ITALIA!

This little guy ran to the side of the fountain, grabbed the penny that i had just thrown in off the side - because it barely hit the water - and made his own wish with my penny! I couldn't believe it.
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Hello everyone! It has been quite some time since I wrote a blog, so I have lots to update you all on. First of all, for our semana santa (basically a spring break for us Americans) I traveled to Italy with 4 other girls. It was absolutely amazing. We started of in Rome, where we toured the colosseum (a huge, incredible stadium where gladiators fought), toured Palatine Hill (ruins of empires’ palaces), saw the trevi fountain, saw the Spanish steps and walked down the major shopping street, and we went to the Vatican City. We had to wait for a couple hours to get into the Vatican Museum, which also houses the Sistine Chapel, which believe it or not was a very short wait. We were there by 8 in the morning. We got a great, yet mighty expensive tour of the museum and of St. Peter’s Basilica, but it was certainly worth the cash. The Vatican city was incredible and my photos quite honestly give it no credit. I can’t even begin to describe the beauty of this place, and having a tour really made me appreciate everything 10 times more. We learned things we never would have known otherwise about the history and the art, etc. I will mention much of what I learned on the photo captions (everything I can remember anyways). On Palm Sunday, we went to the Basilica for mass with the Pope! It was absolutely beautiful, and was conducted outdoors. It was probably the most incredible 2 hours of my life; the music was very moving, palms were everywhere, the square was packed with people but everyone was completely silent, treating it as an everyday mass, praying, singing, and worshiping. You could buy olive tree branches on the street to have at mass, and the money donation you gave would go towards an organization to help the needy. We also saw the Pantheon (a domed temple). Side notes about Rome; the transportation is absolutely awful; a very pointless metro exists with only 2 lines, and the booths where tickets are bought for both metro and bus almost never are functioning. Yet, if you don’t buy one of those tickets that you simply can’t get ahold of, then you pay a 50 euro fine if caught. Silly. Also, I refuse to believe that hostel regulations exist in this city; we stayed at the world’s worst hostel – I am quite sure it had to be world’s worst. We had no bathroom, so we used the one in the room next door, which had a broken shower head and a door that didn’t close. There were no locks on the doors, yet the people working there tended to leave the building unattended from time to time (don’t ask me why, but I guess having a beer at nearest bar was more important than the belongings of over 30 kids). So needless to say, my passport stayed in my moneybelt that weekend. Other than that (yup, not done yet!), we had a broken bed, one girl didn’t have a comforter and the room had to have been at 0 degrees, we had no warm water, and we had no privacy because when the workers actually decided to stick around, they decided to bug us have to death by walking in without knocking and non-stop talking about god knows what. What a great stay, huh? We were pretty glad to get the heck out of there, and move on to Florence.

Colosseum in Rome
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In Florence, did we get to stay at a normal hostel you might ask….well, no. We had reservations at a hostel, but they must have overbooked or something, and moved us to Gyseppi’s apartment. Yes, that is correct, we stayed with a random Italian who spoke no English, and the 5 of us were put into the spare bedroom. This ended up working out just fine, because we each had a bed, we were close to everything, and we weren’t bothered by Gyseppi like we had been at the last place. So, let’s see…Florence; what a great city! In Florence, we did plenty of shopping (good ole leather products and cashmere scarves – really did me in!), we saw the Duomo (beautiful church), went to the Accademia museum to see Michelangelo’s David, went to the market, took a side trip to Pisa to see the leaning tower, and did a tour of Tuscany to see the countryside, which consisted of a walk through the hills (Florence is in a valley) and a nice 3 course Italian meal. Everything was beautiful. I will talk a lot more about this in picture captions. BUT… speaking of food, I would like to mention that I love Italian food! We had lots and lots of pasta. Every type of pasta noodle with every type of sauce imaginable, plenty of pizza and calzones and gelato! We had a couple meals where had every course, like you are supposed too – with fish or a steak after the pasta dish. We spent every night eating a large meal and having a bottle of wine at a nice restaurant – a great way to end a long day! Ok, back on track. After 2 ½ days in Florence, we headed to Venice.

Just hangin out with a Gladiator...
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Venice = beautiful. The canals are great – we were in complete shock when we found out we would be riding waterbuses around town! We stayed in a nice little hotel for 2 nights. In Venice, we visited St. Mark’s Square where the Duomo is and the palace. We saw both of these, and they were both great. The Duomo was incredible because it was all mosaic and very bold colors. It was one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. Doge’s palace was cool, and we saw some nice Venetian art. We went to the Rialto bridge to shop for glass – there are tons of street vendors and shops. Venice is known for its glass, so we had to take a trip to the island, Murano, where it is all made and watch a demonstration, which was fun. It was just a ½ hour boat ride away! And finally, to end our day, we did a Gondola ride! Way too pricey, but it was fun! The next day, we headed to Verona, a very cute little city known for the Juliet house from Romeo and Juliet. The story was based off of the this house, so we did the little tour of it. Then we relaxed in the city and enjoyed the atmosphere. At the end of the day, we took a train to Milan.

Inside the Colosseum. This was underneath the stage, where dressing rooms, etc were. THe stage is no longer intact.
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Time for my 3^rd hostel story – we were only staying in Milan for one night because we were flying out in the morning, so my job before leaving was to find a hostel for the city. I found one for just 10 euros a night, and I thought that since we were getting there late, and leaving very early, maybe saving some cash and staying at this one wouldn’t be a half bad idea. So I ran it by the girls, and all of us knowing that it might be a little trashy considering the cost, we still decided to save that cash. So, a couple weeks later, here we are in Milan standing in front of a gated door, in the middle of a rather sketchy neighborhood, and ringing the doorbell for about 20 minutes. This door had barbed wire at the top and was spraypainted from top to bottom…and why was no one answering the door? After waiting for far too long, I walked to the nearest bar, and asked a gentleman if he knew anything about the hostel, and he said in a very rough accent “Oh, they probably stoned.” OH GREAT. We ran the doorbell for a couple more minutes, and finally someone opened the door. He stared at us blankly as though he was more confused than we were, and then let us pass. We walked through a strange courtyard, where many people were standing and playing foosball (god knows why they didn’t answer the door…) and walked into a very dumpy hostel. We asked to see the room, and it looked….dirty to say the least. We walked back downstairs to find one of the workers rolling a joint over Britney’s backpack…..hmmmmm. At that precise moment, we decided to BOOK IT! I told the nice, yet very high young man at the desk, that we didn’t see a clock upstairs and had to get up by 4 am to catch a flight, so we were going to stay elsewhere. And his response: Oh, good idea. I have a reggae party every night until 4 anyways.

All 5 of us.
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So, we wandered the streets of Milan for about an hour with our HUGE suitcases, now even more packed with the purchases from Florence. We found a 4 star hotel, probably one of the nicest hotels I’ve ever seen, and shared a big room. When we split the cost between the 5 of us, it wasn’t too bad. We didn’t get to see any of Milan, but at this point we were pooped anyways! We’d done plenty of sightseeing, and we’d heard Milan wasn’t as great as the other cities anyways. So, we went out for our last Italian meal, the whole 3 courses, and called it a night. The next morning we flew back to Madrid, to start school again the following day.

On Palatine hill. These are castle ruins.
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WHAT A TRIP! I’m so glad I got to go to Italia!