Thanks for joining me!
Hi there!
Thanks for joining me on my first blog post! If you are a travel enthusiast, you have come to the right place. I love everything about travel, from the culture to the food, and everything in between, so my goal is to give you the best digital traveling experience you can have, as well as offer any tips and tricks that come in handy when traveling internationally.
To give you a little background on myself, I am a French lover and overall travel aficionado. I have traveled to Europe three times, and am leaving for my fourth European adventure in a month. One of these marvelous trips abroad lasted for just about six months while I was studying abroad in Dijon, France (yes, where that marvelous, semi-spicy mustard comes from. Picture below.). I spent my time living with a host family, taking classes at the university, and traveling all around Europe on the weekends.
PS: If you are leaving to study abroad soon and are looking for some insider tips, I will be writing a blog post on that soon!
My passion for France and the French language started when I was a freshman in high school and started taking French classes. Once I realized that this was actually something that I excelled at, I became very passionate about it and the rest is history! My original trip to Paris was in 2015 with my boyfriend. He was backpacking around Europe so I met him in Paris for a week and I hated it. Yes, you read that correctly.
Does anyone else here feel as though all through your French classes, you have been taught that Paris is this magical place where everything is perfect and nothing can go wrong? Yeah, me too. This is far from the truth. My vision of Paris before I left was nothing like I saw when I arrived. There were homeless people in the metros, cigarette butts everywhere, and train strikes out the wazoo. Just another city, one might say.
BUT…I have a disclaimer. I went back the following year when I studied abroad, and LOVED it. Once I accepted Paris for what it really was and not some magical place in story books, I absolutely fell in love with it and understood the hype. So, yes, you can now say I’m totally Paris obsessed, but can you blame me?
Anyway, after my semester abroad (which will be detailed in more blog posts to come) I planned yet another European adventure for 2017. First stop – Paris (bien sûr). However, I did not spend my whole trip staring at the beauty of the Eiffel Tower, or roaming around Montmartre. I moved on to Strasbourg, France after a few days which is now one of my favorite cities in the word. Seriously, you have to go. If you love small, quaint French towns, this is the place to go. It is oh, so charming (pictured below).
Departing Strasbourg, my cousin and I set off on a long train ride down to Switzerland where we visited the lovely city of Zurich. Boy oh boy, have I never spent so much money in my life on the most basic of things. I would absolutely love go back, but maybe when I’m a CEO and can actually afford the common activities and food there. As an example, my cousin and I went to dinner one night and each got a full pizza and a beer. The check came out to be just around $80 US dollars…and it wasn’t even the best pizza I’ve ever had!
Last but not least, we visited Munich, Germany. What an amazing city (and cheaper than Zurich, thank God). It is indeed a city, but really feels like a small town in most areas. We checked out the main areas of the city and absolutely fell in love with sausage and sauerkraut and GIANT beers. Ugh, so delicious I can’t keep writing about it without drooling.
So, for 2018, I have decided to journey to a place I’ve never been before – Portugal! My cousin and I will be departing for Porto and Ponta Delgada in April of this year and I am super excited! Although I will not be visiting my beloved city of Paris (or Strasbourg for that matter), I am looking forward to exploring the new culture, language, food, and most importantly, wine. 😉
Stay tuned learn more about my past adventures, as well as join me on my future journeys that have yet to come!
