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.

i'm baaaack

Hi everyone! I'm back from Spring break and started class today. As I posted earlier, Evan flew out here for break and we traveled around and had a great time. We stayed in Florence for a couple days so he could get acclimated to the time change (it's 6 hours later here than in the U.S) and I could show him around Florence a little bit. In an (one of many) turn of events, my camera charger is MIA so I could, regrettably, only take a very limited pictures on the trip. Anyway, we

finally went to Museo Academia to see the David and the rest of the museum. Just as everyone has said, I was surprised at how huge it was (but we weren't allowed to take pictures). I have to say, thou

gh, that I was disappointed in most of the rest of the museum as compared t

o the Uffizi, which I

found amazing.

After Florence, we took a train to Rome where we stayed at a hostel but one that was actually pretty nice. Getting out of Florence also gave me the chance to have non-Italian food for once, even in Rome. The hostel had a restaurant/bar attached where I got to have french toast with banana and honey for breakfast. A great way to make me happy in the morning. Anyway, on our first night in Rome we wandered around the city for an hour and two and found a restaurant where we stayed and ate lamb, shared red wine, and talked for hours...it was very Italian, as we were there for about 3 ho

urs. Afterwards, we continued to wander and walked all the way down to the Colosseum, which was beautiful all lit up at night. We went on a tour through our hostel which was priced reasonably for a 4 hour tour (15 euro) and it was the most informative and entertaining tour I think I've ever been on, certainly better t

han the tour I took when I was in Rome a couple weeks ago. After Rome, we went to Amsterdam.

I think Amsterdam is my favorite place I've been so far, if not close to it. It's the most charming little city.

Dad said he loved it, and I'm glad I felt the same way. We stayed with a friend of Evan's mom named Rogier who was more than accommodating. He lent us keys to 2 bikes and keys to his apartment. He lived on Beethovenstraat, a street that was perfectly situated in town in terms of vicinity to everything we wanted to see and do. I've always been interested in anything having to do with WWII so we headed over the Anne Frank house which at first felt more industrial than expected until we got the hidden annex she lived in with her family, which was a high step up behind a fake book case. Pretty cool. We spent most of our time in

Amsterdam biking around (it's s

o common to bike there that bikes have separate traffic lights) and walking around town. The next day, we went to the Heineken brewery which I actually found really cool. I got a silly tourist souvenir that's a Heineken bottle with my name printed right on the bottle's label...kitschy, but I like it anyway. We spent our last day in Amsterdam wandering some more, trying all kinds of foods, and headed to the infamous red light district of Amsterdam at night. I found it pretty depressing, with girls in windows advertising the

mselves who looked about my age. We only walked around for about 10 minutes because I got too weirded out and wanted to keep walking.

We left Amsterdam for Brussels the next day, which ended up being a bust. The hotel I booked is apparently a big chain in Brussels and has about 5 in the city. The one I thought I booked was in the middle of town but turned out to be in the boonies by the Brussels airport. It was not near anything, and everything in the hotel had to be paid for (12 euro for the worst "buffet" breakfast I've ever seen), 5 euro for 15 minutes of internet so I could print out our boarding pass for the flight back here, etc. The hotel's restaurant was closed because they were only open on the weekdays (go figure), and since there was nothing in the area, we had to eat at the Holiday Inn next door. I was glad it would be inexpensive...until we walked in the hotel. I have never seen such a nice Holiday Inn, it was way upscale. We sat in the restaurant and I'm fairly sure both of our mouths dropped when we saw the menu. The cheapest thing on the menu was 20 euro, and things ranged up to mid-30s. Evan got a burger and I got fish, both of which were blatantly previously cooked and microwaved, and we didn't even get water because it was 6 euros for a liter bottle. (for some perspective, 20 euro=about 27 dollars). To add to our wonderful money situation in Brussels, we asked the concierge how much it would be to go to the Charleroi airport, thoroughly explaining since her English wasn't the best, that it wasn't the Brussels airport, but the one further away), and she said approximately 30 Euro. She called a taxi for us in the morning, for which we had to pay ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY euro. I was so beyond angry I didn't even know what to do. And once we got to the airport, the bag that I had previously brought on RyanAir flights that fit in the sample carry-on bag measurer, suddenly had to be checked because it was about 1 kilo overweight (about 2 pounds), and that was another 35 euro.

Suffice to say that we ended up spending WAY more money than either of us wanted to on the trip for so many unforeseen issues, which happened everywhere, not just Brussels. The Brussels part was just the most annoying. Anyway, all in all we had a great time and I'm SO glad that Evan got to come visit.

I know this one was long, but it was a lot of traveling! I gotta keep you guys updated, right? ;-)

evan's here!

Hiii everyone. I'm currently in Rome (yes, again) because Evan really wanted to visit, we've been here for two days. Yesterday, though, I realized I had forgotten my passport in my apartment in Florence (typical) so I had to travel back and pick it up...this dumb mistake on my part cost me about $130, which is insane. But tomorrow early in the morning we head out to the Netherlands where we're staying with a family friend of Evan's parents and stop in Belgium on the way back, where I may or may not eat all the chocolate, waffles, and mussels I can handle. I'll update when I'm back.

spring break

I just booked two trips today. One is in May to the French Riviera (Nice, Cannes, and Monaco) and the other is to Croatia for Easter weekend (the first weekend in April). I just had to share with everyone the picture of these lakes that I'm planning on visiting in Croatia called the Plitvice Lakes:

That's it for now. Midterms start tomorrow and I have to keep studying!

italians vs. other europeans

It's sunday. I'm sitting in my living room drinking a nice cup of tea. Even though I'm sick, it's been nice to wake up in my apartment in Florence this weekend. I didn't do much this weekend besides try to catch up on sleep Thursday and Friday night and hung out with my friends last night. However, I still feel the need to share this wonderful link with everyone...it's a video that allegedly shows the difference between Italians and all other Europeans. As far as I can tell, every single part of the video is true. So if anyone really wants to know what it's like to be living in Italy, click the link--it'll give you a pretty good idea.

http://www.infonegocio.com/xeron/bruno/italy.swf

a presto!

p.s. the picture is from the lenin/lennon wall in Prague, but this post looked decidedly empty without a picture.