One of many reasons why we took on this ridiculous exciting Italian farm resort renovation project is our desire for more stress unique experiences and connections in our lives and for those close to us. So as part of the summer pre-renovation work project, we dreamt up an informal “Intern” program for 6 young adults including our kids, nephew and their friends. They cleaned up an old wooden house, assembled bunk beds for housing, and got to work.

While not helping around the property they embarked on a number of European, Baltic and Egyptian adventures. These were entirely planned all on their own with the absolute minimal budget. So to share one of these adventures, let me introduce today’s guest author, Lyra, who is starting her 2nd year at Trinity college in Dublin with photos from Kaitlin who is a freshman at CU Boulder. She has written up their 12 day travel experience planned by Grant and accompanied by Murphy and Brayden.

Take it away Lyra….

Late July, an underground train platform in Bologna, and five tickets for Milan: this was the expectant moment which preceded the twelve most eventful travel days of my 19 years of life. 

The adventure? Seven countries (or nine, if you count a certain mishap along the way), accessed by overnight bus or train and explored in two days or less. 

The adventurers? Grant, trip planner and organizer extraordinaire, his sister Kaitlin, their cousin Brayden, and two family friends: Murphy, the closest approximation to an adult which our group had to offer, and Lyra, your narrator (hi). 

As you might expect from a group of teenagers and 20-somethings, this trip did not qualify as “picture-perfect.” Banish from your mind images of strolls down sunlit boulevards, illuminating visits to museums, local cuisine savored in courtyards. Imagine, instead, dodging iconic landmarks in favor of the nearest McDonald’s, or extending a 30-minute power nap in the hostel to an all-day bed rot, and you’ll have an infinitely more accurate understanding of a journey defined by Redbulls rather than Aperol Spritzes, by shopping malls rather than castle halls. This is a journey full of the unexpected, the hilarious, the frustrating, the exhausting, and, always, in unlikely corners and in unpredictable ways, the wonderful. Read on, and I’ll show you how.

If you haven’t heard of the game Subway Surfers, first of all, how dare you, and second of all, congratulations; your will to live might just remain intact. In it, you play as a skateboard-wielding runaway pursued by a guard through a treacherous subway system, sliding under barriers, leaping over obstacles, evading high-speed trains, collecting coins, trophies, and milestones, in a ridiculous and flashy serotonin-supplier which can easily wave away hours of your life. 

None of this matters, except for the fact that, the morning our adventure began, Grant revealed that he had once held the weekly Subway Surfers high score for the entire United States. This prompted, after the initial surprise, a single overriding reaction: I bet I can do that too.

That, more than anything, encapsulates the lighthearted confidence with which we flung ourselves into travel. The phrases repeated the most during our planning sessions were “sounds good” and “I’m down” and “let’s do it.” A quick scroll through our group chat reveals a near-constant volley of links to maps, restaurants, bars, parks, too many activities and locations to reasonably accomplish, but discussed and delivered anyway. Like the reckless protagonist of a silly phone game, we went and went and went, constant motion creating constant discovery. 

At about 1:30pm, an hour after we left Bologna Centrale station, we shouldered our oversized backpacks, clothes mostly clean, phones mostly charged, and stepped out into Milano Centrale, its high arched walls and windowed roof, complete, of course, with the fluorescent capital letters of a Five Guys at one end, introducing us to a city of both contemporary boldness and historic beauty. A brief walk deposited us at our Airbnb on the quiet street of Via Luigi Varanini, where we left our luggage before grabbing lunch at the first of many kebab-pizza places. Here, at a table crowded with trays and Coca-Cola bottles, the tv cycling through Turkish pop hits, I learned how to play spades, a (needlessly complicated) card game which would become a go-to in quiet moments between activities. 

After food, entertainment, and the hassle of public transportation in a foreign country (24-hour passes or tap-on-tap-off?), we emerged from a confusion of platforms and escalators into, all at once, the Piazza del Duomo. When I think of this trip, that is among the presiding images: the sudden departure from subterranean dimness into vastness and light, and, immediate, astonishing, the Duomo di Milano, the Milan Cathedral, appearing in front of us like something conjured.

Across the piazza you’ll find another stunning building, cross-shaped, with glass ceilings, embellished walls, and bright mosaic floors. This is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the most beautiful shopping mall I have ever seen, predictably overwhelmed by tourists and featuring such tantalizing options for the teenage budget traveler as Gucci, Dior, and Louis Vuitton. We abandoned our dreams of pooling cash to buy a Prada bag, settling instead on a mini foosball set at the local Flying Tiger and milkshakes at the Hard Rock Cafe. It had started to rain. Along the wide streets of the city center, people rushed under window ledges, into shops, and beneath the covers of osteria outdoor seating. We hurried back to the Airbnb to waste a few hours scrolling on TikTok. You know what they say about kids these days. 

Our friend Andrea, a Montepulciano resident and an adult with opinions about wine, recommended a restaurant for dinner, so, after a suitable relaxation period beaming all the questionable opinions of the world into our heads through curated 60-second videos, we decided to walk, passing the Castello Sforzesco, with its moat-turned-lawn, its lit-up turrets, and its remaining drawbridge, and wondering when, exactly, modern architects had given up. It will never not surprise me to see people pushing strollers and taking business calls and teasing their friends as they walk past medieval ruins. Maybe I’m too American to cope with the passage of time. 

We cut through the park behind the castle (word to the wise: don’t wander through Italy on a summer evening without mosquito spray) and arrived at the Brunello Osteria, the fanciest restaurant of our entire trip, where the pasta appears in an aesthetically pleasing pile at the center of a comparatively huge plate and the wine list makes you want to fling yourself into the nearest river. An old yellow tram, creaking suspiciously and surreally through the night, took us home. 

As beginnings go, it was a good one. 

Another piece of advice, for those brave enough to trust my opinion: when your train leaves at 10:20 in the morning, don’t make a wild dash for the station McDonald’s at 10:00. No possible Egg McMuffin can justify the immediate consequence of running up stairs, through turnstiles, and down an empty platform, clutching a greasy paper bag, while the train makes ominous engine sounds and the doors shut as you pass and you, for the terrible instant before you manage to fling yourself into an open carriage, violently despise and renounce the concepts of distance, time, and athleticism. (If you weren’t a weird and asthmatic child with a visceral loathing for P.E., who became a weird and asthmatic sort-of-adult with a visceral loathing for P.E., feel free to disregard.)

Sometimes, you almost miss your train. Sometimes, after boarding said train, you discover that your seats have been double-booked, so you hover, sweaty, breathless, disillusioned, between compartments, while some random man makes an unhelpful comment about your backpacks, which, as Kaitlin would say, probably “made him feel big and strong.” Sometimes, you just have to carry on. You find new seats. You put on your most soothing playlist. You listen to it twice. You try to enjoy the Egg McMuffin and medium Lipton iced tea for which you slaughtered your dignity. 

Hypothetically. Who would do that, right?

Anyway.

In four hours we arrived in Basel, a city in Switzerland near the borders of France and Germany (a geographical tidbit which will become relevant in the next entry). We checked into the Ibis budget hotel, where we discovered that Swiss power outlets require entirely different adapters than the rest of Europe, and visited the nearby Coop, a department store, for lunch. Armed with sandwiches and fruit cups, we walked to the event of the day: the women’s Euro Cup final between Spain and England.

(I know I just confessed to a primal hatred of enforced exercise, but now I have another confession to make. From a very young age, until the point when I realized I hated running, team huddles, and people who shout “be more aggressive” from the sidelines while shielded from the relentless rain by a huge umbrella and three waterproof layers, I was a dedicated participant in club soccer. I think my coaches generally considered me a waste of potential, but, you know, you can take the girl out of the cleats….)

It was the event of the month. We arrived at St. Jakob-Park, Switzerland’s largest soccer stadium, to find color-coded crowds, Spanish flags and Union Jacks, people selling beer, people filming TikToks, people with face paint, people waiting in endless lines for bathrooms or ice cream and side-eyeing the neighbor who had sided with the enemy. A man supporting England filmed us while we failed at a heading game. A woman supporting Spain gave us free flags. That convinced us; we chose Spain. With flags tied around our shoulders, shouting “España!!!!!!” at our allies, we found our seats in the nosebleeds. The opening ceremony proceeded with dancers, violinists, fireworks, flags, announcers, chants, claps, and optimism. Spain had the coolest uniforms; they had the neatest warm-ups. England would perish in ignominy. 

Reader, this is a tragedy.

I won’t bore you with the play-by-play, although I, a staunch dier on hills, still believe Spain had the better game: beautiful clever passes, overwhelming possession of the ball, and, yes, aggression. By the end of the second half, the score sat at a suspenseful 1-1. By the end of overtime, it hadn’t changed. We entered the dreaded tiebreaking determinant, the terrifying and unpredictable penalty shootouts. It all went wrong. The apocalypse was nigh. For every fumbled attempt from Spain, every kick caught or missed, England’s shots landed gracefully, easily, irrefutably, in the back of the net. Thrilled and frustrated, we followed the crowd toward the local train, exchanging consolations with fellow wielders of the Spanish flag.

We would keep those flags with us on the train, making faces at triumphant beans-on-toast-loving children through the window. We would keep those flags with us on our second McDonald’s visit of the day, when we added trademark paper crowns to the ensemble and walked through the streets of Basel like the world’s most incompetent superhero squad, red and yellow capes flapping from our shoulders. For the rest of our adventure, those flags remained tied to our backpacks, so that we could, in the most unexpected places and moments, greet passing strangers with an emphatic “ESPAÑA!!!!!!”

On our second day in Basel, we almost caused an international incident. 

That’s an exaggeration, but at least it makes the truth sound mysterious and dignified.

The day began normally. We returned to a Coop for breakfast (if you haven’t noticed, we’re not the most novelty-seeking travelers; we find something we like and we commit), this time a Coop Restaurant, a cafeteria-style layout with all the yogurts, sandwiches, hot dishes, and smoothies our hearts desired, for as affordable a price as Switzerland can manage. Someone in the group mentioned Basel’s other central tourist attraction, the Border Triangle, where a sleek metal monument marks the intersection between the boundaries of Switzerland, France, and Germany. We finished our breakfast, found the right bus, and set out to see it. 

To paraphrase Jane Austen (being an English major is my one single personality trait; humor me, please), it is a truth universally acknowledged that five American quasi-adults traveling in another country must be in want of Dunkin’ Donuts. By that logic, when our bus passed through downtown Basel and we spotted the infamous orange lettering, complete with pink apostrophe, and the sign out front promising a Monday discount (“12 donuts for 24 Swiss francs!”), we had no choice. Our country demanded we answer the call. We loaded the box, one by one, with our choices: caramel! Oreo! Raspberry! Glazed! Sprinkles! M&M! Apple cinnamon! And so on and so forth. It seemed like a natural next step to cross the street to the Starbucks, annoy the barista with requests for ice water, and sit outside, huddled under an awning, shoveling donuts into our mouths. It was not, strictly speaking, our finest moment or our most international endeavor, but hey, the future is bleak and unpredictable. Nutella donuts bring joy. 

Our faith in humanity reestablished, we found another bus and continued on our mission. We did not, in this sugar-fueled recommitment to the activity of the day, consider the difference between “Border Triangle,” our intended destination, and “Border Bridge,” the destination which we had selected in Google Maps. We also failed, in what may be our lowest moment as plucky European adventurers, to bring our passports. 

“Wait,” one of us said, consulting the map after a stop or two. “The border triangle is over there. Why are we all the way up here?”

The bus stopped. The doors popped open. Two German border control officers stepped through. 

Everyone else, unsurprised, produced ID cards. We, confused, fumbled for driver’s licenses. As you can imagine, the officers were not impressed.

“American?” They said. 

“Yeah,” we said. 

“Passports?” They said.

“We left them in Basel.” 

“Next time, bring passports.” And they continued on their way.

Alarmed by our vaguely illegal and entirely accidental entry into Germany, we exited the bus at the next stop, scurried across the border bridge (which, halfway through, unceremoniously welcomes you to France), and speed-walked an hour back to more comfortable territories. Worldwide scandal averted, we hurried out of the sudden and aggressive rain into that undefeated aesthetic pinnacle of all tourist attractions: mini golf. 

I had never played (see previously expressed opinions about organized sport), but I can proudly announce that over the course of 20 underwater-themed, neon-lit, and architecturally excruciating holes, I earned 77 points, the most of our entire group. (This is not, apparently, a good thing.) The rest of the day included a final stop at the Coop for snacks, more than a few unproductive hours in the hotel room, and a wander through the beautiful streets of the older town, featuring two people swordfighting in a park with, as far as I could tell, real anger and possibly murderous intent. 

At 11:15 we boarded our overnight train, thankfully without incident. We had chosen seats instead of beds, and prepared ourselves for ten hours of sleepless discomfort in the name of adventure. 

Despite our most innovative strategizing, including Grant’s attempt to sleep on the rattling floor under his seat and Murphy’s reappropriation of a sweatshirt as a blindfold, we arrived in Amsterdam at 9:30 in the morning exhausted, sore, and only technically functional. Unless you’re one of those people who can sleep in any situation (or if, like the genius a few compartments behind us, you remember to pack a hammock), I recommend you at least consider the upgrade to bunk beds. Amsterdam, however, did its best to cheer us up. For Grant and Kaitlin, this stage of the trip marked a nostalgic return to a previous home; their family had lived in Amsterdam for a year, and as we explored the city, they told us stories about the amusement parks they had visited, the school friends they still talked to, and an incident involving an extraordinary amount of ice cream devoured with concerning speed. 

We had splurged (i.e. used hotel points) on accommodation at the Hyatt Regency, and after dropping off our bags, found breakfast at a nearby brunch place called, conveniently, The Breakfast Club. We sat outside, eating pancakes and eggs benedicts in morose silence, dreaming of check-in time, hours away, when we could shower and sleep and feel capable of refreshed participation in the world. 

As you can imagine, this won’t be the most eventful of entries.

Kaitlin remembered Albert Heijn, the chain supermarket her family had frequented, so we bought sandwich ingredients for our next meal: bread, mayo, ham, cheese, and, of course, stroopwafels, the treat which would become our newest obsession, bulk-bought in plastic packages and consumed in seconds. (For the record, we knew that there was a correct way to eat stroopwafels, involving the steam from hot drinks, melted caramel, and patience. It sounds lovely. We, however, as trailblazers in our field, could think of nothing more satisfying than trying to shove entire cold stroopwafels into our mouths as fast as the human digestive system will allow.)

We stopped at Plantage Westernmanpark, a small park nearby where we decided to rest. For some of us, this meant playing cards on the benches, while others (myself included) stretched out in the overgrown sunny grass and accidentally fell asleep, only to be awakened by, figuratively, the demands of tourism, and, literally, a woman’s dog nudging my face. We returned to the hotel, found our rooms, and set out again, ducking into vintage clothing stores along Amsterdam’s cobblestoned streets, browsing the website of canal boat rentals until we found one nearby. After a brief safety talk about the do’s and don’t of steering, driving drunk, and playing music (houseboat owners are, apparently, a vindictive and music-hating bunch), we sailed off. When in Amsterdam, etc. 

This was, occasionally, less peaceful than you might expect. Boats could crowd the canals in certain areas, marked on the provided map with an exclamation point, and sharp turns into intersections could result in embarrassing but low-stakes collisions with other boats; we, in a continuation of our directional difficulties, made the time-consuming and wallet-draining mistake of missing the crucial turn which would return us to the rental site, and, since most canals are one-way, had to add an extra hour to our loop. Apart from these issues, however, the ride was exactly what we needed, a calming and low-energy way to see more of the city. We made our sandwiches and rationed out the precious stroopwafels. We passed around Pringles and passed under bridges, admiring the houses, the streets, and the houseboats, with their floating gardens and cheerful decorations. By the end of the ride, almost all other boats had docked, leaving us alone with the quiet and the water.

Our sightseeing done for the day with only minor mishap, we returned to the hotel for a much-needed sleep.  

We woke up, predictably, at noon, and stopped at the supermarket to buy, also predictably, stroopwafels, before catching the train to Haarlem, the nearby city where Kaitlin and Grant used to live. 

(This is, partially, a lie. Before boarding the train to Haarlem, we accidentally boarded a train to somewhere called Heerlen, but our inability to navigate probably isn’t news to you by now.)

After passing their old house (it seemed, as always, smaller than remembered), we ate paninis at Carillon, a hotel with an outdoor restaurant near the gothic cathedral of St. Bavo Church. Grant remembered biking to the coastal town of Zandvoort through an exhausting field of mountainous dunes, so we decided to recreate that outing, renting bikes at Het Swartz Fietsenplan. I enjoy biking about as much as I enjoy running, so I waited for the bus at the station across the street instead and walked seven minutes from the final stop to the beach, windy, sunny, sandy, crowded near the road with restaurants, bars, ice cream shops, and anything else you might want from a day at the coast. 

(There is, by the way, almost no human invention on this earth I love more than public transportation. That feeling of being just one person going somewhere in a group of anonymous but connected people going somewhere, all of you looking out the window, tangentially related through this shared purpose, existing, together, between place, makes me happy for no reason I can easily explain. People get on and off. You leave and no one knows where you went. You know?)

When I asked Grant about the biking, he looked confused. The towering hills, he told me, which he remembered from childhood, had barely been obstacles at all.

We spent over an hour at one of the beach restaurants, a large, colorful, but mostly empty place that took a little too long to bring out our drinks. We played spades again. I think I lost, but the point system is so convoluted that I could never really tell. Bikes returned and supplementary stroopwafels purchased, we took the train back to Amsterdam, where we spent our last few hours wandering through the famous red light district. 

This time, we had spent the extra 10 euros on sleeping carriages in the overnight train. We had the compartment, with its five bunk beds, storage space, and complementary water, blankets, and pillows, to ourselves, so we slid open the window (we were, I have to admit, more than a few days overdue for laundry, and the combined smell of five teenagers’ dirty socks is far from pleasant) and drew the curtains as the train left the station. 

Another tip for enhancing your travel experience: if you listen to classical music, especially anything slow but dramatic involving pianos or violins, while watching the countryside pass through the window of your sleeper train compartment, you will feel, briefly, like the main character of a movie, or at the very least like a person going places, with a spectacular and unpredictable destiny. 

A park full of red roses! A statue of a plane attached vertically to a building, with massive butterfly wings that actually moved! Multiple non-stop elevators! A church so tall you can see it from across the river! Of all the places we visited, we agreed that Prague had the most stunning architecture. 

It also, incidentally, had the best bagels. After our 11:30 arrival at the station, we walked to Just Bagel, which offers every possible type of bagel sandwich and every possible permutation of tea or coffee for the caffeine-craving traveler. Piles of oranges crowded the glass shelves next to the counter. We slid into one booth and tossed our bags into another.

After lunch, we checked into our room at the nearby Hostel Emma (and spent a few hours frantically booking bus tickets; always buy those in advance, kids), then aimlessly wandered, as one does, through the streets of Prague, its colorful buildings, arched windows, gilded domes, pillars, towers, and statues, until a sudden rain drove us (we had no choice) into the nearest McDonald’s, down the street from the national museum. How are we meant to cope with the surprises and storms of life without oversized sodas and chicken burgers, you know?

A stroll through a shopping mall and a spontaneous bus trip, complete with day passes from a kiosk at the station, brought us to a courtyard crammed with the white tents of a farmer’s market, selling jewelry, baked goods, clothing items, and everything else you might expect or want or need. I suggested we visit St. Nicholas Church, the Baroque cathedral, complete with green domed roof and golden embellishments, which overlooked the square. For a student discount, we entered an unexpectedly ornate interior: every surface painted, every statue gilded, every column erupting with detail. A spiral staircase brought us to the second floor, where we could look out over the nave while admiring a gallery of painted scenes from the Gospels. I’m not even personally religious, but that church, with its intricacy and its silence, remains one of my favorite moments of the entire trip. 

As a natural next step to admiring a place of worship, we discovered the impossibly sweet confection that is the Czech chimney cake. Picture a hollow tube of dough, fried, covered in sugar, and drenched in chocolate or piled with gelato, and you will understand the monstrosities which we spontaneously purchased from a place around the corner and ate, regretting every bite, on the bus home. After a certain point, everything feels so chewy and greasy that you start questioning the concept of reality. I recommend.

The day ended with a choose-your-own-adventure. Kaitlin and I, huge fans of sleep, went to Royal Kebab and Pizza for dinner before running through the city in search of milkshakes. All the ice cream places, which apparently only exist on Google Maps, betrayed us. Burger King, however, would never. We returned to the hostel fairly early in the night while the boys went to a bar crawl advertised by the hostel, which apparently featured a bar run by robots, an ice bar that required special jackets and gloves, and a chronically online guide specializing in brainrot (if you’re an adult reading this, look it up. Or don’t. Actually, probably don’t. It might ruin your life). 

That was our first day in Prague. 

I am proud and happy to announce that on this momentous day, on August 1 of the year 2025, we finally did our laundry. (A tip for those doing laundry in Prague: most places only accept cash, but they will take euros as well as Czech korunas.) We dropped our clothes off in the morning and returned, to absolutely no one’s surprise, to Just Bagel for brunch, before walking to the Old Town Square, with its classic cobblestones, towers, restaurants, and horse-driven tours. The astronomical clock at the center of the square, a medieval mechanism featuring zodiac figures alongside more recognizable Roman numerals, holds a clock show every hour where, apparently, something emerges from the clock. I say “apparently” and “something” because, despite our best efforts at punctuality, we missed the crucial moment twice in a row. You’ll have to go find out for yourself, and then let me know.

Another walk, briefly interrupted by an unsuccessful search for a free public restroom, brought us to the Vltava River, near the famous Charles Bridge, where we followed signs to pedal boat rentals. Our rental place (which, by the way, committed to blasting a never-ending stream of sea shanties, unpleasantly reminding me of my seven regrettable years as a middle and high school choir kid) offered a “retro” option, that is, a boat shaped like a vintage car, which we couldn’t resist. For two hours, we pedalled around within a marked region of the river, hiding from the sun in the shade of bridges. In one of those unexpected but lovely moments of connection with strangers, we spontaneously raced another pedal boat as far as we could. We won. Trust me on that. After returning our floating car, we joined a group of kids on the bank, laughing at the swimming rodents (otters? Capybaras? Who knows) that marched fearlessly up to our offerings of carrots and grass. 

What do you do after spending two hours driving a boat as fast as you can? You spend two hours driving cars as fast as you can, of course! The largest indoor go-karting track in Europe waits for thrill-seekers only a bus ride and a short walk from the city. 

If, hypothetically, you wouldn’t necessarily classify yourself as a thrill-seeker, and, in your one previous experience go-karting at the 15th birthday party of a friend you didn’t know particularly well, found it all very loud and slightly obnoxious, then no fear! Simply use the tried-and-true trick of conveniently forgetting your closed toe shoes, and, when the obviously bored employees at the ticket counter offer to find something for you, say, “oh that’s okay! I’ll just sit this one out,” like a saint, winning both the social interaction and the broader scheme of avoidance. Sit at a window, pop your earbuds in, and watch your friends zoom around a series of sharp turns and straightaways, passing each other, failing to pass each other, slamming into walls, making ominous screeching noises with their tires, and, supposedly, having a good time. After the first round, they’ll sit down at your table and debrief, very seriously, about the course and the technique of it all, then rush off to do it all over again with no obvious difference that you can observe, although, let’s be honest, you’re not particularly trying.

It gave them joy, and that’s beautiful.

After go-karting, we picked up our laundry and headed to Makakimo, a sushi restaurant inside a mall, where we achieved the greatest accomplishment of our trip, or maybe, if you really think about it, all of human history. This place was an all-you-can-eat place. We took that as a challenge.

In an hour and a half of frantic activity, plucking rolls and rice bowls and orange chicken (and, toward the end, when we got a bit tired, at least twenty plates of watermelon) from the conveyor belt, we accumulated 127 plates, six stacks total, forming a wall across our table so high that we could hardly see each other over it. We received, as a reward for this incredible feat, at least ten judging looks from casual mallgoers, one thumbs up from the couple at the neighboring table, and five not insignificant stomach aches. As you can tell, the course of society has changed forever. 

At 10:00pm, regardless of our suffering in the name of culinary art, we boarded the train to Budapest. 

As everyone knows, the natural next step after go-karting in Europe’s largest indoor track is, of course, watching a Formula 1 race, which, I discovered, is practically the same, except bigger, faster, louder, and statistically more likely to feature actual flames bursting out of the backs of the cars.

But I’ll get to that soon. Practicalities first. 

At 9:10, we stepped off the train in Budapest and walked to the Equity Point hostel, where we dropped off our bags. We ate breakfast on the crowded second floor of Grumpy, a small but lively breakfast place with all the egg-related foods and coffee-related drinks you can imagine, before catching a taxi to the race. 

After a relatively short drive, we pulled over in, seemingly, the middle of nowhere, but a middle of nowhere overwhelmed with F1 fans jostling for admission. Cars (the ordinary non-racing kind) inched up a hill toward a dusty parking lot, their drivers baking behind the wheel, while people dressed in Verstappen jerseys, sweating in the intense sun, struggled toward the stadium entrance along a narrow pedestrian pathway. Helicopters, making crazy maneuvers against the blazing sky, landed in a fenced-off field: camera helicopters, tour helicopters, private helicopters, whirring over the trudging crowds.

“You’ll have better luck walking from here,” our driver said, so we thanked him, tumbled out, and joined the masses.

Something else I learned: the stadium itself, curved around the finish line, with its flashy screens and enthusiastic announcer, is reserved for the very rich and very powerful. We, with our all-day general admissions tickets, filed between tents selling water and merch and ice cream and beer and food, then clambered up the hill surrounding the track, where people huddled on blankets and under umbrellas, squinting at the distant dazzling shapes of cars shooting around corners. We found, after some wandering, a spot in the full sun, where we could see two turns clearly and up close. 

Practice laps, an F2 race, and an F1 qualifier all sped by. The cars glittered and made an unbelievable noise. The helicopters dipped and dove. The crowds stood to cheer the Redbull-representing athletes (favorites, apparently), then collapsed into the dry grass between races. A stranger offered me his sunscreen. An endless overheated crowd formed around the one free water fountain; we shuffled through the crush for at least ten minutes before we could refill our bottles. When the race finished, we hiked past the parking lot to the train, where the driver cracked F1 related jokes over completely full compartments. 

Tired, exhilarated, and, in my case, worryingly sunburned, we went to Belli Di Mamma, an Italian restaurant near our hostel, for dinner, where we ordered five pizzas and debated the age-old question: what would you do if you had to spend $100,000 in one day? Our answers, of course, featured F1. 

We ended our day with ice cream bars from the corner store and went to sleep thinking of unthinkable luxury. 

The check-out time for the hostel was, technically, 11:00am. It is possible that some of us set our alarms for (you guessed it) 11:00am. We managed, however, to drag ourselves through the door without incident and walked to Vinyl & Wood for breakfast, where we sat outside and ate our usual combination of pancakes and eggs benedicts. (This place, by the way, also gives a free coffee/tea/juice/whatever you could possibly want if you leave a review for them online, so keep that in mind.)

This is also where Brayden ordered a matcha latte for the first time in his life, thinking it was a macchiato, and visibly experienced the five stages of grief when his drink arrived with aggressive greenness. 

After the joys and surprises of breakfast, we walked along the Danube until the Parliament building appeared on the far shore, a building so vast, symmetrical, and ornate, with its single dome rising from the center, that it might win the award for “most Parliament building ever to Parliament building.” We sat on benches beside the walkway, staring at it across the water. 

Someone, of course, mentioned the Formula 1 race happening in our absence, and someone else suggested finding a bar with a tv to experience it from afar, so we walked through the city center, peering through the windows of bars, until we found one, called Iron Bar, featuring the sport in question. We arranged ourselves around a coffee table, sipping beers and iced teas, while the cars shot through turns and changed their tires with ridiculous speed and moved up and down on the ranking. It was strangely soothing. I nearly fell asleep twice. In the end, someone named Norris won for a team with an undying love for the color orange. McLaren, maybe? Who knows. Congratulations to them. 

(The man at the table behind us, wearing one of the omnipresent Red Bull jerseys, did not seem too pleased.)

After a brief wander through the Westend Mall and a stop at Melissa’s Bistro for gyros, we retrieved our backpacks from the Equity Point Hostel and spent a lovely hour mindlessly scrolling, before walking to our last activity in Budapest and a contender for most stereotypically touristy choice: a sunset cruise down the Danube.

In all fairness to us, it was a good idea. We filed onboard under one of those stunning sunsets that you try to photograph but can’t quite capture, collected our complementary champagne, and watched the city pass. At night, the Parliament building turned on lights in all its windows and along all its towers; we watched them appear one by one. It glowed against the blue water. The cruise did not, frankly, have many other sights to offer, but that, in my opinion, made it all worth it. 

At 10:15, our overnight bus arrived at the station. We prepared ourselves for yet another night of cramped legs and bad sleep. 

At 10:00am, we arrived in Warsaw, the beginning of the end of our adventure. It wasn’t necessarily the smoothest transition. Driven by maximum five hours of sleep, we tried to navigate the most confusing public transportation system we’d encountered, where people stood for an hour in line at the one ticket booth, only to fail to receive tickets, and the ticket machines on the platforms gave, seemingly, a hundred options, but none of them relevant. After an extended struggle, we decided to take a taxi instead. 

Magically, we didn’t have to wait for our room at the Moon Hostel, so we spent an indeterminate amount of time showering, scrolling, and napping, until we felt ready to participate in society again. We ate burgers at Burger Boss, a food stall close to the hostel, and walked through Karola Beyera, a park apparently popular with dog owners, on our way to the Vistula river, where, our taxi driver had informed us, all the young people liked to spend time. 

As we wandered along the riverside, we passed a group of people filming a music video, a group of athletes in a pull-up competition, and a busy row of restaurants, bars, and ice cream shops. The first of many mermaid statues wielded her sword from a pedestal. The PGE Narodway Stadium, Poland’s largest, raised its spiked walls across the water. On one side of the walkway, beach chairs, boxed plants, and string lights adorned a stretch of sand, where people sat with drinks, admiring the boats and bridges. We followed their example, grabbing mojitos and ice cream and relaxing in the sun.

It was a day, as you can probably tell, of few activities and extensive leisure time. We had all begun to anticipate the end of our travels. 

We took a roundabout route back to the hostel, passing the royal castle gardens, a circular lawn surrounded by flowerbeds and hedges, and entering the Old Town, with its colorful buildings and clocktowers. I learned that bombings during World War II destroyed the original town, the charming center of Warsaw; its current state is a stunning effort of reconstruction, granting it certification as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Everything, from the layout of the streets to the architecture of the buildings, remains nearly identical to its pre-war self. A sundial glints from one wall. Another mermaid statue, the protagonist of Warsaw’s coat of arms, presides over the center of the square. People eat dinner outside, under tents and awnings and cheerfully painted walls. 

As the sun set, we rented lime scooters, available at assigned spots around town and accessible through a free app, and found our way back to the hostel.

We woke up late, as expected, and walked to Croque Madame, a brunch place offering pastries and drinks alongside its breakfast and lunch menus. This led, of course, to another relaxation session, where we sat in the hostel, scrolling on our phones, ostensibly looking for activities but mostly trying to will away the exhaustion. (We’re growing young people, okay? We need our sleep and we rarely get it.)

Eventually, dissuaded by the heat from doing anything too outdoorsy, we settled on an escape room on Inżynierska street. We took a (surprisingly cheap) taxi, walked through an unassuming door, and spent a blissfully air-conditioned hour dodging lasers, putting combinations into locks, connecting cords, and everything else you might expect, in a museum robbery-themed game ending in our successful theft of the Mona Lisa. Take that, the Louvre. 

If, for whatever reason, you ever end up at the same escape room, here’s my one word of advice, learned through at least ten minutes of trial and error: don’t overthink the ballet dancers.

We took another taxi to the beautifully named Potato Boom, a baked potato place inside a mall, and got drinks from Crazy Bubble, the bubble tea place across from it in the food court. Cut to twenty minutes later, and the boys have discovered that you can load tapioca pearls inside the straw and shoot them, blowdart-style, at your unsuspecting opponent. Shenanigans ensued. Kids, don’t try this at home (or do. All it hurts is your dignity). 

We walked back to the hostel, pausing to try the swings at a playground, just to feel something, probably. What’s life without a little childlike whimsy? 

At this point you may be asking yourself, as many adults did once the trip was over: did we make an effort to try any authentic Polish food? Did we sit down at a restaurant that night for dinner, the last night of our travels, struggling through unfamiliar words in the name of an exciting new culinary experience? 

No. We went to a Thai place called Thai Me Up.. 

In our defense, when you’re drinking iced tea out of mason jars, eating from massive plates of rice noodles and fried rice, it’s hard to think of a better use of your time. 

After dinner, we went to a Carrefour Express minimarket for ice cream bars and snacks and walked home through the light rain, while, outside a club, a group of people very enthusiastically performed a rendition of Rihanna’s “Umbrella.” 

Tomorrow, we would check out of our hostel, eat breakfast, and make our way to the airport, where we would take our separate flights home. 

Grant, for the record, still holds the group Subway Surfers high score.