Traversing tips

Tips for all my future [college] travelers

Save your receipt, look for one on the ground, or motion and attempt to ask a customer when at a restaurant if you have to go to the bathroom.

Nice, France. What I thought was an easy task, using a toilette, required me to communicate with a man sitting reading in McDonalds and ask him to use his receipt to use the W.C. Turns out that the term W.C. is not used in France, but he understood what I meant and offered his receipt so that I could enter a pin code for access to the bathroom.

Always consult with locals when looking for something to do to get the real feeling of the town you are visiting.

Nice, France. The Saint Exupéry Hostel provided a tourism extraordinare. He told us where to go if we wanted to really experience the real feeling of the French Riviera. By going off his minimal transportation advice, we hopped on Bus 100 and headed for Cap d'Ail. The man sitting across from us told us we had three stops to get off on in order to be in Cap d'Ail, the third being the packed touristy beach. We got off on the second stop, walked down a lot of stairs, and finally saw oceanfront and a secluded beach and knew our trip was worth the 45 minutes on the bus. This marked our first authentic European escape to a local beauty.

Interlaken, Switzerland. En route to the train station and running off the suggestion of the hostel front desk to visit a lookout point, Harder Klum, we stopped in a Patagonia store. The local store employee at the register suggested otherwise and gave us directions to picture that was on the wall. After two train rides, a cog train up a mountain with stunning views of the Alps we were inclining, we hit our destination, Kleine Scheidegg, or what is considered the "Top of Europe" without paying 170 CHF to get up all the way to Jungfrau, the top.

 

Kleine Scheidegg



Talk to everyone.

Interlaken, Switzerland. On the way to where we would trek down the canyon when canyoning an hour away from Interlaken, I sat next to a young woman named Catalina. I spent a trip on which I anticipated to spend my time sleeping, having an amazing conversation as we made our way through the Swiss countryside. It was so interesting to hear her personal take and also her relation of Europe as a whole on American politics, economics, and financial status while she equally challenged me with matching conversation.