SEE MORE: – Ireland (Part I) – Gaming – Ireland (Part II) – Adventures on Foot – Italian Cats – Cinque Terre – 

Austria: 122 days visiting 16 countries and traveling via 137 trains, 61 buses, 10 planes, 10 boats, and 5 taxies.

Austria: 80 churches, 27 cafes, 13 major cities, 11 castles, 11 bookstores, 7 markets, 5 hostels, 3 airbnbs.

Austria: Four months in which I ate gelato 20 times, consumed roughly 30+ milka bars, had enough bread to last me for the rest of my life and ordered pizza in almost every country I visited.

Austria: When I took over 11,000 photos because I traveled almost every weekend, spent a whole week in Ireland, 10 days in France, 10 days in Italy, and somehow still completed all my homework for my classes, wrote my papers, read my books, and fully engaged in the education I was receiving.

Austria: One semester that taught me more than I have learned in my first five semesters of college and which gave me memories and stories that I hope I never forget

I probably will never spend four months of my life living in Europe and traveling again, and yet I don’t think I just finished the high point of my life. In fact, I think life is just going to keep getting better. You see the thing is, I learned a lot of valuable lessons in Austria and one of those was learning how to truly live in the present. With no working phone and limited wifi connection, most of my time was spent fully engaging with the people around me and the world I was being blessed to see. I hardly ever traveled with my laptop and I found a lot of freedom in the detachment from screens and the online world. (That’s part of the reason I gave up blogging for the semester, but now I’m back!!)

I could go on and on and never quite find the words to adequately sum up my time abroad and so I’ll stop now and share a bunch of favorite photos from the past four months. I have several more in-depth blog posts ahead for specific locations I visited, so stayed tuned for more!

IRELAND

LONDON, UK

GAMING, AUSTRIA 

SALZBURG, AUSTRIA

ROME

HALLSTATT, AUSTRIA

SKOLJIC, CROATIA

POLANDLOURDES, FRANCE
VIENNA, AUSTRIA

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

CINQUE TERRE, ITALY

VENICE

ROME (TRIP 2)

ASSISI, ITALY

BARCELONA, SPAIN

BESALU, SPAIN

GAMING, AUSTRIA

 

Xoxo,

Mary Kate