I packed up my bags, sadly said goodbye to all of my roommates, took one last tour around my amazing apartment, and walked the all too familiar path to the train station in Florence. There were a few moments throughout this journey to Holland where I honestly thought my luggage was going to just tear open, spilling all of it's contents across the cobbley streets of Florence. I thank my lucky stars that that never happened and I did in fact arrive safely to my grandma's house, bags in tact, around 5 hours later. Besides having to throw out some last minute items in my suitcase (including some really nice wine I was going to bring home) everything went more smoothly than usual. I traveled with my friend Cristina and we just happened to arrive on one of the biggest holiday's in Holland called Queen's Day! We were met by a sea of orange as kids to teenagers to adults roamed the streets celebrating the day away. Long story short, I made it to my grandma's house safely and the comfort of familiarity was much needed at that point.
Over the course of the next few days I relaxed, unpacked, read The Davinci Code, and just thought of nothing else. I caught up with my grandma and Stan a lot, something I have never had the chance to do on my own without tons of family also around, and enjoyed hearing many family stories and looking through great family photos. After resting a day or two, Stan and I biked over to some beautiful and vibrant tulip fields! I wanted to see these so bad and I was not disappointed in the least. I had no idea flowers could produce such colors! The 10 mile bike ride in the crisp air was wonderful and Stan even treated me to some apple pie towards the end of our journey. The next day Granma took me shopping in a nearby town called Alkmaar, where we had an enjoyable lunch and I came out with a new pair of sandals to trek around in this summer! Somewhere in there we also bused it over to a nearby town to watch The Hunger Games. I had been waiting MONTHS for this and I was very happy with the way it turned out. Side note about movie theaters here: it's like going to a show! There is a 15 minute intermission during every movie, you're not allowed to eat in the theatre, you have to reserve actual seats ahead of time and the theatre itself is very nice with the option of buying drinks if you wish.
After those days of relaxing and regrouping, my friend Anna from the program met up with me and stayed at Granma's for 2 days. I took her on a bike ride to the tulips as well and was surprised to see that about half of the same tulips from 3 days before were already cut down! Nevertheless, those that remained were still breathtaking and the bike ride itself was quite entertaining (picture me riding Stan's bike, Stan is more than 6 feet tall, with a seat that won't go down enough for me, so basically I am standing up the entire 10 mile bike ride). We then visited Amsterdam the next day and I was not surprised to realize that I remembered nothing! I really need to learn some memorizing techniques or something. Anyways, Amsterdam was beautiful and we stopped by Anne Frank's house, the flower market, accidently ended up in the red light district, and got some yummy food. What a unique and cultural place!! I really did enjoy the diversity because in Italy you get pretty much just Italian. The last planned trip I took was with my friend Cristina to a town called Voorschoten where here dad had grown up. We knocked on his old neighbors door and had the most unexpectedly wonderful next few hours with this older couple. They sat us down, talked and talked, amazed us with their cuteness and their relationship, and even had us hop in their car to give us a proper tour of their city! It will be something I never forget. Cristina and I then stopped in another town named Leiden where we did some good shopping and ate way too much food. Sempre.
Since Anna's departure, the stress has started to hit. I realized I only had a few days before I would be without a laptop and I immediately started wrapping up all of our summer plans, making sure we had lodging and transportation everywhere. There are still things to be done but the stress was becoming too great so we are just going to have to wing some things here and there! What used to be fun planning became tedious and time consuming. I feel as if I have spent DAYS worth of time planning for the months to come. In the end, I have to keep reminding myself, it will all be worth it and we really have saved loads of money by planning so far in advance. The next time I come to Europe, I will not have an agenda and I'll let the wind guide me. The other source of stress has been CLASSES! Gah, reality sure does come back fast! I have to sign up for classes, an event that is always, always, always full of stress, while I am enjoying time at Lake Como. Who wants to mix fun and stress?? Not I! Let's just cross our fingers that everything works out nicely (I am a senior after all, if the world was a perfect place it would) and my life can sort itself out. More on career stress later (I've decided to be an occupational therapist and classes wise it's more difficult than I thought. I'll most likely have to take a year off before Grad school which will be a good thing in the long run I believe).
Back to fun things! The days in Holland have been very relaxing otherwise and I will be genuinely sad to leave my Granma, Stan, Katja the cat, my nice little space in Gryffindor Tower, and home cooked food especially! I will be back in 47 days, though, with Katie and Meaghan in tow!
I have to say now that it might be quite difficult to update my blog or post many pictures because I will only have my cell phone. I'll try to keep it up as much as possible and if anything I'll at least write down small notes for each week so that I don't forget.
Here's to some crazy backpacking around Europe!!!
A presto!
