Destinations

As I come close to the end of my semester abroad in Florence, Italy I can honestly say I am starting to get tired of traveling. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved traveling and feel very grateful to have the opportunity to have done so. However, constantly being on the go Thursday night to late Sunday night traveling and trying to fit school in during the week and homework whenever you can, it gets very tiring and sometimes a tad overwhelming. Before arriving in Italy I has a list of 5 destinations (London, Barcelona, Prague, Greece, and Amsterdam) I wanted to travel to while abroad and I can tell you I only ended up going to one of these places; London. You can plan all you want but once you actually get to your abroad destination the friends you meet, your class schedule, cost of flights constantly fluctuating can quickly change that list you had imagined and that’s exactly what happened to me and I’m honestly 100% okay with it. The reason I am okay with not going to those above-mentioned locations is that I instead ended up going to other places I would have never imagined going to like Interlaken, Switzerland, Brussels, Belgium, Paris for a second time, Monaco, the Amalfi Coast in Italy, as long as various other locations within Italy. I believe the locations I ended up traveling to with my friends and family are even more meaningful because I do not believe I would end up traveling to these destinations if I had not been abroad. For example, the first week of being here, the group of girls I ended being friends with sent a text in our group chat, “hey we are thinking of going to Switzerland with smart trips…are you guys down?” Of course, I was down and we all ended up going and having a blast going paragliding (because when would I ever do this again and what better place to do it) and touring around. My point is that it is okay that the plans you had for your study abroad experience to change, as they are bound to do so, and it often happens for the better. I do wish I had some extra time to go visit the places on my original list, however, I know those are destinations I will want to still see later on in life and will make the time to go at some point.