Traveling a Ton and Feeling at Home

(Amalfi, Italy – The Amalfi Coast) 

Hello! My name is Chloe Jones, and I’m a Fay Jones student studying architecture. This past semester I attended the UARK Rome Center in Italy. I lived in Aurelio, a neighborhood just south of the Vatican.

Most of my travel was limited to Italy, but a few of the places I visited included: 

Italy

• Rome
• Florence
• Venice
• Orvieto
• Pisa
• Milan
• Como
• Palermo, Sicily
• Amalfi
• Naples

Vienna, Austria
Budva, Montenegro

Out of all the trips I took, Sicily and Montenegro were my favorites. Sicily had great food, and the landscape was really cool and old. Montenegro was one of my friends’ picks to travel to, and I didn’t have any expectations going in. We stayed in Old Town in Budva on Easter weekend, and it was a really relaxing stay. The beach was a three minute walk away, and our Airbnb host showed us around. 

 

(Rome, Italy – The Colosseum) 

 

(Pisa, Italy – the Leaning Tower of Pisa) 

 

(Vienna, Austria – the Albertina Museum) 

 

(Amalfi, Italy – ferry ride) 

 

(Budva, Montenegro – Old Town) 

 

(Segesta, Sicily, Italy – Ancient Temple at Segesta) 

I really enjoyed my study abroad semester, but there were a few things I wish I knew before: 

1. Don’t bring the shoes unless you feel comfortable walking at least a mile in them.
1. Most of the time you can take public transportation, but it only gets you so far. I mainly ended up wearing tennis shoes the whole trip, and while I love my docs, they felt so heavy and exhausting after wearing them for a whole day.
2. Find a grocery store and a café near your home and stick with them.
1. It helps to feel more at home if you find a few favorite places to frequent and stick with them. If you keep coming back, the baristas or grocery store workers will remember you, and maybe you’ll make new friends. This doesn’t mean you can’t try new places, but it pays off to be a regular somewhere.
3. Public transport is a must.
1. I did not drive while I was abroad. Rome has a large bus system and 2.5ish metro lines, and I mainly visited cities that also had available public transport. That being said, Italy is a very car friendly country, so while trains and planes help, it’s difficult to get around in the Italian countryside without renting a car.
4. Travel as much as possible but choose cheaper destinations.
1. This is more of a personal opinion but choose quantity over quality. In a sense, if you could travel to two or more destinations for the same price as a ticket to Paris or Zurich, choose the cheaper option. When discussing weekend trip options with my friends, I never really had much of an opinion because this was my first time visiting Europe. Everything was new to me, and I just wanted to visit as many places as possible.
5. If your program offers large group trips, only pick the ones that are difficult to do on your own.
1. The UARK Rome Center offers a few options for guided trips. These may not be for you if you aren’t interested in guided city tours, museums, or if you’re hoping for a lot of free time. Most these trips are a bit more expensive than they would be if you just went on your own, so I would suggest only going on the trips to places without a reliable public transport system. The two places I was especially glad I went on the large group trip were Sicily and Amalfi. For both trips the school paid for buses or taxis to cart us around.