Category: travels

  • 5 tips for taking a train in Italy

    5 tips for taking a train in Italy

    Nina Mukerjee Furstenau's avatarPlated

    By Claire Lardizabal

    FLORENCE, Italy – Getting to the food stories I would write in Florence meant I had to make it there on the Rome-Firenza train after my international flight. Mostly, the only time trains are used in Missouri are to get to Chicago so venturing from Florence to Rome by train was a new concept for me. Now, equipped with the right information, it seems much easier.

    Here are five tips for your first Italian train:

    Travel Do’s and Don’ts
    TrenItalia is Italy’s train system. The website (www.trenitalia.com) displays in Italian but can be translated to English by clicking on the upper right-hand button that says Italiano, then clicking English. The website offers a plethora of services, such as booking train tickets in advance, how to access the train through the airport, and customer assistance for more information.

    Tip 1. Follow signs. When arriving at Rome Fiucimino airport…

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  • All Aboard to Florence, Italy

    All Aboard to Florence, Italy

    I boarded my plane on the way to my “Will Write for Food” study abroad program in Florence, Italy, equally nervous yet excited for the next five weeks to come. My plane ticket — my first huge purchase as a 22-year-old — took me from St. Louis to a brief stop in Montreal, then onward to Rome.

    When I arrived in Rome, the plan was to take the train to Florence. However, almost every piece of advice that I religiously followed from Google was wrong. Not every Italian spoke English. You didn’t get your train ticket to Florence from where it said I should. Jet lagged in a foreign country, I did the only thing I could: I followed the signs.

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  • Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico

    Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico

    Spring break. The midway point between spring semester. The timeout before the last quarter of the school year. For the past three years, it has been my saving grace from stress. I’ve gone everywhere with my longtime travel buddy/boyfriend, learning how to travel on a college (read: low) budget.

    I chose Cancun because I have always wanted to come to Mexico. I’ve had some non-traditional spring breaks in the past – Vegas, Estes Park, New Orleans. I really wanted to go to the beach this time. Plus, there’s a lot of ruins and caves down here, too. If you don’t know me, I am kind of obsessed with the Mayan/alien conspiracy theory (or any alien conspiracies in general). Also, being semi-fluent in Spanish, I wanted to go to a place to test my skills out. Spanish countries are at the top of my bucket list (Spain and Peru, in particular) because I eventually want to be fluent. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “You speak Spanish?” and I always respond, “Si, yo puedo.”

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  • Abu Dhabi, UAE

    My parents moved to Abu Dhabi this past summer, and my siblings and I visited during Christmas break to get a glimpse of their new desert life on the Arabian peninsula.