For my AP Literature class that I took senior year in high school, I had to write a series of different types of poems. So I thought I would share a piece that I wrote about when I went to Europe in April 2015 with my school.

Europe

I could never imagine at seventeen years old

going to a different world.

I could never imagine being able to see

the world with my best friends by my side.

But one day that all came true.

One spring day, I came home surprised

to see I had been signed up to attend a

Europe trip. This trip

I would be exploring England, France and Amsterdam

for almost two whole weeks.

You never really can describe that feeling

of getting off an airplane knowing you’re in

a whole new world, unless you have experienced it yourself.

At just seventeen years old I would be learning about a whole

new world with my best friends. There is nothing more thrilling

than that.

People always say London is the place to go if you are traveling

for the first time, and they are right. It is an easy place to be because there

isn’t a large language barrier and you still get to experience a different culture.

There is something interesting about being around a place where there is so much

history connected to America. From America tossing the tea in the Boston Harbor to having England be one of America’s largest allies.

Crossing the English Channel over to the countryside of France

and eating Subway as my first French meal, there is nothing

like starting off France with a bang.

Heading a little closer to home by seeing the World War II museum

and having a mini photoshoot in the museum’s back garden, France was

going to be pretty amazing.

Passing the countryside, we head into one of the fashion

capitals of the world- Paris. A place where there is a cathedral at every corner

and you can eat as much gelato and crepes as you want. But there is one landmark that everyone

should see the Eiffel Tower. There is something magical about standing on top of the place where so many couples profess their love for each other as the tower begins to sparkle.

Ending our final days in France, we headed to maybe one of the largest museums

in the world- The Louvre. In this museum you might find a famous painting called the Mona Lisa, although she was beautiful and Leonardo da Vinci was brilliant for creating it, her size

did not reach the standards of all the hype.

This was it, the last two days of Europe. Waking up at the crack of dawn

has always been an issue for me, but not on this particular day. It was six in the

morning and we were heading to Amsterdam a place known for their tulips and windmills.

Here’s a tip, if you are traveling and exhausted out of your mind, just go to Amsterdam and

visit the red light district, I won’t go into details, but it sure does stimulate your mind to wake up.

After being woken up in the red light district, we went on a famous canal tour and of course it was raining, but nothing was going to stop us from having a relaxing canal tour.

Did I mention Amsterdam is also known for their clogs and cheese? Well it is!

There is a whole farm that is dedicated to making clogs and cheese, and from my

experience the cheese tasted amazing and the clogs were so beautifully hand made

I have them hanging up on my bedroom wall at this very moment. Moving on from the

clogs and cheese, we headed back into downtown Amsterdam to see the famous ‘I AMSTERDAM’ sign where a beautiful pond with tulips all around it are placed, it is

a wonderful area to take any sort of tourist photos.

On our final day in Amsterdam and Europe, we ended it with a

beautiful and breathtaking museum- Anne Frank’s house. It was indescribable

to see every room that the Frank family used while they were in hiding for a

little over two years. Each room had pages of Anne’s diary

pinned to the wall explaining the teenage girl’s most

inner thoughts, hopes and dreams. It was a beautiful way to end a trip of a lifetime.

I’m not sure when I’ll be back to Europe, or at least to those particular

places, but I hope one day that I will be able to visit and create new memories,

but still keep the ones that I shared on this trip. If there is one quote I could use

to describe this trip it would be the famous words of Anne Frank and those are:

“I long to dance, whistle, ride a bike, feel young, look at the world, and know that

I am free.”