Introvert Abroad
Pushing Myself to Experience the World
10/9/2018 0 Comments The Beauty of the DaytripStudying abroad can be overwhelming. I’ve said it a million times, and I’ll probably say it a million more. There are a ton of things to worry about. There’s paperwork, language barriers, new classes, and tip planning. As someone who doesn’t regularly plan trips in the US, I have to say, trip planning is actually the most stressful thing ever. You have to figure out who wants to go, when it works with everyone’s schedule, what everyone’s price range is, which things everyone wants to do/see, transportation, accommodation, food, etc. etc. It can take hours to do good research, planning, and price comparisons. In the end, it’s almost always worth it for bigger trips. Personally, I think that one of the most stressful parts of this already stressful experience is deciding where to go. There are a million things to see in the world, and it’s so much easier when you’re already in Europe. Everyone works on limited time and money though. Your calendar starts to fill up, your bank account starts to empty, and you start running out of time for things like, y’know, homework. It’s so hard to prioritize when you want to see and do EVERYTHING. In the face of all of these decisions to make, I’ve found comfort in the daytrip. Daytrips are a quick and easy way to experience Italy without so much commitment. Not only do they take way less time to plan, but they also just last so much shorter. I know it’s the best when you get to take a long trip and really explore a cool, new place. But sometimes, you just want to take a 1-3 hour train ride to a nearby town and go home to your apartment by the end of the night. It’s less exhausting, and you get the chance to explore smaller towns that maybe aren’t huge tourist hubs. So this weekend, I went on some daytrips. I don’t have class on Thursday, so I planned a last minute trip to Verona with my friend, Danika. Planning was pretty easy. I just stopped by her apartment for maybe 30 minutes on the day before we wanted to go. We looked at some trains together, bought a ticket, and decided on a time to meet at the station the next morning. Easy. Verona was described to me as a small, romantic town. After spending about 6 hours there, I have to agree. It was so picturesque in the cutest way. There were many small parks and fountains around. The only tourist-y part of the whole town was Juliet’s balcony. Everything else was pretty mellow. A good amount of people around on a Thursday afternoon, not too crazy, not too empty. The color scheme of the buildings was a nice pastel, coral-y wash with some yellows and greens speckled in there. There were a few bridges crossing this beautiful river. The weather was nice, the town was cute, how could it get better? Danika and I must have complimented the city at least 50 times that day. We would just walk down the street, look up at the buildings and go “Oh my god, I love Verona.” This may not be the best way to see a city, but we actually did zero research beforehand. We had just heard good things about Verona, and I’d decided that I wanted to see Juliet’s balcony while I was in Italy. Once we got there, Danika found a map of a tour of Verona that you could purchase. Although we didn’t go on the official tour, we took a picture of the map and just walked to all of the spots on our own. Sure, we didn’t get all of the historical information or fun stories from a professional tour guide, but getting to see things on your own and appreciating how they look was worth it to us. We just barely had about 6 hours to spend in Verona, and we wanted to do it on our own terms. One of the best parts of the trip was finding the Castel San Pietro after walking across one of the bridges. We hiked all the way up and saw a beautiful view of the whole city. We probably spent a good 30 minutes just sitting at the top and staring at the city below us. Definitely romantic. Got some good marriage proposal vibes there. Might go back and try that someday. The other daytrip I went on this past weekend was actually a two-parter. I went with my friend Madison to Pisa and Lucca on Saturday. There are some things you gotta do when you’re studying abroad in Florence. One of those is to go see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I knew I was going to do this at some point, it was really just a matter of when. The train ride is just an hour, and it was like 10 bucks. Such low commitment for a nice trip! A lot of things that I know about other towns in Europe are purely from word of mouth. I heard from a couple of people that there really wasn’t anything else to see in Pisa except the area around the tower. Keeping that in mind, we decided to book a second train and spend the majority of our Saturday in the nearby town of Lucca. I heard even better things about Lucca than I did about Verona. Everyone said it was such a cute and nice town. Someone even told me that Lucca was their favorite town in Italy. So we carved out about 3 hours in Pisa and 5 hours in Lucca for the day. Even with that full day, our train ticket to Florence would get us back to our apartments by 8:30 pm. Amazing. So to Pisa it was! It’s true, there really isn’t much except the area around the tower. It was truly surreal to see the tower in real life. It’s such a pop culture icon that you see parodied or mentioned everywhere. I even remember some cartoons using it was a joke when I was a kid. I never imagined that I would actually be there. In Italy. Next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Like, it was right there. It really reminded me of how lucky I was to be able to study abroad and see the things that I’m seeing. The outside is a little less ornate than I imagined it would be, but it looks very nice with its simple and clean exterior. The Piazza del Duomo or otherwise known as the Square of Miracles in Pisa was really beautiful. The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta was large and intricately decorated on its exterior. The same, but on a smaller and more simple scale could be said about the baptistery. After staring at these miraculous pieces of architecture, we got some lunch at a cute osteria and hopped on our train to Lucca. Although it was a pretty rainy day, Lucca was still, indeed, adorable. The town of so many churches, Lucca was really great to walk through. It was hard to see the whole town in 5 hours and really appreciate it, but we took our time to really soak everything in and I feel like we did a nice job. The churches were beautiful, even the simpler ones. I feel like I should say more about Lucca, but it was such a mellow and nice time walking through and appreciating the way that everything looked. I feel like I can really only give the description that was given to me before: Lucca is such a cute and nice town. I already have my big, international trips planned for the semester, so I can definitely see some spontaneous daytrips on the horizon for me. There are more towns to see in Italy, and even some that I wouldn’t mind returning to. I want to keep taking advantage of the train prices and convenience while I’m still in Italy. It really is a more relaxing way of life to just take some time to see something new and take it all in. Maybe I’ll take this spontaneity and appreciation of small towns with me to the US.
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