Minnesota Summer Photo Diary

This week I learned that the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area was found to have the most extreme weather in the whole country. This was based on the number of days in which heating or air conditioning was needed per year. Considering our winters, this comes as no surprise. But our summers play their own role in these numbers. Hot and humid though they may be, Minnesota summers are adored throughout the state, most likely because our 10,000+ lakes are there to cool us off.

Yes, I was out of town a lot this summer (I haven’t even covered all my summer trips on here yet), but I tried my hardest to make the most out of my time at home.

Un Séjour à Lyon

“Séjour” is one of those beautiful French words that doesn’t really have a direct translation to English. Google Translate comes up with “stay” and “visit” as its possible English counterparts. So, for all of you non-French speakers, “Un Séjour à Lyon” roughly translates to: “A Stay in Lyon”, or “A Visit to Lyon”. But to me, “séjour” connotes more than just a simple visit or stay somewhere. To me, there’s something almost magical about a “séjour”…

I was only in Lyon for about 24 hours; that’s why I find “séjour” to be more appropriate than “trip” or “vacation”. I stayed with a family friend who had been studying at the university in Lyon. The first night, we wandered around the city before taking the Funicular up the large hill to reach the upper half of the city.

A Glimpse of Luxembourg

Yesterday I made it to Luxembourg around noon. I spent most of the afternoon wandering the streets and taking photos, I even stopped in to get an ice cream. The city completely blew me away with its beautiful architecture, parks and trees, and especially the bridge overlooking the “vielle ville” (old town) situated in a valley covered in forests that sits lower than the town.

My little exploration yesterday was 100% unplanned, I had no map or guide with me, but I found some incredible sights. Sometimes spontaneity is best.

A Morning in Austin, TX

Before the rodeo Saturday night, we spent the morning in Austin, exploring downtown and eating at a quirky restaurant by the river.

Austin is home to the Texas State Capitol, and it’s absolutely beautiful. We visited early in the morning and snapped pictures of the seemingly empty building. But as we drove back past it later in the day, it’s lawn was filled with families and picnickers enjoying a beautiful day. 

Frostbitten in Uptown

Today, my sister and I decided to brave the 8 degree weather and spend the afternoon exploring Uptown, a quirky neighborhood in Minneapolis. In my opinion, Uptown has the best coffee shops in the whole city. It also has amazing thrift shops, restaurants, and book stores.

We started off at Magers & Quinn Booksellers. It sold all kinds of books, old and new, and had such an “urban-quirky-bookstore” vibe. My sister and I spent a good half hour there, browsing books and sneaking around people that were there to actually find books to take

Greenwich Village, Soho, and Chinatown

For our second full day in New York, we had scheduled a visit to NYU. NYU’s buildings don’t form much of a campus. Basically, they’re all clustered around Washington Square Park. However, Waverly Place runs parallel to Washington Square Park, just on the other side of some of NYU’s buildings. Growing up, I was a Wizards of Waverly Place addict (for those of you who don’t know, it’s only the best Disney Channel TV show ever), and so of course I had to stop and take a few snapshots of the street sign. Washington Square Park was a beautiful park, adorned with trees and walkways and a central square with an arch through which you can see the Empire State Building. Under the arch was a shrine to the Paris attack that had happened two weeks prior. Since the rest of the campus was so scattered and urban, I loved that it all centered around a unified and nature-filled park.

Central Park and The Met

Central Park. What a quintessential New York experience. Our first full day in New York, after a college visit in the morning, we took the subway straight to Central Park to wander through its trails and trees and eventually made our way to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, more commonly know as the Met, (conveniently located right on the edge of Central Park). I don’t know how anyone would survive living in New York without Central Park; it’s such a breath of fresh air. You’d think it would be an oasis away from the city, and it is, for the most part. But the city noises and skyscrapers peeking out over the trees are always there to remind you that you are, in fact, still in one of the biggest cities in the world.

Urban Boston

Boston University is in the middle of a very urban area. Lots of people, street lights, tall buildings, even a track for the T. The T is what they call Boston’s public transportation system. I honestly don’t know its real name, but I know that Bostonians don’t call it anything else. It’s kind of a mix between the subway, a train and a bus. It runs throughout the whole city and even the surrounding areas. After visiting Boston University, we walked thorough the outskirts of the campus and through the neighboring streets to get to the T to take us downtown.

To me, this area felt very different than the other parts of Boston that we visited. The rest of Boston that we saw was very historical, with old buildings, statues of important historic