HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM FLORENCE!

Today is December 31, 2008.

I just explored Florence.
And now I am going to get ready to eat dinner in the romantic Tuscan countryside.

Sigh.

And then,
clubbing to ring in 2009.

in Florence. Lets say that again.


HAPPY NEW YEAR! CONTIKI IS FAWESOME!

Hello from Europa!

Greetings from Europe. After almost a full day of traveling, I have safely arrived. Yesterday was a whirlwind of a jet-lagged day as the 21 other young, American travelers and myself were whisked around Munich, later to enjoy a private dinner seating at an exciting and warm (!!) Hofbrauhaus at night. Beer was sloshed, cups were clanked, songs were sung. It was a great and welcoming first night.

Today we are in Ahhhnold's home, Austria, where we rode swift gondolas up snow-capped mountains. Unfortunately we don't have enough time for me to strap on some skis and join the locals, but I'm taking a break from strolling through the quiant city to write this post in an internet cafe, which coincidentally is a cafe I've visited in 2006 with friends (it's next to the Magic Pizza Shop where we got in trouble for bringing the pizza onto the bus, haha!).

It's positively freezing, but I'm glad to have brought my thickest coat (it's still not enough though!). I'm off to Venice and Florence in a bit, then Switzerland and finally Paris. Updates soon and huge hugs from me to you!

The Gift of Travel (I'm off to Europe with Contiki!)

Happy Holidays, everyone.

I've been truly blessed this year with an incredible opportunity to go on a trip with Contiki Holidays, a travel-vacation company for 18-35 year-olds with tours to Europe (Greek Island Hopping included!), Australia, New Zealand, Bali, Russia, Egypt, Mexico, and Asia. Phew!

As I'm taking a break from helping my family with Christmas feast preparations, I wanted to update and let ya'll know where I'll be from 12/26-1/7 with Contiki.

I depart from LAX for Munich on 12/26 on a 6am flight (mmm, what an hour).

Sat 12/27 - Arrive Munich. Explore & check out the Hofbrauhaus beerhall for dinner. Yo ho.

Sun 12/28 - Munich to Innsbruck via Hopfgarten (Austria). We'll visit the ski village of Hopfgarten for lunch and then a trip to the top of the ALPS! Then we'll go to Innsbruck and wander this adorable town & soak in the snow-capped Alps that will surround us. I hope it'll be just like "The Holiday" - cute & quaint & warm (ya, I know. "Aww!").

Mon 12/29 - Munich to Venice. Gondola rides, St. Mark's square, delicious pizza & even better wine, and a little Italian romance, perhaps? Hah.

Tues 12/30 - Venice to Florence. Ah, Tuscany. Good thing my friends and I just watched "Under the Tuscan Sun"! Although it'll be a bit colder, we'll enjoy our cobble-stone strolls and reminiscings of the Renaissance.

Wed 12/31 - Florence. A full day! With my fellow Contiki go-ers, we will have a tour of this beautiful city, including the Piazza della Signoria. I'll have to watch my wallet as we'll have tons of free time to shop. Oh, and did I mention...

NEW YEAR'S IN FLORENCE, ITALY! It's pretty sweet, no? I'll be counting down 2009 in a very...bella..city...oh man do I need to start learning some Italian.

Thurs 1/1 - Florence to Lucerne, Switzerland - an absolutely BREATHTAKING place. Serene, medieval, LOVELY. I can't use any other words to describe it. I've been to Lucerne before, but never during the winter, and I'm tantilized by the opportunity to warm myself up with some Swiss hot chocolate. Mmm =)

Fri 1/2 - Lucern to Paris. We'll drive past vineyards and arrive to a sparkling Eiffel Tower. Sigh :)

Sat 1/3 - Paris. Another free day to explore! Perhaps I'll visit the Louvre, Notre Dame, or maybe stroll down the Champs Elysees? Dinner in the Montmarter district with my fellow Contiki go-ers.

Sun 1/4 - Au revoir a Contiki. But...

1/4 - 1/7 - Family time with my cousins in Paris!



Contact Info:
-I will not have a phone, but will use phone cards.
-I will be mostly communicating via email from the many Internet cafes available in Europe
-Email me at kristinaxlee@gmail.com!

______________________________________________

On the preparation note, my 44 lb. suitcase is packed with lots of layerable clothes to keep me *hopefully* warm and toasty in the foggy/rainy/snowy streets of Europe. Not sure if I'm prepared for this kind of cold, as the "California cold" is to be scoffed at by others, but hey - gotta live it up and experience new things, right?

The next time you'll hear from me, I'll be across the world. Look forward to new posts!

Merry Christmas.

Ciao,
Kristina

Less than a month 'til Europe!

First of all, HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I surely am happy to be surrounded by such wonderful family and friends and LOVE. I'm also very blessed to have the opportunity to travel. On that note, I'm going on a Contiki trip this winter break from December 26, 2008 - January 4, 2009 (2009? oh my!). I'm going with some friends and am excited to make some new ones as well.

Places I'm going to hit up - Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris, Austria, Switzerland...and more to come. All will be covered with wintery/snowy/beautiful goodness. Or so I hope. Here's a map of my past and future travels - enjoy, and let me know if you're tempted to go on a similar trip!

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• Create your own travel map or travel blog



• Travel Info at TripAdvisor

A dose of travel inspiration...

The 50 Most Inspiring Travel Quotes Of All Time

1. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” - Mark Twain

2. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” - St. Augustine

3. “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

4. “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” - Samuel Johnson

5. “All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.” - Paul Fussell

6. “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” - Jack Kerouac

7. “He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” - Moorish proverb

8. “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” - Dagobert D. Runes

9. “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” - John Steinbeck

10. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” - Lin Yutang

11. “Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.” - Aldous Huxley

12. “All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” - Samuel Johnson

13. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” - Robert Louis Stevenson

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” - Henry Miller

14. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” - Cesare Pavese

15. “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” - Henry Miller

16″A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” - Moslih Eddin Saadi

17. “When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” - D. H. Lawrence

18. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” - Freya Stark

19. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

20. “Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” - Miriam Beard

21. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” - Martin Buber

22. “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” - Jawaharial Nehru

23. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” - Paul Theroux

24. “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” - Bill Bryson

25. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

26. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by.” - Robert Frost

27. “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” - Lao Tzu

28. “There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.” - Charles Dudley Warner

29. “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” - Lao Tzu

30. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” - James Michener

31. “The journey not the arrival matters.” - T. S. Eliot

32. “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” - Tim Cahill

33. “I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” - Mark Twain

34. “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quiestest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” - Pat Conroy

“A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” - Lao Tzu

35. “Not all those who wander are lost.” - J. R. R. Tolkien

36. “Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” - Benjamin Disraeli

37. “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” - Maya Angelou

38. “Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.” - Elizabeth Drew

39. “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe”……Anatole France

40. “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” - Seneca

41. “What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do - especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” - William Least Heat Moon

42. “I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” - Lillian Smith

43. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” - Aldous Huxley

44. “Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” - Freya Stark

45. “The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” - Rudyard Kipling

46. “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” - Paul Theroux

47. “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” - G. K. Chesterton

48. “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” - Clifton Fadiman

49. “A wise traveler never despises his own country.” - Carlo Goldoni

50. “Adventure is a path. Real adventure - self-determined, self-motivated, often risky - forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind - and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” - Mark Jenkins

bring on the world

Hey.

Let's start with the basics: a current student at the University of Southern California, native of Los Angeles area, loves the beach & other watery things, photography, children, reading, good conversation, chocolate.

But most importantly...
I like to travel, meet new people, experience new cultures, foods, scents, dances, drinks, sights. If all goes as planned, I'll be traveling the world in the near future, and I made this blog so you can come with me. Meet my new friends, take walks with me through still pictures, share my thoughts.

The world is your playground, and no matter what age you are, you deserve to explore it. Why not start while you're young?

I leave you with this:

"Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled."
-Mohammed