Shalyn Takes on Scotland!: Travel Plans!

Hellooooo!

I am gearing up to head out on my trip around Europe! Here is my itinerary!

Dec 2 - Faro, Portugal
Dec 3 - Lisbon, Portugal
Dec 4 - Lisbon, Portugal
Dec 5 - Barcelona, Spain
Dec 6 - Barcelona, Spain
Dec 7 - Barcelona, Spain
Dec 8 - Seville, Spain
Dec 9 - Seville, Spain
Dec 10 - Madrid, Spain
Dec 11 - Rome, Italy
Dec 12 - Rome, Italy
Dec 13 - Rome, Italy
Dec 14 - Florence, Italy
Dec 15 - Venice, Italy
Dec 16 - Berlin, Germany
Dec 17 - Berlin, Germany
Dec 18 - Berlin, Germany
Dec 19 - Stirling, Scotland
DEC 20TH - HOME TO CONNECTICUT! (arrival at 6pm in Boston!)

Dad helped me out a lot with this trip and was able to book me some great hotels and hostels since everything is a little overwhelming when you wait until there isn't much time left!

I know that it is an ambitious trip but that's what makes it exciting! I will be traveling on my own until I get to Berlin and then I will be staying with Lisa at her dad's place for those three nights. Everything is all set and ready to go!

Hopefully, the weather here stays good - the airport has been closed more often than it's been open since this weekend...Flights in Ireland, the UK and France are all having issues with the amount of awful weather we have had (yes, it is STILL snowing!)

Sunday night, I went out with some people from Urban Dance and we had a Vietnamese dinner called a hot pot. This involves a pot of boiling stew in the center of the table surrounded by bowls of food and you toss whatever you would like in and take it out when you think it is cooked. The only dangerous thing about this is that you never know what you are getting in your bowl...I wish I had a picture of the food because there were baby octopuses floating around in the pot. To be fair, I tried tofu and prawns and possibly by an accident, a piece of cod. Not a fan of the tofu or the prawns one bit but I think the potential piece of cod was so small that I shouldn't count it...After dinner, the taxi could only drive us so far so we hopped out and found some people with trash bags and went sledding! It was loads of fun but going in a trash bag is not recommended!

Monday, I had my last classes and I finalized all of the flights I would be taking and began packing for my journey!

Last night (Tuesday night), my friends threw me a surprise going away party since I am the first one to leave. They filled a whole room with balloons with nice writings on them and they all wrote in a card for me saying some very sweet things. Elsa also cooked everyone crepes - ham, egg and cheese, nutella, butter and salt, etc. It was delicious and we all had a great last night together - I am so lucky to have found such amazing friends over here and knowing that they think just as highly of me as I do of them is a good feeling. I hope that we can all stay in touch (they all told me to keep writing them emails in Spanish to keep practicing!)

Tonight (Wednesday), Lisa and Melanie made us dinner for German night. We had Knödel which is a potato/bread dumpling that doesn't have yeast. They made it with a sauce of red wine and mushrooms and some other gravy like sauce. It tasted pretty good and certainly is filling! I tried the mushrooms (both cooked and uncooked) and it's really not a food I care to continue eating.

Keep your fingers crossed for a flight that doesn't get canceled and takes me safely to Portugal! The plane takes off at 4:10pm! (on a side note, I have internet almost everywhere I go so I will update you along the way but you won't get pictures until I get home!)

I will leave you with some pictures of all the crazy snow on campus! Love you!

Sledding with 'bin bags' (trash bags!)