Home » Archive by category "Travel Blog" (Page 16)

Travelling Again (Text Message Updates for 2009-03-01)

2 Mar 2009
  • Ugh, landed early now waiting for a gate to open. Yawn, way tired eyen though i did sleep! #
  • And have lost faith in british airways. My seat tv screen didn’t work and crew was horrible! #
  • Whew, through customs, no problems, now trying to figure out these bags on the tube. #
  • Well here I am, back at the top floor flat #

Getting a Summer Job in London

17 Feb 2009

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a couple of people get in touch with questions about how to get a job in London, particularly summer jobs for college students.  Although my experience is fairly different than that of most short-term travelers looking for jobs or internships, I thought I’d make a post to share some tips.

If you’re interested in a job, unfortunately you’ll need to sort out a visa before you leave the States – there is no other legal way to get paid. The best (and as far as I know, only) way for a short term student working visa is through a program called BUNAC which is the one that I used.  They give you a visa and then help you as little or as much as you need finding job and housing once you get to the UK. This is a 6 month visa and the BUNAC program typically recommends using the full time available on the visa. Of course you can leave after less time, and you can also do the program twice while still enrolled in college if you decide you want to go back but it is a bit costly if you’re only going to be there 8-10 weeks.

The other option is trying to find an unpaid internship (in fact there are very VERY few paid internships in the UK and they usually go to college grads). Many US students might be surprised by how common unpaid internships are in all industries but if you are expecting them, it’s less of a shock.  You can look at www.gumtree.com which is the London version of Craigslist. International students often work in pubs or restaurants – and in many cases these jobs provide accomodation as well.  Other professional industries offer internships but these tend to be competitive.

I have loved working in the UK and the BUNAC program makes it easy for students to do so.  If you have the funds to travel and work in an unpaid internship, that would be an amazing experience as well.  Good luck in the UK!

Windy Hill

27 Jan 2009

This past weekend I once again had the opportunity to take advantage of the gorgeous Bay Area weather to hike up Windy Hill in Portolla Valley.  This time, I talked a group of friends into coming with me which was quite a feat for a Sunday morning.

The trails through the Windy Hill area are well marked, but a little confusing in relation to each other.  There are about 12 miles total of trails, and if you just keep walking you’re pretty much bound to make it to the top of the Hill in question (where, as we discovered, it was in fact quite Windy).  We didn’t make it on the loop we had originally intended to take, instead walking up the Spring Ridge Trail and back down again for a total walk of around six and a half miles.  It was a great uphill push on the way to the top and an easy walk back down, all of which contributed to a massive group appetite by the end of the hike – perfect for our post-hike BBQ.

Windy Hill certainly wasn’t as eventful as my hike along the Coal Mine Ridge the week before (no bobcat sitings at anyrate) but for an easy couple hour trek, it offered beautiful views, a good workout and a lot of fun with friends.

I’ve got friends in exciting places

22 Jan 2009

One of the things that I love about the internet is how it allows me to live vicariously through my friends in a way I wouldn’t have believed possible.  The ability to be involved in the day-to-day minutia of people’s lives through Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, blogs and more is in many ways creepy however while at home, it allows me to travel with a friend of mine who is off on her own great travel adventure.

Kate, with whom I attended high school, spent a semester in Paris during college and caught a travel bug of epic proportions.  After graduating, she decided to come home and get a job before heading off but last week took the plunge and flew to Hong Kong to begin a round-the-world tour that she has no current plans of ending in the near future.  After a few days in Hong Kong she’s left for Bali.  From there she’ll travel through Asia, meeting up with friends, make her way to India, through Egypt, up to Turkey, and by fall of 2009, she hopes to be in the UK.

I already love reading her posts on her blog Chasing Hemingway and highly recommend that anyone interested in travel or interesting personal stories takes a look.  It’s definitely going to be an exciting trip and thank goodness the internet lets me play along.

Barcelona Recap

3 Dec 2008

Alright, so there are good trips and there are the trips that just manage to fulfill all expectations.  I’ve got to say, Barcelona was an amazingly beautiful city that I had a wonderful time exploring, but overall my trip was not the best I’ve had so far.  To be fair, I was well overdue for my turn at a stressful/hassle-filled/generally difficult trip and at least it happened in a stunning city.

Things got off on the wrong foot with a horredous airport experience from Heathrow to Barcelona.  I was flying Ibera airlines and I highly recommend avoiding them at all costs.  The unprofessionalism of the boarding proceedure (which took about an hour and a half and involved me standing outside for 20 minutes and then about 100 people jammed into a bus waiting outside the plane for another 15), the fact that they didn’t serve any free beverages (including water which you had to pay for!) and the complete lack of communication through the four hours of delay before we finally took off made the beginning of my trip a little shaky.  Finally arrived in Barcelona, however, where I discovered they have the simplest, most intuitive public transport system I’ve ever discovered.  Score one for Barcelona.

I arrived at the hostel which was supposedly “on the outskirts of the city” out of town but was happily only 40 min from the airport and checked in, ready to go to bed as it was already nearly midnight.  Unfortunately the room was so cold I couldn’t get to sleep at all that night! I had on all my layers of clothes but still couldn’t warm up – I was quite annoyed when I finally got up, unrested and freezing, in the morning to discover there was a heater I had missed the night before.

Not ready to let that completely ruin my day, I headed out for a self-guided tour of the city that took me through all of the most important parts of the Old City (also known as the Gothic Quarters) including the Picasso Museum, one of the few places open on a Sunday.  The museum was absolutely amazing and more than worth the 6 euros I paid to get in.  It was housed in a fantastic old Spanish building and arranged over Picasso’s lifetime so there were works from him as a child through his increasingly insane art styles (I’m sorry, is insane the wrong word? I meant “progressive”).  I also attended a church service in the beautiful Santa Maria del Mar cathedral.

Unfortunately by the end of the day I was so cold, tired and achey that I had to call it a night relatively early.  The next day, which was even colder, I did my bike tour of the city with an awesome group called Fat Tire Bike Tours (they operate in a number of European cities).  The tour was fantastic, and it was just me and another Aussie girl with the guide so we had a great time but the freezing weather really put a damper on the whole thing.

From there, I went back to the airport where I had hoped to get on standby for an earlier flight but was told quite emphatically that was impossible (despite there being two flights before mine with empty seats run by the same airlines) and so ended up waiting in the Barcelona airport for 5 hours to get back home just before midnight.

Whew, it was a wonderful city but I am definitely not doing the two-day trip again for a while, unless it’s somewhere that doesn’t require an airplane flight.  Barcelona, I’ll certainly be back.  But I’m waiting for everything to thaw first so don’t expect me until summer.