I was with Jordan and Mackenzie for most of my two-week break. We started out in Barcelona, where we rented bikes for a day, saw the Magic Fountain (a fountain that “dances” and changes lights to music), went to the beach, to Park Güell, and even to a Barcelona Football/Soccer game!
The bike lanes in Barcelona are the best I’ve ever seen in a city!
The Valpo Pin on the bike lane. I can’t say I didn’t get some funny looks from people in cars when I was on the ground taking this!
Skipping rocks in Barcelona (Valpo Pin in foreground)
After Barcelona we flew to London where we saw all the classic sites like Big Ben (actually the bell inside of the tower), the red payphone booths, double-decker buses, taxis, the London Eye, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Abbey Road (where The Beatles famously crossed), Platform 9 ¾ at King’s Cross Station, went up the Tower Bridge, and rode on the Tube. We also got to meet up with a friend from our freshman year at Valpo, Jen Ehr! It was great to see her again and to have her show us around Oxford University where we also got to see the dining hall they modeled the one in the Harry Potter movies after.
One of the many stereotypical London things we saw while there.
It was nice to meet up with a friend from Valpo, who now goes to Oxford. Jen gave us a great tour!
Crossing Abbey Road, complete with a London taxi waiting for us!
Rome was our next stop, where we went to the Colosseum, the Roman Forum/Palatine Hill, the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps (both under construction unfortunately), and also got to see Pope Francis give a blessing on Sunday at noon! It was really cool seeing what humans were possible of doing 2,000 years ago. I could have personally spent a whole day at just the Colosseum and Palatine Hill.
One of the many times we got gelato over the two-week break.
The Roman Colosseum as well as the Roman Forum/Palatine Hill were absolutely amazing! Crazy what people could do 2,000 years ago.
The Valpo Pin overlooking the Colosseum.
On our way to Venice we stopped in Florence for the day where we found this awesome market area! I picked up some dried fruit and Mackenzie and Jordan got some uniquely shaped pasta and a couple random things for Christmas gifts. Upstairs they had a large piece of truffle that was listed at 330,000 euro!
A friendly old Italian man started talking to us (in Italian) while in Florence. It was hard to understand but cool nonetheless!
Next stop, Venice! We did a lot of just walking around there, going over bridges and getting lost on the side streets. What would normally be a questionable alleyway in the U.S. was a perfectly normal place to walk there, just had to be careful for the random dead-ends that only led to water!
Venice was a beautiful city. We spent hours just walking around getting lost in the maze of roads and canals; there’s nothing quite like it in the world!
Mackenzie scaring Jordan next to the water!
The end of my trip was spent with Nick in a small town called Wengen in the Swiss Alps. I couldn’t have asked for a better place to end the two weeks! We went on a 2-hour hike when we first got there and that night our Airbnb host made cheese fondue and had wine for us. Although Switzerland is very expensive, it was well worth it!
The Swiss Alps in Wengen, Switzerland were breathtaking!
Nick trying his hand at chopping some wood at a little campsite area on top of a mountain.
We found snow!
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