Spring break Itinerary

Starting tomorrow, students in my study abroad program are embarking on the wonderful one-week journey called spring break. If I had to split it down to percentages, I'd say 94% have booked a trip with student travel agencies (namely, Bus2alps or Euroadventures -- consisting of American students, nightlife tips, and ridiculously long bus rides). Of the remaining 6%, 4% have booked their own trip with friends, are traveling with family, or visiting someone they know in Europe.

From the sound of this post, you can probably already tell that I fall in the remaining 2% -- traveling solo.

Two other students I know of are doing a solo 10-day trip, one of them being my previous hotel roommate, Catherine. (I mentioned her briefly in my post here: First Full Day in Firenze.)

I'll eventually expand more on the whys and the hows of this trip in future posts, but for now, to keep y'all in the loop, here's the WHAT:

It looks like a lot of hopping, I know -- but I plan on seeing Portovenere, Santa Margherita Ligura, (and from there: Portofino, Camogli), Menaggio (from there, other Lake Como towns), Como, and ending up in Geneva, Switzerland to see my friend from high school who is interning there!

[With this complicated itinerary, I'm learning a lot about the non-standardized train system in Italy. I've got 13 transportation hop-on-and-offs. What makes it more fun? I found out this morning that it's supposed to rain starting from my second day. Hooray for more challenges!]

When I chose to do this trip solo, I was confident and had no doubt in my mind about doing this. As it's getting closer, I'm acquiring what I call my panic attacks. Reading up on "female solo travel tips" on Google is not recommended before a trip, as your brain will probably only see the panic-inducing parts. Such as bringing a safety whistle, a rubber doorstop to deter intruders, tales of the danger-stranger-narrowly-avoided, and barricading your room door with furniture in the room.

That's when I quickly realized that I didn't possess as much confidence as I thought I had.

No worries. As I'm still figuring out my itinerary just ironing out the fine details of my trip, I don't regret this decision for a second. I'm experiencing the same jitters I had days before I came to Italy for study abroad, but clearly it's been more than worth it.

I won't be blogging from Friday until Sunday, March 30 -- but I'll be updating my Instagram during this time to take you all with me on my travels (the link is provided on my Connect page here). And if you haven't already checked it out, my Tumblr gallery is scheduled to post pictures from our past weekend in Venice while I'm absent.

I want to thank everyone who is reading this -- for a cliché, I truly would not be doing this whole thing (study abroad, spring break on my own) if it wasn't for your constant encouragement and support for me to pursue this dream. I owe a lot to each one of you -- whether it was forcing you to edit my scholarship essays, listening to me vent about my frustrations and struggles of being here, commenting on my posts so I know someone's out there reading ;) or financial help -- THANK YOU. 

Arrivederci -- and I'll be back at the end of March to play catch up on blog posts for this month.