notes from abroad | Tag Archive

By admin
18/05/09 at 20:44
1 Comments

Planning: Melting my Credit Card

Well that’s it – classes are over, finals are over, and all that’s left to do is graduate. These last few weeks have been absolutely crazy. but they’re over and now I have an entire week (a.k.a. Senior Week) to just hang out in Ithaca and do whatever my little heart desires. And then I realized: oh boy, I’m leaving in 16 days. I don’t even know where I’m going to stay or where I’m going to go! So much to do!

So my week of downtime has turned into a week of scouring the web for planes, trains, ferries and hostels to try to piece together at least the first few weeks of my trip. It’s been a very expensive past few days and I’ve only booked about two weeks worth of travel and lodging, but I think that’s more sticker shock than anything else.

Why the changes? Well, I’ve decided to put myself at the whim of cheap transportation and (hopefully) comfortable, but affordable hostels. Along the way I’ve found a few sites to be absolutely indispensable:

By admin
03/05/09 at 00:49
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Progress Report

Sorry for disappearing over the last week or so. We’re in the final stretch of the semester and life is a little hectic.

So what’s new?
I’m working with someone from STA Travel to get my various passes in order. I’ll be using the BusAbout and Eurail passes that I won to supplement some of my travels around the continent. As for the plane tickets that were also a part of the prize, it looks like I’m going to be planning a second, mini-trip to the UK sometime next spring (yay!).

By admin
12/04/09 at 01:44
8 Comments

Planning: Geek Necessities

After some long and hard thinking, I’ve decided to do the unthinkable. I’ve decided to -gasp- leave my laptop at home for the summer.

If you know me at all, your first reaction will likely be along the lines of “WHAT!??!?!??!?!!?” followed by all sorts of visions of me going through some sort of hardcore rehab-esque withdrawal. Yeah, I’ve had those same visions. But in the end I decided that I really don’t need a laptop. For the most part I work in the cloud and while it would be nice to have my trusty MBP around so that I have at least something familiar in my life, it’s big, bulky, expensive, and distracting.

By admin
06/04/09 at 01:38
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Planning: Budgetizing

Now that I have my working itinerary down (though it’s been through a few changes since I posted it) I figured it was time to start working on the not-so-fun part: the budget.

This part was actually a bit scary and a bit challenging: some of the numbers that I was calculating were far higher than I anticipated while others were lower. The most difficult part, though, was figuring out how much to budget in for food! I already know to avoid restaurants as much as possible and to try to go to markets and such, but it’s not like I’m going to be buying groceries for a week at a time. And I do want to have the option of eating out every once in a while, because let’s face it, I won’t be able to make pasta as well as the restaurants in Italy and I wouldn’t even know where to begin in cooking an authentic German dinner.

By admin
05/04/09 at 02:17
4 Comments

Planning: The Itinerary (Finally!)

t wasn’t easy, but after many, many hours of staring at maps, reading through travel books, looking at airfares, scouring flickr, talking to friends, and just plain ole daydreaming, I’ve finally nailed down a working itinerary!

I have to say, it took a lot for me to cut out places like Glasgow and Stockholm, but when it came down to which places had to get the axe, I tried to pick groupings that would logically form into a future trip: a trip to Scandinavia, for instance, would let me cover Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, Helsinki and a bunch of other places instead of just the first two. Same goes for the UK. The UK seems like the easiest trip to make somewhere down the line and dedicating an entire trip to the UK would let me cover the more rural parts of England and also fit in Wales and a lot more of Ireland.

So, with the exception of London, none of those places will be included in my trip this summer.

By admin
02/04/09 at 00:55
1 Comments

Planning: Where to?

I have a very long list of places I’d like to go. I know that realistically I won’t be able to cover very many of these, but I figure it’s better to get an “ideal” list down and then pick from there. Here’s a list of places I’d like to see just off the top of my head:

By admin
31/03/09 at 13:57
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Planning: Time to get serious

I’ve had this trip stewing in the back of my mind for a few months now, but all of a sudden I realized that it’s only about 2 months away and I haven’t done -any- actual planning. Not good, Jenn. Not good.

It’s time to get serious.

I was at the campus bookstore the other day and they had some travel guides on sale. $4.00 a piece. I, of course, grabbed a few: Let’s Go Western Europe and Let’s Go Italy. Sure, they’re the 2006 and 2007 editions, but come on, how much do the Roman ruins really change in 2-3 years? The books were pretty useful, but I think they’ll be even more useful once I nail down a preliminary itinerary and time frame so I can look up more specific things.

I think the hardest part about all of this was the sheer scope of the trip. Where do you even begin? (Answer: at the beginning), but where is the beginning? So many questions to be answered.