Independent Travel Week

Hey everybody-

Here is the much anticipated 'Travel Week' post. There is good news and bad news. The bad news is we only received two entries from students who travelled together. In our group's defense, this weekend is quite busy academically-speaking. We have a two final papers, a final, and a visualization exercise due on Tuesday. However, the good news is that if you cannot find you're favorite family member/friend in the following two entries, you have an excuse to pester them with questions about their adventures. So have at it.


Six of us split travel week between Barcelona and Amsterdam. The first half of our trip was very relaxing, as we visited the beach for at least part of every day. When we weren't stuffing ourselves with delicious Spanish food and drink, we toured the Sagrada Familia and saw other sights in the city, like Park Guell and La Rambla. On Wednesday we flew to the Netherlands and settled into the houseboat that we had rented just outside the city. It was a tight squeeze, but we were glad to have our own place. Over the next few days, we rented bikes and cruised through the Vondelpark and along the canals, and visited the Van Gogh museum and the Anne Frank House. We had an amazing time, and made it back to Cambridge safe and sound by Sunday.

-Katie Claiborne ('13), Mike Chappell ('14), Simon Johansen ('14), Andrew Tiano ('13), Seth Althauser ('13), Travis Nordgaard ('13)

 

 

The crew in Barcelona.

We had seven people in our group however we ran into members of our program on more than one occasion. First, we met up with Katherine Greenberg ('14) and her family in Prague. Graciously, the Greenbergs took us out for dinner one night and it was a lot fun getting to know Katherine's parents and her little sister. After a one day stay in Vienna, we decided it would be a good idea to miss our overnight train to Venice. Just kidding, we didn't plan on missing the train, but it still happened. Somehow, we were able to catch up with our overnight train at a different stop. In Venice, we unexpectedly bumped into Danny Geiger ('14) and Taylor Hansen ('14) and had lunch. Following Venice, we traveled to Florence and Pisa to check out Michelangelo's Statue of David and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, respectively. Finally, we arrived in Rome. We spent the final three days of our travel week in Rome exploring the city, seeing such historical landmarks as the Roman Coliseum and the Vatican. In Rome, we also met up with Cody Young ('14) for a brief period. It was a hectic week of travel -- we went from the gorgeous city of Prague to the history of Rome, yet I don't think we made it on one train without having to run.

-Max Timm ('13), Andy Zweber ('13), Miami Austin ('13), 'It's a 5-10 min. walk' Elder ('13), Josh Estes ('14), Jens Lillehei ('13), Ben Truax ('14)

Outside the Vatican in Rome