Autumn in Amsterdam

As my semester in Italy is coming to a close, I have accumulated quite a few photos from my weekends away. Instead of keeping them in my personal archives, over the next couple of weeks I am planning on featuring photos from some of my favorite travels around Europe. I spent a weekend in Amsterdam in mid-October. The leaves were changing colors and the weather was a bit chilly, making it a perfect Autumn weekend. Amsterdam was such a unique city full of canals, unique architecture, and some really cool people. I'll briefly go over what I got up to.
To save on costs, my friends and I stayed outside of the city. Public transportation is my mode of choice for getting around all European cities, but I found Amsterdam's system to be quite confusing and pretty pricey. I would recommend splurging a bit more on accommodation when visiting Amsterdam because we found it to be more difficult than usual to get in and out of the city everyday. As far as food goes, I ate very well in Amsterdam! There was a lot of variety and little cafes on every corner. It was a great place for breakfast which is always nice to find as an American traveling around Europe. Do yourself a favor and try a stroopwafel, as well.
As far as activities, we did a bike tour through Mike's Bikes which I highly recommend! Biking is definitely the way to see the city and I learned a lot about the city history and culture. We went all around the city, my favorite stops being Jordaan and Brouwerij 't Ij brewery, which is in a windmill. If a tour sounds a bit much for you I would recommend just renting bikes on your own as it's fairly inexpensive and such a fun way to get around. You definitely have to be an attentive biker though as the locals get pretty irritated with tourists getting in their way.
Other than the bike tour, we visited the Anne Frank House and the Van Gough Museum. If the Anne Frank House is a must see for you, I would skip the line and come back later at night as it stays open pretty late. The Van Gough Museum was incredibleone of my favorite museums I've visited in Europe. Again, we skipped the line and went pretty late in the evening. If you go for the late route like we did, just make sure you give yourself enough time to see everything before it closes.
Overall, I absolutely adored Amsterdam. I found the city to be incredibly picturesque, the people were lovely, and there was so much to see and do. The dutch seem to be doing a lot of things right and I would love to spend more time in Amsterdam in the future.
Hope you enjoy these travel posts. Talk to you soon.
xx Michelle

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Tunes: To You Alone & All of Them Dreams by Tom Rosenthal. Coldplay's new album is pretty great too. 

A Weekend In Venezia, Italia

The life I live abroad is definitely a unique one. Class takes up my time at the beginning of the week but come Thursday and it's time to take off to a new location I’ve never visited before. I love studying in Italy because there are so many things to see just alone in the country I'm living in. As everything is just a short train ride away, my friend and I decided to spend a weekend in Venice. We spent two full days there which I think was the perfect amount of time. We had so much time to get lost in Venice and we were able to visit the neighboring islands of Burano and Murano. You truly get to know a city by getting lost in it and it is extremely easy to do so in Venice. The city is an organic one, meaning there are no main streets or direct roads to take somewhere. We ended up getting lost pretty frequently throughout the weekend, ending up at endless dead ends that hit a canal with no bridge to pass. Needless to say, Venice is a beautiful place and I had an amazing time wandering my way through it.

We started off the weekend checking into our hostel, Generator Venice. I couldn’t have been more pleased with our stay there. It is a lovely “boutique hostel” with trendy interior that is perfectly situated one bus stop from San Marco Square. The public transportation in Venice was fun to navigate because their system is entirely by water bus. Our first day was spent wandering through the touristy area around San Marco Square. The city is full of canals weaving through compact buildings that are all uniquely worn down in their own way. The city is definitely a quirky one, which is one of the reasons that makes it so great. We had our best meal of the trip our first night at La Zucca. The restaurant is a bit hard to find as it’s about a 20 minute walk into the island through alleys and over bridges. It’s a beautiful walk though and the restaurant is definitely worth it. La Zucca translates to “pumpkin” in Italian so most of the dishes had pumpkin incorporated into them. I would recommend the white lasagna with zucchini and pumpkin, the tagliatelle, and the panna cotta. They don’t offer an English menu but our waiter was very friendly and gladly helped us with the translations.

We ventured to Murano and Burano on our second day. Both are beautiful, but I highly recommend going the full way to Burano - it's a small island of colorful buildings along canals. It was one of my favorite parts of the weekend and well worth the long boat ride over there. Despite the high price, we did a gondola ride when we were back in Venice. The more people you have the less expensive it is, so that would be a tip on how to make that experience a little more budget-friendly. 

Venice has been one of my favorite places in Europe so far. Hope you like hearing about my abroad travels, I'll have a lot more to post throughout the rest of my time here. 

xx Michelle

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Favorites: Entouriste is one of my favorite sites right now. The photography is beautiful and I like to read their articles on different destinations.