The Eternal City. The Capital of the World. Rome. There is no place quite like it with history spanning back millennia, Rome is a sight to behold. When walking through the city, almost every turn there is something historic. You can take a stroll through the Roman Forum where great Roman leaders once stood as they built one of the greatest empires the world has ever known.

Instead of flying straight to Rome from Berlin as I originally intended, I was able to find an inexpensive flight to Milan and I took the train to Venice to spend a day in that magical city before heading onto the Italian capital. One thing, however, that I didn’t take into account was that I was in Venice on Easter Sunday!

During my semester abroad, I had the opportunity to travel as I saw fit during Spring Break. As such, I felt the need to squeeze as much into that week as humanely possible and my first stop was the historic capital of Germany: Berlin.

As part of the semester abroad, the group went on a weekend to the northern English city of York. Located in the former Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria, York has had a long and storied history starting as a Roman settlement to its current status as home to the second most important cathedral in England.

For the Spring semester of 2009, I had the opportunity to study abroad in England and as a group, we decided to spend a weekend in Dublin shortly after arriving. Being that we were only traveling from London, it was an easy trip to take to hope over to Ireland. I spent most of my time within Dublin itself, taking in the sites and enjoying the capital of the Irish Republic.

On my nineteenth birthday, we decided to head over to Park City, Utah and spend some time in the snow. Located in the Rocky Mountains, not all too far from Salt Lake City, Park City is an incredibly popular skiing and snowboarding destination.

London is, by far, my favorite city in the world. Quite simply, it has everything: history, politics, culture, and plenty of strange quirks that makes London, well, London. In 2007, as part of a school trip during my senior year in high school, I was able to venture out of North America for the first time in my life and I was immediately hooked. Since then, I have returned to London multiple times in 2009 and five times after that.

The Big Island of Hawai’i is a land unlike any other. On one side of the island it is a barren lava field devoid of life while the other side is extremely lush and topical. There are fantastic beaches just like the rest of Hawai’i, but also contains the massive shield volcanoes of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa that actually receive significant snowfall in the winter months.