If you’re thinking about studying in Florence through ISI Abroad (which you totally should), there are a few key things you should know before planning your weekend travel trips. Through times like being stranded in Lake Como at 1 am or dropping a phone in the Mediterranean Sea, we have a list of Do’s and Don’ts ready for the next student abroad.
Getting There, Getting Home
For us, we began our trip to Italy by flying out of Newark (EWR) into Rome (FCO) which is approximately an 8.5 hour flight across nearly 4,305 miles. Now, from the United States, getting to Florence isn’t necessarily a big deal. However, you cannot fly directly into the Florence Airport with any airline from the US, which is why we decided to fly directly into Rome instead. As our first piece of advice, we recommend checking every option when flying to your abroad destination. Do be prepared to fly into nearby destinations like we did, as travel by train is easy in Europe. By making this decision, we even got to explore parts of Rome before taking a train to Florence! Be flexible and open-minded, as you never know where each trip can take you!
In addition to getting to Florence, we have to go home eventually. Not wanting to let go of our European summer quite yet, we decided to spend our last weekend in Paris. To get home, it can be quite expensive for a flight. Especially with every other abroad student in your program planning on going home on the same weekend, it can be quite daunting to try to catch a cheap flight out. For us, it was actually cheaper to fly from Florence to Paris, spend the weekend, and then fly to Newark from there. In having the ability to “go with the flow” and be open-minded, we were able to explore more of Europe while also somehow managing to not spend any more money than necessary.
Weekend Travel
In addition to getting to your study abroad destination, you might find that you want to travel to different places on the weekends. From experience, we recommend that you do all that you can! In just six weeks studying in Florence, we got to explore our home base city and additional Italian cities such as Cinque Terra, Pisa, Naples, Capri, Positano, Venice, Milan, Lake Como, and more! In our travels, we got to enrich ourselves within different cultures, connect with locals, and see places we might not otherwise get the chance to explore.
During these trips, we also made some of the best memories that we will keep with us forever. Our first weekend trip was to Cinque Terre. While there, we met with another group of abroad students and went on a three hour boat ride in the Mediterranean. Quite possibly the highlight of our trip, we made new friends and swam in the sea while taking in the breathtaking views of the towns. However, our core memory of this trip was someone on the boat dropping their phone into the sea. Probably not funny in the moment (or at all depending on who you ask), but we look back on this now as one of those dumb moments that we will never not laugh at. Walking off that boat with no phone might not have felt great, but there was definitely a life lesson learned there!
Transportation
While the travel destination is fun and exciting, the transportation aspect is not always so great. In Europe, trains are a common use of transportation between cities and countries. For each weekend trip we took, we had to take a series of trains (use Trenitalia) and or buses to get to where we needed to be. More often than not it was quite simple and cheap to get to each place, but we recommend to be sure you have your head on a swivel and are constantly aware of your situation. A good example for this is when we took our trip to Lake Como. Due to a train strike the day we were set to travel, our train there got delayed for nearly three hours. Landing in a remote train station in Lecco at 1 am was less than ideal, and it was a struggle to find any taxi or Uber to our final destination. 90% of the time transportation is easy to navigate, but always prepare for that other 10%.
Another transportation issue we did not think of was the ferry. On the Amalfi Coast, we took a ferry from Salerno to Positano which was about two hours. An hour delay and another hour added to travel time had us getting to Positano almost three hours later than expected. Unfortunately, we had to turn around and get on another ferry back to Salerno almost an hour after arriving due to needing to catch our train back to Florence. While Positano was beautiful, we would have loved more time there had we planned with the knowledge of transportation not always being solidified.
Do’s and Don’ts: The Final List
From our wonderful and once in a lifetime experience in Florence, we want to give future ISI Florence students some advice before their travels. These past six weeks have been incredible, and do have the best possible time, we leave you with the following:
Do: See as much as possible, go north and south, book travel and accommodations ahead of time, go in with a plan, leave time to explore, don’t be afraid to be spontaneous and try new things, try new things (like cow stomach at Mercato Centrale ), make friends with locals so they can clean your stains in the kitchen of the restaurant, and make friends with other students and locals.
Don’t: Drop your phone in the sea, choose an Airbnb that is a mile up a mountain, slip and fall on a boat, get stranded at the train station in Lecco, leave your menu next to your beer when it’s windy outside, miss the bus in Naples, be afraid to get out of your comfort zone, forget to make sure suitcases are secure on trains, and underestimate the heat and mosquitos.
While most of our list contains funny stories and inside jokes from our experience, that’s sort of what we want to leave you with. You never know what to expect, and even unfortunate circumstances can make for some pretty awesome memories. To the next ISI Florence student, do enjoy every second of your experience because it will fly by in the blink of an eye.
By: Lauren Kaba , Samantha McFetridge , and Zachary Whyte
