Take Fewer Photos: My Experience Traveling During the Semester

My first six weeks of being in the UK..., I took four overnight trips. Honestly, I was tired and ready for some weekends at home once the Oxford term started, but changing up my normal school year pace and traveling has also been incredible. I’m going to tell you a little bit about each of these trips (besides Scotland, which I already wrote a post about), and along the way, I’ll explain why “take fewer photos” has been a goal for me as I’ve traveled. 

1.  Edinburgh and the Isle of Skye (solo) - see my post about it here!
2. Bath and Stonehenge (IES field trip)

This was a two-day trip planned and led by the IES Abroad London Center Staff. They are lovely people, and all the trips I’ve been on with them have been well-planned - I highly recommend! I especially like that traveling with IES Abroad means you don’t have to do much planning, if any. 

Highlights of this trip for me were: visiting the Roman Baths and learning about the history (basically everyone left me behind in the museum because I was too slow for them), dressing up at the Jane Austen museum, seeing “Janites” on the street dressed up in their Regency attire, having afternoon tea at a fancy restaurant, and getting absolutely drenched at Stonehenge. It was a memorable trip - especially Stonehenge. While many of us were still admiring Stonehenge, it started pouring on us, and it just kept getting worse. We all had to wait at least 15 minutes to finally squeeze on to a shuttle back to the visitors center. I was very glad I had brought extra dry clothes as I sprinted to the restroom to change before our coach pulled out. Several weeks afterward, I was still reminiscing with others who went on the trip about how soaked we were - although not everyone laughed about it quite as much as I did. 

There were some downsides to this trip as well. I didn’t personally find Bath the most exciting place to visit, and we had about half a day of free time there. Also, our hostel featured triple bunk beds and a slight musty smell (the triple bunk beds were a bit of an amusing novelty to me, and I slept fine, but it still wasn’t the nicest place I’ve stayed). Finally, getting soaked at Stonehenge makes a good story, but it did cut short my time admiring the ancient rocks. Overall, this trip ranks further down on my list, mainly because I just wasn’t that interested in Bath as a city.

3. Brighton (IES field trip)

IES Abroad planned a day trip to Brighton in late September. Although it would have been relatively easy to plan myself, it was still nice to have train tickets, a walking tour, and entrance to the Royal Pavilion planned by the staff. 

My favorite things in Brighton: the Royal Pavilion (a weird Indian/Chinese-inspired building built by George IV as a “party palace” of sorts), the Saturday street markets, and hanging out by the sea. It was a sunny day, which made everything even better. You really learn to appreciate sunny days in England! I spent part of the day by myself and thoroughly enjoyed wading in the sea (getting my jeans more wet than intended) and checking off a bucket list item by eating at a pub by myself. 

4. Amsterdam, The Netherlands (with flatmates)

Right before going to Oxford, my five flatmates and I traveled together to Amsterdam for almost three days. Although it wasn’t on my original list of places to visit in Europe, I had heard good things about it and decided to go. The canals were beautiful, and I had a great time, particularly biking around the city! 

Aside from going to France for a day while on a choir trip in London, this was actually my first ever trip to a country with an official language other than English. It was super fun to try to learn how to pronounce Dutch words and pick up on meanings of words I encountered frequently. However, a large majority of the population of The Netherlands speaks English, and particularly in Amsterdam, the default language seemed to be English. 

For more details on what we did while in Amsterdam, I’ll turn it over to my friend Sarah, who made a cute vlog about it. 

5. The Jurassic Coast (IES Abroad field trip)

This was one of my favorite trips! It was a three-day trip planned by the IES Abroad London staff. For me it fell right at the end of Freshers week at Oxford, which was a bit inconvenient since I had to travel to London to join the trip (I woke up at 3:30 A.M.), but it was absolutely worth it. We stayed at a nice hostel in the coastal town of Swanage for two nights, and we had excursions and hikes nearby, as well as taking an old Hogwarts Express-esque steam train to Corfe Castle. The sea was a beautiful teal, even in the mostly overcast weather. 

One of my favorite parts of the trip was our boat tour along white cliffs, called “Old Harry Rocks”. But the best part was, I saw dolphins! They apparently like swimming under the boat, and for at least five to ten minutes, we got to watch them swimming and jumping. I have never seen dolphins in the wild, and I didn’t expect I’d see them for the first time on the English coast, but it was an amazing surprise!

My other favorite part of the trip was a hike to Durdle Door. This was a more active, outdoorsy trip (which is probably why I liked it so much), and we did two short hikes. These were optional, but they weren’t impossibly hard - it seemed most people managed well enough. The hike to Durdle Door was over a hill, so it was quite steep, but it was totally worth the effort. 

I think part of what made the hike even more enjoyable to me was that I lost my phone beforehand. It wasn’t really lost - it only fell out of my bag on the coach and I found it after the hike. But this meant that I could not whip my phone out to take pictures every few minutes as I often do while traveling. I still took a few pictures on my friend’s phone, but for the most part, I was forced to just take in the teal water, the white cliffs, and the delicately arched stone Door.

After we descended to the stony beach, I walked along the cliffs by myself and found a shallow cave. I sat inside it for a while, just soaking in the scene in front of me. I felt peaceful in a way I would not have been had I not misplaced my phone. I have no pictures of that view, but it’s etched in my memory. It’s one of those moments I’ll carry with me long after the semester is over.

Have I still taken tons of pictures since then? Yes. But I have also tried to preserve beautiful things and important moments in my memory, not just in my camera roll.

6. Salzburg, Austria (with a friend)

My only trip during the Oxford term! Was it tough and exhausting and short? Yes. (My friend Sarah and I flew to Salzburg from London early Saturday morning and flew back Sunday evening, after which, I still had to return to Oxford.) Was it worth it? Definitely. 

Some of my favorite things were Mozart’s fortepiano, the amazing views of the mountains from the Hohensalzburg fortress and from our hostel (MEININGER Hotels chain, highly recommend), the interesting architecture, warm drinks at the Christkindlmarkt, and great food. But my favorite part was the music, which is fitting in the city which was both Mozart’s birthplace and the backdrop to The Sound of Music. I am a classical pianist, so even though Mozart is not my favorite composer (he’s a bit too cheerful for my taste), I did enjoy listening to his music throughout the museum which now stands at his birthplace. Then, while wandering around Fortress Hohensalzburg, we stumbled upon two trumpet players performing a series of duets from one of the towers. I’m not usually a huge fan of trumpet music (no offense to my trumpet-playing friends), but these guys were incredible. Apparently, every Sunday from 11:45 to Noon, trumpeters play Baroque music from the “trumpeters’ tower” - I would highly recommend it. Finally, we witnessed a group of young musicians dressed in traditional Austrian garb randomly start playing folk music at the pub where we were eating. I think they were warming up for a private gig upstairs, but we enjoyed the impromptu concert, featuring an accordion, a guitar, a baritone, and sometimes, singing. At one point, everyone in the room started singing along, in German of course, and although we had no idea what the were singing, it was cool to witness.

On the topic of language, German is the official language of Austria, and there was a lot more German spoken in Salzburg than there was Dutch spoken in Amsterdam. Several times people automatically spoke to us in German, although when they found out we, sadly, had no knowledge of the language, they generally switched to English. I did have a distinct feeling of separation from local life because at least half the time, I didn’t understand what people around me were saying. Eventually, I’d like to learn some German, beyond just the basic phrases I learn from the Internet.