Destinations Archives - Page 9 of 10

An Afternoon of True Englishness

During my April visit to London I also wanted to have a true English experience, since I had never been to the UK before (shame on me!). Everyone keeps saying "London is not England", so I was really desperate to have a look beyond the borders of the capital to find an authentic piece of Great Britain. Well, one may argue whether Greenwich can be considered a part of London, or not -- but it definitely feels totally different from the crowed, busy city! Walking through the tiny streets that were covered in cherry tree petals in the tentative spring sun almost [...]

By Julika|2013-08-18T18:12:04+02:002012/06/19|Categories: Destinations, Europe|Tags: Architecture, England, Europe, London|0 Comments

Spring Weekend Trip to London

The great thing about having smart and talented friends is that they achieve things like university places and job offers all over the world. My good friend Sarah is one of those people. We both graduated from college in 2010, and after having been an intern in publishing for several months, Sarah started doing her Master's degree in London last year. It was really about time to fly to England and visit her, because in the beginning of 2012 we realized that we were both studying in two amazing European capitals, and made a pact to visit each other and [...]

By Julika|2013-05-07T04:57:03+02:002012/06/11|Categories: Destinations, England, Europe|Tags: Architecture, England, Europe, London|3 Comments

My Semester Abroad in an Undeservingly Short Summary

Oh, how should I ever be able to summarize my semester in Portugal adequately, and squeeze one little blog post – even my original tumblr on my time in Lisbon didn't even cover half the wonderful experiences I had in those sun-filled five months. I will try to keep it short: After a rather elaborate application process, I got offered a place to study at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in the fall semester 2011/2012. Having fallen in love with Portugal, and especially Lisbon, during a vacation in 2008, I always knew that I would eventually have to come back for a longer period of [...]

By Julika|2014-01-28T16:25:53+01:002012/06/05|Categories: Destinations, Europe, Portugal|Tags: Europe, Lisbon, Portugal, study abroad|3 Comments

Romania – Of Garlic, Bloodsuckers, and a Wedding

Love writes the craziest travel stories, and this is one of them: Christian was in my class in high school and we have a mutual friend, Diane, whose family is from Romania. Since Christian was really interested in this country, he went there for the summer during his final years of school. Diane introduced him to one of her best Romanian friends, Claudia, and her and Christian became friends quickly. Although they could only talk to each other in English, they kept talking via chat and email after he was long back in Germany… They soon fell in love, and [...]

By Julika|2013-02-27T15:00:56+01:002012/05/31|Categories: Destinations, Europe, Romania|Tags: churches, Europe, Romania|2 Comments

How The Netherlands Detered Us From Camping

I should have known better. Camping and I have never been the very best combination. However, I thought I had improved my camping skills throughout the past years, so I convinced Steffen to go camping with me in September 2009. Yet another story to file under camping gone wrong, although I had tried to plan so much ahead this time. We had booked a gorgeous camp ground in health resort city of Zandvoort located in the middle of the dunes. And in my idea this was going to be a perfect vacation. Our tent was going to be super cozy, we [...]

By Julika|2013-02-07T18:09:20+01:002012/05/25|Categories: Destinations, Europe, The Netherlands|Tags: camping, Europe, road trip, The Netherlands|2 Comments

Hamburg – Two Days in Germany’s Coolest City

After traveling mainly as far as possible (though mostly within the European borders), it was about time I would go get to know my home country a little better. Of course, I moved around a lot already, and had made trips to Munich, Berlin, or Schloss Neuschwanstein with school and my parents, but there was one place that I had been dying to see for a long time: Hamburg. So, the boyfriend Steffen and I decided to plan a fall getaway weekend to Germany’s second largest city back in October 2008. Steffen dug up a cheap hotel, located on the Reeperbahn, [...]

By Julika|2014-06-10T22:47:59+02:002012/05/21|Categories: Destinations, Europe, Germany|Tags: Architecture, Art, churches, Europe, Germany, Hamburg|0 Comments

Portugal – Love at First Sight

My good friend Carola and I had been thinking about a grand vacation for a while back in 2008, when she remembered that she met a Portuguese girl at an international youth event a few years back: Cláudia had invited her to come visit her in her home town Porto, in the north of Portugal, and we more or less spontaneously booked our flights. We naturally also wanted to spend some time in Portugal's capital Lisbon, so we booked a one-country Eurail ticket to be able to spend some time in both places, and get around easily. In Lisbon, we explored all [...]

By Julika|2013-09-05T08:30:28+02:002012/05/15|Categories: Destinations, Europe, Portugal|Tags: Architecture, Europe, Lisbon, Porto, Portugal|1 Comment

Barcelona, Baby!?

To be honest, this trip was one of my first real city getaways and I've made a few mistakes back then: Choosing the wrong accommodation, the wrong flight company, the wrong priorities when it came to food. But traveling is something you can only learn along the way. This trip was still a lot of fun, but I know we should have done some things differently. What do you think? After our disastrous road trip to France Iris and I decided that we needed to do something a little more structured for our summer 2007 vacation. However, we still were very budget [...]

By Julika|2013-03-28T14:20:32+01:002012/05/07|Categories: Destinations, Europe, Spain|Tags: Architecture, Art, Barcelona, churches, Europe, medieval, Spain|1 Comment

“Monstrous” Road Trip through The Netherlands

After finally having survived our written finals and the very last day of high school in May 2007, one of my favorite travel companions, Carola (she is one of those artsy nerds like me) and I decided that we needed to do something real crazy. So, Carola's family used to have this large Volkswagen van, which had a little hippie vibe to it, but they were about to get rid of it, since it was rather old. We felt like owing that car one last adventure, and thus came up with the idea of a road trip to the Netherlands - [...]

By Julika|2013-05-07T05:01:26+02:002012/04/30|Categories: Destinations, Europe, The Netherlands|Tags: camping, Europe, road trip, The Netherlands|2 Comments

The Insane Road Trip through France Part III: Mediterranean, here we go!

The Insane Road Trip through France Part III: Camargue region and the Mediterranean! After Iris and I had spent our second night in the Avignon area, we left to drive further south, towards the Mediterranean. On our way, we stopped to see the Nîmes, which used to be a relevant dwelling during the time of the Roman Empire, which still can be seen by several Roman relics such as the prominent amphitheater in the city center (where we fortunately didn’t even have to pay an admission fee to see it from the inside!). After the two days of culturally motivated traveling, we [...]

By Julika|2013-06-14T13:08:46+02:002012/04/21|Categories: Destinations, Europe, France|Tags: Architecture, camping, Europe, France, road trip|0 Comments