Travels In Europe

I travelled all over Europe from 2006 to 2008. The reason my family and I travelled so much during these years was because the company my father works for transferred us overseas to Frankfurt, Germany. We lived in Germany for two years, my eighth and ninth grades.

It is currently the summer before my senior year in high school. I’ve been back in the USA for about two years now, but it feels so much shorter. It feels as though I just moved here and I’m dying to go back. Looking at just the second year we were there, from 2007 to 2008, we had countless adventures. However, two of my adventures stick out in my memory better than the others.

First, in June of 2007, almost exactly three years ago, we travelled to Paris to visit Disneyland Paris with my family, my older sister’s friend Kelly who was visiting us from the USA, and my friend Maddie who I went to school with in Germany. We went on Big Thunder Mountain, It’s A Small World, met Goofy and Minnie, and then we left Disneyland to see the real Paris. We went to the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Musée d’Orsay, and the Louvre Museum.

The other memorable experience was in October of that year, we travelled to Barcelona, Spain, my father’s favorite city in the whole world. We landed in Reus airport after a short and cheap flight from Frankfurt Hahn airport via Ryan Air. I highly recommend Ryan Air, it is very cheap and not a bad experience. We stayed in Villanova Park, it was pretty close to Barcelona and the accommodations were really quite nice. The first day we went to a Universal Studios amusement park called Port Adventura, about an hour south of Barcelona in Salov. Later we met up with a former exchange student of ours, Marta. She gave us a local’s tour of Barcelona, which really is the best way to see a city. We went to Parc Güell to see the artwork of Gaudí, which was unbelievable and beautiful. I fell in love with Sagrada Familia, a cathedral that Gaudí started, but died before he could finish. We walked along Paseo de Gracia and ate some fantastic tapas. Then we toured El Raval and Las Ramblas.

The next day we took the Bus Touristic for a formal city tour, it was a great tourist bus. We got off the bus at the Placa de Catalunya and found another tapas place to eat lunch. We rode the bus to see Mount Tibidabo, since Beth had always wanted to see it as it was mentioned by Joey in the television show Friends. We also saw the Royal Palace, the University of Barcelona, and the Futbol Club Barcelona. We ate dinner with Marta at the Restaurant 7 Portes. The next day we spent most of our time in Poble Espanyol, the Spanish Village built for the 1929 International Exhibition. We stayed one last night in Villanova Park before flying home to Frankfurt with Ryan Air again. It was an amazing experience and I can’t wait to go back!