Brief accounts of London, Italy and Spain

After three weeks of traveling, I finally made it to Rabat, Morocco where I’ll be spending the next four months studying. Traveling through London, Italy, and Spain was overall an incredible experience but I’ll only give a short summary of my time in each country before addressing my hopes/ goals for my time in Morocco.

London: I got into London August 11^th and spent the week there. I felt London made for a pretty smooth introduction to my travels because it was abroad but everyone spoke English. This made getting around and navigating the tube pretty easy. My two friends and I knocked out the main tourist sites such as, The London Eye, Buckingham Palace, and The London Tower Bridge but because one of my friends had a cousin in London we also got see things outside of the city such as Stone Hedge and the town of Oxford. In London crossing the was streets was terrifying because we always looked the wrong way and might have walked into oncoming traffic a couple times. London was great to see but by the end of the week my friend Lindsay and I felt ready to move on to Italy and see Europe!

Italy: Travelling around Italy was a completely different experience than London. Neither my friend nor me knew any Italian and many Italians did not speak English. This made navigating and finding streets a little difficult.  Italy was really the country we got to see the most of and I feel got the best feel for. We hit Milan, Florence,Venice for a day, and Rome. The things that stuck out about Italy were the incredible Cathedrals or Duomo’s we saw, art and sculptures by famous artists, the Vatican and Sistine Chapels as well as the Coliseum. Italy had breathtaking views in every city accompanied with endless pizzerias, pasta and of course gelato!! There really was nothing like the Italian pizza we had but by the end of our stay in Italy we so were tired of it that for dinner out last night in Rome we had Chinese food! By the end of our stay in Italy I acquired a pretty decent Italian accent as well as some random Italian words and phrases but had my phone stolen in Rome which was kind of a bummer.  

Spain: From Italy to Spain we caught a ferry to Barcelona. The ferry was 19 hours long and was quite the experience. My friend and I wanted to save money so we just bought passage on the boat rather than getting beds. In the end we ended up sharing a pitcher of sangria and crashing on some random café couches after some karaoke.  When we finally got to Barcelona we were hungry, tired and incredibly excited to be in Spain. My friend Tyler came out and met us for the duration of Barcelona and Madrid. Barcelona was great because I finally got my beach time and got to swim in ocean. Madrid was an incredible city with lots of plazas and incredible architecture. I definitely got my dose of culture in Spain from hitting several famous art museums, going to a concert, and seeing live Flamenco accompanied by a fancy dinner! Some of the art and paintings were amazing and we saw everything from renaissance art to the modern art movement (i.e. Picasso).  I would look up the ones I loved but there’s no wifi in our hotel in Morocco. Leaving Spain bittersweet when I left this morning. I was incredibly nervous and anxious for Morocco along with excited. However despite having to nervous pee every five minutes  I made it safely to Morocco, met my group and got a good nights sleep at the hotel. More to come!