Arrival and First Night in NiceThe trip to Nice was pleasant. Easy flight, I slept most of the way there. Before we had taken off I noticed a girl with what sounded like an American accent sitting next to me on the plane and asked her where she was from; she turned out to be Canadian, and herself and 2 friends went to Cambridge University and decided to visit Nice for the weekend also. After learning that I was a solo traveler, she offered her number and for me to tag along with them if I got lonely. Once we got to Nice, they helped me find my hostel, and split a taxi with me from the airport. This was extremely helpful because they all spoke decent French and I couldn’t understand a thing the taxi driver was saying. Once we found my hostel, they took off to find their Airbnb. I actually didn’t end up meeting up with them the entire trip, but I was grateful they helped me find my way. Upon arriving to the hostel, I was looking forward to meeting some other travelers and hopefully not sitting alone in the hostel common area. At first I was a little wary, because when I checked into my room there were only older women in my room (I’d say 65+, definitely not student traveling abroad age). One of them was friendly, and explained that they come to Nice for the winter while it’s cold in the north. The other lady was cranky and old spoke to me in grunting noises. I learned “arghh” meant “move please” and “ughhhh” meant “your annoying me but I don’t speak English so I can’t tell you how annoying you are”. There was another girl there that was from Russia, who also didn’t speak English. So my first few hours all I could think was “Well, maybe you will really be alone during this trip”. I decided to get cleaned up from traveling and make my way to the hostel bar where they were having happy hour from 6pm-8pm and beers were €1.50. I walked in, ordered a beer, and wandered somewhat aimlessly and was about to sit down when a nice girl behind me asked if I was alone and if I wanted to join her. I was happy to meet someone that spoke English and her name was Emma, originally from New Zealand, but was living in London and on holiday in Nice. (Perfect!!) She introduced me to her friend Johnny and 2 other people from Australia! And just like that, I had found some people that I could talk to and enjoy my first night in Nice with. I hadn’t planned on going out this night. In fact, I wanted to go to bed early and get up early to have a full first day in Nice. But Emma and Johnny were not having it and dragged me to some Irish pub around the corner. One of the employees at the hostel shut down the bar early and went out with us and took us to a few other local bars. I had a blast with Emma and Johnny, none of us spoke a lick of French and all felt out of place together. We had so much fun dancing to songs we didn’t understand the lyrics too, relying on google translate to order drinks, and getting pizza on the way home from the pub. It was a dang good first night in France, and I still had 2 more days to look forward to! Day One - Sunday 3/12/17I got a later start than I wanted, made it out the door around 11am with a smile and city maps in hand. I didn’t have much of a plan for today so just started walking. I knew I wanted coffee so I was in search for a cafe. I was a little worried because I didn’t know how to order a coffee, but I did my best. I found a coffee tent by the Christmas market and tried to order. They gave me a cute little espresso shot, and while I didn’t exactly like the taste, I knew I needed the caffeine for the day ahead! After I sipped my espresso, I walked towards the ocean. It was sunny, and warm (compared to England) and all I wanted to do was sit on the beach and look out at the glimmering water. At first I stopped and sat in one of the chairs overlooking the water that was on the walkway, then I decided to walk down the stairs and along the rocky beach. There wasn’t any sand, just rocks, and I immediately started looking for rocks for Melia (I taught her how to wrap rocks with wire before I left to turn them into necklaces.)
I eventually laid my jacket out and sat down to take it all in. On my right there was a couple playing with their kid and taking an insane amount of pictures of him. On my left, there was a young couple who remained lip locked the whole time I was there (They call it French kissing for a reason I guess). And then there was me. You might be thinking... “She probably felt lonely” but I honestly didn’t. I felt as if I finally knew that I could do this. Coming abroad was a big leap, and then there were little leaps that followed, and this was the moment I just felt so at peace with what I was doing, that I enjoyed doing it alone. I guess we can call this moment a reflection of my personal growth, because I sat here for the better half of an hour just thinking about all that I have been able to do and how grateful I was to be sitting on a beach in France. *Life pondering moment over* I decided to keep walking along the water. I knew I needed to eat eventually and was scouting out some places when I stumbled along the famous Flower Market of Nice, which was more of a farmers market. I decided to buy some fresh cherry tomatoes and some other fruit to eat until I wanted a full meal. The flower market was so cute, there were so many things I wanted to buy but I knew with my one backpack I wouldn’t be able to fit much to take home so I restrained myself. After I was done at the market, I walked up the “I love Nice” sign to get a picture and admire the view from the cliffs. There were a bunch of people taking pictures here but I managed to sneak in there and get a good one. Check out the pictures below!
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A spontaneous trip indeed...On Tuesday, I was sitting in my room analyzing my abroad experience so far. I am quite pleased with how much I’ve done, even though it doesn’t feel like I’ve made a dent in what I want to do. My favorite past time right now is watching SkyScanner for cheap flights to my top destinations. Sometimes I like to click the “Search Everywhere” button just to see what pops up. I had been wanting to somewhere the weekend of December 1st for a while... I had looked at Milan, Rome, Madrid, Krakow.. but didn’t commit to any of them. Partly because I have a huge trip coming up in December already, and partly because I wanted to save money.
Tuesday was the day after cyber Monday and I had noticed some airlines were still having good deals. I clicked the search everywhere option and looked for some future travels. It was then that I noticed Nice, France was was only 10 pounds each way for the upcoming weekend. That’s right people, a round trip flight for 20£ (28$)! I added it to my cart, filled out my name, got to the payment page and exited the window. I was having this crazy adrenaline rush. “Was I about to book a trip, alone, that quickly?! What are you thinking Maddi?!” Is what my brain was yelling at me. I sat there for about an hour, contemplating, thinking, wondering if I would regret not going if the weekend approached and I hadn’t bought the ticket. I eventually convinced myself to buy the ticket. “You won’t be able to book spontaneous travels like this forever so you might as well take advantage of it!” Is what I finally said to myself. I bought the ticket, put a down payment on a hostel for the weekend, and let out a deep breath. I had done it. I had booked my first solo travel and I couldn’t be more excited and proud of myself. My inner turmoil has subsided and I was feeling anxious to research Nice as much as possible. The first thing I looked up was what the weather might be. Drizzling on the day I arrived, but sunny the next two days I was there! And the temperatures! There was a time I would think 60 degrees was too cold to enjoy but after living in 35/40 degrees for the last few weeks, I was more than excited to walk around in 60 degrees. I know England is going to keep getting colder, but I needed a break from this chilly weather. I started playing with the idea of Couchsurfing too, to save some cash and meet some locals. For those that don’t know, Couchsurfing is a website (but more of a community) where you can contact local people in the area and stay with them free of charge. Most people on Couchsurfing ask you to prepare a meal from your culture, and they’ll make one from there’s, and you share experiences with eachother. A lot of my friends have done it and had great experiences. I figured there was no harm in looking into it, so I sent out a request to some hosts. I was mainly looking for a female host, since I hadn’t done this before, and it was my first time traveling alone, I felt this was my safer option. I received about 6 offers, most from men, but one lady offered! I chatted with her a bit and decided to accept her offer. She unfortunately had to cancel the Thursday before my departure, so I was thankful I hadn’t cancelled my hostel reservation yet. I considered the other offers, but had a gut feeling that I should stay at the hostel. I booked my bus to the airport, packed my bag, and started my journey. My flight is at 1pm, but I had to leave my place at 7:30am to catch the bus into town, to get the bus to the airport. I could either get to the airport at 9:30am or 12:00pm... I figured earlier the better. So here I am! Writing this post, with a coffee in hand at the Stansted airport awaiting my flight. I had about two hours to kill here so I downloaded the weebly app so I could update my blog on the go! Stay tuned for updates on this post, if I have time over the weekend I’ll write then, or early next week. Here’s a picture of the sun rising this morning and my delicious latte. Much love, Maddi Pre-Departure and ArrivalCopenhagen... when we booked this trip, we were all so excited to finally have our first travel booked and ready to go! But as the weeks drew closer, we all thought to ourselves.. 'Denmark? Why are we going to Denmark?' It honestly was never a place on my list, however, many of my friends that went abroad loved it and said I had to go. Plus, the flights were fairly cheap so we figured why not! Also during the weeks leading up to our trip, we told many people we were going to Copenhagen and we got the statement... "Oh, that's going to be expensive." And it was true, the Danish Krone exchange to USD was absolute sh*t (explains why the flights were so cheap... they trick you into getting there, then you have to spend a bunch of money to be there). But even through all of this... I was still so excited to finally be going on my first (plane) trip. I was ready for adventure and to see a new beautiful country! When I say 'we', I am referring to the other 5 people I went on this trip with (Sebastian, Mackenzie, Olivia, Peyton, and Julie). Three Americans and three Canadians were off on an adventure! Our flight to Copenhagen was later in the evening (7:25pm) because most of us had class during the day. The trip to the airport went smoothly because I booked an 8 seater airport coach that picked us up straight from our campus and took us to the airport. Since there were so many of us, it ended up being cheaper to do it this way than taking the normal bus. We arrived with plenty of time at the airport to get dinner (Burger King) and relax for a bit. The way RyanAir works is they don't tell you your gate number until 40 minutes before departure.. Then once they do, you have to hurry to your gate and get in line because there are only two boarding lines: "Priority" and "Others". No one really books priority unless they are flying for business, so the others line is always super long. And if you are far enough up in the others line, then you are forced to check your bag, even if its within measurements! So you really have to be ready to get to your gate when its announced. We ended up being one of the first groups there so we were fine (thankfully). Our flight was decent. I somehow ended up under the one stop where the air conditioner leaked, so I was constantly getting water droplets on my head (that's what you get when you book budget airlines). The hour and half flight flew by though and before I knew it, we were landing in Copenhagen! *Side note: The landing of this plane was one of the scariest landings I've ever been on. I think my little sister could have landed a plane better than this guy, but we survived* We exited the plane and got in line for passport checks. No problems here, but I was excited to receive a stamp in my passport!!! As we were walking towards the airport exit, I looked around and noticed NOTHING was in English. I had never felt more out of place than not being able to understand any of the words around me. Thankfully most of the signs had pictures, so we followed the train picture signs out of the terminal. A few train stops down the line, we exited into the city and headed for our hostel! We checked in, got to our room, and settled in. The hostel had great reviews and I could see why! It was very clean, the beds were fairly comfortable, and they gave us free towels. We all wanted to wind down from the evening of traveling so we headed to the hostel bar, which ended up being closed. We decided to walk down the street until we found a pub. We quickly learned, that this was not an area to walk alone around at night. There were pimps with their hoes on every corner. It was a this moment that we all surrounded Sebastian and were thankful we had a man with us. We found this bar called "Spunk Bar" (We later found out what the word 'spunk' means in european slang... I'm not going to say it here, but if you would like to look it up, be my guest). It looked like a local bar, so we entered and ordered some beers. We looked around and noticed it was majority men in this bar, which makes sense if you looked up what that word means. The beer was pretty good, and decently priced. We hung out for a bit and headed back to the hostel to get some rest. By this time it was 1am and we had a huge day planned ahead of us!. Saturday 11/11/17 - Day OneUpon arriving to Copenhagen the night before, we had noticed that there was a Dunkin' Donuts inside of the train station, so we went straight there Saturday morning to feed our caffeine addictions. The other two Americans in our group are from the east coast, so they really needed their Dunkin'. On the go breakfast options were limited. It was either a donut (which looked nice but so much sugar in the morning hurts my tummy), or McDonalds (which was crazy expensive). SO for some reason Peyton and I settled for chicken kababs from 7/11. They actually weren't too bad! Similar to Edinburgh, I booked a free walking tour for Saturday morning so we could get our bearings of the city. The city was so different than I was expecting. I'm not sure what I was expecting because all I really knew about Copenhagen was there was a line of houses that cute and colorful (I later found out this was called Nyhaven). This city had a mix of old and new. I would be walking along a row of old buildings and then stumble upon something modern. I later learned that this was because there were two huge fires in Copenhagen's history that destroyed parts of the city, giving room for new buildings to be build and created this mixed aura of fresh modern and classic old town. The streets were easy to get lost in because everything generally looked the same once you weren't on the main street. Our tour guide had been born and raised in this city, and showed us everything the best he could. He took us from the City Hall, to the old town, to the new town, then to Nyhaven, and we ended our tour at the Queen's palace. Our tour guide explained to us that the Queen had 4 palaces, one for every season, and that Copenhagen was her Winter palace. Apparently the Danish truly love their queen. Every New Year the whole city gathers in the courtyard, and the Queen gives a New Year speech. In this speech, she tells the people of Copenhagen everything that is going right and everything that needs to change in Denmark. Almost like a scolding from a mother. Below are pictures from the walking tour! After we tipped our tour guide, we exited the palace courtyard and took a left, in search of the Little Mermaid statue. My favorite childhood fairytale, the Little Mermaid, was written by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (which I didn't know until I came Denmark) but I just had to see this statue! It turned out to be very small, but still picture worthy. Along the walk there we was some cute buildings, a quiet park with some interesting statues, and a wild goose! This crazy goose was pecking at everything he possibly could. I snagged a picture of him though... doesn't it feel like he's staring at me? (After we saw the statue, we went to this place called Paper Island. My friend Britney told me I had to go while I was here, and I'm very happy that I did! Imagine a farmers market, and all of the food trucks are lined up... now triple the amount of food trucks and put them inside a giant warehouse and you have Paper Island! It was supposed to be some of the best food in Copenhagen, and it was! They had everything you could imagine! Since I hadn't brought much cash with me, I opted for a basic ham, cheese, and tomato panini and even that was quality. The vides in this place were so happy and lively (even though you could hardly move and there were no seats anywhere) it was such a great place to spend our afternoon lunch. *Sorry for not getting great pictures from here, it was so crowded I couldn't eat and take pictures* After our bellies were full, we made our way back to Nyhaven to walk along the Christmas Market. There were cute lights everywhere, and people selling Christmas items out of little huts. I had never had mulled wine before so I decided to give it a try. Oh my, was it delicious! Mulled wine is hot wine headed with different spices, but has a strong cinnamon flavor to it. If it wasn't so expensive for a small cup of it, I would have bought more (thats how good it was). We had all agreed that we didn't want to purchase anything on our first day, so we zipped our wallets shut and went back to the hostel for some rest before the big night!! I'm sure you are wondering... what is the big night? Well it just so happens that we were in town on a HUGE football weekend for Denmark. We were about to witness Danish people in their element. Ireland vs. Denmark is apparently a big deal because the city was live streaming the game in front of City Hall for free! After we rested and warmed up for a bit, we bundled ourselves up, drank some beers, and headed for the game! I watched most of it, and tried to learn to love it, but it just wasn't my type of football. I did enjoy though seeing the Danish people wholeheartedly support their team! And the Irish... considering the fact that the game was in Denmark, there sure were a ton of Irish people there for the big weekend. We had a great time watching the game, but after we were about frozen we decided it was time to find a real pub. It was at this moment that we found out the interesting drinking ages in Denmark. Apparently the drinking age is 18, like the rest of Europe, however the bars have the option to follow the US rule of being 21 to drink, and most of the bars on this big weekend were following that rule. Since two of our group members aren't 21 yet, this meant that our night was coming to an end and we headed back to our hostel. I was quite pleased to go back though... it was freezing and I was tired. *Did you notice in all of that, that we didn't eat dinner? Yeah, we came back and ate more 7/11 food (yuck, but we were a little buzzed so it was okay)* Overall, the first day was a great day and everyone truly enjoyed themselves! Sunday - 12/11/17 - Day TwoDay two started a little later than day one, as we didn't leave the hostel until about 11am. We were all starving and craving a real breakfast, so we went on a search for a real restaurant (no more 7/11). We walked to this place our hostel recommended but they didn't have room for 6 people... this started to become a trend and before we knew it, it was 1:30pm, we still were searching for a restaurant and we were starving. We finally found this place that specialized in some very weird dishes, most of them being oatmeal. Our bellies couldn't wait anymore, so we sat down at the table. I couldn't tell what it was that I ordered, but it tasted like some sort of potato pancakes with a mustard side salad. It wasn't bad, in fact, I liked it at first, but the taste grew too familiar and I didn't end up finishing it (No worries though, I did get full). After our meals, we went to this place called Christiania. This place is known as the "green light district" (if ya know what I mean). A little back story on the place... Weed is illegal in all of Denmark. Christiania is a community that formed in the 70s and fought for their right to smoke, as long as they stayed within their neighborhood boundaries and didn't sell any within the city. It was a battle for years, until Denmark decided to sell the land of Christiania to the people that reside there. So basically, this community is completely self owned and governed, has its own laws, sells weed to support its economy, has its own flag, and even has its own currency. Because it is such a secluded place, pictures are not allowed inside the gates of Christiania. I had heard stories of friends of mine trying to sneak pictures, and locals coming up to them and throwing their phones on the ground. I didn't want that to happen to me, so I refrained from taking pictures. We did have one area where there was a sign that said "Photos Ok!" so I have a few pictures I can put on here. I found this community a little scary at first, because its a very different lifestyle than the one I lead, but after being there for a bit, I could feel the deep sense of community this neighborhood had. I could never live in a place like this, but it was neat to visit and learn about how Christiania became Christiania. Following our trip to Christiania, we decided to get our shopping out of the way before the shops closed. We all got the souvenirs we wanted for ourselves and for our families and decided it was time for us to have a really good meal, since it was our last night in Copenhagen. We chose this cute restaurant on the walkway of Nyhaven, where we could sit outside under a blanket, with heaters arounds us, and enjoy the beautiful scenery just a little bit more. I ordered a salmon dish because I love sea food so much, and was very pleased. I ate every bite of my dinner!
After dinner, we went back to the hostel and prepared for our departure in the morning. We had to leave for the airport at 4:30am to catch our 7:30am flight back to London. It was bittersweet leaving, we had all grown to love Copenhagen in our own way. I can't say its a place a care to visit again, and I still like Edinburgh a lot more, but I am still happy that I was able to experience this trip with my new friends. We all had so much fun together and made memories that will last forever! So as I am typing these last few sentences, I figure I should wrap up by telling you all that I am leaving for Nice, France in the morning! I will be coming back on Tuesday, and will hopefully have a blog post up for that trip faster than I did for this trip. Here are the last few pictures from my adventure in Copenhagen, and as always... Thanks for reading my ridiculously long blog posts! XO, Maddi |
MadeleineMy name is Madeleine Sarner, and I am an American student living in Britain's oldest recorded town, Colchester. After many months of saving, extensive planning, and a few break downs along the way, I have finally started my journey of living abroad. On this blog you can keep up with my adventures, my culture shock, and my new and exciting experiences! Archives
December 2017
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