Last week was my school’s reading week, which meant that we had the week off to catch up on schoolwork and do extra reading for our classes. So naturally, every study abroad student spent the entire week traveling around Europe and doing zero schoolwork whatsoever. I spent the week traveling to Berlin, Prague, and Vienna with my friend Allana!
We flew out of London on Thursday night to Berlin, Germany. We were in Berlin for almost three full days. We spent our first day on a free walking tour of the city where we got to see most of the major attractions in the city. We saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, the site of Hitler’s underground bunker and his death, Checkpoint Charlie, and a few other smaller sites. We had a really awesome Australian tour guide who knew so much about Berlin and even convinced us to buy tickets for her tour the next day of a concentration camp just outside of Berlin. We spent our second day touring the German labor camp, Sachsenhausen, which is about 45 minutes north of Berlin. Almost the entire visit was outside, and it was cold and raining the entire time. Our tour guide said that it was the coldest day she had ever given a tour there. Our shoes had soaked through and our feet were freezing, but it definitely put things into perspective when our guide talked about the awful conditions that people had experienced there. After our visit to the concentration camp, we headed to the East Side Gallery to see some of the artwork on the remaining areas of the Berlin Wall. There was so much cool graffiti and artwork to see, and we took tons of pictures.
On our last day, we went to a really cute cafe for breakfast called Distrikt Coffee. I got an acai bowl and avocado toast (if you know me then you know about my love/obsession for avocado), and it was so so good. Thought about it for the rest of the day, to be completely honest. Then we spent some time at the Museum of Natural History. We were basically killing time all day until our 7:00pm bus to Prague, so we walked back to the center of the city and got ourselves some takeaway (they don’t say “to-go” here.. it’s kinda weird) food for dinner. We made our way to the bus stop and about five hours later we had made it to Prague!
Okay, if you’re ever traveling around Europe and looking for a good city to visit, you absolutely have to go to Prague in the Czech Republic. It’s my favorite city that I’ve visited. It’s a really small (and inexpensive!) city, so we had plenty of time to do everything we wanted in only two and a half days. Our first day in Prague was absolutely beautiful. It was sunny and in the high 50s, so we spent the day walking around doing most of our sightseeing. Since the city is so small we were able to walk everywhere and we got really familiar with it. We walked to the Charles Bridge and ate breakfast at a place called Bohemia Bagel that makes all kinds of sandwiches and burgers that are all served on bagels. Then we made our way up to the Prague Castle and the St. Vitus Cathedral. Both were so beautiful! They’re up on a hill so when you’re up there you get an amazing view of the entire city. I took so many pictures. Then we made our way back across the Charles Bridge to see Old Town Square and the famous Astronomical Clock, but on the way we had to stop and get a trdelník. We had seen places selling this pastry all over the city. I’m not even kidding there are places selling these on nearly every block. It’s basically dough that is wrapped into a cylinder and then the outside is rolled in sugar (and sometimes nuts). Allana and I both got ours with Nutella along the inside, and it was SO GOOD. We even shared another one before we left on Wednesday night. I really think we should make trdelnik a thing in the states. Later that night we went to an ice bar! It was fun, but very cold. It was about 17 degrees Fahrenheit so you’re only allowed to be in there for 20 minutes. Definitely a fun experience though, and we took some cute pictures.
We spent the next day just walking around and exploring. We walked to the Petrin Lookout Tower, which is an Eiffel Tower lookalike that gives you a really great view of the city. The uphill walk to get there was killer, but it was worth it for the view. It was a rainy day so it was all foggy, but it was still really cool! We stopped in a Starbucks to warm up and use their Wifi (lol), and they had a world map and a sign that said “Where are you from?”. People had put pins on the map to show where they were from, and I thought it was so cool to see where people had visited from. There had been visitors to that Starbucks from every imaginable corner of the Earth. People had come from Antarctica and even tiny islands that were barely visible on the map. So cool. It really gives you a new perspective on how huge our world is. The next day we went to a cute cafe/bookstore for breakfast and then we went to the John Lennon Wall. After taking some pictures we just wandered around, had another trdelnik, and made our way to the bus station to go to Vienna, Austria!
We spent our first day in Vienna at the Schönbrunn Palace. We bought tickets for a self-guided audio tour throughout 40 of the rooms in the palace. The inside was beautiful, and it really made me wish I had been born into royalty (sigh). Later that night we went out to eat and then went to Vienna Ice World! At the beginning of the year, the Vienna City Hall Square is transformed into a giant ice rink. The City Hall building is lit up so beautifully and they played fun music. We ice skated for a couple hours and had a lot of fun! We also got some funny videos of us (okay, fine, it was just me..) falling that are hilarious. The next day we went to this really cute place for breakfast. If you couldn’t tell by now, Allana and I are really into cute breakfast places. It was called Corns n’ Pops, and I got a fruit smoothie and a waffle with chocolate chips, chocolate sauce, and bananas. So I guess you could say the food in Europe is okay.. We spent the rest of the day wandering around the Museums Quarter, walking throughout the city, and exploring. The next day we went out to breakfast (shocker) and explored some more before heading to the airport to get back to London.
It was such a fun week of traveling, but we both came back so tired. I needed another reading week to recover from reading week. But it’s okay because Mallory is coming tomorrow to visit for a whole week! I can’t wait to show her around London and then go to Rome together! It’s gonna be fun 🙂
Eva Around the World 