oooh, italia.

Italy cracks me up. I mean, I'm sure if you come to America as a foreigner just as many stereotypes are seen to be true. Last night, on my way home from a night class, I walked by a man standing outside an apartment building with a ton of grocery bags. He looks up, yells, Angelo! Le chiave! toward the sky, puts his shopping bags down, and catches a key that falls right out of the window. I was walking by myself laughing most of the way home because it was straight out of Life is Beautiful. Italy looks, feels, and sounds just as you would expect it too, complete with motorini (mopeds), tons of food, and wildly gesturing hairy men.

Anyway, my last two weekends have been spent in different parts of Italia. Two weekends ago I went to Lucca, where we went to an olive oil farm and did an olive oil tasting. Lucca was beautiful, though not the most exciting town ever. The nice thing about Italy though is that every town, no matter how small and random, has so much beauty in the details and has so much history around every corner.

This past weekend, I went to Siena, Perugia, and Chianti. Siena, of course, was beautiful...we didn't do anything remarkable but tried their famous pastries and laid out in the sun since it was a beautiful day out. This whole trip was courtesy of API, the company I travelled to Italy though, so it was included in our tuition. We did, however, go to a spa in Siena where they had Turkish baths. I had no idea what that was til we got there, but they were giant outdoor pools filled with all kinds of minerals. Despite the fact they smelled like sulfur, we left with soft skin and totally relaxed.

We had a similar day in Perugia--minus the spa--but since they are famous for chocolate, we scoured the city for chocolate. It was such a cute little town (much like all the others), but the chocolate was disappointing considering its fame. On the way back, our bus stopped at the Verazzano Castle in Chianti, where we had an awesome tour of the vineyard there and a great wine tasting complete with tons of prosciutto di Parma, pecorino cheeses, three types of wine, salad, fagiole bianchi, and much more. It turned into a much bigger feast than any of us expected and we went home and fell into food comas. So in sum, the last two weekends were very relaxing and quite cost-friendly but filled with food. Italia è bellissima.

We also went to a soccer game, which was a lot of fun but I don't have any good pictures from that. On the 11th, I turned 21! My friends and I went out to a nice dinner to celebrate and went out and got one drink (even though we can legally drink here, it feels wrong to not get a drink on my 21st) and came home and went to sleep. It was nice to have a relaxing night but to dress up and go out to dinner. My hair is messed up in all hte pictures, though, cuz they all insisted that a wear a gigantic birthday hat all night which ruined my hair...so just ignore that.

Oh, for some inexplicable reason, there are an incredible amount of pigeons everywhere you go in Italy.

Time flies

"Follow the dream

Doesn't mean leave the love

Roam if you must,

But come home when you've seen enough."

-Atmosphere.

I have 3 weeks left of classes, a week of finals, and then a week on the Amalfi coast with friends, then home! I'm loving it here but am excited to see everyone at home. It'll be great to get to spend the summer with my family.

(Dad Steph and Julie--apparently I have no recent pictures with you to put up...don't think I forgot you!)

Miss everyone!

(and happy birthday mom!)

croatia

I went to Croatia for the long weekend and loved it. We went to Split, which is a pretty built up city but it was still great, with palm trees, an old city build out of all white marble, and outdoor cafes on every corner.

To get to Croatia, I had to take a 4 hour bus to Ancona, which is on the east side of Italy and take an overnight ferry to Croatia, and then a 2 hour bus to Split.

Despite all the traveling, the day after we got to Split, two friends and I opted for another 4-hour busride to the Plitvice Lakes, which I had posted

a picture of in a previous post. It was an amazing thing to see: sixteen lakes in the middle of nowhere in Croatia all made up of waterfalls. Unfortunately, we didn't get to stay all day like we all wanted to due to the strange bus schedule since it was Easter weekend. The other problem was that it was hard to take pictures because the pathway was so small with no guardrails, winding through the lakes, and it was crowded. Because of that, my pictures didn't turn out as planned but I still got a bunch of the waterfalls. The picture of me at the waterfall was the smallest one there, but the entrance to the park and I was so excited to see a waterfall I needed a picture anyway.

In order to get to the lakes, we woke up bright and early (5 am) to catch a bus to the lakes. Turns out the schedule was different from the day before and a bus didn't leave until 8:30 so we walked around the city while the sun rose and found this great outdoor market at 6:30 am. My friend Elissa and I were so excited that we bought a loaf of ciabatta as it was coming out of the oven (which was outdoors as well) and some fresh cheese from a vendor...and ate it for all 3 meals.

We had some traveling troubles, where our bus never showed up and we waited around for a couple hours at a bus stop and eventually caught a bus to a different city, transferred busses, and finally got back to Split.

We spent the next day wandering around Split looking at the sites, climbing its famous belltower, getting a free lesson on its history from a very nice and well-spoken tour guide, and searching endlessly for an open restaurant on Easter.

All in all, it was a nice and relaxing trip.