Sunday, 28 April 2013

Being a Tourist is Exhausting


Another blog post so soon, I must either have a lot more time or just don’t want to do my work.

As my time to Denmark comes a quickening halt, I decided it was time to be a tourist again in Copenhagen. So what do you do when you haven’t really explored the city you've lived in for about 3 months now? Make a Google document with everything you want to do and just add as many people to it as possible and hopefully someone will do one of the things with you.

The first day of my tourist journey began on Wednesday April 25th with two friends: Claire and Jake. We began the morning by meeting at the train station and walking towards the Little Mermaid. As soon as we got there, it was inevitable to us that tourist season had started. A huge group of about 30 tourists were standing around taking pictures of the Little Mermaid. After getting a picture of the Little Mermaid, we kept walking and found ourselves in Katellet which is a star shaped fortress that has been well kept. We walked around this fortress and once we walked around it, we went to go take the harbor bus. This is essentially what you might be thinking of right now: a water bus. 
I should also mention here that one of the great things about Copenhagen is that their public transportation passes can be used for ALL of their public transportation unlike some cities I’ve been too, aka Venice. We got off this harbor bus at Nyhavn which is where you can find the postcard picture view that is seen of Copenhagen.

Our second to last stop was the Round 
Tower where you can pay 25 Danish Kroner to go up and get a “high” view of the city. On the way up, you will pass a museum which has different exhibitions and this months was of Syrian art portraying the current situation in Syria. It was very powerful. So a ways further, you will pass one of the two bathrooms of the tower and after that you continue your journey up this round spiral and eventually find your way on the top. 
Once up here, you realize that it actually isn’t as high as it looks. Going down the tower is similar to going up because you feel as though you are just walking in place since you are going down a non-stair cased path. I didn’t like feeling as if I’d walked nowhere -__-




After the round tower, we went to the glass market. The glass market is a type of farmers market but it’s pretty expensive. You will find people who sell cakes, cupcakes, fruit, wine and pastries there. It’s a fun place to go see and you can walk through it in about 10 minutes or so (and that’s at a small pace); it’s not very big.

Once we were done with the glass market, I went home, and decided to go for a run with a neighbor’s dog whose name is Buller. Buller is an older dog and running with her was fun but frustrating. It was fun because I got to run with a dog, it was frustrating because Buller would go slower than what I wanted to run so I had to slow down my pace tremendously. But it was definitely worth it and I would run with Buller again. 

Wednesday, 24 April 2013

Ciao Italy



I had another travel break last week and 2 friends and I decided to explore Italy for 7 days. We went to Venice, Naples, Sorrento, Positano, Amalfi, Pompeii Ruins, and Vesuvio. Yes, that’s a LOT of places. My feet are still hurting from all the travelling.

I won’t bore you with every detail of each place I went but I will give you a quick overview of what my friends and I did in each place. Just know that each days weather was sun sun and more sun! Such a nice change from Denmark.

Venice: Walked around, went to Murano (a little island 30 minutes away from Venice) and visited a glass museum. Had a TON of delicious gelato. While on the island of Venice, we were able to climb the bell tower to get a great view of Venice, made a new friend named Daniel, got a pair of sunglasses but then lost them two days later. I don’t know how I could have lost them. L

Gelato for life <3
Naples: On our way to the hostel, we realized how scary Naples is so we quickly found another hostel in Sorrento which is a much safer city because more older people live there. Though it was scary, Naples’ culture seemed very rick and the pizza was phenomenal.

Sorrento: Walked around, saw multiple beautiful sunsets and ate more pizza. Bought some souvenirs for my family.

Positano: Gorgeous place. Went to the beach to collect sea glass. Ate pizza.

Amalfi: Found the ruins, climbed a lot of stairs and had an amazing view of Amalfi. I was a little disappointed with Amalfi because it wasn’t as beautiful as all the pictures I had seen of it. Oh and had more gelato.
Pompeii Ruins: Did the only thing there is to do, see ruins.

Vesuvio: Also known as Mount Vesuvius that buried the city of Pompeii and Herculaneum. You are able to go walk to the crater granted you pay the 22 euro bus fee which includes entrance to the crater and hike up 20 minutes at a 14% incline. Making it to the crater was amazing, I got to see steam coming out of the rocks since this is still an active volcano.

Archeological museum: Went here to see all the things that were excavated from Pompeii and also got to see some great sculptures of which one was named Flora!

Now a video of some random clips I combined from my Italy trip. Till' next time!