our tour guide told us a bit about the history and architecture of Vatican City, and spoke about the semi circle of columns that surrounds the main square. One of the funniest moments was when she asked a child in our group what that was supposed to represent. The child loudly said, “A trap!” and our tour guide was horrified, because the answer she was going for was “an embrace.”
We headed over to the Vatican Museums, which were very busy. We had to go on the Saturday, because they’re closed on Sundays. We waited in line for a long time to go through the metal detector, and then our guide took us quickly through the museums. A lot of it was sculptures and artwork about the history of Christianity. There were some gorgeous mosaics. My favorite room was the map room, which had a stunning intricate ceiling and old maps of Italy and Europe along the walls. From there we went to the Sistine Chapel, which was also beautiful. They wanted absolute silence here, although their attempts were undercut by the fact that someone kept coming over the loudspeaker and shushing everyone. I would LOVE to see how much money the Catholic Church actually has.
Once we left the Sistine Chapel, we took a shortcut over to St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s a massive structure, with high ceilings and dramatic columns. Once we had finished looking around, we headed back to our hostel for the night.
The next morning, we tried a bakery I had found online that was near our hostel. Pasticceria Regoli, which was delicious. We ate way too many pastries and then headed down to the Colosseum for our tour of that. We waited forever in the line for security, and then felt a bit rushed through the Colosseum itself, which was a shame.
Once we had left, we headed over to the Roman Forum, which is apparently the second largest archeological site in the world (after Pompeii). It had the ruins of the buildings from Ancient Rome, and our guide pointed out some of the places where people had governed and worshipped. The best part of the Forum for me was the hill where we had magnificent views of Rome.
From there, we did a quick tour of the other main sights of Rome. We started at Piazza Navona, then up to the Pantheon. Because it was Palm Sunday, the Pantheon was free to enter, which was cool. It was nice that everything was free, but it meant the crowds were insanely busy for most of our time in Rome. From there we went to Trevi Fountain, where we both threw in some coins, and we finished out our tour at the Spanish Steps. That area was swarming with people, so we broke away from the crowd and got some gelato.
From there, we made our way back to our area and had an early night, because we had another early morning planned. It was a whirlwind trip to Rome, but I think we managed to see most of the main attractions and try a lot of good food. Rome wasn’t my favorite of the cities we visited in Italy, but that was mostly the crowds in every major area – maybe if we hadn’t gone the week before Easter, I would have had a much more favorable impression of the city. That said, it was still amazing to see places I’ve heard about and imagined for years, and it was a great way to start out our trip.
The Icehotel was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had! We flew up in the morning to stay there for a single night. The airport is tiny, with one runway surrounded by snow and ice.
Once we had transferred to the hotel itself, we checked in and started exploring. We were spending a night in one of the ice rooms, although it’s possible to stay longer and spend nights in warm rooms as well. They have cabins and a main lodge, as well as two separate ice structures. During the day, all the ice rooms are open to the public so that everyone can see the incredible snow and ice sculptures.
There’s a portion that’s “IceHotel 365,” which is ice rooms inside a building that are available year round and the Ice Bar. Then there’s another ice structure that’s just available during the winter. They build it in October or November and then it melts down in April. For this one, they invite anyone to submit ideas for rooms, regardless of whether they’re artists or have ever worked with snow or ice before. From the submissions, they pick the best and invite those people up there to design the rooms. They change every year in what’s essentially a temporary museum of ice, which is so cool! We stayed in a standard room, not an art room, but I think I’d like to come back and splurge for one of the art ones.
After we were done looking through rooms, we borrowed some snow suits from the hotel so that we could walk around. They let us borrow boots, mittens, hats, and full body zip up snow suits, which kept us nice and warm. It wasn’t as cold as I expected – I think the temperatures were around 15 degrees for most of the time we were there.
There are tons of activities available up there as well. We saw people go by on a dog sled, which is still one of my bucket list goals, but there are options to bobsled, take a reindeer-drawn sleigh, ride on horseback, and try to see the Northern Lights. Although we’d hoped we might see them while we were there, it started snowing shortly after the sun set. We didn’t do any of the activities since we weren’t there for long, but I’d love to go back and try some of these out.
We had a late dinner reservation, so we went to the Ice Bar beforehand for a drink. It’s been a dream of mine to go to an ice bar for a long time. Sarah and I tried to go to one in Helsinki, but it had closed down. It was worth waiting for, though, because I got to drink out of an ice glass and it was amazing. We talked around our ice table until it was time to go to our dinner reservation.
Dinner was at the cheaper of the two options, which was about a 20 minute walk from the hotel itself down the only road in Kiruna. We initially passed it and had to backtrack, since it was in a section that looked residential. We had a great meal over candlelight and enjoyed our last night traveling together, since the next morning I had an early flight to Rome and Anna and Laurel were heading to Copenhagen.
Once dinner was over, we headed back to our room. They had given us orientation earlier. We got down to our base layers, locked everything into our locker, and took heavy sleeping bags into our room to zip ourselves up for the night. In the sleeping bag, I felt pretty toasty. Because the room itself is so cold, they don’t recommend bringing in electronics, so they do wakeup calls for everyone. Since my flight was so early, I slept fairly poorly and got anxious, imagining I would miss my flight, so I ended up going back to the lodge earlier than I needed to and getting coffee and breakfast. I had arranged a transfer back to the airport, and when I got there, I don’t think there were any other passengers there. I had a flight to Stockholm and then a second flight from Stockholm to Rome, which was a long day of travel! But it was so worth it to get up to the IceHotel – it was an otherworldly experience, and I want to go back someday.
I sometimes think about what it would be like if I had gone to DIS Stockholm instead of Copenhagen. It wasn’t an option when I was applying for study abroad, but it was opened right after, and they had a Forensic Psychology class so I likely would have considered it. Anyway. I liked Stockholm, it was very nice.
We visited the Stockholm public library, which I had seen on some sort of social media on a list of cool libraries. We tried a couple cafés that Anna and Laurel had found as well. My favorite place we tried was a place on Gamla Stan that was down in a basement. There were candles lining the stairs, and it was so cozy. Anna and I also had wine at a swanky bar near our hostel, which was nice. It was good to catch up with her, since she’s currently living in Scotland.
We also explored the main shopping street and visited the island where all the museums are. The first one we went to was the Vasa Museum, which is where they excavated a Viking ship and reassembled it in the museum. It was massive, with intricate carvings on the bow. There were a number of exhibits on what life was like in that era, and they even had skeletons they recovered from the wreck that told them more about the types of people on the ship. It was pretty incredible.
From there, we went through a park, which was covered in snow and ice, and worked our way over to the ABBA Museum. We had a fantastic time there. It started with a room full of guitars from famous musicians, where Anna and Laurel played several rounds of Guitar Hero. Then we went into the ABBA portion, which started with a hype video. I think whoever edited the video was on acid mixed with cocaine, because it was very fast-paced clips of various ABBA music videos, but I did leave it wanting to go watch all of their old music videos. The museum was interactive, so there were areas where we could sing in a mock sound booth and pretend to mix the audio for their tracks. The best part was the one where you can take a selfie and then it photoshops your head on their body, and then you dance around and it makes it look as though you are dancing around on the screen in an ABBA costume. The program didn’t work that well, and we ended up laughing so hard we were all in tears by the end of it. It was amazing.
From there, we took a ferry back to Gamla Stan and spent some more time wandering the narrow streets. It’s a beautiful area, and it was a nice place to end our time in Stockholm. We had a casual night drinking wine and eating dinner back at our hostel before heading up to Kiruna.
