After traveling throughout Asia and Europe the past few months I decided to share some tips on how I was able to do it on a budget and avoid inconveniences like buying separate sim cards each place I went.
Category: Europe
Like Paris, it rained hard on our first night so we didn’t do much exploring. Luckily, as we traveled further North the days got longer. By the time we got to Amsterdam the sun set at 10pm so we’d have a lot of time to explore.
We started off our first morning by grabbing pastries at a boulangerie around the corner from our Airbnb. Like the restaurant from the previous night, nothing was in english and the lady behind the counter only spoke french. Despite this, we were able to order by pointing and using hand gestures. I don’t know why, but the lady kept speaking to us in french even though we said we only spoke english.
After our day long excursion from Venice to Zurich we met up with one of my old co-worker, Vishnu, who recently moved there to work for the Google Calendar team. Another co-worker, Pratheek, was visiting as well so we all headed up to the Uteilberg tower to get a night view of the city.
For one of our days in Europe we decided to train all day from Venice to Zurich. That may not sound like a lot of fun, but we took the scenic Bernina Express through the Swiss Alps. We started early and trained from Venice to Milan and transferred to a train headed for Tirano.
Our second destination was Venice. We were only going to be there for one night so we took the early train from Rome. We got in around noon, but weren’t able to check into our airbnb until 1:30pm.
On our first full day in Rome we decided to visit Vatican City, the smallest country in the world, for most of the day. We woke up early and stopped by a cafe on our way to the metro. Unlike in the U.S. where you can get eggs and toast , most Europeans choose coffee and a pastry. We decided to grab some croissants filled with chocolate/jam and I added on a cappuccino.
To celebrate the end of busy season, Shelley and I booked a two week trip to Europe. Our flight there was anything but convenient. We flew the red eye from San Francisco to Newark and had an eight hour layover. Luckily, my aunt and uncle live nearby so they offered to host us for a few hours.