there then and now.

We are now on our 8 hour train ride to our next stop: Salzburg, Austria, with a transfer in Rosenheim. It gets quite a scenic after Verona, with mountain ranges in the background and vineyards in the foreground.. Though hurray for more blog posts, and tons of photos! Apologies in advanced for the high quality and large size that I cannot easily change via Evernote’s editor. Our last stop in Italy was Venice! Famously known for running entirely on water, it was once efficient in the olden day...

Environment As soon as we stepped out onto the streets of Florence, we noticed that the city was very tourist friendly. There was a lot of space for pedestrians and much less traffic. There is even room for babies in strollers. Florence is also cleaner than Rome, although there was still graffiti present in a few areas. In many ways, Florence is like San Francisco. It’s much more relaxed and chill compared to Rome. We stayed in an area called Santo Spirito, a lively area that many young peo...

We arrived to our first destination by plane at FCO & took the FC1 to our Airbnb which was close to Ostiense. We took up on Rick Steves’ advice for staying up the entire first day to adjust to the jet lag. Although brutal, it was worth it. Rome was a very busy and loud city. I could compare it to New York - the traffic was pretty overwhelming. Stop signs don't seem to exist and there are a ton of roundabouts in large intersections, meaning you need to j-walk often. There is graffiti everywh...

My boyfriend (also SE ’15 grad) and I are exploring Europe for approx. 5 weeks - Rome, Florence, Venice, Salzburg, Munich, Interlaken, Lucerne, Paris, and London. I will be compiling a series of blog posts for each city about our experiences, observations, as well as tips if y’all are interested in checking out these cities in the near future. Our itinerary is considered a fairly laid back trip, as most people blaze through the same amount of cities in less time. We chose to stay in all Airb...

The idea of finally being done school hasn’t sunk into my head yet. When you finish all your finals, you will get the feeling of accomplishment and relaxation of not having to study for awhile — especially as a UW engineering student, it means you can forget about schoolwork for about 4 months as you go on your co-op term. But it’s different this time — school is over for me and it is strange to think that I won’t be writing any exams or doing assignments anymore, as I am not planning to take...