Student Bloggers

What a past few weeks! There’s nothing that’s more exciting than getting to live out a childhood dream, and I got to do so this past week. At Trinity, we have a “reading week,” which is pretty much a mid-term break. However, most students go home and do readings, study, or write essays. I took the opportunity to have a week of travel: Amsterdam, London, and Edinburgh, all in the span of 1 week! All three cities were gorgeous, with the most amazing old architecture. I was baffled at how gorgeous Amsterdam was! The buildings towered over the long canals, and on Saturday morning we woke up early and walked around practically deserted streets to get to know the city. We toured the Heineken museum, went to the Rembrandt museum, took awful tourist-y photos at “Iamsterdam” and experienced an “Ice Bar” where everything in the bar was made from ice, including the glasses. It was almost like being back home in Minnesota, except we don’t have ice glasses!

Since I was little, I always wanted to go to London; so naturally, my next stop had to be the hub of England. The London accent was always the embodiment of posh businesspeople having afternoon tea… how could I not love it? I was geeking out the first day we went there, especially when our waiter called us “love” rather than “miss.” We did the London Eye, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the National Gallery, Hyde Park, some shopping, and ate at Nandos. At the end of our long days of walking, we practically fell into bed. I also experienced an overnight train for the first time, and I learned quite a bit about trains that night. First of all, I didn’t have a blanket, and it seemed as though our cabin did not have a heater, so sleep was hard to achieve while shivering. We also thought we would have our own cabin possibly with lay-back beds, but when we arrived, it was actually a 20 person shared cabin with recliner seats. Expectations, right? We also didn’t have anything to plug our phones into, so we had to find a coffee shop the next morning with WiFi and outlets. I don’t regret it too much, though, because we ended up at the cutest café in Edinburgh that was 1) warm 2) WiFi equipped and 3) had outlets galore! We ate an amazing little breakfast (with plenty of coffee for me) and toured around town. We did a three and a half hour walking trip to see the architecture of the old town, enjoyed a Scotch Whisky museum, toured around the town on our own, then headed back into town that night for a spooky night tour during which it started to downpour. Needless to say, we were a bit grumpy, very cold and wet, and fairly hungry. We devoured a late dinner and once again, passed out immediately after hopping into bed. Although I didn’t get much actual reading done this past week, I think I had a pretty successful Reading Week experience!