Bologna | New Year's Eve Trip

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Where I'm from, the normal thing to do on New Year's Eve is pay a lot of money to go to a huge party which you have very high expectations for. The girls buy nice dresses and the boys wear their best suits, you spend forever getting ready, everyone drinks a lot, and everyone is extremely happy. However by the end of the night, your heels are killing you, you're trying hard to find a taxi home and failing miserably, and everyone is complaining about how bad the party was.

So this year, my friends and I decided that we didn't want to spend our New Year's Eve like that, so we booked tickets to Bologna in Italy. It was the most spontaneous thing I've ever done, we booked the plane tickets and the hotel and

we were just relieved that we were going to be spending our New Year's Eve abroad. Nothing was planned, we had no idea what we were going to be doing for those five days until about two weeks before we actually left.

We were a group of ten people (seven girls and three boys). It was technically a girls' trip but we brought along the boyfriends too. I can honestly say it was one of my favourite holidays until now. It was the first time I've been abroad with a group of friends without any adults taking care of us. I'm actually quite proud of how none of us got lost and how many things and places we managed to visit in such a short time. Don't get me wrong, we messed up quite a few times. From catching the wrong train to climbing up 500 stairs, waking up 10 minutes before our train was leaving, and having our toes frozen by the cold. But we made it. And we surely enjoyed every second of it.

We were staying in Bologna, but we spent one day in Ferrara where we stumbled upon an ice-skating ring and got extremely excited. We also spent one day in Florence which is honestly one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. On New Year's Eve we all went out to dinner which was amazing (every single meal was amazing - god bless italian food), and then went back to the hotel and

popped open some champagne bottles at midnight. It isn't what you would expect typical 19/20 year olds to do on New Year's Eve, but I enjoyed it so much. Great company is the most important thing after all.

Also, biggest highlight of the holiday - IT SNOWED!! Probably none of you will understand my excitement for snow, but it NEVER snows in my country. It's practically impossible. So when we found out it was going to be snowing while we were in Florence, we kind of freaked out. I've seen snow before when I was on the mountains but it wasn't actually snowing at that point. So this was my first proper time seeing it snow! And it was so damn cold!!

Overall, it was so much fun spending these five days with most of my best friends (and boyfriend). I must say that I'm slightly sad to be back home especially since I have University exams coming up soon. But anyway, it was a wonderful experience and I'm so lucky to have such great friends and to have the opportunity to do things like this!