Cinque Terre

On Saturday I made the trip with my school to Cinque Terre which literally translate to "five lands". Thats exactly what it is too, its five little towns located on the coast of the Italian Riviera. Theres really not that much to say about this trip besides the fact that the views during the hike were absolutly incredible! The day started with a hearty McDonalds meal and then we were on our way. The distance between each town varies, the first was just around 20min long and other ones were close to an hour and a half. During the first couple hours it was raining a little bit but it was rather refreshing. The hike to the fourth town was long and involved lot and LOTS of stairs/inclines. I think everyone was huffing and puffing and it made me feel bad about myself when I saw old people doing the same hike I was. Can you say OUT OF SHAPE!? All of the pasta and pizza has definitly gotten to me.

A view from right above the 4th town

When we reached the fourth town we sat down for a break and had a snack of beer and pizza. Another healthy choice. Ha. The sun came out while we were sitting there so we sat by the water for a while to catch some rays. After we had begun to bake, we made the spur of the moment decision to jump in! We went to a little shop and bought some shorts and then took off into the Mediterranean. I guess I was not thinking, but it did not occur to me that I would be jumping into freezing cold salt water. Both my eyes and mouth had a nasty little surprise and I could not breath it was so cold. I think the entire town knew that I was cold by my girly screaming that was unnecessarily loud. I also do not like mossy rocks but it was a lot of fun nontheless. By the time we were done swimming and drying off, there was not enough time to get to the fifth town so we got some gelato and took a train back to our bus.

The view from the rocks we were laying on!

I would definitly recommend anyone traveling to Italy to stop in cinque terre. It was sooo pretty and a really fun day trip :)

This video is of us walking up part of the 4th path. No idea why we were making goofy noises... trying to show how out of shape we were? haha

MIFFLIN... In Munich

Mifflin in Madison this year is on May 1st which means those of us abroad will be unable to attend. Fortunately for us, Munich holds this "little" party each year called Springfest. I think everyone who went will agree with me that Springfest more than compensated for our need to day drink and get silly. No worries though, to those who are concerned that I paid to go to another country to drink, I did in fact go siteseeing and get the cultural experience as well :)


Thursday April 15th: Our flight out of Pisa on Friday left at 7am which meant that in order to get to the aiport early enough for check-in and security we would need to hop on the 3:30am transfer bus to Pisa. Thursday I was all about going to bed at 10pm and getting a few hours of sleep in but when 12am rolled around and I still had not showered or packed I knew getting some Zzz's in was not going to be an option. Oh well, at least I passed out on the bus for a good hour and twenty mintues.


Friday: We arrived at the airport around 5am and we were worried about the VOLCANO that erupted in Iceland. Several flights had already been cancelled and we hoped that would not be the case for us as well. Fortunatley we boarded, took off, and upon landing were informed we got the last flight out to Munich. Lucky Ducks. Ryanair being the terrible company that they are flew us into Memmington which is not quite the closest aiport. They claim its "West Munich" but as put best by a comment on the ryanair website "While Memmington is west of Munich, so is London and New York" So we had to take another 2 hour bus. But we got there and it was still before noon. The first thing on our agenda was a free walking tour! Our Guides name was Claudia and she talked way to much but it was good to see the city. Almost everything we saw had something to do with Hitler or WWII and we learned that while everything in the city looks old its all really just a replica of what the city use to look like before it was destroyed in the war. Intresting eh? When the tour was over we met up with Rachel and Molly! We met at the Hopra House which we learned all about on our tour. It use to be a beer hall which only men were allowed in. Orginally there were no bathrooms so people would have to go outside pee but that got very inconvienant once you had found a table and had a drink so they created troughs that ran under the tables. Then each person had a stick that would guide thier pee into gutters... nasty. Lucky that aspect of the place was gone. We all got a couple liters of beer and after a quick stop to SUBWAY for some sandies we headed to the festival! It was like a playground for adults. While there were children there, the merry-go-round had a bar on it and towards the late afternoon everyone had disappeared into the beer tents.

BEER TENT

These tents were MASSIVE filled with tons of people haveing a good time. You sit where ever there is room so you are forced to meet new people. We ran into about a million Wisconsin kids which made it feel that much more like Mifflin. We all just danced, sang, and drank until the tents closed and then went to bed!

A tower we saw on our tour. The bottom three windows go to a room in which Hitler dined in the night he planned "Kristallnacht" the night of broken glass in which hundreds of Jewish business were broken into and destoryed

Saturday: We woke up around 9:30 and headed to Dachau which is about 45 min away from the city. We went with a relatively large group of kids and we all got these phone things that when you press numbers tell you about what you are looking at. It was a very strange and disturbing experience. It was hard to believe that so many terrible things had happened where we were walking. We saw everything from the barracks to the gas chambers to the crematoriums and the shooting ranges. There are also a few memorials built representing the different groups of people that were detained at the camp. I am glad I had the chance to check it out but it was very sad.

"Work sets you free" - the Gate to Dachau

After the camp we planned on taking a nap before heading to the festival but on our train ride home we were informed that our plane home had been cancelled! Drama drama drama. We learned that one of the trip planning companies would be ordering another bus to get all the stranded travelers home. It was 100 euros to get on the bus which seemed a bit outrageous but condsidering there really was no other option we signed up as soon as possible to save our spot. All airports would be shut down until at least wednesday and we had class we had to attenend on Monday... so that wouldn't work. There was also a train we could have taken but that was even more money (160 euro) and you had to sit in the isle. No you did not have an isle seat you were acutally sitting in the walk way... sounds comfy. Once we figured things out though, Emily, Sarah and I headed to the beer tents. I got a huge pretzel! We sat at a table with these three men, two of which were Chezch and the other Russain. The youngest was 25 while the other two where definitly in thier 40's if not much older. They all worked together and kept complimenting us on our beautiful teeth. Ha I guess Europeans just dont have the same kind of dentistry as we do in America. After chatting for a while with them they bought us more beer and shots! They also bought us roses and Emily got a hat out of the deal, it was a lot of fun. Then we left to go meet up with Molly, Rachel and Laura again and on the way I purchased a GIANT cookie that no one is really sure what it said but supposidly is said something along the lines of "I love you to the stars" everyone I asked though kind of chuckled first though so who knows.

My Giant Pretzel and Pretty big beer (I thought the glasses were so pretty ha)

We went on some of the rides and one of them we rode 4 or 5 times! It was so much fun. At first it looks kind of lame but soon you starting getting whipped around upside down and at the very ended there is this big line of water spouts shooting 20 feet in the air. The seats lock and you slowly move closer and closer lying parallel to the ground, the water just inches away from completly soaking you. A lot of people would splash the person sitting next to them but luckily I didn't get to wet. I had to hold my hair back though or it would for sure had gone in the water. Overall it was an amazing night.

Aww Deeg's and my big cookie

Sunday: We had to be out of the Hostel by 10 so we put our stuff in storage and while other people went to places like the BMW factory and some English gardens, Sarah and I went back to the fair grounds for one last time. We got super long hotdogs for brunch and there was some sort of old car parade going on that we watched for a while. Then we went to the tents and had a mug of beer that took us almost 45 mintues to finish, I think we were beer-ed out at that point. We went on a few more rides, had a drink on the merry-go-round since we still had not done so and then headed to the busses which left at 2:30pm. The bus ride was more than 8 hours long and we finally arrived back in florence around 11pm. I offically hate busses, but even if i knew that I would end up having to take a bus home before I went on the trip I would do it again. I really really like munich!

BARCELONA!! (Spring break part 3)

We arrived in Barcelona around 11pm (later than anticipated because we missed our flight, boo). Molly, Rachel, and Laura's apartment is HUGE!! It was nice to be back in an apartment rather than sharing a room with a bunch of randos in a hostel. As soon as we got there we got ready to go out. Some other wisco kids came over and we headed a bar called Chupito around 1am. This place was very crowed with black lights and crazy shots. There were over 200 shots to choose from with all sorts of crazy names. The first one everyone took was a smores shot in which you shot was lit on fire, you roasted a marshmellow on it and then dipped the marshmellow in the shot, took the shot and then ate the marshmellow. Most of the shots have something to do with fire one of them the whole bar was lit up! It was pretty cheap at 2 euro a shot so it was a good place to start out. Around 2ish we headed to a club called Sutton. At first there weren't many people and I was somewhat unimpressed with their "crazy nightlife" but it evenutally picked up and it was a fun night of dancing. Anne and Monica met us there so it was a big DG reunion. The only bad things about the place is there was so much broken glass on the floors that it kept getting stuck in my heels and making it really hard to walk AND people can smoke inside the clubs which results in stinky hair and clothes.

Day 2: We woke up and headed down Passeig de Gracia, which is the big shopping street in Barcelona to check out some of Gaudi's work. We saw his Casa Batllo which is the colorful building that looks like it has skulls and bones that form the balconies. Molly told us some crazy stories that she had learned about the building and why Gaudi might have designed the building the way he had. We also saw the Casa Mila which was an apartment building that Guadi designed. According to molly, nobody wanted to live in the place at first because it was so different from traditional styles! Afterwards we headed towards las ramblas. Las Ramblas is a famous street that has all these crazy street performers on it and people selling junk. They even had animals for sale! The street was super crowded and supposidly its notorious for pick pocketers so I held on to my stuff real tightly. The street led us to the Boceria, a huge outdoor market place. It had TONS of fruit and candy and vegetalbes and fish and everything you could imagine. We got smoothies that were only 1 euro and so delicious. Then we got lunch at a little sandwich place and by the time we were done it was already almost 4 so we headed back to the apartment for a nap. Emily, Molly and I made dinner that night and after getting ready to go out we ended up just sitting on her couch till 4:30 am catching up on the last 4 months.

1Euro smoothies!

Day 3: Molly and JD walked us around a bit more checking out some near by parks and then we got some TAPAS. they were a differnt kind of tapas in which they were all little sandwichs. I'm not sure what exactly it is that I ate but it was so good. It was expensive though which was kind of lame because I was still hungry when we were done. Afterwards, Molly was off to Venice for the weekend and Rachel and Waldman had already left for Amsterdam so Emily and I headed to her friend Mikes house where we would stay for the remaining two nights of our trip. We dropped our stuff off and headed out for another day of site-seeing. Our first stop was the Sagrada Familia. It is a massive Catholic church that started to be built in 1882 and is not expected to be done until 2026! It was designed by Gaudi (like everything else it seems) and although its pretty cool looking now, I saw pictures of what it is suppose to look like in final form and it is absolutely AMAZING. I'm impressed.

Sagrada Familia

Next we hopped on the metro and headed towards Parc Guell, designed, of course, by Gaudi. The park is on a hill and the whole place is a bunch of architectual strutures that are decorated with mosaics. Everything was so colorful and pretty and the fact that it was like 75 and sunny just added to the beauty of the park. Emily and I wandered around the grounds for a couple hours before heading back to mikes.

Park Guell entrence way

We went to the store when we got back and picked up some food for dinner. We made Tacos! ha yes, its mexican food rather than spanish but it was delicious all the same. We may have started drinking a bit to early because when 3am rolled around and we headed to the clubs, Emily and I were sent home in a Cab soon after when the bouncer would not let us stay. Whoops.

Day 4: We woke up around noon and headed to the BEACH!! We layed out all day soaking up the sun and it was SOOOO NICE! I am so jealous that Barcelona has a beach and Florence does not. It was a topless beach though which was awkward. There were moms running around playing with their children with no shirts on. Maybe its normal to them but still very strange to me. Around 4 we headed to this place called the Champaigneria which obviously is famous for their champaign. Everyone got burgers and champaign and we headed home for a nap. On the metro which was insanely crowded, one of the girls we were with got her wallet stolen. Thank God it was not me! We had to nap in shifts as Mikes roomates also had visiters and everyone wanted to nap in the beds so as some of us napped the others cooked and then we rotated. ha. That night Mike cooked us chicken stirfry yum! There was a HUGE soccer game on so we headed downstairs to the bar below thier apartment to watch the Barcelona Madrid game. People were crazy, everytime they scored a goal everyone went nuts and you could hear fireworks and other stuff going on outside. Barcelona won 2-0. After the game we headed back up stairs to get ready to go out. We went to a club called Razzmatazz which was insane! It was a massive multi-level club with different types of music in each room. We danced until the wee-hours of the morning and got back to the apartment with just enough time to make some "breakfast" and watch the sun rise.

Our group for the last two nights

Day 5: We spent our last few hours in Barcelona at the beach again. Emily and I got massages by these asian women walking around that are super annoying but well worth the 5 euros. At 6pm we left to get to the aiport that was an hour and half away (thank you ryan air for making my traveling as inconvientant as possible). Our flight was at 10:30 and after waiting in the Pisa airport for a bus transport to florence we finally made it home around 2:30 am. Long night of traveling and it felt so good to be home! I absolutly loved Barcelona, by far the best city I have been to so far. :)

Madrid!! (spring break part 2)

If I could, I would move to spain in a heartbeat. That being said, the moment our flight touched down in Madrid was that happiest moment of our spring break so far. We took a cab ride from the airport to our hostel which was probably a mistake since we could have taken the metro for about 1/15 of the price but it was late at night and we were anxious to get settled. After the cab dropped us off we wandered for a good 20 mintues trying to find our place. I think we were thrown off by the fact that our hostel was not an entire building but rather just one floor. The Hostel did not even have a sign outside, the only way we figured it out was by looking at the names on the doorbells for the building we thought it was suppose to be in! Although we were skptical from the looks of it from the outside, the inside of the rooms were quite nice. I did not like the showers (five of them) that everyone staying in the hostel shared, but considering Emily and I had not showered in the last four days it was nice to get clean. Before arriving we had heard how the night life in Madrid is crazy and that its the clubbing capital of the world. We were all excited to go out but once we ate dinner (paella, i tried mussels for the first time!), which was considerably late, we came to the conclusion that we were exhausted and dancing in a club all night was somewhat less than appealing. So we went to bed. I'm glad we did that though because we woke up early the next morning and began touring the city. First stop, the Almunena Cathedral. I have now seen like a thousand churches on this trip but I was surprised that I actually really liked this one. The ceilings were painted in a various array of bright colors and shapes. It was something a little different, very pretty, very spanish, and I was impressed. Right next to the Cathedral was the Palacio Real de Madrid or the royal palace of Madrid. It was a huge white beautiful buiding and signifcantly less gaudy than the court of Versallias. While we were there they gaurds were doing some sort of..umm... thing? ha Not sure what they were doing it lasted for almsot 10 minutes and they kept getting into lines but then they would fall out and appear disorganized so who knows what was suppose to really happen.

The Palace... Check out those beautiful blue skies!

Have I mentioned yet that it was absolutely GEORGOUS outside?! It is amazing how a change from the rainy cold weather of paris to the warm sunny weather of Madrid could change our moods so drastically. After the palace we strolled on over to the Plaza de Espana which is just a
large square with a big monument in the middle located on the street Gran Via. There were some vendors selling little souviners/junk that Emily and I looked at for a while before heading down Gran Via to check out one of the most popular shopping streets in the city. The long street led us to Parque del Retiro where we spent the majority of the rest of the day. We ate lunch at a little resturant in the park and Emily and I had our first taste of Sangria (and by first I mean first time while in spain of course). Yum... it was delicious and it was so nice just to sit in the park and relax in the sun. After eating we wandered around the park for a while. There is a big pond in the middle where lots of people were out on canoes. We thought about getting one but we were being cheep so we passed. We walked around the city until 530ish, checking out different plazas, doing a little shopping (they had topshop!!) and maxing out on some delicious candy that we ate while chillen by the fountain in Puerta del Sol. Then we headed to the airport to catch our flight to barcelona!!

One of the Plazas... this one is across from the Palacio Real

We arrived with an hour till boarding, nicely done Laura and Emily, you had an amazing day and are right on schedule!! ARGH! If only that were true. While we did have a great day and we did arrive early, we were sitting at the wrong gate!!!! Now, we are not actually that stupid. We just sat down in the wrong place, our tickets did say gate H -18 but apparantly it was changed to gate H-28. Our only mistake was not checking the boards for possible changes. Who knows why it did not occur to us that maybe we were in the wrong place until the time our flight was scheduled to take off but when that light blub in our heads went off we SPRINTED to the correct gate just to watch our plane pulling away. Fantastic. The only staff member we could find was from another airline and being the horrible person that she was, she was completely unhelpful. She told us that because we were flying with a different company she could not tell us where we had go to deal with our missed flight. So I asked her to "pretend" that we were flying with her and then inform us of where we should go. Surprise surprise it ended up being the same place our company had to go. This little mishap cost us 130 euro each. Lame. But I still really enjoyed madrid :)

Paris = Fail (Spring Break part 1)

I guess it should have been obvious from the way our trip started that the first part of our spring break was just not going to work out well for us. Emily and I headed out Friday the 2nd around noon to catch a train to the Pisa airport, we managed to miss TWO trains and it was like a scene out of a movie, Emily and I were literally running after the train, me holding on to the railing of the door trying to jump on... Fail # 1. Once we acutally made it on the plane the turbulance was so bad that people were screaming and yelling thinking we were going to crash. No it wasn't just a couple stupid girls being over dramatic its was like a fourth of the passengers... I was laughing but still, Fail # 2. Our hostel was surprisingly very nice, we stayed at St. Christophers and it was very clean, new and fun. One strange thing though, one of our roomates was a 60 year old man. Very strange. Anne and Monica were staying at the same hostel that first night so we all met up and went to dinner at this place that Elysia recommened. That would be the 3rd Fail. It was supposidly unlimited wine and fondu but what we got was one "baby bottle" (litterally a bottle, nipple and all) of wine and little pieces of bread with cheese that was mostly bitter tasting oil. To get a second bottle of wine we had to pay another 2 euro so for 20 euro I ate so bread crumbs and some wine. Waste of money. After dinner we went to a bar that was fine but then tried to go to some posh clubs. Unfortunately our crew was not a group of 6 foot models weighing in at 85 pounds wearing Christian Louboutins so getting into the club called VIP Lounge was Fail # 4.

Oil/cheese... yum (NOT)

Our Second day we woke up and climbed to the highest point in paris Saint Pierre de Montmartre. While the church was beautiful, the view it self was less than impressive. With rainy gray skies and grey buildings to match, I definitly would not list Paris as one of the prettier cities I've seen. Then we hiked on over to the Effiel Tower which may have been cooler if the line to climb it wasn't 4 hours long. Emily and I went on a bike tour though that was acutally one of the high lights of the trip. Our guides name was Seth and he was really cool and reminded me a lot of Michael which was really wierd. We saw everything there is to see in Paris and we even got Seth to take us to Notre Dame which wasn't orginally on the agenda. We took a break though to get a beer and while we were sitting out side there was literally a torrential down pour. We then proceeded to ride our bikes through that, Fail # 5. A really pretty rainbow resulted though and it was right over the Louve which was sweet but I still didn't like getting all wet.

Fat Tire bike Tours. If you happen to be unlucky enough to go to paris at least take this tour. it was acutally pretty fun and intresting to learn about the history:)

Day 3: Easter. Fail #6. Nothing is open on Easter... Except the louve and since it was the first sunday of the month that ment it was free entrance. Free entrance means a line that took forever just to find the end. Definitly not waiting in that. We spent the rest of the day walking down the Champs Elysees and going into stores. There was a hail storm. Fail #7. While waiting for the weather to chill out we popped into Sephora. It was ENORMOUS. We spent a good hour in there putting on all sorts of make up. We walked out looking like hookers with "Smokey eyes" and red lipstick at 4 in the afternoon. That night Emily and I chilled at the hostel bar and met a bunch of people from all over. We befriended a guy named Jacob who is acutually from the US and Glynn from the UK. I don't remember the rest of their names but they were from all over, one scottish, a couple Aussies, and even a French guy... of course he was the least friendly though. Ha

Day 4: Mondays are considered holidays. Fail # 8. We took the trip out to see the Court of Versilles, the French sure do love thier gold. Of course it was closed though so rather than going inside we could only walk around the massive gardens in the back. They were really pretty and it was cool to see the estate but I would have really liked to see the inside as well. For dinner we got Sushi which was delicous and that night we went out to a few differnt bars with our new friends. It was a lot of fun except for the cab ride home. We hadn't even drank that much but for some reason both Emily and I got sick. I do not know if it was the Sushi we had or what but we were both puking out of our respective doors in the cab. That would have been a cute picture for sure. Fail # 9

Outside the Gate to the Palace

Day 4: We wanted to see Moulin Rouge before we left for spain so we went to the metro that we had been taking the last 3 days. We bought the same day pass we had also been using which apparently is only a weekend pass (Monday included, strange i know). When our tickets did not work it didn't occur to us that maybe we had bought the wrong one but since no one was around to help us we just decided to hop over the railing. FAIL #10. Of course there were 8 security gaurds waiting on the other side. They grabbed us and charged us each 50 euro. Bye bye 75 dollars. I tried to explain that we did not know the ticket was just for the weekend and that it was what we were using for the previous 3 days but this stupid bitch just kept saying (in a perfect AMERICAN accent might i add) "I don't speak english, its not my fault you don't speak french" Alright lady, I know you are bitter that you are a rent-a-cop but no need to take it out on us, YOU are the reason people think French people are rude. When we acutally got to Moulin Rouge it was nothing spectacular, took a picture and went to find lunch. We got nachos and quesadillas, wrong country.

When we finally boarded our flight to Madrid I could not tell you how happy we were. Though the first 4 days of our spring break may have been awful the final 5 days made up for it for sure!!!