Miss New Buda

I've realized that I am absolutely terrible at starting blog posts, and I'm probably going to have to get better at some point but I'm just going to jump in on this one! Swiss airlines is so boss. They serve chocolate on (almost) every flight, and the chocolate is way better than what you're going to get in the United States. Fact. 

We landed in Budapest around night time, and luckily our school itineraries had a map and multiple ways of transportation to get to the hotel. Trying to be economically conscious and learn the typical ways of transportation, we decided to do the cheapest way, bus...and then the underground. Surprisingly, we were able to navigate our way just perfectly fine (with only maybe just a couple bumps along the way) and we were pros in no time! 

Once we arrived to where our hotel was we looked at the AMAZING view that Budapest had provided us. We couldn't imagine if the city was this mesmerizing at night, how much of a great time we would have during the day! The pictures that I took in no way do it justice, but here is one so you can generally get an idea:

For dinner we went into this English pub that had both Hungarian dishes and English dishes, but being in Hungary we decided to try the Hungarian food. I went with goulash (yummy!) and a couple of my friends tried Wiener Schnitzel. Overall it was a good, cheap meal! 

Another thing we could not possibly prepare ourselves for: the hotel. but specifically....the hotel breakfast. *cue in angels singing*

I wish I had taken a picture of the breakfast area because it was so freaking extensive! There was cereal, fruit, yogurt, pancakes, biscuits, omelets, pastries, bacon, sausage and so much more. There were multiple choices for EVERYTHING! 

The hotel also had probably the best towels I've ever felt when it came to shower towels. It was as if God himself had made them. So soft. So magical. 

Hesitating, as we could have eaten all day at the breakfast bar, we walked outside (where it was extremely windy) and took a tour around the Pest side of Budapest. I actually didn't know that there were two sides...Buda and Pest! It was a great tour, but a little hazy as I didn't know much of the history coming into Budapest so it was hard to retain. We visited a Jewish temple, the "tree of life", and a jewish museum. After our tour we ended at a church and a couple of friends and I walked and walked and walked all the way up to the top. The view, of course, was gorgeous. 

It was lunch time and although we were in a place with different food, we decided that we were craving Thai food. Best decision of the trip, in my opinion. We entered this place that was cheap, but it seemed really popular. I can't even describe to you how good that pad Thai was. I honestly just wish I was eating right now so I could be experiencing culinary excellence (typical of this blog to maybe possibly be exaggerated).

After that out of body experience, we met with the school group again to go to the Terror Museum. At first when I heard the title of this museum, I for some reason thought it was going to be like a scary movie type museum. Not exactly scary movies, but just scary things. Well, the museum was a bit scary, but for a different reason. Hungary had been affected by World War II, and so at this museum were things in relation to that. Throughout the museum there were many videos of people talking about their experiences. Although I didn't really, truly understand, just seeing their faces so distraught and sad was enough to make anyone feel their pain. 

For dinner, we, once again, went to the English pub and then headed back to the hotel to just simply hang out and talk and share each other's favorite songs, it was a really nice, relaxing evening. 

The next morning some of us woke up early (like 5 am early) to visit the Thermal baths. While everyone else went to go swimming (which now I regret I didn't do) I went to take pictures. That worked out fine though because since everyone else was wet, they needed someone to take their pictures! Once we were done with that, we went to our haven of the Hotel Breakfast and then took a much needed, but not nearly long enough nap. 

Apparently, at the hotel, you could order special pillows such as a Vitamin E pillow, a pillow for your back, or a pillow with horse hair. I didn't try any of these, but a couple of my friends did and they claimed they slept like a baby. So I guess if you have a chance, try it out!

Our next venture was another tour around Budapest. We visited the market, which I guess was famous for its pickles, and then we visited the Buda side of Budapest. This is said to be the nicer side, and I could see that because we went to a CASTLE! My fav. Can't get enough of those. 

I was still exhausted from the early morning tour, so I took another nap, but, thinking ahead, I set my alarm to a couple minutes before the sun was setting and I woke up just in time to enjoy the breathtaking view and of course...take some pictures! The image loader is making the colors all funky for the picture I wanted to upload, but again, you can see it better here. 

Our last part of the school trip included a cooking class, the thing I was looking forward to the most! My group's task was to make meatloaf and a cream pea sauce thing. The first step was to cut the onions and then cook them in oil for a bit. Well, we messed up on the very first step. Classic. We cut the onions! Buttttt we forgot to cook them in oil! Woops! The head chef later tried our pea sauce thing (still don't know what it was, also I have to add that I was not part of the making of said thing) and made a bad face. I think that's when our group felt a BIT defeated and our chef supervisor decided to just take over. I think that was probably best for everyone. Of course, I later managed to burn my hand from boiling soup when I was ladling it out, and that kinda ended the dinner for me. This was over a week ago and one of my fingers is looking pretty grody, but we carry on! 

It's odd to think that I've been in Europe for almost 2 months and I've already visited 6 countries (including Italy). The time is going by insanely fast and I need it to slow down! I want to appreciate every bit of this experience that I have and be able to document it at the same time so I don't forget anything. My worst fear (which I'm afraid may come true) is that I'll arrive home in an instant and be gone from all of this. It will still be something that I have done, but it would be just that....done. 

On a happy note, I've still got a couple trips left and I'm excited for those! :)

A Very Harry Potter Weekend

My trip to London has probably been my most chaotic and dysfunctional trip yet! It hadn’t even started and my friends and I were already a hot mess. Firstly, getting onto the bus was a bit harder than we thought. We knew we were pressing for time because the busses come every however many minutes, so we scrambled to get our tickets and realized we didn’t actually know where the bus picked us up from. As we ran outside with only minutes to spare, my friend decided to step onto the street where a bus was just inches away from doing what it did to Regina George!

After that mess, it turned out that we missed the bus by only seconds (great), but this really nice person who worked at the stop walkie-talkied the driver and had him come get us (BLESS). We were then on our way to the Pisa airport! 

The airport itself was a true breeze; you didn't even need to take off your shoes. After we got through security, we had plenty of time to relax before our plane started to board. However, a couple of our other friends on the same flight had a class that ended later, and they didn't show up until we were boarding! This would only be the first time out of many that we would get to things just barely in time in London. 

We took RyanAir for the first time, wondering why the flights were so cheap! It didn't take us very long to figure that one out....the entire plane ride the flight attendants would announce promotions, and I mean the entire plane ride. Every time the flight attendant spoke, I took out my headphones thinking it was something important. Nope. Just a promotion of Lady Gaga's new CD among other things. You know she didn't do that well if RyanAir is promoting it....just sayinggg. 

Once we flew into London I could not contain my excitement! I had been waiting so many years to come to this city with such a great history of culture....not to mention, I would be going on the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour the next day. 

When we reached our hostel, we were greeted by a very friendly woman. The entrance of the hostel was a cute, humble looking bar, which we didn't get drinks from, but the atmosphere was quite nice. We climbed up the stairs and went into our rooms to find out that (clearly...) our rooms were co-ed. The stink was unbelievable! However, there was a bathroom that was separate from our room, so we didn't have a problem changing there. The hostel itself was pretty great, the staff was incredibly friendly and it seemed to be in good condition (aside from one of the showers didn't drain all the way, so I took a shower in a puddle...blehh). Unfortunately, we were roomed with a creepy Romanian man who kept hitting on my friends. He was fairly harmless, but it was just really annoying. No problem though! We only had to be in the hostel when we slept, so we were out early by morning on our way to venture the wonderful city of London....which was freezing. 

We learned quickly that Oyster cards were the way to go when it came to transportation in London, however it took a couple dirty looks until we finally got it right. I asked a woman what an Oyster card provided and she just flat out didn't understand my question, as if I could be so stupid as to not know what an Oyster card was. We had been planning on getting one eventually, but we just wanted to make our way to Kings Cross station first, and we decided that we would figure the card out later and just pay this once for the bus. Apparently, that was stupidly American of us to do. We decided to pay with our coins to get on the bus and one woman basically condescendingly asked if we were really paying to go to Kings Cross without an Oyster card, and we were pretty much the laughing stock of the bus. Being a little annoyed, I said that we CLEARLY weren't from here, so I asked what the best option was for us to do, which had of course, been the Oyster card. I just felt like if we obviously weren't from the area, it probably would have been helpful to try and help rather than be condescending. It worked out anyways, this was just a bit of a rant. 

We eventually made our way to Kings Cross station where we visited....you guessed it! Platform 9 3/4! My friends and I took pictures there and I bought a wand for my little cousin, and a mug and ticket for myself. It was magical!

Our next stop was the British Museum, which held a lot of cultural history in it, it was cool! Sorry, didn't have much to say on this one...

Now, for the most exciting, yet stressful part of our trip: the Harry Potter Studio Tour

We had been running a bit low on time, and knowing we needed to give ourselves as much time as possible (since we hadn't figured out the transportation system just yet), we started to power walk to Kings Cross station. It was just our luck that the line we needed to take had been closed at Kings Cross, so we were then directed toward a different tube station. Again, we were power walking, but that was just not cutting it for me...we had to do the unthinkable....we had to run. So I started running chanting on my friends like some sort of army officer "LET'S GO LADIES", looking like complete fools running through the streets of London. Thank God I had somehow (probably divine intervention) convinced myself to run because when we reached the station we only had three minutes until our train was departing! Again, we booked it through the station like lunatics! With approximately thirty seconds to spare (not to mention we were now truly hot, sweaty messes) we made it on the train (tube? idk)! We then started to look at what we had to do from there, it said the studio was about a 15 minutes walk (lies) and so we were discussing our plans when a nice lady overheard us and told us there was a bus right outside of the station that would take us to the studio. God bless. Once we got onto the bus we realized that walking would have legitimately impossible. We went on so many roads and even went on a highway, I'm not entirely sure what we were thinking. With triumphant music playing (in our heads) we entered the building that we had been waiting a very long time for: The Warner Brothers Studio. I'm not kidding when I say that I almost started crying. Don't even get me started when the first thing we saw was the staircase. Ugh, emotions. Before the actual start of the tour we were put into a room where we watched a video about the growth of Harry Potter, there were tears. 

Now, I've already done my fair share of picture sharing for the tour, so you can access those on my picture blog here. 

The first place we entered was the Great Hall.

 My sister had gone before, so I knew we were going to encounter this, but I had imagined feeling more like a student at Hogwarts than how I actually felt, which was a fan stepping onto the ground of what was a big part of her childhood. We got to see the sets, big props, and a glimpse as to how they used masks and animatronics for the movies. It was so. cool. There was also a portion of the tour with a green screen area where we could appear as if we were riding the blue flying car and another one where we could appear as if we were riding a broom, it was so fun! All of my childhood dreams were coming true! One of the things I was most excited for, and did not disappoint, was tasting butterbeer! It didn't have alcohol in it (I'll have to attempt to make a recipe at home) but it was soooo good! I don't like whip cream, but whatever cream froth they had on top of it was amazing!

 After the tour we went into the gift shop where I purchased yet another mug. This one I was obsessed with from the beginning as it was a Marauders Map mug! I could not turn that down. It was such a crazy, yet perfect day :)

Part of the reason why I decided to go to London was not only to experience the behind the scenes of Harry Potter, but my dad was also in town on business. However, being in a different country made it quite difficult to get ahold of him. Luckily, my hostel and his hotel had wifi so we were able to rely on that for the time being. I texted him and told him to meet me at the Victoria and Albert Museum at 10:30 and hoped that he would get the text and be able to make it because I wouldn't be able to see any texts once I left the hostel. When we got to the museum (which was awesome by the way), there was a little bit of internet, but inconveniently Viber didn't work for some reason. I spent maybe an hour or more wandering around part of the bottom floor of the museum looking for my dad, while he was on the other side of the bottom floor, until finally he decided to venture over to my side and finally found me! Unfortunately we were only able to spend half a day together, but it was still really nice getting to see him and share a little bit of what I had experienced on my European journey so far. We stayed in the museum for a little bit, and then made our way to Kings Cross so we could buy my little cousin another gift, which was a ticket for Platform 9 3/4. After that, we headed towards Buckingham Palace. At this point, the weather started to get really crappy (both heavy wind and rain), so we only stayed briefly, and got on the tube (which I had mastered at this point....hell yeah) to go towards the other big points such as the London tower (which was closed :( ). Impulsively, we decided to hop onto one of those tour boats that took us along the river to show us the London Eye and the tower that held Big Ben, and (to my surprise and enjoyment), an all guys school which Daniel Radcliffe himself had attended! Wanting to get closer to the sites, my dad and I got off of the boat and attempted to take pictures, however the weather was just so terrible that we left and decided to spend the rest of the evening in Piccadilly Square. We found a nice, really cool looking restaurant, and just spent the rest of the evening at dinner. The atmosphere felt very modern vintage (as cheesy as that sounds, I feel it's pretty accurate), and I think my favorite part of the meal was the lemon meringue dish, which wasn't pie but it was more like a custard delight of heavenly glory (may or may not be exaggerating...who knows, maybe it was just THAT good...it was). 

Again, I had another perfect evening to a great trip! I'd love to visit London again when I'm not broke and when the weather is better, I think it's a fantastic city with much history and I'd really like to come back.  

The Hills are Alive in Austria

Two weekends ago, Jan 30- Feb 2, we made it to Austria! My friends and I were most intrigued by the Sound of Music tour, and I, of course, was dying to see the Neuschwanstein castle which influenced Disney World's Cinderella castle....typical Nicole. Just like Switzerland we took a bus to Austria on Thursday and got to our hotel at 5 in the morning! I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to function yet again on about 3 hours of sleep. On Friday morning we jumped on another bus to start our Sound of Music tour! There, we saw the house that was shot for the Von Trapp mansion in the movie

the famous gazebo for the "Sixteen going on Seventeen" song

 and the church that Maria and the captain were married in.

 At the city where the church was we had AMAZING apple strudel and mulled wine, which, for those who don't know, is warm wine with cinnamon spice mixed it.

 I'm still not quite accustomed to wine, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought. When we went into the church, I think my favorite part was seeing an actual skeleton on this throne at the altar.

 My favorite part of the tour was the view shown down below and when the bus played the songs for us to sing along to. It was nice having a whole bus of people just as enthusiastic to sing their hearts out to a classic musical.

Naturally, coming back from the tour I was exhausted and after I took a (not long enough in my opinion) nap, my friends and I walked down town and climbed a fort that overlooked the city of Salzburg. Luckily, we made it to the last part of the sunset, which made part of the sky blood orange.

Couldn't help myself! But anyways, here's a couple pictures of the amazing view:

Surprisingly, I wasn't dying when I reached the top, so after we got our pictures of the sunset, we were on our way back down and headed over to dinner! Since I was in Austria, I HAD to try Wiener Schnitzel. I didn't actually know what it looked like, so I was very surprised to see that it was essentially fried meet, however it was still very yummy, especially with the cranberry sauce!

 Aaaandd of course I went to bed immediately when I got back....but not after watching the first half of the Sound of Music (which was playing 24/7 at our hotel).

Saturday we went to the Neuschwanstein Castle, and I tried Bratwurst for the first time beforehand. Again, I wasn't sure what it was, so I was surprised to find out that it was pretty much a hot dog....but like way better (I'm not a big fan of hot dogs). Afterwards we made our trek up to the castle, which was awesome of course!

 There was an option to ride a carriage pulled by horses, but my values and ethics were definitely going against that option, so we stuck to being healthy and walking up the hill! I also found it a bit hypocritical of me that I was so concerned about not supporting carriages or Zoos, yet I am still not a vegetarian. I can't really justify that one. (Yes I can----Bacon is yummy).

We then left the castle and made our way to our next hotel in Innsbruck. The city was beautiful, and we were fortunate to walk around a great amount of it. For dinner, we decided that we wanted to go in a group of 8 and try to find a place to eat. Needless to say it was a lot harder than we expected. As the night went on we were getting more tired and hungrier, but eventually started to make our back to our hotel hoping we would find something closer. After at least a good hour an a half we stumbled upon a Greek place with a big table practically glowing and beckoning for us to sit in it. Our tired feet and empty stomachs were relieved when we finally sat down and were able to have a delicious Greek meal. Although it took a while to get there, it was worth it!

The next day was all to ourselves to explore the city of Innsbruck. A couple of my friends and I went around to the main sites closer to our hotel. This included a building with a golden roof (which had an incredibly boring museum inside), a beautiful cathedral, and the clock tower that we were able to climb up on. At first I was a bit hesitant, but the view was absolutely worth the climb up the stairs. We had a lot of time to kill, so we went into a panini place, and then went to a cafe to grab a bit of the famous cake, Sacher Torte and proceeded to talk for about an hour. It was a nice ending to relatively relaxing weekend.

I Waited Too Long and Now I Don't Remember What I Was Going To Write About

Edit: This was supposed to be posted before the Switzerland post, but I forgot, so now it's awkwardly published after. So just know that everything you read was written like a week ago. Okay, carry on...

I know that I've been planning a blog post for this week but now I can't remember what I wanted to say. I know that on Sunday I went to mass for the first time in a long time (aside from Christmas and my grandma's memorial) and it was something that I really needed. Our priest said, and I quote, "there is nothing you can do to make God love you less." Meaning that God loves all people, and gives the same amount of love to everyone, no matter who you are. He, also, and I quote, said, "God has the same amount of love for the Virgin Mary as he did for Hitler." The point is that God loves literally every single person on earth with the same amount of love. And I think that we should too (or at least show the same amount of compassion). There's a certain comfort knowing that you are receive infinite amount of love just for being you and for making mistakes. Obviously some people would take this as being able to do whatever they want because it won't change God's love, but in a way, it makes me want to be an even better person.

Moving on from the cheese...

My roommate and I used to have another roommate here in Florence but she had to go home, so now we have three beds. Naturally, we put all three of them to make the ultimate bed! See below...it's awesome. 

We've also been super paranoid because we have been told about bed bugs recently because there has been quite an epidemic and they are a REAL THING. One night I found a couple bug bites on my shoulder and I started scratching even though they didn't feel itchy, I just knew they were there so I was always thinking about them. Then I would look around my bed, in my sheets, and under my mattress just constantly searching for bed bugs, but seeing nothing, but also not entirely sure what I was looking for. So both my roommate and I were freaking out, totally joking about it, but just unsettled. Fortunately (and you know bed bugs are bad when I say what I'm about to say) we found that we had a mosquito in our room! yesssss

Again, wasn't sure what I was going to write about before. I think I was going to talk about classes. Some of them are good. English is great because we started out by reading Greek mythology and it's so interesting! All of the Gods are completely ridiculous and horny buttt it makes the stories entertaining for sure! 

Sorry this post is boring, but Switzerland and Rome are much more interesting. Read those! Or read a book! Why are you reading this anyways? 

Chocolate!!!!!!!

This past weekend I was lucky enough to visit Switzerland, the chocolate capital of the world. That's all you need to know really.

Literally the entire weekend I felt like the character from Spongebob that freaks out about chocolate. See picture below.

No exaggeration.

Let's back up a bit though to travel day. On Thursday night we were supposed to leave for Switzerland from Florence at 6:30 pm, but the schedule got moved back to 8:15 because the bus was coming from Rome and for some reason they were late. No problem. However, we didn't actually get on the bus until almost 10 at night, and we still had to stop for dinner. I was also told that the bus got lost (not sure if this was true) so we arrived in Interlaken, Switzerland at 6am. But with a curse comes a blessing! The program that we went on is called "Florence for Fun". The people who were coming from Rome on the bus were on a different program called "Euro Adventures". Our program felt so bad about the delays that they offered to give us a 50% discount to a trip to the Venice Carnival. Hell. Yeah. So I will most definitely be taking advantage of that! Both program leaders were very nice, but the people who were attending Euro Adventures on our bus were probably the most obnoxious, rude people we've encountered in a while. I won't go into detail, but there is definitely a difference between the people who attend the Florence for Fun program and the Euro Adventure program. It's no wonder they have the reputation that they do. 

Okay, just needed to get that boring stuff out of the way so we could move on to the good stuff!!

So after sleeping for two hours (we woke up at 8), we went downstairs so some of my friends could sign up for Canyon jumping! I didn't sign up as it wasn't on my list of things to do and not exactly in my price range. However, for those who did do it, it seemed absolutely worth it because Interlaken is one out of two places in the entire world where people can Canyon jump. Incredible! 

Friday was a pretty relaxed day. We walked to Lake Brienz (again, pictures below), and the view was stunning. Even on the walk there, I could not stop thinking about how beautiful Switzerland is. It felt unreal. I had never seen water so blue and never felt air so fresh. Coming from Florence, known for its pollution, being able to breathe absolute pure freshness was well....a breath of fresh air. I don't think I've said the word "fresh" enough times. 

Oh yeah, I promised you pictures...

Unreal, right?!

Later that night we went to what we had all came to Switzerland for...the Swiss chocolate tasting. Oh yessss.

It was all amazing of course. I also learned that the more chocolate snaps when it breaks, rather than bends or folds (I'm looking at you, Hershey), the better the chocolate is. At the end, we tried an alcoholic chocolate piece that you bite into and then down like a shot. It was very minimal, of course, but still fun to do! I have a video of me doing so, but the Internet is so poor here, I won't be able to share it until after I get back from "studying" abroad. 

As I said, Friday was very relaxed as we were all very tired. We turned in early, after eating at this great Irish pub with our AWESOME waiter named Sheppy (or that's what his friends called him) from New Zealand. 

Saturday morning, during breakfast (which consisted of jam and bread) I noticed a man with pink satin bell bottom pants. Later on we started to notice more people with the same outfit and painted faces. It was odd....but more on that later. So we headed off to the federal city of Switzerland (whatever that means, kinda like a capital), Bern. The view overlooking the town was absolutely gorgeous. I didn't take very good pictures but just Google image it. In Bern we passed this stand that was serving free melted Swiss cheese on warm bread. My mouth is watering just thinking about it! It was so yummy!! My tour guide also bought this warm wine with cinnamon, it sounded like the perfect winter drink! I didn't get a chance to try it, but I'd really like to some time (but actually, friends...let's try it sometime!). There wasn't as much to do in Bern as I thought there would be, but it was still cool walking around a city we had never been to before. However, Switzerland's pricing is high! There was a Starbucks in Bern and the price for a grande was 9 Swiss franc which is basically the same currency as the US dollar. I don't buy Starbucks often anyways, but there was no way in hell I was trying any this time! Oddly enough, I think my favorite part of Bern, aside from the cheese and bread, was watching this street performer play bagpipes. I'm not sure what it was, but I just really enjoyed hearing music that we don't get to listen to often in the United States. 

After we got back to Interlaken, we were exhausted so a few of us decided to take a nap while the others decided to go out. We had the room key, so we just left the door cracked open for the others when they came back. Well, that idea backfired. The nap was unsuccessful to say the least. Remember those people with the weird pink outfits and face paint I was talking about earlier? Well, there were over a hundred of them staying in our hostel with absolutely ridiculous outfits, each with different themes. We saw tiger costumes, jesters, outer space theme, and even outfits with lights on them! It almost felt like we were the ones out of place. Apparently they go from place to place playing their drum line music, which is not at all quiet. During our nap we heard someone attempting to play the trumpet and then all of a sudden just a ton of drums outside out window. That didn't last too long so fortunately we started to drift off again. But just as I was drifting off, (half asleep, half awake) in my dream someone had screamed, which then caused me to scream....but instead of screaming in my dream, I actually screamed. Sooooo I woke up my roommates again! For our third round of drifting off we started to hear whistling. "Well, that's fine", we thought. It's just someone passing our door in the hallway! But the whistling was louder than we expected. We then remembered that we had left the door cracked open, so our reasoning was that it was just louder because the door was open. Nope. Two guys from the drum line crazy outfit party had decided to enter our room. They were being difficult and claimed that they had used their room key to get in our room but we knew that we had kept the door open, but long story short, after some yelling and shoving them out they eventually went away and our night continued nicely!

After all of that we went to dinner and then back to our Irish pub where we saw Sheppy again! It was nice to just sit at a table and drink, again, just keeping it relaxed. We had a stressful day!

On Sunday, a couple of my friends hadn't been to the lake that we went to on Friday, so we revisited that and took some gorgeous pictures and then we left back for Florence (but not before buying some chocolate first!)

The Infamous Su Crew Dinner

Readers be warned: This probably won't be as interesting to you as the actual dinner was to me and this is going to be the weirdest post I am ever going to make (maybe). So it's probably best if you just skip this one because it's more for me because this is like...you know, my blog.

It was Saturday, January 11th 2014. A night to remember. Wine was on our table, and we were ready to drink.

First course: Grilled vegetables for daysss and another thing that I don't know what it was but it was really good, and it's been a week but I know we were given other things...like cheese and salami (great description, Nicole).

Second Course: Pasta on pasta

At this point, we thought it was over and much of the wine had been consumed. Gang signs were thrown up and silly giggling following the phrase "if my legs could talk". "Peace sign" turned to "pizza" and deep dish was created.

(yeah I know this doesn't make sense to any of you)

 The night went on and our wine was gone :( but we were searching for more, not giving up .

BOTH tables next to us generously shared their wine and we, so so greedy, took it graciously.

Then, there was talk of dessert. What could be the options?

Claire, though, she had a plan. A fool proof plan. She would pray for....Tiramisu. Her prayer went:
"Dear God, if you are real, please let there be Tiramisu"

And there was.

However, we did not know that this ordering of dessert was in between courses. First, the salad came out and we thought, "okay..this is light...that's not that bad". But then, a fourth course. Meat and potatoes. I had to turn it down because I was so full and I wanted dessert.

Speaking of dessert:

I, a simple being, asked for chocolate cake. However the Lord was on my side that night. He blessed me with not only chocolate cake, no. He blessed me with chocolate cake, cheesecake, and...oh yes...and....lemon cake. Score.

After our bellies were full (and I mean full) of food and wine, we decided to continue our night in Rome never forgetting the Su Crew or Deep Dish.

Roaming Roma

This past weekend, my school took us on an opening tour in Rome! Some of us were still a bit jet-lagged, but we somehow (yet barely) managed to keep up with the busy schedule that we were provided.

Thursday, January 9th
On Thursday we took a bus from Florence to Rome which lasted approximately 4 hours. Although I brought a book onto the bus, I didn't manage to open it once. For the first two hours I talked to the people around me where we shared stories and laughed. When the conversations died down and throughout the second part of the trip, I looked out the window taking in the thought that I was in Europe. It hadn't really settled in my mind that I was just taking a bus ride to Rome....no big deal...The landscape was beautiful of course. The hills are so lush and the buildings are built so differently than in the United States. One person I was sitting with stated something that I agreed with. She said that it seemed that the architecture and buildings were constructed the way they were because people took the time to put in this extra effort into the architecture. In the United States it always seems like buildings are being mass produced and everything is so fast paced. Europe is different; it's very much about taking the time to appreciate what's around and slowing down a bit. Other conversations I may or may not have listened in on consisted of what people were passionate about. Getting to know peoples' passions is actually really interesting because it's as if they are sharing this really personal thing about themselves without revealing something secret. It's just something they really love and enjoy. There was also talk of shows that I watched and I wanted to jump in on the conversation but it was really nice just listening to what people had to say without participating.

Once we got to the hotel, we checked it out and soon after we took a three hour tour around the city of Rome. It was beautiful and I took many pictures, which you can access here. We visited the place were St. Ignatius resided (we even saw his clothes and books), the Trevi fountain (my favorite place in all of Rome! Side note: would definitely be okay with getting proposed there. So gorgeous!), among other places around the city. The streets and architecture are truly gorgeous. My only complaint about the city of Rome was how many street vendors there were trying to sell flowers by shoving them in your face. There were also these men that would flash lights to try and distract you in order to pick pocket you. Although the city itself was beautiful, unfortunately because of its popularity, tourism had taken something away from it.

After the tour, the whole program went to dinner where a place was rented out for us. There we ate way too much food, and we even had entertainment! There was a man who was nicely playing the piano for a good portion of the night, and he later transitioned into playing American songs such as New York, New York and YMCA. He was such a great highlight of the dinner and made all of us laugh when he did ridiculous things such as using a whistle for part of his act. During the dinner I talked to a group of girls whom I didn't know, which was great because making friends is part of this amazing experience! Afterwards we decided to go on a bar crawl because well..."When in Rome!".

We ended up only going to one bar, but it was absolutely not a dud. At first, I was a bit hesitant because it seemed like we were the only Americans there and I had not quite gotten used to the idea of being in a place without many Americans. We ended up staying and being the only females and Americans in the bar so that called a bit of attention to us...

When we decided it was time to go home, my friend and I went ahead of the group we came with and went by ourselves. We knew the way in a general sense, but not specifically...what I'm trying to say is that weeeee got lost. Woops!

So we went around 98% of the route correctly and when it came to turn to our street, which we had been unfamiliar with being there for only half a day, we didn't turn and we kept going. Somehow we just kept on walking and that got us pretty far from our hotel. We asked multiple people (including the police) where we were supposed to go but there were just so many ally ways it was too difficult to tell if we were going the right way. Eventually we entered this plaza where there were many drunk italians. Even though we had been down some sketchy ally ways, for some reason this plaza made me feel the most uncomfortable. We approached one group of Italians for directions but the directions one gentleman gave us we knew for sure was just not right. Finally, I found a group that looked like Americans and shouted, "okay, are you American?!" so frustrated with our situation. They smiled nicely and excitedly said yes! Thank God. We asked them if they knew where our hotel was, which they didn't, but two of the guys in the group offered to help us find it. They seemed, and were, absolutely trustworthy and I am so glad we found them that night. It took a while but they helped us find our way back and we made it safely to our hotel. Quick note: Don't ever go to Hotel Navona in Rome. They were rude and disrespectful. I understand that handling a group of college students is a hard task, but this is customer service. Apparently some other students arrived around 3am (we arrived around 1:45) and were locked out of the hotel because the staff kept our keys and didn't tell us. Great service...

On a lighter note, it was a funny adventure to look back and laugh on!

Friday, January 10th

Friday morning started with a visit to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum! It was incredibly interesting looking at what used to be the heart of Rome. I couldn't comprehend the fact that these were ruined governmental buildings and an actual part of a city. People lived here many years ago in an age that is significantly different than our own. This architecture was built by such talented individuals. My only wish was to see what it was really like back then and see the city come to life. Obviously, that wish didn't come true, but one can dream! This tour was nice because we had complete control over how much time we spent in both the Roman Forum and the Colosseum, and then we were free to get lunch on our own until we had to meet back at our hotel to go on another tour! Let me just say that the  pair of shoes I chose for that day was not a good choice...cute!... but not a good choice...

Our next visit was to the Villa Borghese, which was the Borghese museum that held many sculptures and paintings from famous artists such as Bernini. Before this trip, I'd probably say that I wasn't very fond of museums (holla, I'm becoming more cultured!). However, Rome started to change my mind. I really do enjoy art, but in order for me to really appreciate it, I need context. Fortunately for my learning experience, we were given a tour guide (and these awesome head pieces that he spoke into so he didn't have to speak loudly and we could hear him! MAGIC!) and he knows EVERYTHING! Like, we had this tour guide three separate times: Thursday, when touring the city of Rome (so like, that's already a lot), Friday, when visiting the Borghese, and Saturday, which you will see below, when we visited the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica. So basically his extended knowledge really helped me enjoy the art and architecture because it was so interesting learning about the stories and meanings behind the statues and paintings! For example: The statue of Daphne and Apollo is inspired by the mythological story of...you guessed it....Daphne and Apollo. The signature scene of the story where Daphne just barely escapes Apollo's lust by turning into a tree is what the statue shows. Many mythological stories were shaped into sculptures and although they are already crafted so beautifully, hearing the stories adds another dimension to the experience.

Something else that I learned is how nudity was actually a symbol of purity and spirituality rather than being scandalous. Of course many people viewed nude paintings as scandalous, but in one particular painting, it was quite the opposite! In the painting, Sacred and Profane Love, there is one woman who is clothed and another naked. One is supposed to symbolize sacred love, and the other profane. At first, I thought the naked one was profane love. However, I was told by my tour guide that the naked woman was actually Sacred Love. I posted a picture below so you could see what I'm referring to. I don't normally like traditional paintings, but again, context is key. So in the background behind the clothed woman, there is a castle behind her. This, along with her clothing, is meant to show materialism. Behind the nude woman is a lake and what seems to be a steeple. This tends to be more pure and innocent, sacred. I just found it very interesting that I could oversee so many details and miss the idea entirely, which probably is very common.

What really captured my attention is just how beautiful the sculptures around the whole city of Rome are! There is so much detail and they all look so powerful and graceful. It totally brought out my inner Goddess!

Well before I was in the museum my feet were killing me, so I think you can imagine how much my feet hated me AFTER the museum. Every time my group entered a room with a seat we all scrambled to get a seat because we were all just so exhausted.

Night time, I had a BLAST! I met up with a few girls, some who I just met, and a couple I already knew, and we bonded instantly! In italy, it is typical to eat carbs on carbs on carbs. Endless. So needless to say I was craving a big ol' salad. To be perfectly honest I've been craving a smoothie since we got here but we can't have everything. Anywho, my salad was awesome. It had lettuce (obvi), brie (the best cheese because brie), walnuts, pears, and honey! Yum. Also, someone didn't want their mojito so guess who got that? This girl! Never turn down free alcohol. It's just a simple rule of life. We then went to have a very low key evening at a nice, hipster-looking bar where we had wine. The cover charge was 1 euro, which was no problem because we got chips (again, hollaaaa). For some reason we decided to roam around the city, I think we just wanted to become familiar with it and see it at night time (even though I had my lovely, unexpected tour the night before). We went down under a bridge by the water, which looked absolutely sketch, but we were aware of our surroundings. It was fun exploring! We then headed to our hotel, but got distracted by a street that had lights hung around it (as many did) and a lot of people were walking around as well. We decided to go over there and check it. Best idea of the night. We stumbled (not literally. Please, we're classy ladies) upon this bar that had all drinks for 5 euro. There were a ton of people there, so obviously it was a popular place! I got a Sex on the Beach, which was great! There, two very nice (non-agressive...shocker) Italian guys talked to us and we talked about the stereotypes for Italians and Americans. It was a really light hearted and fun night with a lot of good laughs and we safely left to be back in our hotel for our 1 am curfew.

Saturday, January 11th

Saturday is the day we toured St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican. I'm not going to lie, after all of the walking done the day before, this tour was a bit of a drag. I had one favorite thing and that was learning how much of a freaking rebel Michelangelo was when the Church asked him to paint the sistine chapel. He was not keen on doing this, so he left a few presents in the painting, my favorite being God's butt.

Gotta love sassy Michelangelo.

The Sistine Chapel, in my opinion (along with others), was a bit of a let down. I was expecting it to be as tall and grand as St. Peter's Basilica, yet it was not. Plus, we had seen plenty of other paintings on the ceilings so it just didn't make the Sistine Chapel feel any more special. I think what also took away from the experience was the fact that the room was so packed with people pushing that it didn't give the calm atmosphere I was expecting. It was very hard to enjoy. 

The tour was down in the morning so we had the entire afternoon until dinner to do whatever we wanted. My friends and I went to my favorite place, the Trevi Fountain! We took the cliche pictures and got out of all the tourism. 

Now I was going to post our grand finale dinner experience in this post, but it really deserves its own (most likely short) post because it was probably the best dinner experience I've had. If you have made it this far, you are a trooper. And thanks for reading!