One of the best things about Durham is that we get month-long breaks – one at Christmas, and one at Easter (UBC take note, yeah?). This means that students get plenty of time to enjoy the holidays, catch up on academics, hangout with friends and family, and possibly even pick up some hours at work in order to afford next term’s alcohol budget. For me, however, Durham’s month-long Christmas break meant that I got to travel! I spent two weeks back home in Canada, where I spent most of it sick in bed with strep throat, and then headed back over to Europe to travel around a bit with my boyfriend, Mike, before exploring a little more of England by myself.
Mike and I decided to go to Bruges and Amsterdam—two places we’d been before when travelling together in 2015—because both cities hold a really special place in our (read: my) hearts, and we thought it would be nice to see them in the winter. Instead of writing all about our time in each city and what we saw/did, I’ve decided to tell a couple of my favourite little stories over the next few posts.
For me, the best part about travelling isn’t necessarily seeing all the attractions and doing the touristy things, but rather meeting new people and getting into wonderful, weird, and sometimes very, very horrible situations. It’s these moments I remember and look back on the most. It’s these moments that first pop into my head when someone mentions somewhere I’ve been. It’s these moments that turn travelling into an adventure. And it’s these moments that make a new place feel a bit more like a home.
