independent, intentional travel
Originally, I wrote the skeleton of this post last summer, when I was newly excited about getting my placement. This year’s new auxiliares should be getting their placements soon, so I decided to resurrect this topic!
I’d been checking my email every morning for way too long – the application period for this year’s Auxiliares de Conversacion program didn’t even close until April 13, but I was vigilant, just in case. I couldn’t wait to receive my regional assignment! [Read more…]
My last day in Berlin called for rain. Since I’d been to the city before, six years before, I’d already done a lot of the indoor tourist sights like museums and the Reichstag building. But as I browsed through the results of my Google search — “things to do in berlin indoors” — one particular thing caught my eye. “Berliner Unterwelten,” or Berlin underground bunker tours.
All of the reviews were positive, so I thought I’d give it a shot. [Read more…]
A view of Valle de los Caรญdos
Funny story: a half-baked version of this article about Valle de los Caรญdos has been sitting in my “drafts” folder since April 29, 2017. That was only a week or two after I started this blog. I knew it was a topic I wanted to cover — it fits well with my theme of independent, intentional travel — but I couldn’t remember all the necessary details from my trip to write the article that I wanted.
So, now that I’m in Spain full-time, I recently had the opportunity to go back to this interesting place. Since I was bringing friends with me this time, I was wishing I’d finished the article two years ago so I could go back and read it. (Didn’t want to get us lost.) But once again, the trip was successful.
[Read more…]
The last time — and only other time — I tried to take an international bus trip, it didn’t turn out very well. That was when I wanted to go from Brussels to Amsterdam. After waiting for the bus to show up for two and a half hours, in the pouring rain and freezing cold very early in the morning, I gave up and took the train.
So I was a little nervous about my plan to take a bus fromย Wrocลaw, Poland, to Berlin. I decided to use a different bus company than the one that had failed me (I’m looking at you, OuiBus). My friends Carson and Natalie had used FlixBus for their trip from Paris to Madrid, and their bus clearly showed up, so my standards were pretty low. But I have to say I really enjoyed my FlixBus experience! [Read more…]
View in Wrocลaw at Market Square
I had an ulterior motive when it came to visiting Poland for the first time. Way back in 2012, after spending a Christmas in the far northeast of Germany with my boyfriend’s family, we’d driven across the border to Szczecin just to say we’d stepped foot there. (And I think we ate pizza.) But since I didn’t spend much time there, I never really felt that I could say I’d *been* to Poland.
In order to alleviate this traveler’s cognitive dissonance, I kept an eye on flights to Poland in 2019, during my first year living in Spain. And finally, a cheap flight to a city called Wrocลaw aligned with a puente (long weekend) from school. [Read more…]
For better or for worse, Spain’s ALSA buses are a topic I’m all-too familiar with. Every Tuesday and Thursday at 1:15pm, I would board a big green ALSA bus from Buitrago del Lozoya, where I worked, to get back to Madrid, where I lived. Occasionally I had to catch the 6:45am bus to work — but I don’t like to think about that because it was truly the stuff of nightmares.
Anyway, I don’t know what ALSA stands for, but I do know that it’s the largest Spanish bus company for more long-haul trips. So when I went to Granada for the weekend with my friends, that’s what we used. Here’s how the experience stacked up. [Read more…]
On the playground at my school
I recently talked via Instagram with my 11th-grade English teacher, Ms. Thompson. She asked me for more information about the Auxiliares de Conversacion program (also known as NALCAP) because her daughter is a college senior and may be interested in doing something like this after graduation.
This caused me to realize that, for as much as I talk about the program and how to apply, Iโve never written a post on what all the program is and actually entails. So, here it is! [Read more…]
Granada, Spain, was a city that I’d always heard about while living in Madrid, but never gotten around to visiting. Its location — isolated in Spain’s deep south — requires visitors to have sufficient time to not only enjoy the city but travel there as well. Situated in a mountainous region of Andalusia, Granada didn’t even have a high-speed railway station until mid-2019! Which meant that my transportation options were limited to flights, cars, or buses.
One of my friends in Madrid, Ellie, had studied abroad in Granada during college. Along with our friend Sarah, we planned a weekend trip, traveling via bus. It was 5 hours each way, which was a lot, but it wasn’t horrible. From the time I set foot in Granada, I fell in love, and I think it’s my new favorite city in Spain. Here are 7 reasons everyone should visit Granada! [Read more…]
A few years ago, my best friend Hanna took a trip to Northern Ireland with her mom. All the pictures were so beautiful, and one of the places she specifically mentioned was the Giant’s Causeway. Fast forward to when I lived in Madrid. I’d been planning a trip to Dublin to visit my friend Nicole, who was living there at the time. A week before the trip, Nicole texted me: “What would you think about taking a trip up north from Dublin to Giant’s Causeway?” [Read more…]
Portrait of the author recovering from tonsilitis on a Wednesday
You know how people will post photos like “Instagram vs. Reality?” I don’t really see myself as someone who highly curates my image or digital presence, but to anyone who doesn’t talk to me on a regular basis, it may just look like I’m living the dream all of the time in Spain.
Which is totally true. This is my dream! But there are also lots of parts that aren’t easy; parts that are unglamorous and hard work, and I don’t talk about them much. So I wanted to share an inside look as to what it’s really like living in Spain. Here are my realities! [Read more…]