Wanderlust Wishlist

GUYS. It's no secret that I have been bitten by the Wanderlust bug + that I love a good link up + low + behold I found one that combines the two! (by found I mean Maddie found my blog + told me about her link up + obviously I loved it.) The prompt for April was: the most memorable place you've traveled + why. I though HELLO EUROPE because it was my first ever real adventure and I did it all. by. myself. I feel like I've hammered that into y'all enough lately so I thought I would pick places I want to travel now that I've started.

FIRST OF ALL. This list will probably get longer rather than shorter. I assume that you can take this list + my wanderlust pinterest board as my still-not-conclusive-list-of-adventures

• Tulips in Amsterdam
• Meet elephants in India AND Africa
• Yacht Week
• Versailles gardens in the summer, really most of France in the summer..
• Machu Picchu
• San Fermín Festival in Spain
• 2018 World Cup
• 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro 
• Oktoberfest in Munich
• Mardi Gras in New Orleans
• Carnival in Brazil
• Thailand.
• Australia.
• New Zealand. 
• Stay in a tree house in Costa Rica
• The Greek Isles
• Barcelona
• Everywhere on this list (maybe my own boozy tour of Europe in general....)
• Turks + Caicos
• Ireland. all of it. 
• Scotland. 
• The Muggle Tour in London.

That's just a start. Let's be honest. I would live out of my suitcase for the rest of my life if it meant I got to see everything. Where do you want to go?

5 Reasons You Should Go On An EF College Break Tour

**update** First of all, thanks so much everyone for reading and appreciating my honest words. We did so well that EF not only cancelled my referral code, but took away all of the credits I had earned from actual people I knew and this post. They even updated their terms of service. I see that while I was trying to figure out a solution, someone else was sending their referral code, which apparently hasn't been cancelled, so I can't earn credit for my opinion, but someone can use my opinions to make money off of, real cool EF. real cool. I'm going to leave this up, because I genuinely enjoyed the trip, and you know, apparently still want them to make money off of my honest opinion. More so because I do want there to be an unbiased, very much so not paid for review of the trip. Please don't hesitate to reach out with any questions, but I can no longer provide my referral code. For what it's worth, they never contacted me regarding this post, asking to take it down or anything, because it's clearly driving people to take the trips, they didn't tell me they were cancelling my code, and they took away what I had already generated. **

Okay, up front. I was zero percent compensated by EF College Break for this. I am more than willing to share my referral code with anyone who wants to book a trip (I'm not going to include it in this post because I have a feeling it's against the rules I agreed to when I booked my first trip. side note, does anyone ever actually read the "terms + conditions" or do we all just agree? Do you ever wonder if we're like, unknowingly signing over our first born because we didn't want to read them?)

ANYWAYS. When I first stumbled upon EF College Break, through a Facebook ad of all places, I googled the crap out of it. I couldn't find a single trip review that wasn't on their blog. Not that I don't buy those opinions, just that it seemed weird that nothing was on the regular Internet, you know? Positive or negative. Then I vowed that I would blog the living daylights out of my trip so the Internet would know. It's my duty, right? So this is what I got out of my trip + why I will absolutely be going again. 

I 100% stole this picture from facebook. please don't sue me.....

Traveling Solo for maybe just the flight over // I didn't have anyone to travel Europe with me. When I booked the trip I was in a bad place + just needed anything to look forward to. I read all of the posts on their blog about "50% of our travelers sign up alone, 0% travel alone." I thought that was the corniest thing I had ever heard, until I got off the plane in Amsterdam. I literally made friends when I found the people waiting for the bus. That's it. Granted, I can talk to a wall, but I didn't feel like I was forcing anything + I was so pumped to make new friends. We even still chit chat on Facebook today (hey guys, glad you're reading this!) about how we're going to try to go on more trips. I think it helps that we all obviously had that wanderlust gene. 

BOAT TOURS IN AMSTERDAM

Fantastic day-to-day events // To be honest, I wouldn't have known where to begin if I was planning the entire trip by myself. I made a list of things that I absolutely had to see, then followed the planned excursions + optional add on adventures. I could not have possibly found the tour guides that we had on my own. From what I understand, EF is really serious about the people that they hire, and they're great about it. I've talked about our tour guide in London (remember? "what the front door?!"). We had equally fantastic tour guides in every city. Super knowledgable, fun, + not afraid to go off the beaten path. They were great. Honestly. I couldn't say enough nice things about all of our guides. I never once felt like I was drudging through a history class with a monotone professor who lived with the dinosaurs. 

Monthly payments for the win // Oh, you have three grand to drop on a trip today? Well, good for you, want to take me too? I know I didn't have a cool couple grand laying around when I decided to go. I did make a bigger down payment (because last year I didn't owe the IRS money...) then I had totally manageable monthly payments. So I paid off my trip month by month rather than magically being good at money management. It's super empowering to be able to pay something like that off, by the way. It's a steal too. My entire trip was less than I would have paid for a flight to Amsterdam and back. 

this has nothing to do with our tour director because I didn't plan this post while I was there so my photos don't reflect it.

The Tour Directors are the bomb.com // Along the trip we crossed paths with a couple other tour directors, obviously none of them were as kickass as ours (his name was Adam. he's fantastic! I would take a tour 100% just because he's the director.) They are amazing. Just like with the tour guides, they are super selective + only hire the best of the best. I'm sure that if we had a lame tour director who wasn't all about, well I don't know anything but us having a kick ass trip, we wouldn't have had a good trip. Adam wanted to make sure we loved it + had a blast + I don't think we could have had a better director if we tried. 

BECAUSE YOU WANT TO TRAVEL + YOU NEED TO TRAVEL // I have the bug. I have the wanderlust bug bad y'all. I want to go again yesterday. Obviously since I've blogged about wanderlust at least once a week since I've been back. I bet you're tired of hearing it. I wouldn't have been able to realize that dream without the folks at EF + so I cannot say enough good things about the trip. They recently bumped the max age to 27 -- so GO! OH BETTER -- LET'S PICK A TRIP + GO TOGETHER! 

Have I convinced you yet? Do you want to talk about it more? You should totally shoot me an email or stalk me on any other social media outlet (you can see some of my favorite pictures on the instagram machine...) Have you picked out a trip yet? I'm daydreaming of Greek Isles or Thailand or you know, a casual month in Australia + New Zealand. Again. 100%. EF didn't ask me to write this (guys they didn't even pick my pictures on insta to regram, that kinda made my inner blogger sad. I thought I instagrammed awesome pictures. #kaseygoestoeurope.) I just honestly think it was the best decision I have ever made. Hands down. Are you ready to go on an adventure with me?

ALSO. Did you miss my Europe posts? Catch up here:
London
Paris one || two || three
Amsterdam

Amsterdam For New Years

I don't know about you, but I hate New Year's Eve. Think about it. There's so much pressure for that night to be awesome that it literally never lives up to the hype. Well, at least that's what I thought until I went to Amsterdam, officially setting the bar for future NYE celebrations at unattainable levels. So here I am, 25, and I will most likely never top that experience. Tampering future expectations obviously. Or maybe I'll just have to spend NYE in a different country every year. What an adventure that would be. 

SO we did literally a million things on New Year's Eve/New Year's Day. It was a fast trip. Way too fast. I probably could have spent two weeks in Amsterdam alone. I'll have to go back in the summer. One of, if not my favorite activity on the whole stay in Amsterdam, was the self-guided canal boat tour. Our group rented three boats, we piled in with baguettes, boxed wine, cheeses, and grapes, then took off down the canals. Obviously, our fearless leader knew his way around, but it was fantastic. We dodged a few giant canal cruises with a bunch of miserable looking people on them, and waved our hello's to everyone, just in case they were thinking we might not be tourists.

Before the canal tour, we had a guided walking tour of the city. Our tour guide was the best, cracking jokes and taking us to all the places we wanted to go and some we didn't even know we would want to go. Our tour ended at the Ann Frank House, which I would have loved to have had a little more time to take in. There were some pushy people behind our group, as well as a few people who maybe didn't understand the gravity of that place. I'd have to say, I don't feel like that's really the place for joking around. Maybe that's just me though.

Finally, for the actual NYE festivities, we all hopped on the tram from our hostel (which, by the way, was not anything like we were expecting from the movie Hostel. It was just like summer camp, aside from having to push a button to keep the shower water running + the motion sensor lights in the bathroom not staying on long enough for you to pee, I would totally stay in one again!) Grabbed a quick pizza (you know, "American food") and tried to find a good bar to start the evening at. I learned that they don't drink tequila in Amsterdam (or Paris, if you're wondering.) I ordered one tequila drink, where I was promptly told she couldn't make me a tequila drink, but I could have a tequila shot. Seems reasonable. She ended up giving me too much change anyways, so I got paid to take a tequila shot.. We then headed to a market, because we figured why not take advantage of how "open container laws" are an American thing.

I'd be surprised if you expected anything less

A bottle of wine to each of us, we wandered around to Nieuwmarkt, found a bar to settle in, then rang in the new year out on the square where there were literally all kinds of fireworks from all angles. I definitely got hit in the face with one or two. It was equal parts beautiful and terrifying. They really love their explosives over there. I'd say the fireworks were going off until about the time we left on January 2nd. Sometime before our adventurous two mile walk home, I lost my driver's license, then turned super melodramatic exclaiming that I didn't even exist any more. Which is reasonable.

New Year's Day we did some more exploring and made our way to the Heineken Experience. Y'all. If you're in Amsterdam, you gotta do it. Buy your tickets in advance though, so you save a couple of Euro and don't have to wait in line. It was so cool. The brewery has so much more history than the craft beer places over here, so there's so much more to the tour than "this is where we mix the hops. not sorry about the smell." There was even a 4D tour where we were turned into beer + then taught how to take "manly sips" to enjoy the beer better. I would actually probably do that tour again.

All in all, Amsterdam was definitely the best place I could have possibly picked for my first adventure out of the States. I will be back. In the summer. I'll rent a bike and look at the tulips that started wars and take another boat ride down the canals. I will absolutely be back.