Remember that time a million years ago when I decided to say, “fuck it” and travel for 3 months? It’s been so long, I barely remember what it’s like to NOT exist in a Groundhog Day (yay, early spring in 2024!) consisting of work, school, sleep, work, school, sleep, work, school… 😵 Anyways, in the more than 13 cities in 8 countries across Western and Central Europe (yes, I’ll keep flexing that), I tend to see 3 recurring phenomena: Dunkin’ Donuts, KPMG, and cats. Funnily enough, every time I see a Dunkin, I usually also find a KPMG building close […]
“Did you know that New York used to be called New Amsterdam?” Said every Dutch person ever when they find out I’m from the US (NL Part 2)
I completely forgot to share photos from my city bike tour in my last post. Oops. So, here are some of those photos, along with my Amsterdam Airbnb host who invited me to his roof deck dinner party. He’s my fave. BTW, if you click the photos, it will open the full size in a new tab. You’re welcome. In total, I took 4 different guided bike tours in Amsterdam: 2 city tours, 1 countryside tour, and 1 city food tour. And in addition to that, I also took a canal cruise/tour. Damn, I took a lot of tours. One […]
Bicycles mandatory, helmets optional. (NL Part 1)
I already owned up to the fact that I am bad at keeping a consistent blog post schedule last time, so I’m not going to apologize for the long period of silence 🤷♀️ You guys knew what you were getting into. I am who I am. I was in (or near) Amsterdam for almost 4 weeks, from June 7 to July 2. To be exact, it was 26 days. By the end of it, I was starting to feel like a local! I was starting to get by with some Dutch, and I even have a vague idea of where […]
“Ma’am, did you really not think you needed to buy a ticket?”
Step counter: 124,911(15 days, from June 4 through June 19) Rough landing in Amsterdam, you guys… Less than 30 minutes after getting off the plane from London, I get in trouble with the Amsterdam transit system. For no other reason than I’m dumb and lack common sense sometimes. In my defense, if they required you to buy a train ticket to board a train, then why are their gates wide open?! I only realized when I got to my station and wasn’t able to “tap out” of the exit gates. The worst part wasn’t even the transit guy basically asking […]
Prone to inertia
Step counter: 70,134(7 days, from May 28 through Jun 3) As I’m writing this, it’s a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and I have done exactly nothing today but make my hair bluer and sit on my ass watching Boston Legal with a sheet mask on my face. What I realized about myself isn’t so much that I’m lazy by nature or have an addictive personality, even though I tend to exhibit both traits. Rather, I’m prone to inertia. If I’m in motion, I tend to stay in motion until something stops me, like utter physical exhaustion of being go-go-go-go-go. And once […]
Those first few days in London
Step counter: 44,930(3 days, May 24 through May 27) I think I’ve met more Canadians in three days than I’ve met in the US in the last 12 years. Gary, Olivia, and Megan from Toronto. Nikayla and Eric from Vancouver. Living in a hostel has been an experience. This being my first time, I specifically booked the “women-only” section for a week, and, especially as I was writing this paragraph, it felt like I was back in college with my girlies joking around and chatting about our past travels and future plans. I got so many good recommendations from everyone, […]
Who What Wear
Even though nobody asked, here’s a whole post documenting what I packed for this 3-month trip. It’s actually pretty crazy how much I was able to squeeze into a 45L backpack. There were some rules I followed for clothes specifically. First of all, pockets on everything, except tops. Self-explanatory. Secondly, each article of clothing has to be easy to clean/dry. And lastly, because I know myself, I’m not allowed to bring anything that stains easily and obviously. To be fair to myself, even though I put off planning my trip until basically the last minute, I have spent months mentally […]
Hello world!
I spent way too much time tooling around with this 🤬 site, so you better be reading this right now. Yeah, you. Ok thanks. On this sweet, beautiful Sunday, instead of enjoying the sun and getting on top of my weekly chores, I spent the last 8 hours doing this. Did I learn stuff? Yes. Did I get to flex my creative muscles? Yes. But does my back hurt now? Fuck. Yes. Was it my own damn fault for having shite posture? Ok, fine, also yes. Anyways. We are in the final countdown for this Europe trip that I finally […]