When the Moon hits your Eye...

This weekend our school took us to VENICE! Prior to going we heard that its more of a day trip place with not much to do but we ended up having a lot of fun.

Day 1: Buses departed at 8:30, not to bad. After making a few stops and catching a ferry, we arrived at our hotel around 1. The hotel was in three different buildings which was confusing and our room was TINY. I kind of liked it though. The bed, like most beds, was more comfortable than my bed here in Florence so that was nice. At 2:20 we met with our tour group by the accademia bridge. Then we walked over to the San Marco Church.

This is the Church, the entire thing is deocrated with pinky nail size pieces of glass and gold. The building took 50 years to make and 500 years to decorate!!

The inside of the church was very dark but soo pretty. There are four horses on the balconey (the originals are inside) and they were made of gold and had rubies for eyes. Napolian stole the eyes though and loss them some where in the alps. Good job Napolian! In the plazza infront of the church there are a TON of pigeons. Michelle held out chips in her hands and let the birds all land on her. I was disgusted and wouldn't let her get anywhere near me afterwards but it was funny to watch. There is also a to little coffee place with life music in the plazza, it was one of the first coffee shops or something and back in the day was a secret because the church believed that caffeine was a drug. Espressos there cost 10 euros though so definitly did not try the place out $$$$$. Next we went to the Palazzo Ducale. This place was where the government was and where the doge use to live. The doge was some sort of leader but not a king because there was no royal family. While we were getting a tour this was this one man that tried to join our group. He looked like he wasn't "all there" kind of spacy and goofy looking and we think he was trying to stalk our tour guide. She eventually got a security gaurd to ask him to leave. There was also a prison in the place which was cool to see. And we walked over the famous bridge of "sighs". Criminals would sigh as they walked over it because they were either being let free or they were seeing the outside for the last time before they were hung in the square. The bridge later became associated with gondala rides and kissing under it so this morbid bridge is now thought of as romantic. A bit strange.

Emily and I on the balcony of the church with the Plazza behind us

That night we went to Campo Margherita which is just a little area with a few bars. There really isn't any night life in Venice but when you put like 60 kids in one bar its hard not to have a good time. We didn't stay out that late though, we were home and in bed by 2.

Day 2: We chose not to go on the morning tours because they did not seem to be that intresting and instead we had breakfast at the hotel and took a Gondala ride!! Our man's name was Mattiea and he was really funny. We were very loud and obnoxious though, since mattiea wouldn't sing for us some of the girls were singing. I think one of my favorites was when chirsty broke out in "On top of Spaghetti"... real classy. Towards the end of our ride, which lasted a little over half an hour, we got pulled over by the police!!!! There are suppose to only be 6 people in the boat but we had 7 and our driver got a ticket! Sad. We gave him an extremely generous tip though.

We sat in the back, check out my super cool gondala driving hat :)

In the afternoon we went on the trip to Murano to visit a glass factory. The boat ride was about 35 mintues, the glass blowing demonstrating was literally 2.5 mintues. Needless to say we were a bit disappointed. THEN they let us walk around for an hour and a half and the ONLY thing the island has is glass. there are like 500 glass shops and nothing else. 1. I do not know how the shops compete with eachother since they all sell the same thing. 2. We had to search for over half an hour just to find a snack. We ended up getting twix bars at convient shop. LAME. By the time we got back it was nearing 6 so we took a nap before dinner. We went to the same place for dinner boths nights, i forgot the name of it but it had a very American feel to it. It was good, and relatively cheep so we enjoyed it. Later we went back to Campo Margherita to meet up with everyone. Me John and Emily thought taking some shots of Absenith would be a good idea (don't worry the illegal stuff is all taken out now, no green fairies) The bar tender told us they are not that strong blah blah blah. LIES. It burnt my throat sooo bad. Our eyes were watering so bad it looked like we were crying and all the italians were laughing at us. Oh well, it was an experience.

Our Shots with Sugar burning on top

Around 1:30 we left the campo and went to Piccalo Mundo. Its probably the only club in venice, it was very small but we had an amazing time!!! We just danced until the club closed and walked home around 4 am. I was discustingly sweaty afterwards but it was definitly an intresting night.

Day 3: There were no real plans made for us today but we had to be out of the hotel by 10. So we put our stuff in storage and a group of 8 of us made our way to the Jewish ghetto. The walk took us an hour but it was well worth it for the Matza ball soup. I also had potato latkes. They were good but different from what I'm use to. The meal was expensive too but worth it because it was so delicious :) By the time we walked back to the hotel it was time to meet the busses. We got home around 6.

Last night Emily and I ran to Red Garter to watch the Wisconsin game. They lost. LAME

I have to run to class now. Alexis comes this weekend & I'm so excited!!!

I'm thinking of a person... (Prague/Kevins visit part 2)

The second part of Kevins visit takes place in Prague! It is beautiful but SOOO cold at this time of year, I would love to go back but it would definitly have to be in the summer.

Day 1: Arrival. We got in a cab, Kevin requested a receipt because thats what he read to do so that we don't get ripped off. However, not having any idea where we were going didn't help because it seemed like he was driving in cirlces slowly getting closer to our hotel. I'm pretty sure we passed it like 3 times before we acutally stopped in front of it. But finally we arrive at the Jury's Inn! Then we realized it was farrrrrr away from everything. Luckly the Metro was right infront of us so it never took more than like 7 mintues to get anywhere. By the time we got settled cleaned up it was time for dinner. We went to some resturant that was on the river over looking the Charles Bridge. It was pretty fancy which I don't think we were expecting but it was good. Unfortunately both Kevin and I felt like shit throughout the whole dinner because we were getting sick. I had such a bad sore throat that eating anything was unenjoyable and Kevin couldn't breath out of his nose so tasting the food he was eating was very difficult! After pondering if we should go out or not we decided that just going to bed was the best idea. I was out before 11.

Day 2: 8am (ish) wake up! Got ready and hopped on the train over to the Charles Bridge. There was construction (lame) but it was still really cool. Then we walked over to the other side and got STARBUCKS!! Yes, I was very excited, watered down espresso shots are getting old. Then we strolled around, checking out some pretty buildings and we walked up to the Prague Castle or the Prazsky hrad. Very cool. Big gateway, goofy gaurds, enourmous building, and it was snowing!

Awww us infront of the Castle... in a Snow storm

Then we went inside the Big church behind it...very cool stained glass. Then we went into the old part of the castle, it was intresting but somewhat less exciting than expected. Much cooler looking for the outside but we had to go in. Included in the ticket we bought we got to go in Georges bacillica, walk down the "golden lane" which is just a tiny street with tiny tiny tiny shops. My size! Then the final stop of the 'tour' thing was a tour that they used for tourture... there were some creepy things there.

Us infront of the Church part of the Castle :)

Next we walked back over the bridge to Old town Sqare. Its very cool! We saw the clock and I recorded the whole verrrry exciting show that goes on every hour. Acutally, its not that exciting at all but everyone gets so excited its funny. All that happens is some creepy things in two little holes rotate in circles and then some trumpet player plays for a couple mintues at the top of the tower. OO and me and Kevins favorite building is in the Square, we don't know what it is but it was pretty and it was PINK or salmon colored i guess. After we went to lunch some place near by. I got a HUGE enormous plate of ribs and Kevin got gooloush or however you spell it. We also drank two half liters of Pilsner. That was the last tradtional Chezch meal that we had that was even remotely good. The waiter kind of forgot about. us though and he wasn't to friendly.

After lunch we were on our way to the Jewish town area when I had to pee real bad. We didn't know if we could use the bathroom without buying something so we got another beer. In retrospect this was a dumb idea seeing as I had to pee again no more like 30 mintues after leaving the place. We also walked into the stores like Louis V, Prada, and you know stores like that. By that time we had seen pretty much everything we wanted to and it was proabably around 5 so we headed back to the hotel. Kevin took a nap, I made a presentation for one of my classes (damn school). Then came the adventure that was finding our dinner spot. We left for a late meal aroudn 9:30ish and wandered for a good 45 mintues searching for U Vejvodu and just as we were about to give up I spotted it! Thank goodness. Here we had some dinner and then just drank some beers till 2am! We were just chatting and playing dumb games like "i'm thinking of a person..." where the other person just tries to gues who they're thinking of. Kevin sucked at the game. I was awesome. Obviously.

There were Giant pretzels too

When we left there we went to the Karlovy club. It had like five floors of dance rooms and Kevin claims that he doesn't like clubs but it definitly didn't seem like he was having that bad of a time considering he was dancing all night hahaha. Needless to say we had a good time. We got home super late but whatever.

Day 3: Alarm went off at 8 and considering that was like 3 hours of sleep I didn't move for like another hour or hour and half. But we were out and moving by 10. We went to see a few last sites that we hadn't see the day before and we took some sort of tram up a big hill which was pointless but i guess the walk down was pretty nice. We had a HORRIBLE lunch, first we each got french onion soup which was essentially broth with some uncooked onions and cheese thrown on top. I got chicken which is usually pretty hard to mess up but it was MUSHY and had ham and cheese on it. Kevin thought I was being dramatic but then he tried and was equally grossed out. Yuck. Then we walked back to old town square and stopped in about 50 gift shops searching for the one particular shot glass I need to add to my collection. It was funny, i saw a million before I had any money but once I went to the ATM none were in sight. I finally found one though :) Then we did a little shopping and around 6 we sat down infront of the clock for some dinner. Poor decison. Food is quite expensive over there and after peepin at the bill our hamburgers were like 18 dollars! crazy. Then we went back to the hotel to chill for a little and then got ready to go out for our last night.

We went to this place called beer factory that was a bar but it had like club music. Each table had thier own tap and you poured your own beer! There was a meter that kept track of how much you drank and the number of glasses each table consumed was projected onto a big screen where everyone could see. It was sort of a competetion to see who could have the most. But since it was just me and Kevin we never got close to winning. We made friends with the people sitting next to us though. It was 4 boys and one girl. All the boys bonded over being in sigmachi which was funny. We then wanted to go to another bar but ended up getting pulled into places by these promoters. Turns out they were Strip clubs! We essentially went on a mini strip club crawl ending up going to three total. We never stayed much longer than five mintues at each and then we went to a bar. We chatted a little more with our new friends and then took off since we had to be up early in the morning to get to the air port.... BYE PRAGUE! I had fun!

KEVIN VISITS! part one

Well, as I'm sure everyone knows, Kevin came to visit from the 5th until this morning when he left for the airport around 5:30am! Bad news, he did NOT bring me peanut butter. I am okay with that though, I was just so excited to see him. He was suppose to come in at noon so when 1 rolled around I started to wonder where he was. Turns out his phone did not work at all over here so thats why I had not heard from him. When he finally arrived I ran down the stairs to let him in and I got a big hug... yayyyyy. From Friday until Wednesday I just showed him everythere was to see in Florence. Unfortunately for him, he came when we had the worst possible weather! When we went to the Uffizi we had to wait outside for a good 45 minutes and it was Snowing/raining and absolutly FREEZING. The cold got the best of us when we went to a soccer game too. Florence played Juventus which was a really good game and the fans were nuts but we had to leave early cause my body was completely numb. I finally got to check out Piazza Michelangelo for the sunset which was a georgous view but again the extremly cold weather made it less enjoyable.

RESTUARANTS: Me and Kevin went to some delicous places to eat this past week. The first was Aqua al 2. The menu was not in English so we had a mini panic when we realized we had no idea what anything was but our waiter was really helpful and guided us towards some good dishes. We shared pasta sampler which was five small tastes of differnt pastas, one of my favorite was some little curly pasta with some sort of spinach sauce. Then he got veal which he said was just okay and I got balsamic steak which was sooo good. I guess there pretty well known for thier blueberry steak too so I'll have to go back sometime and get that.

We also went to this resturant, La Giostra. A bit pricey but definitly worth it. They brought out a big platter of appitizers on the house and then kevin had the pear ravioli (don't worry its not acutally like pears) and I had some sort of spinach and cheese ravioli. Kevins was way better but mine was really good too. Then we both had steak, his was some bacon one and mine was a balsamic one again...YUM

We followed a guide that one of Kevins friends had given me before I left so we tried this other place he suggested that was kind of a far walk but I'm glad we went. It was a little place run by a man and his wife and unlike the other two places it was all Italians. The food wasn't the most amazing thing i've ever had but it was good and we got a lot of it!

On Wednesday evening we left for Rome since that is where our flight would leave from the next day. We took the long train (4 hours) because it was significantly cheeper. We were running a little late though so we ended up having to literally run to the train, we forgot to validate our tickets and there were NO SEATS LEFT. We thought we were going to have to stand for 4 hours and we were definitly not thrilled with the idea. But evenutally it cleared out, we got our own seats and when the ticketman came around to see ours we played dumb about the whole validation thing. 50 euro fine avoided.

When we arrived in Rome Chelsea told me what bus to take and were to get off but some how we messed things up horribly and wandered around rome for about an hour before we decided to hop in a cab. Finally arriving at Alexa and Chelsea's we chatted for a bit and then just passed out. Kevin and I were also just beginning to get sick so waking up at 8 the next morning sucked. But we did it anywhere so I could show Kevin the major sites in the two hours we had before we had to leave for the airport. We hit up the Colosseum, St. Peters, the Pantheon, and the Trevi fountain. I really wanted to show him the inside of St. Peters but the line was SUPER SUPER long. I was carrying my bag with my the whole time though so of course I was complaining because it was so heavy. Siteseeing with luggage = not that great of an idea.

Our flight was suppose to take off around 1:30 but there was an hour delay. I really wasnt to upset because I just napped the whole time. We landed in Prague around FOUR......

Prune hands.

I was going to go out tonight, afterall it is Thursday. However, being the awesome person that I am, I stayed in and cleaned. I scrubbed the floors, fluffed the pillows and even tackled the bathroom (sans the toilet because I refuse to go near that beast). And after two hours I deceided to give up. This is what I learned:
1. The floors are still dirty, maybe they should be washed more than once every 7 weeks
2. you have to use about 40 swiffer wet wipes to pick up all the hair that five girls create over a two month period alone
3. tile hurts ur knees
4. scratching candle wax off shit breaks your nails
5. I have pruney hands (i dislike having to use my fingers right now Michael)
6. I never want to be a cleaning lady

On a more exciting note, KEVIN ARRIVES IN LESS THAN 12 HOURS WOOOOOO

DAVID BECKHAM, and other less important things

On Wednesday the 24th I went to another soccer game, Fiortina vs. AC Milan who temporarily has DAVID BECKHAM. So thats obviously the only reason 100's of american girls went. We lost in the last five mintues 2 to 1 and David Beckham never even went in but, I did take about 40 pictures of him streching in hopes that he might go in. I only posted one because I didn't think anyone else would be as intrested in the copious amounts of pictures of his butt as I am.

Saturday, the 27th I went to Fiesole with Emily and Ally. It was like a 10 minute bus ride up the mountains a little. We were in search of a nice relaxing little hike but instead, taking the road less traveled, spent a few hours walking up and down rather steep rocky hills in the forest. It was fun though, good exercise and beautiful views of all of florence. When we made it back to the town center we were tired and STARVING so we downed large pizzas and went home. Of course we did not make it home before we got Mcdonalds McFlurries... so much for having a healthy day :)

Today, Sunday, me and my roomates did nothing. We all booked a trip to the Amalfi Coast though for the last weekend in our program. Should be amazing but also sad that its the end!!! This week I have to complete 3 research papers that are approx 9 pages each so wish me LUCK. And then Kevin comes on Friday so I'm obviously very excited for that. He better bring me peanut butter

Rome... A little late

So, I have taken my time putting up this post because I wanted to include photos but for some reason it won't let me so everyone is just going to have to deal with it. DAY 1: Thursday the 18th, we woke up at 7am to get all our stuff together and run to our bus that was waiting outside the Ferragamo store. We made it, I was quite sweaty though. Yuck. The bus ride was 4 hours and I tried to sleep but coach busses, no matter how luxurious they are suppose to be, are not that comfortable. We arrived around noon, checked into our hotel and got pizza for lucnch. We got these HUGE slices that they fold in half for you so you eat it like a sandwhich. Of course I dripped the oil from it all down my shirt so that was nice. At 2 our first tour began. We took the subway to the Spanish steps which are right in front of this street with all the expensive stores on it and it always seems to be crowded but it was a lot of fun. Then we walked to the pantheon which is essentially just a really really really really old church with a hole in the ceiling. Oh and Rapheal the painter, not the ninja turtle, is burried there. Outside of the Patheon there were these men dressed up like ancient roman worriers. One of my roomates was trying to get a picture taken with him and he said that she had to pay. But then as I was causally strolling past he said "for the sexy one, free" so I took a picture with them and of course felt very special for like 30 seconds. We then walked to the Trevi Fountain which was packed but beautiful. We threw coins over our right shoulder because thats what everyone does. What we gathered was that if you throw one coin you will return to rome at some point in your life and if you throw two you'll fall in love, or something cheesy like that. Then we got gelato yum! The rest of the tour that afternoon was a long precession of churches that all blended together and none that were too exciting of famous so I've blocked all details of that out of my head. BORING.
That night we met up with Allie and Allison who are studying there and we went on this organized bar crawl. We all met by the Colossuem (pretty cool at night) and had a sort of happy hour where there were "free drinks" (we paid 15 euros to join) we got a t-shirt and we played some games that were entertaining to watch. Emily, Marrissa, and Michelle all played one game where they were partnered up and had to push a beer can, while blindfolded, up the leg of thier partners jeans, and down the other, then open the beer and try to get their partner to drink the whole thing without spilling as fast as they can. The one girl in the competition that wasn't one of my friends won. Then we went to three other bars, danced, drank, and had fun!

DAY TWO: 7am wake up...again. There was a bus strike so we had to be at the subway at precisely 7:45am because the strike began at 12 and we had to make it to the Vatican!! When we met our tour guide, Fredarica (who was acutally really cool except for this little incident) she took attendence like 5 times. No joke. We were all ready to murder her and wander around the massive building by ourselves. But she eventually got her shit together, got us "Whisperers" aka headphones and we were off! We saw a bunch of broken statues in the first couple rooms that did not impress me. Then we saw some of the old popes living quaters and all the paintings done by raphael like the School of Athens which is that painting with people walking/sitting/chilling on some sort of steps. I'm sure if you saw it you would know what it was. Then we went into the sistine chapel in which you are not allowed to take pictures but I snuck a few. After taking like 15 I got caught on the last one and one of the guards yelled at me. Its okay though cause I had no idea what he was saying. Next stop was St. Peters which is BEAUTIFUL. It is also enourmous, the largest church in the world! Everything in it is overly decoratated with gold and mosaics and all sorts of things. Our tour guide pointed out that everything that looks like a painting is not a painting at all but a mosaic and thats why its okay to have lights on all the time because it can't fade. Looking at the pictures then was incredible because these things were so elaborate and huge. The last popes body is still on display there which was slightly distrubing. I got pictures of that as well which felt wrong but it was allowed and I was intruiged. His face was covered in wax though so he still looked like a human as opposed to a rotting piece of flesh. YUCK. We climbed to the top of the dome after which was more steps than the Duomo! There were gorgous views up there. I lost my friends though, thought they had walked down with out me. It turns out we were just circling on the top in search of eachother at the same time so we never ran into eachother. I then sprinted down the stairs thinking they would be waiting at the bottom but no such luck. I just chilled at the bottom and then approx 7 minutes later they came busting through the crowd yelling my name so I guess everyone was a bit paniced. The rest of the day we spent relaxing. We had a long, expenisve, lunch which was not good (Rome's food kind of sucks) and then we took a very much needed 4 hour nap. We had Mcdonalds for dinner and then we went to Campo di Fiori which was this really fun little square with lots of bars. We started the night in this bar called Drunken Ship and a bunch of us girls got these pitchers of long Island Ice Teas yum. Then we went to a couple other places and thats about it!

Day Three: We went to the Colesseum. Its really cool looking. I'm mad at one of the popes though from back in the day because he wanted to recycle the marble so theres no seats left cause they were all taken out! It probably would have still looked more like a stadium today if that hadn't happened. LAME! The rest of the day was spent looking at ancient roman ruins which were cool but very little was left so it was hard to picture what it was like. For lunch me and Emily got CHINESE!!! It was nice to have a little change. I ordered way to much though so for the rest of the day i felt like a fatty. Then we took another long nap and went to the same place as the night before.

Day Four: We signed up for an optional tour which was of these "villas" they were also ancient ruins and one of them was this fountain garden. There were some 30 fountains and it was amazing. So pretty. It was crazy to think that people in the 1500's were able to figure out how to get enough water pressure to shoot the water so high! For lunch we got kabobs which are just chicken wraps kind of but they were delicous. Then we went home!!

Oh and I forgot the mention that besides a few moments of rain, it was like 60's and Sunny... in Feburary. JEALOUS???

Stairs, Confetti & Masks

So, this weekend was a TON of fun :) Saturday morning Emily and I climbed the Duomo... all 463 stairs of it. The sky was bright blue and it was sunny, so pretty much the ideal weather to go to the top! It was 8 euro to get in and some of the stair cases were more like ladders. It was absurb how many flights of stairs we had to climb and how croweded it was. But it was well worth it because once we got to the top we could see the entire city... we were even able to find our apartment and I zoomed in really far with my camera and took picture of Michelle and Marissa who were standing out on our roof top patio. Saturday night we went to YAB which was so much fun. Not many people went out so it was just me and my roomates and we danced our way into this little italian VIP area. At one point me and michelle had to run away from the italians cause they were getting creepy but we were on top of the speakers so she jumped down and then i jumped on her back and she gave me a piggy back ride. It was really funny at the time.

Sunday was Carnivale! We went to Viareggio which was a town on the ocean that supposidly has the best Carnivale in Italy. I have never seen cooler/bigger/more elaborate floats in my life. Everyone is dressed up from infant babies to old old people. Some of the floats were really poltical though, like there were two with Obama on them and they were essentially shitting on America but it was still cool. We all got masks and wore them around all day and I bought confetti and threw it at everyone... just fitting in with the locals. We also ran down to the water and took some fun pics there. It was really a great experience, probably one of the most fun things I've done since I've been here!