Balabanova All Over

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[Vatican City, Italy] No visit to Rome is complete without a visit to the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. If you have only one day in Rome and have to pick between this and the Coliseum/Forum, I’d pick this (although with some planning, they are both doable in one long, exhausting day). To get to the Vatican, I took Bus 64 across the Tiber river. It was about… Read More

[Chicago, IL] A couple of major Chicago attractions book-ending a divine lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant? Not a bad way to spend another day in Chicago, I think! We started off our day at Willis Tower. Built as and still commonly referred to as Sears Tower, it was the tallest building in the world from the time it was completed in 1973 until 1998 when the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia were… Read More

[Chicago, IL] Kristina did not know this yet, but sightseeing with me is no joke. There are places to be seen and meals to be eaten and pictures to be taken. I have a checklist with must-dos and nice-to-dos, and I have google-mapped the place to death because my worst nightmare is wasting precious time trying to figure out where to go next, or, even worse, having to come back to an… Read More

San Francisco, CA We didn’t get too many attractions in today, but the ones we did see were quintessential San Francisco – Alcatraz and Coit Tower. We started our day with a tour of the infamous former federal prison just off the shore of the city. The boat ride there took 10 minutes at most. As soon a we got off, we saw an Alcatraz sign that had “Indians welcome” written on… Read More

[Los Angeles, CA] What a wonderful day yesterday was! I got to see most of my closest people all in one place – that happens so rarely that, at one point, I was just about in full blown tears! It all started very early with Commencement breakfast at school. It was nice to be there early and have some time to catch my breadth – I had been playing tour guide from… Read More