The first day at sea involved sleeping in, something we hadn’t done since starting our travels. My friend Rachel and I decided to go off and do our own thing in the morning. My decision was to eat a great breakfast at the buffet and then to grab my book and lay by the pool. I found a great lounge chair and just got to enjoy the sun and relax. After lunch I met up with Rachel, we hung out in the solarium and had pizza and French fries as a little treat. We went to the bar and enjoyed the [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Venice at around noon the next day. Pulling into the city of Venice by train is pretty cool. You cross a bridge for like 20 minutes that is surrounded by water. We got out of the train station and you walk right out to a main canal and tons beautiful buildings. We headed to the cruise shuttle since we were spending a couple of days in Venice after the cruise. The bus took us to the port and we waited to board our boat called Splendor of the Seas. We walked around the amazing boat of all 11 [View Full Entry]

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Meeting all the participants in Berlin I was able to hear what everyone’s travel plans for our 2 weeks in July. Another of my good friends was planning to be in Italy during the same time and so we decided to meet up in Amalfi. Rachel and I took the water bus to Amalfi the next morning. The boat made a stop in a town called Positano before arriving in Amalfi. Positano was amazing we were tempted to stay. Once we arrived in Amalfi we met up with our friend Ryan. We walked around the town and saw a very beautiful [View Full Entry]

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My flight was early on a Monday morning from Cologne/Bonn airport to Naples, Italy. The flight actually got us in at around 10am in the morning so we had most of the day to explore the city of Naples. I was traveling the 2 weeks with a good friend named Rachel who lived in Cologne and Bonn during the year we lived in Germany. The 2 of us had done little prior planning on what to see in the cities we visited and figured we would just wing it. On our bus ride from the airport to the hotel we spoke [View Full Entry]

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My last few weeks in Germany I made it a point to sort of say good-bye to my favorite cities. I couldn’t have been prouder to live in the state of Nord Rheine Westfallen. The state was filled with amazing cities and mind blowing sites. Even though Remscheid was not a glamorous city it still became my home and a town I miss. Köln The city of Cologne over the year was always the place to go when I wanted a change of scenery. It was not much further away from Düsseldorf but for the first 5 months it also cost [View Full Entry]

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With the last few weeks winding down I decided to stay around my home state in Germany and not leave the country until my last 2 week vacation. Even though I was staying around the state of North Rheine Westphalia didn’t mean I wasn’t going to explore new thing. My host family told me they wanted to plan a good-bye dinner with some of my friends. So one night in early June we had a fun barbeque with 4 other friends from my program. It was fun for my host family to hear about the other participant’s experiences in Germany and [View Full Entry]

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So after spending one night at home after Rome I had to get up early the next morning for our train to Berlin. The trip to Berlin was paid for by our program because it was a final seminar for all 75 participants. The week was basically to visit the capital and be involved in different publicity events to support the exchange program. It was also a nice way to all meet up and find out how everyone’s year has been. We arrived on Tuesday and only had a brief greeting from the program organizers before having a nice dinner all [View Full Entry]

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Seeing the eternal city of Rome has always been a dream of mine to see and I had hoped this year I would be able to go. The weekend before our final seminar in Berlin was a long, so we decided to plan another blind booking. The theme we choose was culture with cities like Athens, Barcelona, Prague and Rome. As soon as you book the flight you find out which city you fly to and it happened to be Rome. Everyone was really excited since most of us had never been to Italy at all. We started the search for [View Full Entry]

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With the weather getting nicer and my time getting shorter I have been trying to take advantage of every weekend and every event. During one of the nicer weekends in early May I made a plan with a friend in Bonn to go hiking. We took a train along the Rheine to a town called Königswinter where there is a beautiful castle and gorgeous hiking paths. The town is right along the river and a castle is located up the hill called Drachenburg or Dragon Fort. We hiked up and enjoyed the amazing views of Bonn and the surrounding landscapes. We [View Full Entry]

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With my time going so fast I thought it would be a good idea to do some final travelling before I left. German Wings is a German airline that has an offer called blind booking. What you do is pick a city theme, ex: East Europe, Party Europe or Culture. You pay only 40 € and the website randomly chooses a roundtrip ticket to one of the 10 different cities in the theme you choose. I had been thinking about doing it for a while and finally set a date to go with 3 other friends. We choose the East Europe [View Full Entry]

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