Munich, Germany (and a couple towns we didn’t know to expect)

For the final leg of our post-study abroad trip (minus the Mallorca layover, where we did nothing but lie on the beach for a glorious day), Alayna and I took a 90-minute train from Salzburg to Munich. This train ride from across the Bavarian countryside was the sort of beautifully cliché travel that I had...

Divided History: Berlin, Germany

After studying abroad in Spain for a semester, my friend Alayna and I planned to stay in Europe two weeks after to travel. We deliberated where we should go during the first couple months of studying abroad and decided upon Germany and Austria. Originally, we considered adding more cities in Germany and Austria plus in...

¡A comer!: Spanish Food

Perhaps one of the most fun parts of traveling is sampling new food and drink. I mean, who doesn't like to find the best wine and chocolate in every country? Living for a semester in Spain was a completely different food lifestyle from my American routines. Some of the food I was happy to say adios to...

Granada, Spain: Land of the Moors

This blog post is the first since my revival of Adventures of a Traveler's Heart for my New Year's Eve resolution. My first goal is to finish writing about the trips I took while studying abroad in 2015, when I put blogging on hiatus towards the end of the semester as I attempted to soak...

Random Ramblings from Sevilla

(My other working title was "Stephanie finished her homework due tomorrow and doesn't want to work on her paper anymore.") I still have to catch up and fill y'all in on my Barcelona trip (amazing...one of my favorite cities) and la Feria de Abril, a huge festival in Sevilla. But tonight I thought I'd reflect...

La Semana Santa (Holy Week)

La Semana Santa, Holy Week, is an important holiday throughout Spain, but most of all in Andalucía. Thousands of people flock to Sevilla for the festivities, which is one of the reasons I took most of that week to travel to Portugal. However, I returned late Thursday before Good Friday and was in Sevilla through...

Madrid: A Capital Experience

(Terrible pun intended. Puns are always intended.) I apologize to family and friends for falling behind in my blogging (sorry, Grandma!). I've been busy traveling and studying and living Sevilla! I just got back from a week in Portugal and I also want to share a bit about Semana Santa, but first I'll catch up on the rest of...

Odds and Ends

This weekend I took a break from traveling so I could enjoy spending time in my host city. There is so much to see in Sevilla, and I love discovering new things about my Spanish home every day. Here are a few of the fun, random, crazy, weird, exciting things I’ve encountered recently: Remember when...

Moroccan Adventure

Last weekend I made it to my third continent, Africa! With my roommate, Alayna, and 100 other students in a Discover Excursions group, I traveled to several cities in Morocco. While in general I prefer to avoid touristy travel groups, I do not speak Arabic and my French is rusty, so I felt this was a...

Córdoba: Lessons in Train Travel, the Inevitability of Getting Lost, and the Kindness of Spaniards

Thursday afternoon, two of my roommates, Alayna and Courtney, and I decided that we wanted to take a day trip this weekend after all, despite our original plan of using this weekend to get settled with school, rest from an exhausting two days of classes (which isn’t that bad, except that operating completely in a...