Today was the last official tourist day of the program :(. It’s starting to become a reality that we will actually have to go back home soon. Nonetheless, I was excited for another fun-filled day. We hopped on the bus for the last time and headed over to the castle. When we arrived, we had a bit of time before our tour so we got to walk around the little town below the castle. My favorite park in the area had to be the lake with the ducks. It was so peaceful and the backdrop was amazing for photos. The squad and I are pictured below. We spent our free time attempting to skip rocks and dipping our feet in the water.
We then next headed up the hill to the castle. See I think I underestimated what hill really meant when Dr. Feick said we would walk up a hill. In my mind, I pictured walking up to something similar to cardiac hill…I quickly learned that this was not the case. The walk up the hill was basically like walking up a series of long ramps. I honestly do believe that a cardio requirement should’ve been included in the application for this trip. Lol, I’m only joking (not really haha). There was a pit stop along the way that Shreya and I thought was the top, but sadly it was not (kind of evil). But the long walk was worth it went we got to the top. Again, we got another beautiful view. Honestly, I don’t think there was any place that we went to on this trip that didn’t have a nice view at the top.
What was even nicer than the view was the castle. There are not even words to really describe the interior of the castle, it looked old but also modern at the same time. I think the only real way to describe it was a ton of gold. And swans. The man really loved swans. His bathroom also was the size of my bedroom x2 which was insane. He had a whole bed in there. There was also this weird hallway that looked like you had just walked into a mine. The castle really showed me that you can do everything you want when you have the money to. I really wanted to snag a picture or two but it was forbidden.
After a brisk walk down the hill with a pit stop for some donut ball things that looked and tasted like zeppole, we headed to another little town with shops and restaurants. We decided to get Asian food and take a break from the pizza before we all turned into pizzas. After lunch, we got our first gelato of the trip, which was very necessary. We spent the rest of our time doing my favorite pastime, shopping. I found a cool Peppa pig ball in Woolworth.
The last stop of the day was one more church to end the trip, very fitting considering we spent a lot of our time during this trip at churches. I really loved this church, the mural on the ceiling was incredibly beautiful, it honestly may have been my favorite church we visited. Unfortunately, we only got to spend about 15 minutes here but every minute was worth it. After the quick pit stop, it was time to head back to the hotel and put out the finishing touches on our presentations for tomorrow. I’ll check in tomorrow to let you know how they went!
Signing off,
A very nervous Sydney