Last summer of my college life

Summer of 2011 before my senior year in the states. How time flies!!!

I'm currently a student in Ohio, double majoring in Finance, and Financial Maths. The late decision to double major have been draining me every day at school last year, together with the honor program - somehow I'm definitely not excited to come back, together with tons of my other plan to finish in these two last semesters ... As if I had just started my college life, haha.

This summer so far has been the best spent summer of my life, without friends and family in Europe (I met some of them, but only for several days.) I have visited Prague, Paris, Venice, Rome, Barcelona and is still dont want to leave London for the states.

I'm still working on the rest of my journal book of London with a class of history through architecture with some American students, will upload it before my semesters start. I'm starting this blog to share with whoever are interested my journeys around the world, my experience and some lessons I have learnt on those days around the world. I was lazy to start blogging ever since grade 12 - college was even a huge experience everyday that makes me lazy. However, reading those old entries amazed me of how growup I'm after everyday, and the lessons and feelings I learn will never be the same. I guess that is to say I appreciate every enjoying moment of my life; usually life sucks and just turn out to be so hard haha.

---------------------------------
Travel around the Europe

This process is not needed for American, Japanese, Korean and lots of other countries' citizens, but is still quite simple for tourist visa: you show them your plan for your travel itinerary: booking of hotel/hostel, indicate how many day you plan to stay in each country, buy insurance for your trip, and your flight ticket reservation. I choose France consulate in Chicago (since I'm in Ohio, which corresponds to Chicago-based office) since I will stay in France the longest, but any country in the area will be able to provide the permit to go to the whole area anyway. I messed up with some documents and requirements and was scared to death if they ever refused my application and noted "refused" in their record... It was such a relief to hear "You're done" all the time everywhere you are in line waiting for paper works.

2 weeks after the interview (more of the finger prints and photo taking day) the visa arrived my mailbox. It takes two other weeks to send my application package to the UK embassy for my different visa to London. Today, looking at my passport book with visa to the US, UK, EU... I just couldnt hide my little happiness ("evil laugh") However the waiting time was so close to the travel day, so I could make any earlier planning (not to say I was still overloaded with school and stuffs). For all of you have already know, late planning and bookings resulted in extremely high cost for transportation and accommodation, especially cities like Paris and Rome.

I have tons of random things noticed everywhere I go, but here come some general reviews about each city only, since I dont want and cannot publish a novel in the first blog entry (and quietly disappear LOL)
Prague is a very pretty and quiet capital of Czech. Different from other gorgeous pretentious tourist attraction, Prague has much less noise than all later city in my journey. The city displays all the old building, none of them has the modern architecture style of steel and glass, but all old bricks, painted bright colors. I went to Prague because of a recommendation from a friend, and somehow the impression of a humble pretty city make be feel peaceful whenever I think of Prague...

Berlin, is one of the most boring city to visit as a tourist haha. People can come there to live, well they probably can know more bars and clubs or nice places to 'hang out' and enjoy a nice modern city. However for a tourist it didnt have a lot to offer =]] Well, at least I have been there. Ticked.

Paris didnt overwhelmed me at first, but on the contrary reminded me of the Hanoi train station - Gare de Lyon was like that, quite old, crowded and quite chaotic. The traffic jam in front of the train station and the street in outbound Paris to my hotel exactly looked like Hanoi streets...
I stayed in Paris for 4 days and I couldn't make it to visit and fully enjoy all the places I wanted to be. Paris is just way too much beautiful glamorous city, also luxury and fashionable.

Leaving Paris for Venice, we've had a long journey to a small island near Venice and I was confused when I could see any sign of 'Venice' which I always had in mind. However the camp where we stay were such a wonderful camp for group, and the beach nearby and the nice weather just refreshed us. Venice was a very pretty pretty romantic tiny island, with excellent 'Venice' mask and the boat team. Some part of Venice are in construction, so I could see them entirely, or take a best photos of them. Guess I would want to come back.

I feel like I have walked to every corner of Rome in 5 days staying there with friend and shortly see my family. Rome is such a small city that the hotel staff recommenced us to walk instead of the inconvenient underground. Later, I figured out that local bus is free (well it was so crowded that you would not have chance to swipe your card, even though I bought my Roma Pass already). It was amazing walking on the old brick road, turning to all the tine lane and looking at all the vespa on the street - oh how much I missed those motorbikes, nowhere to be found in the states). Italian gelato was a super plus. Of course, just like Paris, Rome was overcrowded with people - we couldnt even find a nice place to take picture with the Trevi Fountain =]]

Barcelona is another peaceful place of my interest. The architecture of Gandi was incomprehensible to me LOL. The city didnt offer much of tourist attraction for me to rush, but enough to enjoy a nice trip and the beauty of the city.

That's way too general reviews of those cities, after that I came to London and it's another great experience. I may return with more craps about EU cities ^^