What You're Missing in Croatia: Part 1

Our last hurrah in Europe! Well, hopefully not forever, but for the time being. We had some time so we escaped for a week to do a tour of Croatia. We flew into Dubrovnik and rented a car to drive up the coast, and then flew out of Zagreb. This is only part 1, so be sure to keep an eye out for part 2 and part 3!

Our first view of Dubrovnik, on the way in from the airport.

Prague in "Summer"

This summer my brother's girlfriend was doing a study abroad program in Prague. So of course, since she was in Europe, I had to go on a quick trip to visit her. My brother was visiting her also, so it was all four of us and we had a great time, even though we could only be there for a few days. Unfortunately, we hit a bit of bad weather-it rained almost the whole time! Even so, it was a great excuse to stay indoors and enjoy ridiculously cheap beer, and lots of meat and cabbage.

K and I enjoying some delicious beer! 

Boa Viagem- Lisbon

Last weekend was Carnival in Spain, which for me means puente! So my boyfriend and I decided to jet off to Lisbon, Portugal for a quick visit.

Praça do Rossio

My dad mentioned before I went that the city was like San Francisco...I can see a connection- the city is full of huge hills! It also has a red bridge, and trams to go up hills. Besides those things, it's got a charm of its own. I really enjoyed the visit and the city is beautiful! Here's my list of cool things to do here: 

Amor por el mar- Cantabria

Here in Spain there is a thing called a puente. They have a lot of holidays that are on a Tuesday or a Thursday and they take the days off in between. So if there is a holiday on Tuesday, they will take the Monday before that off and call it a puente (bridge). In the beginning of December, there was a week where we had two puentes in one week! Actually, most schools took only one puente and worked two days in the week. I was supposed to work two days of the week, but I somehow weaseled out of it and ended up having to work only one day- and got two puentes! So two of my roommates and I went on a road trip up to one of the northern regions of Spain- Cantabria. We had had a few girls from Santander come visit and stay at our place a few weeks before hand so we figured we would call them up and see if we could stay with them and explore the area. My one roommate has a friend native to the area, so we had a list of awesome villages around Santander that we needed to visit.

Seoul Soul

This last weekend we went up to Seoul...I know it's been a couple of days since we got back but I've been busy! The only reason I have time to write right now is because I'm on call for this class period and nobody called in sick! :)

We left the village on Friday afternoon and went into Daegu to take the KTX up to Seoul. The KTX is a super fast train! The fastest we went was 305 km an hour which is equivalent to about 190 miles an hour. So on the KTX it only took us 2 hours to get all the way up to Seoul. There is a slow train too, which is cheaper, but also takes about 4 hours. The KTX feels like a plane inside. The seats are exactly like in an airplane but there is no annoying wait time for take off and landing and such! The ride is also incredibly smooth for a train. The funny thing is that when we got back on to go from Seoul to Daegu, we were going backwards! They don't turn the train around so you are sitting facing the same direction but traveling backwards. So I traveled backwards for two hours..what a trip!

We get into Seoul station and go straight down into the subway. Now this is the first time I have ever ridden a subway and it was a little overwhelming at first. You go in and have to look at a map to figure out where you are going. Then you have to buy a ticket and make sure you get on the train going the right direction! The first time we got on we almost went the wrong direction but a nice guy who overheard us told us to go to the other side.