Taking Rome Staten Style

2007-01-02T04:33:00.000+01:00

so ive already been home for a week and a half but wanted to post these pictures now that i'm ready to do it. i was really sad to leave rome but now i'm ready to post some pictures from our goodbye dinner at la limonaia. i'm not going to write an entry with this one cause it'll make me too sad. but here are the pictures anyway.

and of course i got stuck in london overnight which was an absolute nightmare. and as much as it was awful and the worst experience in my life, it was still a free night in london in a swank hotel room that cost 200 pounds a night. here are some pictures of my hotel room.

ok well i guess thats it for this blog. i made this specifically for my semester abroad and that's over now. so...that's it.

2006-12-19T16:01:00.000+01:00

as jesse's last day, she and i went out on the town to do some touristy stuff. we took the bus to the bookstore to sell back our books and then, from there, walked to la bocca della verità. it was a bit farther than we expected but we still got there on time and got to take a picture with it. there we are.

after, we decided we were hungry and improvised a bit and headed over to l'archetto, the spaghetteria. yeah we know it was lunch time, but it was our last meal out together and i found it only appropriate that we were both having the chanel spaghetti at l'archetto. after feeling like complete fatties, we walked down to the colosseum to see it one last time and to see the tree out there. here's a picture of it.

after, we took a stroll up via del corso to hit up a few stores and then came home so that i could turn in my paper and movie and chill with our other roommate. i don't have any pictures from last night mostly cause we were mostly just chillin and packing but it definitely was really sad. i said goodbye to my roommate this morning around 640 when her cab got here. i tried really hard not to cry, but i couldn't really help it. i'm also not worried cause i have no doubt in my mind that ill get to see my roomate again.

as for tonight, IES is throwing us a going away dinner at la limonaia...the place we all had our first lunch together. i'm excited to see everyone for the last time and to have an amazing 20 course dinner as IES always gives us. woot for being a fatty on your last day in rome.

2006-12-19T15:35:00.000+01:00

sunday night a big group of us headed out to the olympic stadium to watch the soccer game. this weekend, AS Roma played Palermo. the game was so so much fun especially since Rome kicked ass and they REALLY don't like sicilians. there's nick and justin outside of the stadium.

and this is some pregame fire.

here's a picture of me, steph, and melissa at the game.

and here are the two teams all lined up before the game started.

this is the game now in action.

this is the palermo section. they were given a small section in the corner and were instructed to stay in their seats after the game ended and all of the roma fans were gone. there were all kinds of things being thrown including fires and firecrackers.

this is now the palermo section after palermo almost scored. the riot police showed up and did not leave.

this is one of the fire bombs thrown into the palermo section.

there is some guy in front of us flipping off the palermo section after we scored.

melissa and justin with their goal faces.

steph and me.

waving the flag after we scored.

domenico. i forget exactly what his comment was on this photo but it had something to do with getting little sleep, taking drugs, and then getting hit by the ugly hippy stick.

theres stephanie with the field.

penalty kick where totti scored. woot.

this is me and my roommate at the game.

and this is the crowd singing "grazie roma" after we won.

gotta love the calcio<3

2006-12-17T13:38:00.000+01:00

i thoroughly enjoy IES people and IES Rome.

we headed out to the vatican to do some souvenir shopping and see the square for the last time before heading back to the united states. the square was really cute esp since they erected a tree that is almost as tall as the obelisk. here are some pictures of the square and jesse and me in it.

so then we took the train to piazza di spagna and saw this cute little choir of italian children singing english christmas carols with accents and messing up some of the words. so cute though.

so then last night we started in the apartment and then headed out to cheap bar to meet all the other IES people. here are some pictures of us in our apartment.

and at the bus stop.

on the bus.

in piazza navona.

at cheap bar.

rock castle.

after rock castle, meredith, lauren, jesse, and me headed out to club sin in testaccio and had a friggin blast. there were a bunch of IES people there that we ended up hanging out with and meeting all these italian people too. i dont have any pictures from sin...but it was quite a good time. as per usual, i fell down the stairs...so we all know the night was complete.

2006-12-16T18:38:00.000+01:00

so thursday night was valerio's birthday which coincided with the first night of our last weekend in rome. so being that these two things were happening and, on top of that, everyone was pretty much finished with finals, we all headed out to a club called cosmopolitan. it was so so fun especially since we didnt have to pay cover since it was valerio's birthday. here are some pictures from the apartment before we left to hit up cheap bar to get cheap drinks.

collin and me...one of us has asian glow one of us not so much.

emily and me.

my three girls showing me their bums.

the 4 of us smiling.

apparently im the only one smiling here.

and here's a silly picture of the four of us.

and there's some roomie love.

2006-12-16T12:33:00.000+01:00

so on saturday night when we returned from prague, jesse, collin, emily, and i all headed out for dinner and a fun, early night...since collin and i were pretty much exhausted

here are some pictures from dinner. we went to one of our favorite restaurants called l'archetto which is a spaghetteria. granted, they have other food too but theyre most known for their like 60 or more different kinds of spaghetti.

first this is jesse and emily showing off their azn pryde.

and then this is my and collin's reaction. (what are they doing?!)

and then a second try at our reaction (what do they want from us?)

and this is a picture of the four of us...our tuesday night cheesy 90s movie and dinner crew.

After dinner, we hit up piazza navona cause of their cute little christmas carnival.

this is jesse and emily with one of the huge bears.

there's jesse on the carousel. thats right, we TOTALLY rode the carousel that sits in piazza navona. and of course i chose the biggest horse on the ride and had so much trouble climbing on.

that's faux dancing grandma who was outside of the bar.

and jesse getting her turn with santa.

this is emily pouting in the corner after we left her with the rest of IES.

and this is one of the beautifully lit streets of roma all ready for christmas.

ok i know this is a week late but ill keep posting pictures and entries as i get the chance to do so. these last few days have been incredibly busy as i had 4 finals in two days and am not trying to enjoy rome as much as i can since i only have 4 days left. i also still have a paper due on tuesday so i'm kind of trying to do 1000 things at once. anyhow...i'll post more either this evening or tomorrow.

2006-12-13T19:47:00.000+01:00

i'm really sad to have to admit this, but this entry is about my last trip while abroad. This past weekend, collin and i traversed to the Czech Republic where we met two of my best friends from college, Jessie and Marissa. Prague was pretty much amazing. Here's the first picture of Collin and me. unfortunately, we didn't fly out of ciampino, but rather out of fiumicino which was sad in itself. fiumicino is rome's real airport and is much much bigger and it was really sad not flying out of our usual little airport. so here we are waiting for our flight. it looks like i have no hair but in reality, my hair just merged with hers.

so we got to prague at like...6 or so and checked into our hostel and got korean food for dinner. the food itself wasnt too authentic but it was so good considering i havent had real asian food in forever. after, we were on a mission to find a cafe and recreate our wondrous night in sweden but of course didnt find one we liked. we stumbled upon a mall instead and met a russian girl selling all kinds of russian chocolates and sweets and things. of course, we werent in russia but i got some anyway and tried talking to her. it wasnt bad i guess. so then we went back to the hostel (which was absolutely beautiful) and had tea and waited for jess to get in from madrid. when we picked up jess, we, once again headed back to the hostel and got jess into her room after many attempts. we headed to bed fairly early so that we could get up early the next morning to do all kinds of touristy stuff.

the first thing we did was hit up a church and small square near our hostel in the new town. there's me and collin with the church.

we then walked in the general direction of the old town. here's the beginning of wenceslas square.

so we stopped on wenceslas square to get some czech food which was fab and then continued walking to the old town with no agenda. we found like 100 different christmas markets and turned on streets that we just generally thought could have some pretty stuff on it. this is jess and me on one of those random streets with a random church in the background.

so we kept walking and shopping and hit this cute little street that had a slice of pizza handing out flyers. of course collin was ridiculously amused and made us take pictures of her.

and after a short walk we hit the old town square. i have to say it was so so cute with all the christmas trees and christmas markets and things. they sold pretty much everything christmas as well as everything prague and a ridiculous amount of sausage, mulled wine, and ham. there's me and jess in the square.

thats more of the old town square.

and those are the christmas markets in the square.

more of the square.

so after walking around the square for a while we found a petting zoo! it was kind of ridiculius. there was a donkey, 2 sheep, a goat, and a shetland. there are the sheep.

and there's jess with the pony.

and so we kept walking towards the water to get a view of the prague castle and the lesser town. there's a view of the other side of the river.

and this is the beginning of the charles bridge.

so we went back towards the old town square and found the astronomical clock.

that night we went to the symphony which was absolutely beautiful though for some reason i have no pictures. we headed back to the old town square that night to see if we could get some gingerbread (which didnt end up being gingerbread nor did we get it that night). the square was so so pretty when it was lit up, but all the stands were closed.

we stumbled upon bohemia bagel as we were walking home and stopped to have bagels even though we werent hungry or anything of that nature. it was pretty delicious esp since weve been so far removed from bagels for 4 full months. after eating and chillin and running into random people we headed back to our hostel to call it a night.

the next morning we got up early to meet marissa since she arrived in town pretty late the night before. we met her at her friend's metro stop and then we started on our way for the day. the first thing we did was the charles' bridge. we wanted to see the prague castle and wanted to just walk all day so we started by crossing the river on the charles' bridge. there's a view of the lesser town and prague castle from the charles' bridge (with marissa of course).

so we climbed up the hill (which was a little ridiculous but it felt good to conquer) and hit the castle. there's the prague castle.

and there's st. vitus' cathedral.

and that's the inside.

there's one of the amazingly beautiful stained glass windows.

and that's one of the small chapels on the side.

so we found the entrance to the cathedral's tower. it was 248 steps to the top and it was all in one small spiral staircase. of course, the entrance and the exit were the same so going through the staircase was pretty intense. and of course one of the lights wasnt working so there was a whole segment of the staircase where we couldnt see ANYTHING. regardless, here is the view of prague from the top of the tower.

and here's a view of the palaces.

this is a picture of me, marissa, and jess with the spires.

so we headed back down the stairs which was quite interesting and dangerous and then went for a stroll through the complex. here's the straw nativity set that was set up next to the cathedral.

and this is the back of the cathedral.

we also were able to catch the changing of the guards.

so after that we were done with prague castle and ventured down into the new town to find a different bohemia bagel to have lunch at. which was delicious by the way. and then we headed back into the old town via the charles bridge. there's collin and me on the charles bridge with a view of the old town.

so then we headed into the old town square for just a little while before heading up to the jewish quarter. here's a picture of me, jess, and marissa outside of it.

we didn't go in because it was about to close so we went for another stroll along the river to find frank gehry's dancing building, also known as fred and ginger. here's me and collin without the building in the background but in that area.

so there's jess, me, and marissa with the building.

and so shortly after, we headed back to the hostel to chill for a while before going to meet marissa's friend caroline for dinner. here's E&Y prague...which made me really really happy.

and so we met Caroline to have some Czech beer and then Czech food. Goulash was ok, it was just not something i particulary would eat very often. after dinner we wanted to do something involving absinthe so we went to a bar to do B-52s which is layers of kahlua, baileys, and absinthe. there's my shot.

of course i managed to mess it up. i put my straw in too early and it melted (since you light the top of the shot before you take it) anyhow, this is a picture of the 4 of us at the bar.

and there are the remnants of my straw/straws.

here are some random pictures jess took and posted and thought id add here just so everyone can see.

so we returned to rome on saturday afternoon which was perfect cause jessie had finals on monday. i'm in rome for the homestretch now. sorry it took so long to post this but i had all my finals and presentations in two days so i finally now just had time to write this. i'll post our rome activities soon.

2006-12-03T20:39:00.000+01:00

poland was really cold.

that's not all i have to say about it, actually. we got to warsaw early in the afternoon on friday and our hostel is right in the center of the city. it was a cute lil place called oki doki and i actually really enjoyed it. it was quite new and clean and had an excellent location...close to the old city and the central station, which were the only 2 points of interest for us. so when we got off the bus, we stopped in all the stores to look for boots and clothes since we passed an H&M, zara, and a bunch of other things right away. of course, we didn't buy anything but it was definitely excellent to have an H&M again. so we checked into our hostel and immediately went for a walk towards the old city. now, warsaw is quite pretty but it's not very old because, during world war II, like 80% of the city was razed. of course, it was all rebuilt in an attempt to revamp the city and is actually super super pretty. here's one of the first churches we encountered.

and there's me with the presidential palace.

that's the beginning of the old city and royal castle square. the red building to the right is the royal castle. what i found really weird about warsaw was that they had pretty lil terraces and lookouts but all of them looked out on like a highway. a really busy one. anyhow, there was one of them to the left but i didnt feel the need to take a picture of it.

that's the royal castle. as we were walking through the square, there were people decorating the tree and stringing lights. it was so cute.

and this is the main square of the old town, called Rynek Starego Miasta.

so the legend is that a fisherman caught a mermaid (syrenka) and the mermaid told the fisherman that if he started a city she would protect it. of course, the city was almost completely demolished during world war II, but you know whatevs. there's a picture of me with the mermaid statue.

and this is the barbakan. i think it's supposed to symbolize fortified walls around the old city. (i'm not really sure but i think that's right.)

and this is the new city. it doesnt look much different from the old city, but the streets are much wider.

and here's a small church we passed along the way. it was really cute and i dunno what it's significance was.

and this is a war memorial in the new city. it was kinda cool to see it lit up at night.

so we walked back into the old city to get back to our hostel and passed the royal castle. it's so pretty when it's lit up at night with a lighted christmas tree for decoration.

and that's warsaw university. there's ridiculous construction going on all on the streets in front of it.

and so we went to a pierogie place for dinner called pierogarnia. it was a cute little hole in the wall place that just served all different kinds of pierorgies. and since everything in poland is so cheap, we got potato soup, a salad, and a dish of pierogies for like 4 dollars. it was kind of amazing.

and this is the palace of culture and nature. it's a stalinist building that completely dominates over the city.

so after dinner and walking around, we headed to bed because we had to get up really early to catch a train to krakow. krakow is a 3 hour train ride from warsaw and we most definitely wanted to hit that up before leaving polska. the next day, we got to krakow around 11 and walked around. the city is really small but is so so cute and ridiculously touristy. it was also december 2, so all the christmas markets had just started. here's cloth hall which is in the middle of their main square, Rynek Glowny.

inside, there are lots of stalls that just sell krakow merchandise, jewelry, handmade fuzzy slippers, and all kinds of silly lil trinkets.

here are more pictures of the main square. the square is actually cut in half by cloth hall.

and this is st. mary's church. inside, the church is absolutely beautiful and a completely different style from most other churches. i couldn't take pictures, though.

on the other side of cloth hall, there was a huge clock tower and the christmas markets. here's me with the clock tower.

within the christmas markets there were so many foodstands to feed all the hungry shoppers. here's one of them grilling meat. lots and lots of meat.

and that's the christmas market which was so cute and sold pretty much everything christmas you could possibly want.

and there's me with my kielbasa. i was so proud of myself that i knew how to order cause i remember like 1 word of russian and its so similar to polish. i ordered "raz kielbasa biela." woot for knowing how to say one white sausage.

so we walked south and found wawel castle. its an enormous castle that sits on the river that was started in the 1000s. it was really pretty but we didn't feel like climbing up there so we walked along the river and looked at it.

there's also a legend that at the southwest edge of the wawel castle there used to live a dragon. one day, a shepherd left the dragon a poisoned sheep. when the dragon ate it, it drank so much water from the river that it drank itself to death. this is the entrance to the cave...it's me with the statue, but the den itself was not open to the public.

so we walked back to rynek glowny and saw these two fujifilm pandas and were unreasonably amused. it was so odd cause we asked them to take a picture and they spoken english. now, we expected it to be a picture of the 4 of us but mine totally snubbed collin and it looks lik we are two couples. woot.

and so we decided to head back to the train station after that and hit st. francis' gate along the way.

that night, we went back to warsaw and had a nice polish dinner as our last meal and then headed back to the hostel to chill and talk for a while. we didn't have to be out very early today because our flight was at 230, so we stayed up late to talk and then slept in today and took our time to get ready. it was altogether an amazing weekend and i really really loved poland.

oh and one more thing i forgot...PJP2 is from krawkow and so they had some paraphernalia. this is the shirt i got.

2006-11-27T20:46:00.000+01:00

woot for the best birthday ever. besides that thanksgiving was pretty much amazing, we did the weekend right by traveling to dublin to spend the rest of my birthday weekend there. danielle flew to rome first to be here for thanksgiving and and then we flew up to dublin with collin to meet jess. here's me and collin on the bus on the way into the city.

and there's jess and danielle on the same bus. danielle is showing everyone her man corner.

it took us pretty much the whole day to get to dublin and to get settled in, but once we got there we ate, walked around some, checked into our hostel, and then took another walk around the temple bar area since it was so close to our hostel. we ended up going to this cute lil italian style place called CafeBarDeli...one word. awesome. it was actually quite delectable and since we only were able to nap the night before (2 hours of sleep) we passed out pretty effing early.

dublin is 1 hour behind madrid, milan, and rome, so we gained an hour in the whole ordeal. we got up quite early to have breakfast where danielle was accosted by a toaster and she slowly took her revenge. we got out of the hostel early and took a walk to st. patrick's cathedral, but of course it was closed...the ONE time we get out super early to do everything stuff is closed. so we took pictures from the outside.

we then migrated toward Christchurch which was also closed but was going to open quite soon. here's me, danielle, and jessie outside of Christchurch.

and these are the two sides of the inside of the church.

As always, i lit a candle in this church in memory of all my loved ones who have passed. since we were pretty much the first ones in the church i was the first one to light a candle and my candle was quite lonely on the stand. here i am with my candle.

after the church, we headed over to dublinia...this medieval history/viking exhibit. it was pretty much the most amazing thing ever. before you even go in, they have these cut outs that you can stick your head in. here are the two rotations we did.

inside, they had a scary manequin in medieval costume. there's me, danielle, and jess with the man.

and there's jess with the ambiguous circus animal. we have no idea what that is. i thought donkey jess though trained bear.

and there are jess and danielle doing their black death faces. they were supposed to get a guy in the background but it didnt quite work out for us.

this was supposed to show a food cart in the market place. i couldn't resist and the whole time the dog was growling at me.

and i totally sexually harassed one of the dudes in dublinia. he was fake but he still was not amused.

and there's me, danielle, and collin in the viking ship.

there was also a section on slavery where they had shackles you could try on. we decided to sell jess for white slavery.

and there's collin being a viking/knight. classy.

as we walked towards trinity college, we stumbled upon a cute little cafe place called queen of tarts. it was voted best of dublin multiple times so we stopped in for tea and scones. SO delicious.

we also passed dublin castle which we are unsure what it was for. we didn't go in because collin didn't want to go in unless they had a zara in there. we all predicted they didn't so we kept walking.

we then took a tour of trinity college. it was so so cute and tour guide was meant for masterpiece theater. here's a picture of the first part of the campus.

and there's our tour guide, rory in another part of campus.

we also found my roommate's children. she's destined to marry and have our friend domenico's babies and collin and i found EXACTLY what these kids would look like.

we were able to see the book of kells also, but not pictures of that, unfortunately. so afterwards we headed to the guinness factory which was so so fun. it was 7 floors and kind of ridic. first, here's danielle and me with one of the lil exhibit thingies. we took this picture cause it said something about the head. i dont remember what though.

and there's jess and me with the barrels. they had some message on them about like the roar of raw heat or something silly like that.

and that's the guinness toucan that we did not know about. we were like WHY ARE THERE TOUCANS EVERYWHERE but then we came to learn that the toucan was actually like the main advertising character for a long time. there's one toucan with two guinnesses on his beak.

and there's collin showing me her homeland.

there was also this little area where you could post messages to show you were there. i put up two...one commemorating my amazing birthday weekend. and one showing my staten pride. can you guess which one this is?

and there was a place not as cool as heineken video messages but almost. we took a picture of the 4 of us. so silly...that's the link to it.
http://guinnessstorehouse.bitmove.tv:80/bitmove/guinnessstorehouse/receive.jsp?uid=B0BC2AE8E1ABBD7ABB63D582DC66E426

at the end of the tour, you get a free pint of guiness at this place called the gravity bar which is the highest level. the views of dublin from up there were beautiful even though i'm the only one who really enjoyed my guinness.

when we were leaving, we took our picture with the big guinness sign as everyone does. unfortunately, it's quite dark but here it is.

when we got back to our hotel, there's a huge message board that sits at the front desk to give everyone messages from their callers. of course my message took exactly half the board and said in huge letters: LISA CRUZ...FRANCINE CALLED and the rest of my message about where to meet them and what not. and as i was standing there, ate francine called! yes, we ended up meeting them at the porterhouse where we continued to a delicious lebanese restaurant for dinner. afterwards, we hit up quite a few ridiculously crowded bars where they were so amazing and bought us beers and chatted us up. i love the two of them so so much its kinda scary. i always refer to them as my two cousins even though they're really just my cousin and her husband so many a time i've had to clear up that my cousins aren't married to each other but that i consider them both my cousins even though i'm only actually related to one of them. anyhow, we had a ton of fun going to all the different bars and theyre pretty much amazing. you've made the blog a france and k rod! i love you both so so much.

and here are the 4 of us in the last pub with the dancing man. there was one really really drunk guy in this pub who was trying to dance with everyone. i offered danielle up to 8 euro to go dance with him and even pulled the birthday card but it didnt work. cute picture nonetheless.

ok well that was my wondrous weekend. it was pretty much the best and worst thanksgiving and birthday ever...leaning towards to best. poland next weekend!

2006-11-26T19:15:00.000+01:00

thursday night was pretty much one of the best/worst thanksgivings ive ever had. it was the worst because i missed my family so so much and wished i could be with them but it was also the best because i got to be an adult and plan my own thanksgiving for the first time and have my friends at my house for it and just really enjoy this ridiculous american holiday in italy with my american friends. jessie and i prepared most of everything (with help from collin, emily, and gretchen) and it was kind of a ridiculous ridiculous fiasco. not only did we start early with wine and sangria, but we were also rockin out to christmas music the entire time.

this is the beginning to thanksgiving...thursday morning, my last day of being a teenage (mutant ninja turtle) and so jesse and i decided to deck ourselves out in stickers that christina sent and then hand them out to our friends at school, too. that's me and jesse on thursday morning before leaving for school.

then we went through a whole day of school and i ventured into trastevere to find a place that sold gravy (though they didn't) and then came back and started our thanksgiving festivities. step 1 was pumpkin pie. after putting it in the oven we continued to celebrate with all kinds of random activities. first, here are the girls watching true life as jesse peels potatoes (in our newly washed and DRIED clothes).

then we were burning water and doing all kinds of maneuvering on our tiny little stove and somehow managed to set a pot holder on fire. here we are, a bit distraught, with our burnt pot holder.

and there me, jesse and collin taking a little break just for a pretty picture.

and then another short break for emily, collin, and me to show our asian pride. in case you dont remember, in assisi, emily decided to let the two asians know that this little ghetto trekky symbol meant asian pride.

and here's jesse with her pie straight out of the oven. can you say SO DELICIOUS?!

and here's the tuesday night crew. every tuesday, after our obnoxious film class, collin and emily join me and jesse in apartment 5 of corso trieste 142 to have dinner and watch 90s teeny bopper movies. i love these girls <3

and theres emily and collin rockin out in the kitchen.

while putting the potatoes in to huge pots of boiling water, we splattered water in all different directions. there's jesse with her burnt stomach. see, the water splashed all over our feet and the walls and somehow managed to hit her on her stomach on burn her. luckily, i had some aloe vera lotion to soothe that monster.

and here me and jesse with our silly faces. we had so so so so much fun doing up thanksgiving our way.

and here are the five of us who shared thanksgiving together.

collin also brought me the most magnificent fruit birthday cake from my favorite pasticceria, marinari. it's like the most amazing place ever and she picked the most wondrous fruit tart that was so so so good. for some reason i only have a picture of me and jesse with it, not with collin.

after our immense meal, collin and emily assumed the digestion position on our cold cold floors. i would imagine it helped considering the ridiculous amounts of food that we ate.

and here are the four of us with more funny faces. i think we took like 10 pictures before it was properly centered and had all 4 of us.

and so danielle was supposed to arrive in rome around 730 but missed her flight, so she caught the next one. my friends and i, after our wondrous meal, all headed out to termini to get her. now, given the time she was getting into rome, my 1201 was either going to be spent on the bus or walking to the bus stop, so we grabbed some bubbly and popped it along the way. first, here's emily and collin walking with us to the bus stop.

and this is my 1201! the very first minute of my birthday where i was no longer a teenager and now just a plain mutant ninja turtle. i found it fitting that i spent the turn of my birthday while walking the same route i walk to school. nonetheless, so so much fun. there we are popping the bubbly on the street.

and there's collin participating in her own biathlon - the two events being running and climbing.

and there we all are at the bus stop. notice how my roommate is caressing my leg.

and there's me and jesse water skiing on the bus. no wonder all the italians hate us americans.

and so we get to termini to pick up danielle and finally find her and have the reunion of a lifetime. danielle is one of 3 best friends from tufts and i havent seen her since august when i went to boston. so there's me and danielle.

we quickly run back to the nomentana neighborhood so danielle can have some thanksgiving dinner and then we can pack it up for dublin. i've already returned from dublin at the point where i wrote this entry, but the next entry will how the wonder of dublin and all the fun we had <3

2006-11-22T22:39:00.001+01:00

i've decided that i'm so blessed because i always find myself surrounded by the best people ever. not only are my friends from tufts amazing, but my friends from home are still my best friends despite the distance, my friends in Rome are amazing, and i have the best family a girl can ask for...especially my sisters. Christina sent me a birthday card early to be sure it would get here in time for my birthday. She knows that my deal is...when anyone turns 20, i am sure to remind him or her that it is just no longer possible for he or she to be as old as the teenage mutant ninja turtles. so she sent me the sweetest card and some TMNT stickers! Now, at first, I just had the stickers on display but earlier this week i decided that i need to celebrate the last few days of my TMNT era so my roommate and i proudly sported them on our outer most layer of clothing. here's the full sheet of stickers i have left, the other one is missing quite a few stickers.

and so that made me super happy cause i actually received that card about a week ago. then, anna informed me that she had sent me something and collin informed me yesterday that it was waiting for me at the IES center. after school, jesse and i went to pick it up and it was so so cute. anna's card was silly (as expected) and the package was even sillier. she sent me two little boxes of nerds, the soundtrack to party of five (as a preview to my real gift), and she colored me a picture of a giraffe holding a toothbrush and toothpaste. i really loved all of it and it made me so happy to receive such a silly birthday package right before my birthday. this is anna's masterpiece. i've named him denny.

and these are the two cards from my sisters :-D

and there's my CD and nerds.

ok well that's it for now. i just wanted everyone to see how amazing my family and friends are and how loved i feel. thanksgiving is just a lil more than an hour away. i'm totally a persony adult...we're hosting a bunch of our friends for a thanksgiving feast tomorrow evening and then danielle will be flying in from milan to join us before we go out for my 1201...the official time that i can no longer be a teenage mutant ninja turtle. i have a feeling we wont be going to sleep and will just head to the airport super early to catch our flight to dublin! i'll post pictures of us cooking and my last few hours as a TMNT and my birthday celebration as soon as i can.

2006-11-20T16:28:00.001+01:00

the past weekend was kind of a long one. i went to all my classes on wednesday and then came home to pack it up and leave for the weekend. after class, i got back to corso trieste and cooked myself lunch and took my time to get ready since my flight wasnt til kinda late. so i got to the airport fairly early since i didn't have much of anything to do in rome and took off for paris! im kinda proud of myself because i got to beauvais with no problem and then headed into paris where i took the metro from port maillot to marissas apartment and used the codes i had saved in my phone to get into her building and ring the doorbell so that she didnt have to come down. so i actually got to her apartment close to midnight and then we chilled for the night and caught up, though there wasn't much news considering i had just seen her 10 days before. we shared a bed (again...baby.) and then she got up early to leave for class with ariel. i got up around the same but took a short nap after she left and proceeded to get ready to be a real person. i met her and her monuments class in montmartre because they were taking a tour of sacre couer. i know ive been there a bunch of times now, but it was interesting to hear the history behind it and see the details of the architecture and decoration and then learn the significance of those. unfortunately, i have no pictures of this, but ive posted other things about sacre couer so whatevs.

that afternoon around 4 or so, marissa and i left paris on a train destined for amsterdam where we would meet jess. luckily our seats were right near each other and we were able to ask the nice man (who spoke every language) to switch seats so that we could sit together. it took about 4 hours to get to amsterdam and neither of us were successful in napping even though we were both so tired. when we got there, it was already dark and was raining so so hard. also, the directions that our hostel posted on the website were kind of awful so it took us a good while to find it in the pouring freezing rain. i also had my 3 euro umbrella which served us quite well but regardless, it was a pain in the ass. so we find out hostel which is SLAP in the middle of the red light district (as our map informed us) and checked in before heading back to the station to get jess. our hostel wasn't actually smack in the middle of the red light district, but whatevs. i think they consider our area the red light district cause there were so many cafes and all the restaurants were open late. the main streets that are known for prostitutes and strippers and such was actually a few minutes walk from where we were. so anyway, we went back to get jess and then had a delicious argentinian dinner at a steakhouse. one thing that i really loved about amsterdam was that it was so diverse and, consequently, had so many different kinds of food to choose from. anyway, after dinner, we dropped off jess's backpack in the hostel and took a walk around the city. though not much of anything was open on thursday night, it was such a pretty city with all the little canals and everything was lit up. here's the one picture i have of one of the bridges all lit up at night.

that night, we just hung out in the hostel lobby/bar/lounge thing to talk and catch up since we havent been together in forever. before this weekend, i hadn't seen jess since jerry's birthday (which was for like 20 minutes) and marissa hadn't seen her since july 4th. of course i had already visited marissa in paris and i also saw her in new york right before we both left for europe.

the next morning we got up fairly early and had breakfast in the hostel. the breakfast was eh but there was some decent granola which is always filling. it also had very lightly sweetened raisins in it which is pretty much one of my favorite things ever so that made me really happy. since it was such a nice day we decided to do a canal cruise. along the damrak, they have a few canal cruise lines that take you on a cruise of the city through the canals. it's mostly to view the architecture and to see the city from a completely different point of view. it was so pretty and the city is so pretty with all the canals and cute narrow buildings. here's a houseboat we saw parked along the canal.

and this is another one.

and this is a pretty view from the cruise (strikingly similar to the friendship in disney world, but not quite the same).

this is one of the prettiest views from the cruise. from here, you can view a full stretch of a canal with seven different bridges.

so amsterdam has 348239482309482394823904823 bikes, and that is not exaggerating. it's actually quite efficient, but pretty much everyone has a bike and rides it around the city as the main mode of transportation. this is one of the multi-leveled bicycle parking garages we passed on the cruise.

and here's marissa and me chillin on the wannabe friendship.

we got out pretty early from that since the ride was only about an hour long and headed over towards the van gogh museum. it's the most visited museum in amsterdam so it also gets really crowded if you go later in the day. it was definitely an incredible museum because it had so many of his original works as well as related works by gaugin and others. van gogh's actual paintings were really cool because they had so many of them that they were able to tell the story of his career as a painter and show the evolution of his techniques as he matured and studied art as an expression. this isn't one of my own pictures, but this is one of my favorite van gogh paintings that we saw in the museum. it's a painting of van gogh's bedroom in arles.

here is a picture of the rijksmuseum, the big museum in amsterdam that showcases the golden age of the dutch through art. it houses a lot of rembrandt, but we didn't go in cause we weren't quite as interested and didn't really feel like doing another museum.

after the van gogh museum, we found a delicious bagel place and got bagels. FREAKING BAGELS. can you tell that we're stupid americans? well, we're not so stupid it's just that our respective countries don't have much diverse choice when it comes to american food. sure, you can get hamburgers and spaghetti (which is supposed to be italian but has also become quite american) but when it comes to things like bagels, you just can't compromise...you have to accept. so then we had our delectable bagels and walked around the city some more to do a bit of shopping. marissa and i were on the hunt for boots and jess was on the prowl for sneakers (pumas/asics or something of that nature). we probly viewed at least 5000 different pair of shoes within a few hours but didn't find anything we wanted. so the "heineken experience" closed at 6 so we decided to head over in that direction to check it out. after getting a bit lost, we found it with plenty of time. this is me and marissa outside the brewery.

so we go in and it only costs 10 euro to have a self guided tour, three beers, and a special gift upon exiting the brewery. when going to the first room telling of the history of heineken, they have a cute lil set up with fake bars with the heineken sign outside. here's jess and marissa in front of one of these sets.

so we take a stroll around and see how heineken is made and get to touch barley and all the silly little things that go into learning how beer is made. after a few minutes, we hit a mini-soarin'. it was actually a simulation ride where you stand on a platform and watch the bottling process from the point of view of a bottle while the platform moves accordingly. it was so corny and silly but it was totally awesome cause i got to at least pretend like i was on a ridiculous ride with my hands up.
this is me and marissa waiting outside for the ride to start with the lil heineken showcase.

after we finished our little adventure we hit bar numero uno where we were given our first beer. the heineken is definitely so much better in holland than it is in the united states. besides that it was so so so so cold, it was just like so amazingly good. anyhow, after the first bar, we hit another ride that was a simulation ride also. in amsterdam, there is a horse carriage that rides through the streets all day pulling (probably) fake kegs of heineken. so the ride was a simulation of the carriage ride. they had the same warnings as mission space (people who are pregnant or have high blood pressure should not ride on this ride), but mission space is deadly and this ride was silly. so then we did a bunch of heineken commercial watching was cute and then continued on our merry little way. after that lil area, there was an area where you could send video messages to your friends and family from the brewery. first, we made one for danielle and then we made a silly one for my two sisters. this is the one we sent to my sisters.
http://www.heinekenexperience.com/vidEmail.jsp?uid=2388330F791469F60DD87BCF96FA6639&vid=lisa171106165532.WMV&host=hexperience3.bitmove.tv&format=wmv

there was also this lil singing and dance along that you could email to your friends and family. this is so silly.
http://bluescreen.bitmove.tv/bitmove/cgi/receive.jsp?uid=252A4050352450B48EC3DFD799227EED&format=wmv

there was also a video messaging station that was inside what was supposed to be a huge keg of heineken. this was our first attempt at a picture with the keg, but jess is blinking.

after, we asked someone else to take our picture with the keg so that jess wouldn't be blinking. this is what he produced. notice how i'm not even in it.

again, we found another nice american couple this time who actually took a picture of all three of us AND the keg.

here's marissa and jess with one of the old vintage heineken ads they had hanging in the brewery.

and here's the same picture we have everywhere else in the world we ever go (minus danielle).

we quickly hit bar number 2 where we were given 2 more beers to enjoy. i ended up hitting up the store to get myself a heineken experience shirt (since it was so super fun) and a really really corny gift for someone at home. i wasn't in the right mindset, but whatevs theyre both really cute. here's the three of us enjoying our third and last beer before getting kicked out of the brewery. of course, we didn't forget about our gift upon exiting and got a cute little heineken experience bottle opener that came in a souvenir tin shaped like a bottle of heineken. it was actually really really cute. and its wallet sized so it sits in my wallet with my IES id.

for some reason, i have no other pictures but the second day we headed over to the anne frank house which was really cool to see. it's pretty well preserved (minus the furniture since the government seized their furniture after arresting all of them). they also had her original diary as well as original letters written by otto frank after the liberation. when nick asked me how the anne frank house was the first thing i said (which is kinda funny that it's the first thing i thought of) is that the stairs are really steep. way to go, lisa. after the anne frank house we went in quest of the frank gehry building that we originally thought was in amsterdam but eventually found out that it's in prague (which all three of us are going to for the same weekend). so we hit up the museum of modern art and decided that everything we did that day was just ridiculously depressing. this is a picture jess took of a view of the city from the docks near the museum of modern art.

we headed back to the jordaan area of the city where we found a cute lil pancake place (unsure if this is dutch food or not) and had pancakes for lunch. jess and marissa got apple pancakes (more like crepes than pancakes but not quite crepes) and i got a cajun chicken one. they were all delectable and we ended up staying at the same place to have coffee and pie for like hours. it was a really cute place and it was quite chilly out so it worked out that we stayed for so long. there's marissa and me at the pancake place.

we were going to try and find a windmill a little out in the city but it ended up being cold and dark so we just hung around the city for a while. we stumbled upon a cute little indonesian place for dinner and ended up having amazing asian food and drinks for a few hours as well. as jess and i have decided, she really likes eating and sitting and talking to her buddies. and i agreed with all of the above. so after that, we sat in the hotel lobby/lounge thingy and talked and enjoyed our last hours together since jessie had to get up very very early to leave for the airport. we headed to bed around 1230 and jess left the hostel a little before 7 and marissa and i (though we didn't have to) left the hostel around 8 or 830 and headed to the train station to be sure we got there in time and had time to get bagels. so we got bagels and caught our train...it took me 12 full hours to get home. we left amsterdam at 10 am, got to paris at 2 where i caught the RER to orly airport and waited a few hours for my flight. then i got to ciampino where it took me forever to catch a shuttle to termini where i met nick so that he could come over and we could finish our italian project. by the time nick was gone and i could shower and unpack and not be so disgusting it was like 1030 pm.

well anyway, i had quite the amazing weekend being that i finally got to spend time with my jumbos again (minus danielle who will be here in rome so so soon). i missed them more than i will ever be able to express in words and getting to spend time with them and seeing that almost nothing has changed and we still have all the same inside jokes and everything is good between us was pretty much the best and most comforting thing ever. not only did i enjoy my weekend, but now i'm looking forward to going back to tufts and living with my three best friends.

so it's now monday evening and thursday evening danielle will arrive in rome to enjoy a wondrous thanksgiving dinner with my roma friends. we planned this big (relatively, of course) feast of roast chicken, mashed po's as jesse likes to refer to em, stuffing, green beans and an array of vegetables, and pumpkin pie. just to add to the feast we might make pasta? who knows, really...and then were all going out for my 12:01 to celebrate my transition out of adolescence. yeah, as of right now i have 4 more days of being as old as the teenage mutant ninja turtles so i'm a little sad that my status as a TMNT is expiring but eh i'm not as depressed as i thought i would be. i'm much more sad that i don't get to spend my birthday and thanksgiving with my family as i do every year, but it's cool cause my cousins (really my cousin and her husband...no, my cousins did not marry each other) are meeting us in dublin so it's going to be a blast anyway.

alright well that's it for now...ill post about my birthday and dublin after the weekend probably.

2006-11-12T17:02:00.000+01:00

budapeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeest.

ok so this weekend, lisa, collin, and i made a lil weekend trip to hungary. budapest was definitely so so awesome and i wish we had more time there since the frickin baths close early in the winter. anyway, so we left pretty late from rome which was so nice cause we usually have ass early flights. we took wizz air this time which had nicer planes but was completely delayed and not even nearly as awesome as ryanair. the airport is right near the city so we took a bus in and then got donuts at the metro stop. theres collin with her donut.

so we get there on friday afternoon and the sun sets early there too and it was really cold and i was really sick so we checked into our hostel and got dinner. our hostel was pretty cool cause it was like a hostel company where they just like rent out three flats and then you live in a hungarian apartment for your stay there. i felt totally hungarian (as collin would put it). so lisa was in one flat with a bunch of people and then collin and i had our own flat where the other room was occupied but the girl who stays there was away for the weekend. she must have lived there or something cause she had so much food and all these like products in the bathroom. this is the parliament at night as seen from our side of the river.

and this is the lil market hall down the block from our flat.

soon after, we went to this cute like cafe down the street from our flat called angelica that served amazing homecooked food for like 10 euro. the exchange is so awful (or good for us) that everything there is generally just so much cheaper. after that collin and i went for a walk along the danube cause it was actually kind of mild and there was no wind. after that we just headed back to the flat and did some catching up since i hadnt seen collin all week.

saturday was our day for sightseeing. we started by heading up the hill from our apartment into the castle district. the first thing we hit was the cathedral and fisherman's bastion.

this is the view of pest from the top of the hill.

and here's the cathedral from the front.

after we got to the top we headed to the other side to get a view of buda. it was soooo pretty.

and here's me and collin with a view of pest from in front of the castle.

this is the castle up close. it's not very historic looking simply because it has been invaded and razed so many times that the one that still stands is like not even a hundred years old, i think.

so after walking around a bit, we crossed the danube river to see what was going on in pest. this is the view of the entire castle from pest.

after a few minutes, we hit the basilica of st. stephen. this is me and lisa outside the basilica.

there's the rotunda of the huge dome. it kinda reminded me of santa maria maggiore.

and this is the inside of the cathedral.

after the basilica we kept walking east towards the park and hit a bunch of things along the way. here's the opera house which had a louis vuitton store right next to it. i was soooo tempted to buy someone a present there but thank god i did not.

shortly after, we reached heroes' square which is a monument park within a park in pest. this is the square.

and there was this castle thing in the park called vajdahunyad vára with an ice skating rink in front of it.

if you went in through the main entrance there was this cute lil chapel and a tiny little market place with small stands and things.

around that time we decided to have a late lunch and headed over towards the gundel restaurant but then ate at their sister restaurant, bagolyvar, instead. gundel was much more fancy so we werent up for that. this is the restaurant...i know its super random but i saw it listed in the 1000 places to see before you die book so we decided to hit it up.

afterwards, it got really really cold and we still had to walk all the way to buda so i whipped out my scarf hat (hat scarf?) that anna and i got in estonia. i decided to name him benny on the spot. here's benny's debut while i'm in heroes' square.

and so here's collin on me on the bridge on the way over to buda.

and this is the view of buda from the bridge.

unfortunately, the freaking gellert baths close early in the winter so when we got there it was already closed even though the ad we saw said they closed 2 hours later. so we went to the gerbeaud cafe instead to have their delectable layer cakes. lisa and collin had this like truffle torte thing and i had the signature gerbeaud cake with a cafe latte. yumm.

afterwards we just headed back to rest since we had to get up pretty early this morning. this is the chain bridge all lit up at night.

on the plane back to rome we met some architecture students who were studying in rome (from northeastern) who really felt the need to talk to me cause i was wearing my tufts sweatshirt. ends up theyll be in amsterdam next weekend too. how weird would that be if we saw them there? i doubt it, solely cause didnt see our friend obsidian lord in paris.

wednesday evening, i leave for paris to spend a day with marissa and then thursday afternoon we depart by train for amsterdam to meet jessie. ill post again when i get back on sunday night. should be hectic!

2006-11-07T10:15:00.000+01:00

so i pretty much had the biggest dose of home yesterday. jerry sent me a package and i have to say i love him more than i will ever be able to tell you. he knew i was getting homesick and so he got me a pop up card that said feel better and sent me the new john legend cd, true life: i'm a staten island girl on dvd, a hinman college keychain, and some post-its. pretty much one of the best packages i've ever received. props to my sister, anna, though...she was about to get her vhs converted to dvd so that she could send it to me. it's ok the three of us arent the same person or anything. i love them both so so much.

i also got a wagner college postcard from matt alvo which is quite amazing as well. he wrote me the cutest funniest message and i miss him so much too. i showed maryla the postcard since she goes to wagner and we did a bit of staten island reminiscing.

then i skyped with anna for the first time. i dunno why our schedules are so conflicting but they are and it took me being here for 2 full months before we decided to talk. well ive called her like once before but it costs me like a million dollars to call home so i barely ever do it especially since the time difference kinda messes with everything. my older sister, christina, also emailed me yesterday which was so cute. i miss her tons and she updated me on some boston finds and things. i miss having her around.

ok well here's a picture of all my wonderful new stuff. weijia gets here today!

2006-11-05T17:33:00.000+01:00

IES roma gives its students a week off from school to enjoy as something of a fall break. technically, we had 10 days to do whatever we wanted and i think every single person in the program left for at least part of the week. collin, lisa, and i booked our fall break pretty early and ended up getting a lot done in just 10 days. so we started the week off in brussels. i didnt realize we didnt need that much time there so, luckily, we were able to spend a full day in brussels and then do 2 smaller day trips. let's start with brussels.

we decided to walk down to the grand place from our hostel which was only a 10 minute walk. along the way we passed so many belgian fries places so of course we stopped to get some. i had no idea what i wanted and the guy didnt speak english or italian so i ended up getting fries with the traditional plain mayonnaise. normally i would be really grossed out by that but to be honest, this mayo was so much better and whatevs, i had it once. here's me with my fries.

we started at the grand place which was pretty excellent. its like their main square and its super super pretty. here are some pictures. im not really sure what the significance of each building is, but i know that it was super pretty and everyone just hangs out there at night no matter how cold it is.

and heres me and collin in the grand place. its much prettier to just take pictures of the places but ive taken to taking pictures of people with the background even though i might possibly be THE least photogenic person in the world.

so we continued walking looking for this lil fountain called mannekin pis. it's a small statue of a boy peeing and is (i think) the symbol of brussels. anyhow, along the way we passed this amazing waffle place. of course, belgium is known for its wondrous belgian waffles that are sold on the street for so so cheap and are so so amazing. here's the first batch of waffles that are served plain with sugar. (they call them gauffres)

and then there were the fancy ones that had chocolate on them or chocolate and strawberries or chocolate and bananas or even ice cream.

lisa got one with chocolate and strawberries, i got one with just chocolate, and collin got a sugar waffle. here are the 3 of us before we start...so good but so disgusting at the same time.

so i got one that just had melted chocolate on it and of course im pretty much the messiest person ever and every 10 seconds collin would have to grab a napkin and wipe chocolate off my nose or chin or cheek. this one was staged, but this is basically what i looked like the entire time.

we finally make it to mannekin pis to find that its this little tiny statue on a random street corner. well at first i wanted to make the picture be that the lil boy was peeing on my head but that was unsuccessful.

then we just posed.

brussels is also known for its art noveaux style. here are some buildings. i know kinda random

we eventually stumbled upon the cathedral. here's me and lisa with it.

we went inside and it was actually really pretty. definitely different from anything you would see in rome.

we kept walking and came to the parc de bruxelles which is lined by EU buildings and palaces. here's the park.

and here's the palais royal

if you keep walking past the palais royal, you hit this lil square that has a church of the military, a national library, and some art museums.

there's also a way off the square that leads to a pretty garden and has a nice view of the city.

and at the top of the stairs for some reason there was this park bench that had like a harness on it, making it kinda like soarin. but it didnt move. i dunno.

so we had dinner at the top of the hill and then came back to see the view of the city at night. really pretty but not as lit up as i had originally expected.

afterwards, we just headed to the grand place to hang out for a lil while. in the north, the sun sets so early that by the time it hits like 10 were so tired and cold that we dont wanna do anything.

the next day we headed out to bruges for a day trip. as collin so eloquently put it, we had traveled back in time to a provincial town pretty much straight out of beauty and the beast.

here's one of the monk's courtyards that we walked through to get to the main part of town.

so we finally make it to the church that holds michelangelo's madonna and child. that's me with it. ps ive kept my promise of lighting a candle in every church.

and this is the inside of the church.

afterwards, we headed to grote markt and collin and i had some french fries for lunch with samurai sauce which sounds quite gross. here we are with our disgustingness.

and here's the clocktower in the grote markt.

and some more grote markt.

there is also a church in bruges that allegedly holds some of jesus' blood. thats the priest who guards it and wipes the casing clean after people come look at it.

and thats me outside the basilica.

that night we just headed back to brussels and chilled for a while to get ready for luxembourg the next day!

so collin and i catch a train out to luxembourg where we meet this guy who reminds me so so much of a friend from home/school. it's weird cause this guy looked exactly like my friend but with shorter hair and not quite as tall. and he made kinda similar jokes and was actually really funny. anyway, so we head out to luxembourg to find that its cute, small, and gorgeous. the foliage is amazing and its just so relaxing to be out there. here are some views of luxembourg.

and this is the royal palais.

and then there was this random old a person who was like reaching out to touch the guard and all the other random a people were taking pictures of him so i figured i should partake.

after a bit more wandering we reach the church of our lady of luxembourg. here it is.

and here's some of the exquisite stained glass you can find inside.

and this is the burial of the royal family that is underneath the church. it's guarded by two bronze lions.

and here's the last picture i have from luxembourg. i took this on the way across the valley before we hit the church with the random mass in tagalog.

our next stop for fall break was scotland. we were based in glasgow but we also did a day trip to edinburgh. here is the view of kelvingrove park and the museums from our window.

we started the mackintosh trail which is the trail of things that charles rennie mackintosh designed. the first stop was the glasgow school of art.

then the willow tea room with amazing blends of tea.

thats when we decided not to do the rest of the mackintosh stuff just cause we didnt have time. so we headed out towards the gothic cathedral being that its creepy and it was halloween. thats me outside of the cathedral.

and thats the inside of the cathedral.

behind the cathedral there is the necropolis which is the old cemetary with burials and memorial stones of all different ages. this is the view of the cathedral from the necropolis.

and here are some pictures of the necropolis.

the next day we headed out to edinburgh for the day. edinburgh is definitely not as much of a city as glasgow but it's cool in its own way. this is me and collin at the edingburgh castle.

and here's the beginning of the royal mile. the royal mile is a combination of 4 streets that is between edinburgh castle and the palace of holyrood.

this is one of the cathedrals, called kirks, along the royal mile. this one is dedicated to st. giles.

along the royal mile we hit a children's museum which showcased toys and games and things. theres collin with one of the hand puppets. unfortunately i dont have a picture of it, but we also colored and made paper teddy bears.

and this is the palace of holyrood which is one of the residences of queen elizabeth.

the next day we were set to depart for paris in the afternoon so we decided to stay in the neighborhood of our hostel. we ended up visiting the kelvingrove museum because of the dali painting in it. this is collin and me in front of the museum.

and these are some of the animal exhibitions within the museum. its kinda cool cause almost all of the museums in scotland are free.

and this is collin's favorite dali painting.

afterwards, we chinchilled in the playground for a lil while before heading out to the train station to catch our plane. thats collin after having mastered the rope jungle.

we arrived in paris rather late and just ended up hanging out with marissa and some of her friends from her program. they were cool and her neighborhood is really cute with lots of bars and restaurants. on friday, marissa was nice enough to take us around paris for a bit. our first stop was the cathedral of notre dame. this is marissa and me outside of the cathedral.

afterwards we checked out the moufftard and then headed over to the champs elysees. this is the lv store where collin bought a speedy and then they treated us to champagne to celebrate the occassion.

there's the arc de triumph at the end of the champs.

marissa then brought us to the galleries lafayette to see the view of the city from the terrace. this is the dome of the galleries from the ground floor.

we also stopped at the opera house to see it since it's so ornate. there it is from the outside.

afterwards, marissa headed back home to get ready for the opera and collin, lisa, and i went for a walk along the seine to the eiffel tower. i was kinda proud of myself how much i remembered being that its been more than 2 years since i had been there. well here's me and collin in front of the louvre as we were passing through.

walking along the seine we got really pretty pictures. this is the eiffel tower with the path that leads to the hotel d'invalides.

and here are some pictures up close of the eiffel tower at night.

and this is the eiffel tower light show from the trocadero. it's not really a light show but the eiffel tower sparkles for about 10 minutes at the top of each hour.

that night i actually had twisted my ankle stepping off of a curb incorrectly so the next day i didnt feel up to walking around. collin and lisa headed out to the louvre since theyve never been and i stayed back and had lunch with marissa and figured out my schedule for the spring semester. that evening, i met collin and lisa at the moulin rouge and then we headed up to sacre couer. marissa informed me that sacre couer was a church built on that hill as sort of a plea to save the people who lived in that neighborhood. it was an effing tiring walk up a million stairs but it was so pretty and its definitely one of my favorite things to do in paris. it reminds me of my fam who i miss so so much.

after we finished at the church, marissa and our friend laura from tufts met us at the bottom of the stairs so that we could all get together for dinner. marissa had heard of a great fondue place just up the street from the church so we headed over. i forgot how much i adored laura and am a little sad that i don't see her enough. anyhow, here's marissa, laura, and me drinking the wine out of baby bottles that comes with our dinner.

and theres collin, lisa, and me enjoying our baby bottles and pot of cheese.

we got up around 500 this morning to head out to catch the bus to our plane. i finally got back to my apartment around 130 where i did loads and loads of laundry and am still not cleaned up or unpacked. its now 930 and im about ready for bed considering how tiring this trip was. anna made a good point that i may need more time to recover from this trip than i needed to recover from our trip to greece which mightve been one of the most intense trips ive ever taken. well, i suppose thats it for now. weijia arrives on tuesday and will be staying with me for a few days. i'll post some pictures from our sightseeing and then next weekend is budapest!

ps i love and miss jerry and my sister so so much.

2006-10-23T15:08:00.000+02:00

this past weekend, IES took a group of us south to hit up napoli and the sorrentine peninsula. we left friday morning and headed to napoli first. as soon as we got there they took us to the coast to have a delicious pizza lunch (on them of course) at a water front restaurant. of course we were served a full italian meal with 3 courses. all three absolutely amazing, btw. here's a picture of the neopolitan coast from our restaurant.

and here are some of the girls with their pizzas.

this is me and lisa with our desserts. i know she loves this picture.

after lunch, they took us on a bus tour of the city since we had very little time to do this amazing city. we did make a few stops, however. this is a picture from the top of the hill looking out upon the neopolitan coast.

my roommate also decided to pose with louis, who is ridic dirty now btw.

so we did a very short walking tour of the neopolitan coast. and by short i mean like 30 minutes. we started at castel nuovo.

then we headed out towards the galleria which was so pretty. this is from the outside.

and this is one of the wings from the inside.

after the galleria we walked towards plebescito square. here's me and jesse with the palace (i think?)

and this is me and lisa in the square.

after, we headed to an area of napoli called spaccanapoli. it's the main area of napoli to visit and its super cute. all the streets are narrow and there are random churches and monasteries and thing built into it. so one of the monasteries in napoli has the original nativity set. the nativity is a tradition that originated in naples and eventually spread throughout the catholic world.

and this is me and jesse chinchillin in the courtyard of the monastery.

after we finished our tour of napoli, the whole group headed out to sorrento to check into our hotel and to have dinner on the top of the mountain. we stayed in a hotel called the capodimonte (top of the mountain) though it wasnt actually at the top. it was just a few blocks from the main shopping area and was a beautiful 4 star hotel. IES really takes care of us, i must say. anyhow, here's sara and collin in our marble lobby waiting for room assigments.

and this is me and lisa in the lobby. in case you havent noticed we take this one same picture where we are positioned the same way the entire time and its just the background that changes.

this is me with the view from the balcony. i look like im 12.

there are some pictures of our room.

and this is another view of sorrento from our balcony.

so then we had a wondrous like 9 course meal courtesy of IES and afterwards didnt feel like going out cause it was rainy and disgusting so lisa, collin, and i all chilled on collins balcon ust taking in the scenery. here's me and lisa chinchillin on the balcon. (yes that is spelled correctly.)

on saturday, we got up early to have a buffet breakfast at the hotel which wonerfully included omelets made to order and then took a bus trip out to positano. positano is cute lil fishing town on the coast of the bay of salerno. it was super cute but, unfortunately, no longer beach weather. this is the view down on positano from the top of the hill.

and this is the view looking up at positano from the bottom of the hill.

after a bit of free time, we took a boat trip along the amalfi coast over to the town of amalfi. here's the view of positano from the boat.

and here's the amalfi coast.

this is the cathedral of st. andrew which is in the town of amalfi. i have to say, amalfi is super cute but there really isnt much to do there.

one of the artifacts in this church was this like silver panel which was supposed to be like the tombstone type thing of st. andrew (i think?). heres jesse kinda smiling with it?

and this is the inside of the main cathedral.

this is the statue of st. andrew.

after our tour, we had a few minutes to chill in amalfi before departing for sorrento. this is me and jesse on the stairs of the church. this picture really taught me why you shouldnt take pictures from below looking up. i look pregnant.

after returning to sorrento, we went to this delicious seafood restaurant with the program. we had amazing seafood pasta and fish dishes. here's sara, callie, and beth at dinner. ps they gave us 7 bottles of wine for 6 people.

and this is a sad attempt at bringing back the cobra attack.

and this is beth's really cute attempt at the cobra attack.

small note to the jumbos before i continue, the cobra attack, as seen in these pictures, should be reserved for the 4 of us and only us. kthanks.

after dinner, we went to karaoke with a bunch of IES people which was kind of amazing. i mean when is karaoke not amazing? this is callie, jesse, beth, and me karaoking. i dont remember taking this picture.

after a bit more dancing and a few more destinations, we all headed back to the hotel since we had to get up quite early to head over to pompeii.

pompeii was cool but not at all what i expected. i thought it was going to be a city preserved by ashes but it ended up being a town of ruins, not quite what i expected. i mean it was really cool, dont get me wrong, but it just wasn't at all what i expected. that's their amphitheater.

and this is the two different ends of the main street in pompeii.

and this is pompeii. it's ac excellent picture because it shows one of the main areas as well as the asian tour group taking a picture, woot.

and there are the random a people. i really wanted collin to jump in the picture but she didnt quite make it before they dispersed.

these are some pictures of bodies preserved after the eruption. if i remember correctly, the tour guide actually told us that these aren't bodies preserved by ashes. in fact, they found moldings of where the bodies were but had decayed and then filled in those moldings with concrete and displayed them.

and this was our last stop in pompeii, the temple of apollo.

after pompeii, we just had a nice lunch altogether and then headed back to rome. a good weekend altogether, fall break next week!

ps im sorry this entry was posted so late but my internet stopped working for a while and then fall break started so i was unable to complete the post until after break.

2006-10-16T17:11:00.000+02:00

winnie comes to rome!

so as my bus pulls into termini from the airport after a weekend in barcelona, winnie gives me a call informing me that they are at termini waiting for me. i can't even tell you how happy i was to see winnie for the first time. seriously, i love it here and i wanna come back after graduation and i LOVE traveling every weekend, but i really am starting to miss home. i miss my bed, my house, my mom, my sisters, my car, my friends, my phone, diverse foods, and tufts. so anyhow, seeing winnie had to be one of the most refreshing things ever. don't get me wrong, seeing alex was awesome as she was my first familiar face in such a long time, but i guess the fact that ive known winnie for like 8 years now and have been good friends with her since pretty much day 1 makes her such a huge part of my life. so i met them (winnie and her friends sean and tim from michigan) at the station and took their bags to bring home so that they could start sightseeing while i showered and did my usual recuperation after the weekend. i stayed home and did a bunch of stuff that needed to be done (laundry, shower, upload pictures, etc.) and then lisa and i met them out at piazza navona for dinner. we chose a random restaurant right on the piazza and had a lovely dinner. we came back and tim and sean passed out from exhaustion almost immediately and then winnie decided she wanted to go out. i was far too tired cause i barely got any sleep in spain and didnt even get to nap when i got home so i directed her in the right direction and gave her my cell phone and keys and instructed her not to die and to get home safely. i ended up sleeping in valentinas bed so that when winnie got home she could just go right to sleep in my bed. it actually worked out quite well that valentina went to sicily this weekend and isnt returning til tuesday or wednesday cause tim and sean needed somewhere to sleep and my apartment really isnt all that big.

anyhow, sean woke me up this morning and we got ready and had breakfast at the paris bar before heading to the vatican. we took the bus and train out to la citta vaticana. ive already been there a bunch of times, but it was the first time in rome for all three of them and, as architecture students, the vatican was amazing. well i guess to anyone of any religion or major the vatican just happens to be an amazing place. so we first went into the basilica and spent quite a while in there. i didn't take too many pictures cause sean took a bunch and i'll just post some of his. well here are a couple, i'm choosing only the pictures with people in them.

after, we headed down into the tombs of the popes and then i dropped them off at termini. we made it to termini just in time for their train back to venice and, 5 minutes before their train was set to depart and i was already out of the station, i realized i was still holding tim's sweater! so i ran back to the train and realized that their car was like halfway down the train and ran on, hoping it wouldn't take off with me still on it but couldnt find them. so i ran down to the other end of the car to see if they were sitting over there and winnie saw me running down the train so she met me at the door so i could give her tim's sweater. i have to say, saying goodbye to winnie this time around was one of the saddest things ive had to do in a long time. i mean, leaving home to come abroad wasnt that sad because of how excited i was but seeing winnie has made me quite a bit homesick. also, winnie is super awesome cause she went to target to buy me all the american stuff i needed and lugged it all the way here and also left me a few surprises. at my request, she ran to target to get me ziploc bags, gum, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, and deodorant. she also quite nicely surprised me with granola bars and trail mix which is pretty much the best thing ever.

ok well that was my lil rant about how much i love winnie and miss home.

2006-10-15T15:22:00.000+02:00

this past weekend i traversed out to barcelona with collin and lisa battaline. our flight left ciampino airport at 645 am which mean we had to be there by 6 which meant on the shuttle at 430 am which meant out of my house by 330. so i was supposed to get up at like 220 to shower and stuff but i think i set my alarm incorrectly and so i got up at like 315 when lisa called to see why we werent at our designated meeting place. anyhow, we found our bus and got to the bus station in time to catch our flight and all was well. weird, my sociology professor was on our flight to barcelona and she totally recognized me but didnt say anything. ah well, i wasn't upset about it. so we get to girona which is a small town outside of barcelona and collin takes a bus into town to get to the dali museum to meet kaylin while lisa and i head straight into the city. we get into the city around 10 and walk from the station to our hostel which isnt too far. we decide to check in and drop off our bags so we can at least go get something to eat considering we had already been up for like 7 hours and hadnt had anything to eat yet. we went to some random sandwich place (kinda like quizno's) which was awesome since we dont have such things in italy and then headed back to our hostel to get our rooms and shower and stuff so we can start our day. collin and i were in a 14 bed mixed dorm. it actually wasn't that bad but living in a hostel is definitely like a frat house in that it's just like ridiculously busy at all times. esp since our hostel was like the place to be, being that it was on the same street as casa mila and casa battlo and only a block away from la rambla. anyhow, here's a picture of our room. the beds were fairly comfortable but they only gave you a fitted sheet and a pillow case so i felt a bit exposed when i slept. oh well, no harm done.

so after freshening up we started walking north on our street, passeig de gracia, and stumble upon casa battló. so this was a house that gaudi designed on passeig de gracia. it's really colorful and wavy. we decided not to go inside this one cause casa mila is up the street and we were much more interested in that one (and the line was shorter). anyhow, here's the best picture of casa battló i could get.

so we continued down passeig de gracia and come across casa mila. another gaudi building, casa mila is also known as la pedrera. here's the sign outside the house.

this is me and lisa waiting in line to get into la casa mila. the italian fam in front of us had brought a full line of antipasti to enjoy while waiting in line. it was so weird. they had like canned olives and small personal bottles of wine for each person.

so the line was a bit of a wait but really not that bad considering how much of a tourist attraction it is. so casa mila is like...you go up to the attic and look at the models of the attic and then head out onto the terrace where gaudi designed all the airvents and things to be really cool chimneys. first, here's the courtyard you see when you first come in.

here's a picture of me sitting amongst the chimneys. luckily, it wasn't raining nor was it very crowded so i was able to take good pictures.

we also were able to take pictures of the two of us together (since collin was at dali). this is me and battaline with a bunch of different chimneys.

i know there are tons of pictures from casa mila but i really loved it up there. anyhow, here's another picture of me and lisa just one the terrace.

so from up there you get an awesome view of the city. this is me and lisa attempting to take a picture of ourselves with the view in the background. we managed to get la sagrada familia in there too.

there's this one big chimney on the roof that was really pretty and was easy to lean on since you cant really sit on the steps. here's me chillin on the chimney.

so after casa mila we hit up starbucks which was pretty much the most amazing thing ever. jesse (current roommate) and i always talk about how we could use a cup of starbucks right now and how we kinda wish they had that here. frickin spain of course has them so right after casa mila lisa and i ran to the closest starbucks and i got my vat of coffee, decaf as i almost always do. anyhow, after starbucks, we walked over to la sagrada familia (the sacred family). so this church was started by gaudi in the 1880s and still hasn't been finished. it's not a cathedral, but rather just a large roman catholic church that is supposed to be a mixture of a dragon's cave and whipped clouds. well, it's supposed to finished in 2010 so now it's still under major construction. here's a picture of it up close.

after the church, we headed down towards the water to see what we could encounter. first, we wanted to do the beach but it was a little too chilly to spend the day at the beach so we decided we would just walk south and probably hit so many things that we could just go see the beach and perhaps just enjoy the sounds of the ocean and the company of the locals. along the way, we hit the arc de triomf. it was kinda refreshing to see an arc that wasn't made of marble. here's lisa and me with the arc.

so after a lot of walking and lots of random sightings we finally make it the beach. the beaches in barcelona are gorgeous and people are frequenting the shore at all hours of the day. it was a lil chilly since its mid october but the waves were crashing and plenty of people were still surfing. here's me taking in the sun and trying to get rid of some of my paste (with a sweater on).

and here's me chillin on the boardwalk in barceloneta. barceloneta is the suburban town of barcelona that is situated south of the city right off the water. it's supposed to be known for american style pizza restaurants and tex mex, but we didn't have either of those. anyhow, the town was super cute.

while walking back along the shore towards the city, we encountered the dock where everyone parks their boats. this is the dock...i took a picture cause i saw all the boats of different sizes and thought of my sister and her boat.

so we decide to buy tickets to the stomp imax presentation but it doesn't start for a few hours. we keep walking along the path and find a mall! a freaking mall! i havent seen a mall since i left the isle of stats. not that malls are really that cool but i kinda miss them and i kinda miss the ridiculousness of the staten island mall. anyway, here's a picture of the mall (with a lot more affordable shopping thatn italy.)

we wander around the mall for a while and exit at every exit to see where it leads us. we end up on a dock at some point with a beautiful sunset which battaline and i romantically enjoyed. actually, i went to take out canteloupe (my camera) and the charm of PJP2 and benny fell off and fell through the planks of the dock. i was super sad but then realized i bought quite a few of those so it should be fine. anyhow, this is us with the sunset.

after shopping some more (though not buying anything) we catch site of mcdonalds and decide were not hungry enough for real food so we grab some mcdonalds. its kinda awesome cause i got a happy meal which included, chicken nuggets, potato wedges instead of fries, soda, a toy, and a desert for like 3,30. the toy is this lil music playing thing and here's a picture of lisa rocking out to her happy meal and the song from girls around, a girl group that our toy was based on.

so we still have some time to waste after dinner and we walk around towards the aquarium. there's this shark mouth outside that is no longer completely inhabited by children and we decide to take a picture with it. and by we, i mean I. do i look scared or just plain silly?

our stomp IMAX showing was so so cool. it was like this documentary style thing where it showed the rhythms of the world. here's me and lisa all taken aback by the super effects of IMAX.

after the IMAX, we just walked back to our hostel which was like 30 minutes but still a nice walk and there were so so many people around even though it was past midnight and nothing was open. on saturday, we got up early to have breakfast and then walked to parc guell, a park designed by gaudi. there are SO many tiles that go into everything gaudi designs. even the park sign shows this!

here's a picture of me at some part of parc guell. i wish i knew the names of the sections.

parc guell is an UNESCO world heritage sight and is actually famous for a lot of things, the longest park bench in the world being one of them. so many shards of glass went into designing and decorating every part of the bench.

here's a detail of the bench.

from the parc bench, you can get a really nice view of the city as well as a pretty view of the main buildings.

theres also an area with all these columns and random lil designs on the ceilings. this is one of the designs on the ceiling.

and here i am with the columns.

if you exit the parc through the main entrance, you can get a reall pretty picture of the buildings, parc bench, and colonnaded area.

the parc was rather crowded so we headed out and decided to hit up el corte ingles. its kinda hard to tell you how awesome corte is given that it has pretty much everything you could possibly want.

after corte, we headed towards the gothic quarter. the gothic cathedral COULD have been pretty if it wasn't completely covered in scaffolding.

here's a random street in the quarter.

there's lisa in the gothic quarter.

after this, we headed back to the hostel to meet up collin and get ready for the symphony. lisa and i got tickets to attend the symphony at the palace of music (palau de la musica). this is the outside of the palace on the side.

and here's the inside of the palace. it's so ornately decorated and there's so much going on in there.

the ceiling is especially known for the stained glass.

and there are also stained glass windows on both sides of the palace.

here's me and lisa enjoying the persony things we do like the symphony.

and this is the front of the palau.

after the symphony, we settled down for people watching, sangria, and paella with collin and kaylin. i have to say, barcelona is definitely one of my favorite cities ever and i was kinda sad to leave. one of the things i loved most about it is that its a lot more laid back than rome. you can wear sweatpants outside and not look like a total idiot. they also have tons of american stuff! dunkin donuts, starbucks, KFC, pizza hut, subway. all stuff that italy would never even think of having. freakin italia. ok well that's it for now i guess. winnie's here now with a few friends from mich so im gonna go meet up with her for dinner. ill post pictures and stuff from our adventures while she's here and then next weekend...napoli, the amalfi coast, and pompeii!

2006-10-08T11:49:00.000+02:00

SVEZIA

Before my weekend excursion to svezia, i attended a cute lil cooking class coordinated by my lovely study abroad program. it was literally just a group of 5 of us who went to an old italian woman's apartment where she taught us how to cook a lovely meal and then ate it with us. yeah it was super cute...it was me, battaline and gretchen, and then two guys from my classes, bernardo and chris. we learned how to make 2 different kinds of roman pasta, bruschetta, veal (saltimbocca alla romana), grilled eggplant, and tiramisu. here's a picture of chris and bernardo in their hot aprons cutting the pancetta for our sauce.

so it was as hands on as i expected but we learned how to make everything and also got the recipes typed out for us to make on our own. it's all really easy to make and is so so so good. i typically don't like eggplant much, but the grilled eggplant was probably one of the most amazing things ive ever tasted. here's a picture of me and battaline during dinner.

and here's one of chris and bernardo with our cooking instructor.

so i got home decently early on thursday evening, but considering how early i had to get up on friday morning i probly should have either come home earlier or gone right to bed when i got home. unfortunately, i decided to watch house of carters on you tube cause my silly sister wanted me to watch it as soon as possible so that we could discuss it and comment on how silly the show is. anyhow, so i stayed up later than i should have to pack, watch this show, and talk to my sister. i got very little sleep but it was ok cause i wasn't too awfully tired. well, i got up at like 530 to shower and get ready to go and then met collin at termini. finding and getting on the bus was no problem at all which kinda made the trip run a lot smoother. we got to ciampino not knowing what to expect and it was an absolute mad house. it is a very small airport outside of rome that was completely unorganized. you check in by destination and there's no real order to it. after checking in, everyone goes to this big hall that kinda reminded me of a modern day main hall that would find on ellis island. where there are just benches spread around and everyone waits for their turn. this is ciampino.

so while waiting in the big room we meet some other american study abroad students who are stationed in rome but spending the weekend in stockholm. theyre part of the john cabot university program for american students here in rome and they were actually quite nice. anyhow, after lining up for a while with other people on your plane, they open the doors and everyone files onto buses that drive around the runway bringing you to your planes. this is me and collin on the shuttle to get our awesome seats.

so collin and i end up being the very last people to get on the plane and so we have to take random seats, which isn't a big deal considering the flight wasn't very long. funny story, collin gets seated next to this big fat guy who takes up his seat and half of her seat and scarfs down 4 different salami sandwiches during the 2.5 hour flight. he also tends to lean over her to look out the window at clouds since there was nothing to see. i, on the other hand, was randomly placed in between the two guys we met in the airport. a fine pair, i must say. so back to the story. this was my first time flying ryan air and i have to say i really liked it. the chairs were pretty comfortable (like delta song where everychair is comfortable and leather) and the service was ok. the best part is, its free seating! it's like a free for all circus where you fend for the best seat on the plane. kinda fitting, no? well anyway, i highly recommend ryan air with its cheap flights to pretty much anywhere you would want to go. another funny thing about ryan air is that they serve beverages and things but everything is for sale, nothing is included. and as a promotion for this season, they're doing a buy one get one free shot of booze deal to try to get more people to buy it. i thought that was kinda fitting and really funny. anyhow, here are some pictures of ryan air.

the flight itself was fine. i was so tired i fell asleep before take off and woke up when there was probly like 1.5 hours of the flight left. the flight itself was fine and i occupied myself by reading the economist and listening to my trusty olive. we finally get to skavsta airport and have to hop on a bus that takes us into the city in 1 hr 20 minutes. that ride wasn't too bad either but i was a bit anxious to get there. we make it into stockholm city in pretty good time and buy T passes in order to use the train to get to our hotel. here's the sign welcoming us as well as a map of stockholm.

after figuring out how to get tickets and what ticket we need, as well as where our train goes and how to get there, we finally make it to our stop, telefonplan. what an awesome name.

after a bit of confusion and a lot of wrong turns, we finally find our hotel. we booked a hotel this time, called hotel attachè, because it wasn't much more expensive and got really good ratings. it was a bit out of the city but not very far at all and totally worth it. this was our room, 304.

so we quickly drop our stuff and pack smaller bags and head back into the city. right near the central station, where we arrived, is the old town, called Gamla Stan which actually means the city between the bridges. it's a city that dates back to 13th century and is so cute and colorful. this is me with Gamla Stan in the background from across the bridge.

so we walked through the cute lil cobblestone streets and tried to find a place to eat. we ended up deciding upon quick, cheap, swedish meatballs just to have it and also cause we were starving. here's collin with both of our meals.

so after dinner collin and walked around and i showed her the royal palace and the view of the city at night. the city is so pretty when it's all lit up.

since it was so cold and rainy, we thought warm pai (pie in america) and hot drinks would be absolutely delicious. we found a cute lil cafe that was lit by candle light and frequented by all the locals and ordered blueberry and apple pie with chai lattes. after that we were ready for bed and just headed back to the hotel. on the way home, however i caught site of an awesome subway sign in swedish. we decided to jack it since theyre so easy to steal but couldn't carry it home. here's collin with the sign.

though our hotel was a lil pricey, it was well worth it. not only was it clean and big, but the bathroom was awesome and we had cable tv in english. we slept so so well and got up to a surprise free breakfast. we expected a lil bit of bread and maybe some cereal but ended up getting this amazing gourmet traditional swedish breakfast buffet. they had 4 or 5 different kinds of bread, 4 kinds of pickled herring (which was SO amazing), 4 kinds of cheese, breakfast meats, swedish meatballs, jams, peanut butter, fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, grapes, fruit, and cookies. this is me with round 1 of 4 of our swedish breakfast. after that, i had never felt so full in my life. this time definitely even beat this year's super bowl.

after breakfast, we decided we would try to hit up the if...stockholm open. coincidentally, the stockholm open started on saturday with the first round of qualifying. granted, it was mostly people i didn't recongnize, but i still had a really good time getting to see and experience another tennis tournament for free. anyhow, here's the sign welcoming us to the stockholm open.

the stockholm open is pretty small. theres the one main central court, one side court, and one practice court. here's the main court.

another thing i loved about this and which i always love about going to different tennis tournaments is the obscurities of the ball kids. at the french open they did this weird wind up bowling motion to pass the balls around to each other. the stockholm open was actually even weirder than that. they took children's tennis rackets, unstrung, and attached a net around the rim so that it resembled a butterfly net. only the ball kids at the net had them but they used it always to catch the balls. it was so odd. regardless, here's a picture where you can see the net hanging down from the racket.

and here's one with the ball kid in action. special note for anna: as was the case at the french open, i probly attempted to take a picture of the ballkids in action at least 100 times before i even got one good one.

so after staying for a few hours, we headed back to the city to do some sightseeing. the only main site we did on saturday was city hall because the weather was so awful and i kinda didn't wanna go back to the vasamuseet. well, here's a picture of me with the city hall from across the water.

we went shopping for a while after that. what we actually ended up doing saturday night was canceling our hotel because the trains dont run past midnight and we had to be at the bus stop by 330 this morning to catch the bus to take us to our flight. before heading out to the stockholm open, we locked away our backpacks in a locker at the bus station for the day and only took with us the essentials. so after sightseeing, we did some shopping and bought some awesome stuff. i cant say what i got because it's someone's present for when i go home but lets just say that sweden has this weird obsession with everything italian, everything new york, and everything italian and new york. you can probly figure out what this has to do with. irregardless, here's a picture of central station which is actually a pretty old station that serves as the center for buses, trains, and subways.

after shopping, we stopped at a thai restaurant in this place called kungshallen. this place is known as a huge hall with all different kinds of food in it and its a general meeting place for young swedish adults to meet, eat, and head out together. collin and i were in the mood for asian so we decided on thai where we were able to have rice, noodles, and meat. delish. anyhow, after that we had plenty of time to waste so we ordered pai and chococcinos from the local cafe and sat, ate, and talked for a few hours. we initially planned on heading out the bus station after that and just waiting for our bus to arrive. little did we know what the freaking bus station closes from 1145-330. so we end up finding a mcdonalds thats open til 4 and just sit in there without eating for drinking anything until we can go back to the bus station. at 330, we find out that the area of the bus terminal with our locker is closed til 5 (around the time we needed to be at the airport thats 1.5 hours away) so we begged and pleaded with security guard to take us to our locker so that we could get our stuff to fly home. the security guard was actually really nice about it and immediately took us down to our locker so that we could catch our bus out to the airport and make it home safely. so here's the picture of our lil gate at the bus terminal. back to rome!

ok well that was my wondrous weekend in stockholm. next week...barcelona!

2006-10-03T21:54:00.000+02:00

sunday we ventured over to trastevere to try to find the market but ended up wandering around gianiccolo for the day. it was a ridiculous uphill walk and it was kinda hot but you get the prettiest views of rome from up there. i believe that area is best known as the childrens area, as there is a huge children's hospital, a few schools, and on sundays they have pony rides and puppet shows. for those familiar with rome, at the top of the hill is piazza garibaldi. anyhow here's a picture of the city from the top of the hill.

yesterday was alright. didn't do much besides go to school and cook myself a delicious meal. surprisingly, when i'm unlazy enough to cook for myself the meal comes out to be pretty decent. yesterday i made a simple pasta with some margarine, olive oil, garlic, onions, peas, and mushrooms. today, on the other hand, was kinda awful. i woke up with a stuffy nose which turned into a full blown cold which turned into a fever and all on my busiest day! i know i sound kinda like a whiny baby, but ok i had class from 12-2 then i came home to make myself soup which made me feel a little better and then i had class from 345-700 in which i watched 2 movies in italian and broke out into a fever. but then i had a field trip for my art history class at the forum at 730 that i pretty much couldnt miss cause she was taking attendance so i headed out there with my roommate and with battaline and then it got cold which im guessing couldn't have possibly been good for my medical condition. and of course, silly janna, our professor talked forever and ever and rambled about everything and the forum wasn't lit up so we could barely see anything. i'm just glad cause there's a field trip this friday that i can't make it to since i'll be on my way to sweden AND class is cancelled thursday. granted, i will go to the site by myself when i return but its kinda nice knowing that i only have one class on thursday. hopefully itll help me get better before heading up to scandinavia.

alright well i don't foresee anything happening before the weekend so i'll post again when i get back from stockholm.

2006-09-30T23:00:00.000+02:00

im going to begin this post with a bit of an introduction. today, we went to the vatican museum. it was super exciting and i have a lot to recount for all of you. another very exciting thing happened today, however. i'm completely done booking my trips! after 349823904823 years ive finally finished booking every single weekend til its time for me to go back to new york. so this post will begin with a recount of my day with some pictures and then a detailed schedule of where I will be every weekend so yall can look forward to hearing about each thing.

lisa, collin, and i left corso trieste a little before noon and headed over to the vatican. yup, we left italy for a little while. anyhow, we got to the vatican in record time and decided to hit up i musei vaticani (the vatican museums) because we figured that would probably be the first of all the things to close. It was just as i remember it- SO much art and filled with so many people that you can barely enjoy yourself. The first statue we encountered that really struck my fancy was the Laocoön which, according to collin, is pretty much THE statue that everyone tries to copy. this is the best i could do when trying to capture it though there are so many k people's heads in it.

we pretty much tried to speed through the vatican museum since it was so crowded and there were like 324233429842390482 people all smelly, sweaty, and mostly American. this is the ceiling of the map room. to be honest, one of the things that impressed me most about the vatican museum is that there are no boring areas. every single wall and ceiling is completely covered in ornate art, whether it be statues, wall carvings, or frescoes.

another very famous fresco is Raphael's School of Athens. my handy little guide book that i spent hours choosing in barnes and noble was quite useful today because it served as out tour guide throughout the vatican museum so that we didn't have to pay for one. anyhow, here's the school of athens.

within the vatican museum there are also many pieces of art that make you think, hm someone mustve really wanted to give something but couldn't quite figure out what to give. well here's the perfect example. randomly, we come across this statue of two swans that were deemed the mute swans of peace.

after a few hours, we finally finish the museum and then head out to grab a bite to eat. afterwards, we walked over to Piazza San Pietro to take pictures of the square and basilica. this is me and collin in front of the basilica

we decide to head over to the tombs of the popes before actually entering the basilica. off to the side, theres this random entrance to a room under the basilica where you can see where all the popes are buried, including saint peter. when you first enter the tombs, theres a statue of St. Peter. I don't know why but I decided to take a picture with this dude.

of course, I was most excited by seeing the grave of PJP2 but actually getting to see the burial site of st. peter was pretty amazing. this is both the covering of PJP2's grave as well as the lil room he occupies.

PJP2 has pretty prime realty down there cause he has a pretty, lit up lil room quite close to St. Peter himself. Here are some pictures of St. Peter's Tomb. this is the area that is directly underneath the high altar and it didn't use to be open to the public.

After finishing up in the tombs, the three of us decided to hit up the Basilica. Of course, the first thing you admire when you walk into the basilica is the pieta. a beautiful statue, this area of the church is ALWAYS crowded! well anyhow, here's a picture to remind everyone what this magnificent statue is.

another very popular picture is that of the high altar of St. Peter. Here's me and lisa with the altar.

I, luckily, got to experience a lot of things today while at the vatican. First, there was confession. I didn't confess simply cause my last experience was a lil painful and awkward but collin did. i also got to experience mass in the church. last time i was there, I didn't get to experience this. Though Benny wasn't presiding during this mass, it was kind of cool to experience a Mass that was being celebrated on the main altar of St. Peter's Basilica. The mass was in Italian, but surprisingly I could still understand the main idea of the readings. anyhow, here's a picture of the window above the altar, all lit up during sunset.

so after we finished there, i sent some postcards to my sister and mom since the vatican's postage is different from the rest of the world. we then headed back home since we were all so so tired from being such tourists for the last 4 or so days. at this point, we finished booking everything! it's so nice to have all this stuff just be finished and done with and not have to worry about any of it anymore. I'll end this post with a detailed calendar of what the next 3 months are looking like for me.

oct 5- ITALIAN COOKING CLASS woot. im learning how to cook! our program provides two separate cooking classes and mine is this coming thursday. i can't wait to learn how to cook real food.

oct 6-8 STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN forgive me for repeating to those of you who have already read my past entries, but this will be my second time in stockholm this year and i can't be more excited!

oct 13-15 BARCELONA, SPAIN finally going to spain! i wish i could go visit jess in madrid, but unfortunately i only have enough time to make it to barcelona. so so excited for sangria and paella. (battaline is coming on this one which makes it doubly exciting!)

oct 20-22 NAPOLI, THE AMALFI COAST, AND POMPEII last time i came to italy, we skipped everything south of rome. lame, i know, but now is my chance to experience all of that stuff. we already took care of sorrento and capri last weekend, but now its time do get the rest done.

oct 27-29 BRUSSELS AND BRUGES, BELGIUM brussels! though i never knew much about it brussels has always been one of those places i wanted to go to. and now i finally am! also props to my sister, the big AC, for recommending Bruges, we're going to be in brussels for almost 3 full days which i think is more than enough to see everything we need to in brussels, so we will be heading out to bruges for one of the days to make our fall break a bit more productive.

oct 29-Nov 2 GLASGOW AND EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND woohoo, scotland! i've never been and it's definitely one of the places i've wanted to hit up. unfortunately, i had never made it before since there were so many other places for us to go, but now i can finally do it and not worry about how much it costs.

nov 2-5 PARIS, FRANCE can't wait to see marissa! i know paris wasn't necessarily one of my top places to visit, but collin has never been there and i would love to go again as well as share a bed with marissa. baby.

nov 10-12 BUDAPEST, HUNGARY so i know i was supposed to go in october in order to meet up with my aunt and uncle, but unfortunately it didn't quite work out. october became completely booked really quickly so we pushed budapest back to november. so so excited to goooo.

nov 16-19 PARIS, FRANCE and AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS so i know i didn't really wanna go to paris as badly as it may seem, but im heading out to paris for a day and then out to amsterdam with my jumbos <3. so marissa decided to take the train from paris to amsterdam since its cheap and quick and she didn't want to travel by herself. it worked out with my schedule and wasn't really all that expensive so i decided to fly out to paris, stay for a day, take the train with Marissa to amsterdam, spend the weekend with marissa and jessie, take the train back to paris, and then fly back to roma sunday night. it's gonna be a tiring weekend but it'll be so so worth it.

nov 24-26 DUBLIN, IRELAND my birthday! i get to spend my birthday in dublin! isn't that kinda crazy? i definitely think it is. my cousins, A France and K Rod, are going to be in dublin that weekend so i figured i would coordinate my trip with them. i know i won't get to see them too too much but hey, it'll make up for the fact that i have to miss thanksgiving in new york like i like to enjoy every year. (this trip will be a wonderful mix of me, collin, battaline, and my lovely roommate superior jessie.)

dec 1-3 WARSAW, POLAND that's right, Poland. i know, also kinda random but you know who's from poland? PJP2. hehe yeah i know i'm a huge loser. anyhow, poland was a country i also wanted to hit up while i was on this side of the pond and it ended up i had a free weekend in december that coincided with cheap flights to poland. our hostel is called oki doki lol. (battaline's coming on this one too!)

dec 6-9 PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC woot prague. it's finally happening. for a pretty long while i was positive that prague wouldn't happen because flights were so so expensive and the ones i could get were at awful times and whatnot. anyhow, after a bit of maneuvering and a whole LOT of research, collin and i found flights for under 70 euro so that we could spend 3 days in prague.

dec 14-16 ROMA, ITALIA yup, i decided to spend my last weekend in rome to really be able to enjoy the city for my last weekend before heading back to new york.

dec 20- ISLE OF STATS, NEW YORK that's right, december 20 i will be back on staten island and back in action. hopefully start working december 21?

ok that's all i got for all of yall for now. hope you enjoyed this one <3

2006-09-29T23:00:00.000+02:00

ok i know it's been a few days since i've updated but for the first few days, nothing really happened and then a whole lot happened and i just got to be ridiculously busy and barely even got to use my computer. i shall recap it for yall.

so my friend alex from tufts has fall break at oxford right now so she decided to head down to italy for the break to visit me as well as see her friend ellen. she flew into rome on wednesday so i went to meet her at termini station. after great confusion, she got to rome safely and we got to hang out. i went to the ATM to get some money and it says that my card isn't international. seriously, bank of america needs to slow its roll before i harpoon them with my fork, king triton style. so basically, before i left i physically went to the bank and explained that i will be living abroad for 4 months and need my card to work. the teller was totally like oh yeah thats fine no problem, it should be fine. wednesday rolls around and i need to take out money and it says your card is not international. for some reason i didn't flip out, but i immediately emailed my sister (who is the best by the way) to take care of it since it would cost me almost 40 cents a minute to talk to these people for probly a few hours. so she took care of it by the end of the day which was so so nice and now i have a functioning ATM card. whew.

so back to the point of the story. alex pryor is here! though she is not physically with me at the moment, she flew into rome on wednesday morning and then she and i spent wednesday and thursday together. her friend ellen got here last night and so i took her to the bus stop where she headed out to the train station to meet ellen and check into their hostel. if i had space, i would totally take them both in so that they wouldn't have to pay for a crappy hostel, but unfortunately i have one small couch and hardwood floors which i assume would not at all be comfortable. well anyway, so alex got in wednesday afternoon to downtown rome and we came back to my apartment so she could get settled in and shower and everything after her long long day. after a few hours, we hopped on a bus downtown to start the sightseeing. im kinda proud of myself for knowing where everything is in relation to my house as well as to each other. anyway, we started at Piazza Barberini where we walked to Piazza di Spagna to see the spanish steps. apparently, other tourists dont understand that when you ask someone to take a picture of you in front of a monument it means to get you AND the monument in the picture. anyway, this is the picture we got of us and the spanish steps.

so then we walked down via condotti to see my favorite stores (dior, gucci, prada, YSL, ferragamo, etc.) and then headed towards the Trevi Fountain. I didn't know i knew the historic area so well, we didn't get lost at all and i generally knew where to go. granted, there are signs everywhere but i felt really familiar with the area and was able to predict where to turn and things. anyhow, i didnt know it at the time but it ends up that the trevi fountain is a fountain that was built at the end of one of the canals that brings water into Rome to commemorate the fact that its the end of the canal i guess. eh whatevs. here's a picture of me and alex at Trevi.

we kept walking out towards the tiber river and hit the pantheon. i didn't know it was open in the evening, but it was! for some reason, half it was closed off (for cleaning im guessing) and so we went in to see the hole in the ceiling and a bit of art and then headed back out to get a picture with it. this is probly like the best picture we got all night of us AND a monument.

we continued on our journey to piazza navona where i showed her where kevin lives as well as try to describe the fountain a bit. maybe after hearing it so many times, it's started to stick in my mind but i'm actually not a bad tour guide and know a lot about the main tourist stuff. after two attempts, here is the best picture we got of us and at least part of the fountain.

so it was pretty late at this point and we decided to stop for dinner. i wanted her to have some good italian food since she says Oxford's food isn't so great so we went to the restaurant that kevin recommended. the place was gorgeous since it was mostly outside tables and right on piazza navona on a perfect night to sit outside and the food was quite good but not as good as i expected it to be. anyway, here's a romantic picture of the two of us after finishing our delicious meal.

after dinner we walked down towards piazza venezia where i showed her the wedding cake (monument to vittorio emanuelle II) and then on the colosseum. after reaching the colosseum we decided that we were both really tired and headed home to have ice cream and relax a bit. thursday morning, alex headed to the IES center to use the wireless internet and work on her paper and then i had 2 classes which were both so ridiculously painful. i came back after school to get her and then we headed down towards the spanish steps again to go shopping. for the majority of the day, we were a complete failure but at the very end i bought a pair of bermudas and then we both got black ballet flats that only cost 14,90. awesome. so we came back and as i was sitting down i all of a sudden got completely hit by exhaustion. i felt really bad cause alex thought i was mad at her but it really was just that i got so tired after doing so much walking and stuff for 2 straight days that i needed to sit home and rest if i wanted to be ok to do anything at all this weekend as well as go to sweden next weekend.

anyhow, so last night i just hung out with lisa and talked about life and the like and then we both got up early (a relative term) and went to buy books. then i headed back to do a bit of grocery shopping to prepare for our american dinner tonight (hamburgers and french fries with chocolate cake for dessert) and then every1 converged at my apartment so we could head out for the afternoon. around noon we decided to do pretty much the same exact thing i had just done with alex plus some. so we headed down to the spanish steps, via condotti, trevi fountain, wedding cake...you know the yoozh. this is where things changed a bit. we decided to walk up into the wedding cake since its open and free during the day for tourists. so we walked up and around and out the back where it led us to campidoglio. weird, huh? well we went out and sat in front of the senate building for a while to rest and take in some sun and then set out to find the mouth of truth. here's the picture of campidoglio from where were sitting.

this is the fake statue of marcus aurelius that sits in the middle of the square.

this is the view of the forum from the back of campidoglio.

so we walked out the back of the piazza and looked for the mouth of truth. for those of you who don't know, la bocca della verità was in roman holiday (as well as only you). the legend is if you stick your hand in and you tell a lie or have a guilty conscience, it will bite down and take your hand. well anyhow, in both movies the characters stick their hand in and then pull their arm out with the hand tucked into the shirt sleeve to make it look like their hands have been bitten off. so here's the picture of me shoving my hand into this mouth of truth.

after walking some more down south, we hit circus maximus which is right off the palatine hill. this is a huge field where they used to host both foot and chariot races for all to see. it sits next to the palatine hill and, actually, the rich people who lived on the palatine hill could watch the festivities from their windows. here's me and lisa at the circus maximus.

here's collin running laps at the circus.

these are the buildings that remain on top of the palatine hill. legend says that romulus settled on top of the palatine hill and remus settled on top of the aventine hill. since romulus won and killed remus, the city was built around the palatine and was called rome. and as collin pointed out, not reme.

so we headed south even more looking for le terme de caracalla. these are the ancient baths that were built under the comission of marcus aurellius and are still in pretty good shape now. the outer structure is still intact and they actually preserved a pretty good number of the mosaics and things. this is me and lisa with the outer structures that you first encounter when you enter the complex. this isn't quite the main building yet, but it's what surrounds the entrance to the complex.

here is me and collin inside the baths. i believe this room is the frigidarium which was used for cold bathing.

these are the mosaics that hung on the walls in this bath. due to severe damage, the mosaics are no longer in one piece, but they were able to save a few pieces to keep on display.

so after thinking about our french fries and hamburgers some more we headed back up north on the other side of town to catch a glimpse of the colosseum by day. this is the only picture we got of the colosseum (collin with her fob pose) since both lisa and i have already been there.

we also encountered the arch of constantine while walking around the colosseum. here's the three of us with the arch. special thanks to collin's k people for taking our picture.

after the colosseum we were pretty much completely beat and decided to head back to corso trieste to have our american night. here's a picture of collin with all of our ingredients for this fine evening's dinner. consisted of: hambugers, french fries, lots of ketchup, cheese, really cheap beer, cake batter in a bag, etc.

after unsuccessfully cooking italian patatine (fried potatoes) but enjoying them anyway with cheese and hamburgers, we attempted to make a cake. it would be useful if you didnt feel a cold draft coming out of the oven when you were trying to heat it. anyway, we ended up making our cake successfully and making this like pastry creme thing instead of frosting and enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. we watched anchorman and decided to call it a night.

calling it a night was a good idea cause tomorrow is...THE VATICAN. haha yes, i will in fact be heading out to the vatican tomorrow. we're gonna hit up the museums, st paul's basilica, and the sistine chapel. i've already been but my mom wants me to go see the body of PJP2 (pope john paul II) so we're gonna try to make that happen. my trip to italy would also be complete if i got to see benny. hope that is in the agenda somewhere in the next 3 months!

2006-09-25T23:40:00.000+02:00

another addition to the calendar of booked trips...

nov 15-19 PARIS, FRANCE and AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS so marissa and jess and i were trying to plan to meet somewhere from nov 17-19. marissa decided she wanted to take the train from paris to amsterdam since its only about 4 hours away but didn't want to travel by herself. for me to fly to amsterdam is ridiculously expensive so i agreed to fly to paris on wednesday night then spend the day in paris while marissa has class and then well head out to amsterdam on thursday afternoon. we would get into the amsterdam train station around 8 pm and jess will get into the airport around 845 so im guessing marissa and i will just hang for a bit, check into the hostel, walk around and then have dinner when jess gets into town. i'm super excited to get to see them again and am a lil sad that d stein wont be there but its all good, we'll be living together so so soon. so marissa and i will stay in the netherlands until sunday morning when we'll take the train back to paris cause marissa's parents are coming in for the week. i think what i'm going to end up doing is stay in paris sunday night to see marissa's family and then head back to rome early monday morning to get back in time for class.

once i book the last two weekends i'll post the full calendar of my semester for everyone to see.

2006-09-24T19:25:00.000+02:00

it's a lil after 8 pm now and i got home for capri probly about an hour ago. how can i sum up this weekend? absolutely amazing.
so we left friday morning from rome and headed to naples by train. the train ride was kinda long but it was kinda nice cause we got to nap. here's a picture of me and collin on the train. i wanted a nice picture documenting our travelling but she messed it up as she was (at the time) eating the stupid crackers she bought at tuo di the day before.

so we get to naples and walk around for a lil bit trying to figure out which train to take to sorrento. we finally find it and realize the train ride takes about an hour and a half as it goes from naples, around mount vesuvius, then to sorrento. we finally make it to sorrento, find our bus, and head all the way up the hill to find our camp site. we originally thought we would have a room and a tent but it ended up we had two cabins to share between the 5 of us. here's a picture of our cabin (cabin O). it actually was kinda nice and had clean sheets and all but for some reason when we got back from capri it was damp inside. i bet we were supposed to leave the window open or something. collin termed the ambiance as that of a "damp sandwich."

so we spent friday evening walking around sorrento. we first headed down the hill to explore a bit to see what we could find. we stumbled upon this beautiful church on the way down. it was a bit unsuspecting but once we went inside it was beautiful. unfortunately pictures are not allowed inside the church but here's the picture of the front it. completely unassuming, no?

after walking around in the church for a bit, we headed into town and grabbed some dinner at an outdoor cafe. the place was real cute and the food was good and cheap. i enjoyed spaghetti alle cozze (spaghetti with mussels) as everyone else enjoyed pizza, gnocchi, and spaghetti alle vongole (spaghetti with clams). after dinner, we grabbed some gelato at one of the local places and kept walking around to see what we could find. there was so much shopping it was ridiculous! and so much english spoken, too. i guess i never realized what a tourist town sorrento actually is. after a bit of wandering, we stumbled upon the public gardens of sorrento. it's a lookout point where you can see the bay of naples, naples, mount vesuvius, and capo di sorrento (the top of the hill). here's the best picture (of about 3409823490238409328 that we took) of us with capo di sorrento all lit up.

shortly after our stroll through town, we decided to head back to the camping site since we were planning on leaving for capri around 630. we headed up and went to bed early so we could be up by 6 and out by 630. on friday, we didn't pay for the buses because there was no one checking, but since we were the only JO's on the bus at 630 the bus driver asked for our tickets and we didn't have any. so we got off the bus and decided to walk down the hill instead. it was only about a 15-20 minute walk and it was downhill so it really wasn't a big deal at all. this is a picture of me and collin at the lookout point about halfway down the hill.

we run down to marina piccola to find that the ferry is leaving in 10 minutes. we buy tickets and run out to the boat with ample time. the ferry ride over was quite short but pretty and the breeze felt really nice. we started out inside but then decided it would be so much nicer inside. here's a picture of battaline, me, and collin chillin in the ferry before deciding to enjoy the outside deck.

so we get to capri and first get a bit of food and then buy tickets to the blue grotto. we get on the boat to the blue grotto and it ends up just being the 5 of us and this one other american dude travelling in capri for the weekend. this is a view of the seaside town from this boat.

and here's a picture of the 5 of us on the boat on the way to the blue grotto.

la grotta azzura, as they call it, is this lil grotto that's actually within the rocks on the island of capri. the hole to get in is so small that the people sitting in the rowboat have to lie along the bottom and the boat driver (term?) lies one level above, pulling on a chain to get in. its amazing...you get inside and its a small grotto. the water is so blue and gorgeous. and the acoustics of the place are amazing! our boat driver sang for us a bit and it sounded amazing even though he doesn't have much of a singing voice. here's the best picture of the grotto i could get. it's just amazing how this lil opening in the rocks could create this natural affect on the water to make it light up so bright blue!

so we headed back to capri and couldn't decide what to do. it came down to us wanting to lie down on the beach all day. so we headed over to the closest beach (2 minute walk) and started walking. after a few minutes we realized that there's no sand on the beaches in capri! i guess the beaches aren't that old cause in some parts the stones are HUGE and in others, theyre smaller. it was amazing to me cause i had never seen a beach like that and i have to say it is quite painful to walk on those stones without shoes. we ended up spending most of the day at this beach since the weather was so beautiful and the water felt nice. i, personally, chose not to swim cause i had to be wearing my bathing suit for the rest of the day and the water was ridiculously salty. but i did wet my feet (belmar style). here's a picture of the rocks that made up the shore.

as the sun got stronger, and we got hotter, we headed back into the town. we hit up a "snack bar" as they call it for a delicious caprisian lunch. sara got risotto al pescatore with all kinds of amazing seafood. lisa got a caprese sandwich (fresh mozarella, sweet tomatoes, olive oil, basil, and deliciousness) and i got a caprese sandwich with some fresh grilled tuna. i can't even begin to tell you how amazing the seafood is down there and how cheap it is too! i also had a lemon soda which tasted like non alcoholic mike's hard lemonade and it was also delish. apparently capri and sorrento are known for their lemon products (something i didn't know before) so of course i had to try it all. shortly after, we hopped on a bus to anacapri, the historic center on the top of the island. anacapri is a cute lil place that really reminds me of the greek islands. all the buildings are painted white and there are tons of lil shops and things for tourists to walk around and visit. we stumbled upon this chairlift up to mount solaro. its literally like chairs attached to cables that just constantly go up and down the hill. it's kinda cool. well anyway, mount solaro dates back pretty far and there some ruins and statues and things up there. by far one of the most beautiful and breathtaking things ive ever done in my life. from the top of the mountain, if you look down at the marina to see the boats, this is what you see. cute, huh?

here's a picture with me and the view of capri from the mountain.

now on the other side of the mountain, you see a different side of capri. this is me, lisa, and sara with collin standing on the chair to take the picture in order to get the background.

one of the most famous statues on the top of the mountain is of this guy hanging off the building. it looks like he's saying what up or flipping someone off. this is collin showing him how its done.

on top of the mountain there are a bunch of tables and lounge chairs where you can sit and enjoy the view. the weather was so beautiful but we were totally all up in the sun's grill.

we met some other americans who agreed to take a picture of the 5 of us with some kind of view. here it is.

so on the way down i figured would be better to take pictures of the panorama considering the way its positioned. here's a picture of a random k person (one of collin's people that happen to be one of 92383948329 in sorrento and capri this weekend) on his chair and the beautiful view of the countryside from the chair.

there's collin on the chairlift doing her fob pose.

by the way, this chair lift isn't too high from the ground (20 ft maybe?) but it goes down this really steep hill and at some point slowed down which was kinda shady. good thing none of us were afraid of heights. though the entire time i was kinda wishing i could take babiak with me to see how he would react. anyhow, we get back down to anacapri and realize what time it is and try to run down to the ferry terminal to catch the last ferry. we get on a bus that only takes us halfway down the hill which is uber lame but then hop on the funicolare. it kinda reminded me of the tram in santorini that anna and i RAN to catch in order to make the last hydrofoil back to the boat. here's me, sara, and gretchen on the funicolare.

we catch the ferry back to sorrento with great ease and it all went pretty smoothly. once on sorrento, we enjoy a nice meal and the lovely evening. of course we managed to make the restaurant hate us and pretty much ban us for life but you know whatever. anyhow, here's sara walking through the beautifully lit alleyways of sorrento.

this morning me, battaline, and collin headed to one of the limoncello stores to buy these like lemon chocolate almond candy things we tried the day before. they're so amazing. i know lemon chocolate almond doesn't sound too appetizing, but i have to tell you these candies are amazing. the guy was this old italian man who kept singing and telling us how italian men love women and so we asked him to take a picture. the lady taking it was kinda stupid so its blurry but nonetheless, its a funny picture.

after buying our long awaited candy, we decided to go back to the lookout point to see the bay of naples by day. here's what the country side looks like during the day.

also, down in the bay of naples, they have restaurants, beaches, and bathing platforms. the shore of sorrento only gets a strong enough sun for sunbathing between the months of april and october. they have these platforms that you pay for to head out and grab a chair and take in the sun. when october rolls around, they dismantle the platforms and put them away. theyre actually really cool since the water is so clear and all. these are the bathing platforms.

and here is a picture demonstrating exactly how clear the water is.

this is mount vesuvius. its kinda weird cause i heard a tour guide saying that when its even a lil cloudy, mount vesuvius gets completely lost in the haze and can't be seen at all. also, if it ever erupted where i was standing would be the perfect place to watch from.

so then we decided to just head out since sorrento really isn't close AT ALL to rome. and by not close i mean it takes like 6 hours to get there. we luckily caught the train right away and headed out to naples where we thought we barely made the train but of course the train left 30 minutes late. here's me and collin after not having showered for 2 days and sweated lots during the heat. yum.

ok well that's it for now. next weekend i think we're just doing a day trip to tivoli to see hadrian's villa and then probably trastevere and the vatican on sunday. but after that more adventure to come.

ps one more addition to my lil traveling calendar
Nov 10-12 BUDAPEST, HUNGARY barbie goes to hungary! no i'm not barbie and i'm sure yall can figure that out from the pictures. actually there's this low cost carrier called wizz air that has pink and purple planes which is what i booked with to head to budapest. collin and i found a decent flight and a good hostel so we decided...budapest it is! it's pretty off beat but i bet itll be amazing and my aunt and uncle will have just been there and can sort of guide us. yay!

2006-09-21T13:15:00.000+02:00

more exciting news! as the semester is quickly moving alone, my weekends are just as quickly filling up. one more trip completely booked to add to the list

oct 13-15 BARCELONA, SPAIN so i think i'm the only person in the world, but i've never been to spain before. i've been to lots of obscure places like estonia, but i never actually made it to spain. pretty much all of us (with the exception of battaline) have been dying to get to barcelona. originally i wanted to take a ferry that leaves from civitavecchia and takes about 20 hours to get to barcelona, but that ended up being really expensive. i know it would've been an amazing experience but it doesn't look likely. so after extensive research, i found a flight for 80,99 euro round trip and a hostel for only like 19,00 per night. it's the highest rated hostel in barcelona and is supposed to have the best location. ahhh i cant wait.

so i'm still in the process of planning the rest of my weekends. any brilliant ideas for next weekend, sept 27? sicily might be in the cards...

2006-09-20T17:21:00.000+02:00

i apologize, but i left out quite a trip from my itinerary.

oct 20-22 NAPLES, THE AMALFI COAST, POMPEII so IES subsidizes one free trip for us and mine happens to be for naples, amalfi, and pompeii! all these places were places i really wanted to go to last time i was in italy but unfortunately it took us long enough to do venice, rome, florence, the rest of tuscany, pisa, siena, and milan. yeah, so this time around im gonna finally get to hit these places up. yayyy.

ok thats it.

2006-09-20T16:42:00.000+02:00

not much to write about today. EXCEPT THAT IM FREAKING TRAVELLING THE WORLD IN THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS. well europe, at least.

weekends are slowly approaching and its time to start planning hardcore. i had 3 classes today which were as painful as i expected and then hit marinari for gelato with collin where we discussed our travel plans. we then headed to the IES office (where we now are) to book everything. so far here is what we have completely booked.

sep 22-24 CAPRI, ITALY capri! we wanted to go to capri last weekend but thank the lord we didn't. last weekend was all rainy and yucky and we ended up having a good time just clubbin and chillin in ROMA. well this weekend, is supposed to be sunny and warm but not too hot, perfect weather for a beach weekend!

oct 6-8 STOCKHOLM SWEDEN. isn't it crazy? since i was a lil kid i never thought id make it to sweden but now i will have been there twice. in a year. OH MY GOD. so we booked our flight and were having trouble finding a hostel. we ended up finding one that was a lil pricey (45 euro a night)but its a key location and we get our own room and bathroom. omg sweden so so soon.

Oct 27-oct 30 BRUSSELS, BELGIUM belgium! so brussels was one of the places on my list i absolutely HAVE to go to. ive been dying to go to brussels and its finally going to be real! we have a week off for fall break so collin and i decided to start the week off in brussels.

oct 30-nov2 GLASGOW, SCOTLAND scotland is one of those places ive always wanted to go, but unfortunately it wasn't very high on my mom's list of priorities. obviously, she wants to go there but we haven't made it yet. i know it's kinda random but it was a cheap flight from brussels to glasgow and collin and i figured, why not?

nov 2-5 PARIS, FRANCE finally getting to see marissa! collin and i didnt have paris very high on the priority list since ive already been there and collin figures its one of those places she could totally come back to, but since we had a few extra days we figured we should just go. and on top of that i get to see rissaroo finally!

nov 24-26 DUBLIN, IRELAND i know it makes more sense to do dublin and glasgow around the same time. there's a reason, im honestly not THAT stupid. so my cousins, a france and k rod, are going to be in ireland for the week of thanksgiving to celebrate their anniversary. now i really wanted to, at some point, head to dublin so i figured i would just coordinate with them and just have dinner with them while we're all there. not to mention the fact that i havent seen them since like...last thanksgiving? plus, dublin is a lil expensive but its my birthday so i might as well treat myself a little bit!

ok well thats all we have completely planned for now. ill keep yall posted as most things are planned.

ps happy birthday ryan!

2006-09-19T21:58:00.000+02:00

the weather for the last few days has been absolutely awful. weve had rain on and off since friday so it was hard to go out (even for a walk) and i spent a large part of the last few days at home, without internet, reading the economist or new york magazine and seeing either just jessie or a combination of jessie, gretchen, valentina, and lisa.

today, however was completely different. i had italian class at 11 which was really really boring but my other 2 classes aren't set to start til next monday so collin, lisa, and me headed out to stazione termini and had korean food for lunch. i, of course, had jap che which wasnt quite as good as k town but definitely such an amazing change from the usual italian food ive been eating and cooking for myself. it was definitely quite refreshing to have some other kind of food even if it wasn't the best ive had. so lisa headed back to campus for class while collin and i stuck around termini and got gelato and sat outside the station just to watch all the tourists get on and off the buses and just enjoy the completely different kind of people watching we've enjoyed. we had a total heart to heart catching up since i havent seen collin for like two weeks and then headed back to nomentana. we head over to the IES office to book stuff and research stuff since my internet has been sort of shotty (knock on wood). so we've officially booked dublin for the weekend of my birthday! im so excited...we leave rome at 10 am on my birthday (friday the 24th) and we get there around noon, dublin time. we're gonna check into our hostel and then walk around dublin for a few hours and perhaps just enjoy some excellent irish beer and pubs. saturday we decided we're gonna do some more site seeing and then, at the least, hit the guiness factory to see where they make excellent beer as well as where the student t distribution was formed. saturday night, of course, is reserved for dinner with a france and k rod who will be in ireland for their 3 year anniversary. im so excited to see them! and then sunday, we leave dublin around noon to head back to rome. it was a lil on the pricey side to book a flight to ireland, but i figured i really wanna go to dublin and on top of that its my birthday so its ok to splurge a lil. plus, collin is totally willing to travel with me wherever so its gonna be totally fun.

so we were supposed to go to florence this weekend but things got crazy and of course plans changed at the last minute. around 1 pm on tuesday, our plans for this coming friday changed. sara called me up on the way to termini to tell me since florence didnt quite work out how did i feel about going to capri. of course i was like YES, which was the same reaction as lisa and collin. so we booked a hostel in sorrento (where collin and i will share a tent for one night) and will be doing a bit of sightseeing and then head to capri for a nice beach day for the other day. emilys gonna be there too! which means lots and lots of fun to say the least.

ok well thats about it for today. its been sort of a long day and i cant wait to get to bed. ill blog again probably after this weekend :-)

2006-09-17T19:04:00.000+02:00

Before posting about yesterday's events i need to issue a correction. earlier in the week, i deemed the eyesore of rome as the tomb of the unknown soldier. i, however, was incorrect. it is actually the monument to vittorio emanuelle II. i apologize for any inconvenience this caused. here is the picture of the monument as a reminder.

despite the rain, last night was a complete success. though in the beginning it didn't seem like it would be. first, we got sort of a late start. gretchen didn't take a shower until right before we left and lisa had stuff she had to do on the internet. not a big deal, though, since the best time to get to clubs is like 1230 or so. so then we head over to trastevere to sara's apartment to have some wine before we leave. the H bus decided it didn't want to run at night so we hailed a cab (which believe me, in piazza venezia is NOT easy) and headed over to via de trastevere. so we get there and gretchen decides shes far too hungry and we stop at mcdonalds to get chicken nuggets that she didn't even really enjoy.
anyway, we get to sara's and map out a way to get to alphaeus, a club recommended by one of our italian teachers. this is me and lisa with our makeshift shot glasses since no one has any.

this is our best attempt at a picture of the 4 of us before going out. i still haven't mastered it.

after much walking and trying to find it, we find alphaeus on this lil dead end street and it turns out its not open. so we keep walking (at this point for about an hour) and ask a few times along the way where we can find a club. eventually we find a few clubs in the park at testaccio. we get in line for one called akab and make friends with some very friendly italian men who are trying to convince us that there are 4 of them and 4 of us and that it could totally work. they wish. so then we make friends with a guy who knows the bouncer and get in after about 5 minutes of waiting. i have to say, clubbin in rome really reminds me of home. besides euromullets, they all look just like my staten island and new york friends and are probly the only people who like techno and house. ok, so maybe that's a little harsh, but of all the people i know...staten island people are the few who like to listen to and dance to techno. needless to say, i enjoyed my long island iced tea and had a blast dancing the night away. one last note on the club...i didnt think i would use the phrase "long island" as much as i did yesterday. and i never expected to hear an italian say "long island" to me either. ever.
here's a picture of the club sign. sooooooo much fun.

anyhow, my friends are wimps and wanted to peace out at 4 so we headed out to the street and tried to hail a cab to no avail. we continued to walk and found a random bus that we did not know the route of but knew it ended up at stazione termini, which is quite the transportation hub. so we get on and see that it passes right near ponte rotto and get off to walk to saras house. this morning, she fixed us a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs and potato croquets (interesting breakfast combo, i know) and then we headed out in an attempt to be real people. we didn't trust that the H bus would come so we took the 8 tram to Argentina. I didn't know this but apparently in Piazza Argentina, there are ancient ruins that happen to be the main area where stray cats stay. it's called the Cat Sanctuary (the name is actually in english which struck me as odd). Here's a picture of the sign and the ruins.

In Piazza Argentina, we also ran into the most random like marathon or run for a cause or something. here's a picture of the guy in the lead...he has a torch?

i have to say, clubbing in rome is so so much fun, despite the casualties. to begin, my feet are mangled! wearing heels while walking around and dancing for 5 straight hours does not do well for the feet. when i got up this morning, my feet had cuts, blisters, and dirt all over them. also, i dropped my jacket in the mud which is so depressing cause it was a new jacket and it was my first time wearing it. after washing it, a lot of it came out but the traces are still there. i think ill find a place tomorrow and get it professionally cleaned or perhaps just go to the grocery store and find stain remover and try again. it wasn't an expensive jacket and the stains aren't that bad so i can still wear it, but still kind of depressing. we took this picture in the club while waiting in line for the bathroom. not bad, eh?

i'm kind of glad i didn't head out to the vatican for mass this morning. benny is in germany right now which i completely forgot so we wouldn't have been able to attend his mass anyway. also, it's been pouring all day! it wouldn't have been very enjoyable to have to stand in the pouring rain for an entire mass that would be said in latin.

on a last note, my internet has been so shotty today (knock on wood). for some reason my roommates have been able to connect on and off to our local network but i've been having a problem connecting at all. but i'm finally back, bizzes.

ps class starts tomorrow. boo.

2006-09-16T14:22:00.000+02:00

last night was my first venture into trastevere. trastevere is an area of downtown on the other side of the tiber river. it's a really trendy neighborhood that half of my program lives in and the other half of my program lives near me in nomentana. so last night sara and her roommate isabelle decided to have a wine and cheese party in trastevere. unfortunately, the bus strike yesterday didnt fair so well for us. lisa and i planned to leave nomentana around 840 but didnt end up leaving til like 10. so lisa, gretchen, and i found the bus we needed (luckily) and proceeded to piazza venezia where we were supposed to transfer buses. of course the bus we needed wasn't working cause of the strike so we started walking down towards the river to see if we could find it by foot without a problem. of course freakin isabelle gave us retarded directions and so we had to call like 10 times to make sure we were going the right way. we encountered many sights along the way which I, of course, documented.

this is il teatro di marcello which is right near piazza venezia. it's funny cause everyone always refers to it as the thing that looks kinda like the colosseum but isn't.

here's the view across the tiber river from the street of the mouth of truth. oh roman holiday :-D

This is the tiber river from via de ponte rotto.

here's the best picture of ponte rotto i could get at night. so ponte rotto was the first stone bridge they built across the tiber river. it was so hard for them to maintain cause the current of the tiber river was so strong and kept damaging it. today, only this small piece remains as a monument of this bridge.

this is me and lisa crossing the tiber river. we tried to get ponte rotto in the background but weren't successful. so take a look at that gash on my forehead. earlier in the day, lisa tried to kill me with her yogurt and ended up slicing me right down the temple. what's funny about this picture is that we didnt even try to accent my head injury but it just ended up coming out pretty clear anyway.

what a perfect picture to portray the strong tiber current that ruined the bridge.

After trying to follow isabelle's second set of idiotic directions, we tried to figure out if we were going in the right direction based on what stops the bus makes. here's lisa with the oh so creative tagging at the bus stop.

Me and Sara in her trendy lil loft in trastevere. i adore this A girl.

Our lil wine and cheese party was set up in sara's apartment with candles and everything. it was super cute. francesco totally showed up too. um awk much?

so apparently all of our laughing and loud banter intimidated the other guests of this wondrous party. no1 wanted to approach the table we were sitting at with the wine and food so we ate all the grapes and most of the cheese and crackers. here's lisa the grape stealer, who stole half of the grapes on the table and then continued to try to take mine.

sara and isabelle bought this rancid wine from tuo di (the discount supermarket) that cost like 1,60. so it totally did not go down well at all. i felt bad wasting it so i forced people to do wine shots with me just to finish it and be done with it.

this is the only group of normal people that were at the party last night. everyone else decided to debate politics and religion in all sorts of languages. funny, i'm like one of the normal ones around here.

here's me and gretchen on the boat shaped island.

right before (luckily) catching the nocturna bus back to nomentana we passed campidoglio all lit up at night. it was pretty but really hard to photograph.

aright well that's a recap of my day yesterday. tomorrow should hopefully be mass with benny (pope benedict, for those who don't know my lingo yet) and book buying. should be a pretty exciting day.

2006-09-14T21:19:00.000+02:00

so i got up at 9 this morning to meet lisa to go for another walk around the neighborhood. we were in search of a good place to go running since villa torlonia is so small and for some reason under construction. she calls me at 10 (our meeting time) and im flippin out cause i cant seem to find my keys. i know i used them last night when i got back from Barberini. problem was, i was so exhausted when i got back that i literally came in, put my stuff down, and took a nap. i was so worried that i had left the keys in the door that i texted jesse to see if maybe she accidentally grabbed my keys but then decided to go for the walk anyway and just ring the doorbell when i got back.

so lisa and i ventured up the hill towards villa ada. we encountered one of the main most beautiful traffic circles of nomentana. here are some pictures of the buildings surrounding the circle.

the buildings surrounding this traffic circle are so beautiful in their own way. and definitely well maintained.

so we get to villa ada and start walking around inside to see whats there. It's such a pretty estate. They have all kinds of cyprus trees and different kinds of vegetation. This picture shows the landscape you first see when you walk in. Lisa mentioned that it feels like we stepped into the african safari.

im guessing this is one of the summer residences of the probly ridonc rich ada family. walking around the villa, you see that there are so many abandoned buildings...it was actually kinda creepy. it's now a HUGE park and this building is still in use.

so here's a picture of Lisa with the abandoned buildings. also really pretty summer houses but quite creepy since theyre abandoned, tagged, and all have broken windows.

Along the way, we ran into this pretty landscape. the park is so big that sometimes you walk around and don't see any people for at least a few minutes. this picture is me with the abandoned path of cyprus trees.

Here's a picture of me on the main path. the landscape is just so beautiful and to think this isn't even one of their main parks...

so then i came back and waited for my roommate to see if maybe she had my keys. before jesse got home, lisa and i turned the room upside down, looked in every bag under every bed and desk and in the closets and couldnt find my keys. so then jesse gets home and she and i are looking for like one minute when i decide to move my mattress to see if its on there somewhere and i hear the keys moving. it was on my bed stand the whole time under my mattress. i was so frustrated but at the same time was so glad that i finally found my keys.

ok well it's been raining for a few hours here and it got really cold so reba and i decided not to meet for dinner. i guess i'll just have to see reba next week. ok, time to read the new yorker and plan my trip to madrid.

2006-09-14T00:40:00.000+02:00

ok so today wasnt all that exciting. i had to go to the police station at like 730 this morning to register with them as a student. it was a pain in the ass and took so long and they covered my hands in ink to take finger prints and hand prints. yuck.

so we got back to corso trieste around 1140 and i decided i would take my time, make and eat lunch, upload pictures onto facebook, register for class, and then head to class when i was ready. so i went and registered with Mr. IES (our program director) and bullshitted my way into getting the classes i wanted and then made it to class with only 40 minutes of the 2 and a half hours we had left. yeah that was pretty sweet but im so tempted to just not show up to class tomorrow. hmm we'll have to see.

ok well i think its about time for bed. I started planning fall break. I'm hoping to head to capri next weekend but again this planning thing is so hard and since im the only one who has internet i of course am in charge of planning which blows. im hoping to make some sort of prague/warsaw trip for fall break but i guess i'll have to get on that soon.

2006-09-12T23:36:00.000+02:00

so today started out so awfully but now it has been completely redeemed. so first of all, i was running really late for my academic advising so i get to campus at like 1043 when my appointment is at 1040 and am just like hey i think i have an appointment with francesco and the guys like oh francesco is in corso trieste (10 minute walk) so im like DAMNIT ok thanks and run over to find that he hasnt come in yet so im like ok this doesnt make sense. so i call up 2 others that i thought had an appt with him too and they were like oh yeah we came in and asked for francesco and they were just like oh we'll help you. so basically i havent gotten to register for class yet and freakin pier paolo only sent ME to corso trieste. awesome.

so then i went to the ies center after class to talk to someone and ended up running into collin. they said they couldnt help me today but to come back tomorrow so collin came over to try my staten style pasta with tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella and then we sat outside and chilled on the park bench in the divider area of the street. unfortunately i have no photos documenting this but collin refused to let me take photos of us as native italians.

after that, she left cause she has to go to the police station at like 5 am tomorrow and then lisa came over cause we wanted to (at some point) head downtown and do some walking. she stayed for a lil while and then gretchen and jessie decided to join us for our evening stroll. we hop on a bus that we though would take us to the colosseum but then ended up right at the trevi fountain. i cant even believe how gorgeous it is at night.

here's a picture of the three roommates of corso trieste, 142 at the trevi fountain.

and then the two lisas enjoying the ambiance of the trevi fountain at night.

look how beautiful the trevi fountain is all lit up at night. it gave me kind of a chill to be there, especially knowing that its only a few minutes away from where i'll be living for the next 4 months.

so the legend is that if you throw a coin into the trevi fountain it pretty much guarantees that you'll return to rome. well the corny non tourists that we are, we decided to all throw in our coins but of course document the moment with a photograph. Here we are, after much pushing, right in front of the fountain getting ready to guarantee our return.

though the rim of the fountain is ridiculously wet, jessie had the pocket tissues that lisa and i bought from the grocery store in like a 100 pack. we were able to clean just enough of the rim so we could have a beautiful picture of us sitting on the fountain, enjoying the beauty of ancient rome.

so we decide to keep walking around the historic center (centro storico) to see what we can come across. so after buying DELICIOUS gelato, we're walking down a random pedestrian street and see one of those people in costume. it's a guy standing perfectly still dressed as a mummy. and so jessie is like WHAT IS THAT?! and i was like umm a person. and she honestly didn't know that it was a person so we decided to support his cause and donate some change and so here's the picture of us utterly confused. actually this is the second picture we took. the first time, the flash didnt go off so i was like HOLD ON but then realized this dude wasn't going anywhere so here's the second picture we took.

we continued wandering around and saw what looked like some beautiful monument and realized what it was. so the tomb of the unknown soldier is like this enormous monument that is made of white marble that can be seen from anywhere in rome. it's so huge and high up and well preserved that you can see it glaring from pretty much anywhere. it's probably one of the most beautiful monuments made and so expensive and so white but its still the eyesore of rome.

here's ths first picture i attempted to take of this "birthday cake" or "typewriter" as the romans call it. of course with all the passing traffic it got this odd lighting effect.

Here's a better and clearer picture of the eyesore of rome. so so beautiful, especially when all lit up at night.

so we started trying to figure out where to go from there and whipped out this lil mini map we had. it wasnt very useful so we unfolded the HUGE map. all we needed were our HOT IES rome hats to mark us as the ultimate tourists.

when Jessie and I couldn't figure it out, Lisa had this brilliant idea to lay it out against the wall and just figure out how to get to the colosseum. after the three of them sprinting across the street and me walking calmly (like the true new yorker) we finally saw where we needed to go. so we crossed much closer to the wedding cake and got some really pretty pictures. again, I can't post all my pictures here so here's the link to my fotki page if you wanna see every single picture ive taken. i've taken a ridiculous amount since ive been here so it's a pretty big page. http://public.fotki.com/lillestcruzzin/

anyway, here's the picture of the wedding cake upclose. its just so beautiful.

so the roman forum isn't really lit up at night much but we tried so hard to admire it while we were there. here's the best picture i got of the forum at night. amazing.

so while walking down the main street leading to the colosseum, there are 4 carvings of europe showing 4 different stages of the expansion of the roman empire. these are the best pictures i could get of them at night but none the less, still pretty cool.

This is one of the like 324938 pictures i took of the colosseum as we were walking down the via dei fiori imperali. i honestly can't even believe how beautiful it is at night.

I tried so hard to perfectly place the people in the picture. i found a bunch of surfaces i could use to rest my camera on just so i could take a picture that was not so blurry. if you notice jessie and gretchen were like running back and forth as i told them to move forward or backward.

Finally a picture of the 4 of us! right across the street from the colosseum there was like this crazy old marble water fountain that was perfectly situated to use as a surface to take nice pictures of the colosseum. of course at night its hard to get both the background and the subjects to not be blurry but in any case, this is the best we could do.

so apparently the italians are quiet on their buses. the 4 of us were laughing it up and having a good time and every1 else was either silent or giving us dirty looks. The first picture I took was of Gretchen and Lisa. Really cute.

Now, i asked Lisa to take a picture of me and jessie. she takes the picture and then reviews it and is just like hm well, before you see it, jessie, i just wanna warn you that as i was taking the picture i was thinking i should tell her to move her head but then i thought...nah.

so thats a recap of my wonderous night. it was the first time i hung out with jessie like not on a tour and not in the apartment. we had a really nice night and it was just a lovely evening stroll through ancient rome. :-D

2006-09-11T22:25:00.000+02:00

Ok so today was pretty boring. I didn't have class til 12 (intensive italian) but i got up at 830 anyway and went to sign up for a trip to naples, the amalfi coast, and pompeii. all three of those places are places i have been dying to see since forever and am finally gonna get to go! (for free!) so the way my program works, is that we had a mandatory trip to assisi and perugia which was super fun and then we're entitled to one more trip as part of our tuition. so i went as soon as the office opened to be sure i got the trip i wanted and then went to the dollar store. yeah, keeping it real in rome lol. basically i went to a number of book stores, and couldnt find a note book with wide ruled paper. they only write on graph paper here! So I ended up buying a few useful things and only spending a few books which was super nice. it's kinda funny though, the books obvi are super ghetto since they only cost 0,99 so it ended up being that i got two with like pictures of wrestlers on em. ICW im guessing is the italian wwf. and the other one is like this biking thing. My friend, Lisa, got one that in huge letter on the front just says "Thanks to life." we figure something had to have gotten lost in translation.

So then we went to the grocery store and got some essentials but then went home to drop them off because the beginning of class was quickly approaching. So i put my groceries away and talked to Valentina, my Italian Student Companion, about her exam tomorrow. she spoke to me in italian and i could understand most of it but for the most part, her message was lost lol.

so 12 oclock rolled around and lisa and i walked over to campus to try to find out class but couldn't find the classroom we were supposed to be in. of course we stopped for mushroom pizza along the way first, but you know those are just minor details. we walked around the entire building not able to figure it out when we ran into annelise who luckily narrowed it down to 2 possible rooms. so we had intensive italian for 2.5 hours which went pretty quickly cause we did so many group activities. ive never felt like such a first grader in my life. they had us draw pictures of our companions and then converse in italian. so clearly, i'm an amazing artist. I drew my friend Lisa and obvi i am the best artist to ever grace the face of the earth. here's a picture of lisa holding up the picture so we can compare how accurate it is. everytime she or jessie sees it they cant stop laughing. its so funny, its like the same reaction to the wrestler notebooks lol.

here's a closeup of my wonderful art project.

so then after class lisa and i went grocery shopping and bought all kinds of crazy stuff. they don't use as many preservatives in their food here so everything they sell comes in single servings which is the best thing ever. i bought like pesto sauce in single serving containers so that i can just boil some pasta an pour the sauce on when im too lazy to make real sauce. of course i got fresh buffalo mozzarella, olio, salad, fresh vine ripe tomatoes, foccaccia, and laundry detergent. yeah good times. so lisa came over and i made her a staten style tomato sauce with the fresh tomatoes and we had it with some oddly shaped pasta that i can't remember the name of. we enjoyed it with a 2 euro bottle of wine poured into spongebob glasses. here's a picture of me and lisa drinking our vino rosato out of mini mini spongebob glasses. classy.

so lisa stayed and stole our wireless for a lil while. jessie decided to show us her hot new towels from oviesse an modeled them for us. before this one, she was using this lil mini towel the size of the one she's using in the picture. a few nights ago, she pops her head out of the bathroom and is like lisa i'm already undressed and i left my shampoo in the room and my towel will only cover either the top or the bottom half of me do you mind if i just borrow your shampoo for now. so of course i said yes and then today she showed us why the small towels just dont work for her and here are the pictures of her wonderful display.

and so i had bought tape this morning at the wonderful 0,99 store and decided to hang up all of my pictures. i know i told some of you that i had 40 pictures but i realized that i had 40 printed but used a bunch of them for the frames and collages in my room in staten island so i only actually have like 35 pictures here (as if thats not enough). so i made a cute lil picture collage on my closet doors of my tufts friends, my staten friends, and my fam. it ended up coming out pretty nice. here's the picture of my closet doors with the collage plastered on the front. when jessie came home she wasl ike WHOA THATS A LOT OF PICTURES but at the same time was like aww cute i wish i had some of my own.

ok so i guess that's it. i tried a million times to post this but blogger isn't doing too well with the uploading of pictures thing so it took me so long, just trying to upload pictures and then finally deciding to write the entry and then add the pictures later when this thing decides to stop being g (not gangsta). alright, im gonna go do my 5 minutes of italian homework and hopefully publish this entry before i go to bed. ciao, bella :-D

2006-09-10T14:00:00.000+02:00

so a lot has happened since my last post. no drama for those who were hoping for such. that night i walked around the neighborhood just to get a better feel of it and took some pictures to show everyone. i love my camera (named canteloupe but pronounces can-ta-loop-ay) and so ive been taking ridiculous amounts of pictures. in the past ive always felt like i should just take pictures later but then i never remember all the things i wanted to take pictures of. so this time around i always have my camera and am always always always taking pictures. ok so lets start with pictures from the neighborhood.

ok so i thought it was kinda funny that down the block theres a chinese restaurant. you don't find many chinese restaurants here in roma but there happens to be one like right there. weird.

Here is the vespa parking lot outsie of my building. i love vespas and euromullets. unfortunately i do not yet have a picture of the latter.

This is the corner of Corso Trieste (where i live) and via costanza. this is the corner that i turn and then school is about 2 minutes down the road. which makes my walk to school a total of 4 minutes.

this is marinari, the local pasticceria with amazing bread and so much sweet food.

These are the doors to my building. even though theres some tagging on the walls, its actually a really nice building in a really nice neighborhood.

ok so then this weekend. friday and saturday was a lil overnight trip to Assisi and Perugia. Both places were beautiful old medieval towns about 2 hours north of Rome. so friday we arrived at Assisi around noon and had a luxurious lunch at the hotel sole where we were staying. we then took a walking tour of Assisi. the town itself is built around the life and times of St. Francis (Santo Francesco) and St. Clare (Santa Chiara). It was kinda cool cause its very religious and really historical at the same time. like its still a very well preserved medieval town. ok here are some pictures of that.

this is the view of the countryside from the top of the hill in Assisi.

This is the view we had from our hotel window. our hotel was right on the main street in a beautiful 5 storied medieval building.

This is the church of St. Claire. it's a really pretty pink limestone and it was half a block from our hotel. St. Claire's body is actually preserved and on display. Rather creepy if you ask me.

Here's a view of the town from down the hill. It's perched high on the hill and is so well preserved.

This is the church of St. Francis, one of the 1000 places to see before you die. It's actually two churches built on top of each other and then further down below the bottom church is the tomb of st. francis. It's completely covered in frescoes my Giotto and Cimabue but unfortunately pictures of the inside of the church are not permitted.

Here is the monk's courtyard that's off to the side of the church. from here you can clearly see the two different churches built on top of each other.

Me and my neighbor, Anneliese, having dinner at a rooftop garden outside of Assisi.

Emily showing her Asian Pride/Ghetto Trekkiness. Collin is either praying or completely unamused.

wine shots :-D

so saturday morning we departed for perugia where we spent the day and had a wonderful tour. perugia is also a medieval town perched on a different hill with the most beautiful views of the countryside. Perugia (also one of the 1000 places to see before you die) is known for its chocolate (Perugina Cioccolata) . ok here are some pictures.

Emily and me with our hot new fashion accessories. Tourists much?

The medieval fountain that is the one thing that Perugia is most proud of (besides Perugina Cioccolata).

The Palace from the 1300s that unfortunately was closed on Saturday.

Emily and Frieda with the view of the countryside from La Passegiata (one of the 1000 places to see before you die).

Me and my roomie Jessie with the view of the Town from La Passegiata.

me with the view of the town from the market.

Me and three of my favorite girls.

So then we returned to Rome around 5. I signed onto AIM and checked my email and talked to every1 i needed to then showered and then headed out for la notte bianca. so la notte bianca is this big festival in rome where everyone from rome and the surrounding areas head into the city and stay out til 8 am. there were just hundreds of thousands of people getting drunk, people watching, socializing, and enjoying the city. it was an amazing experience for quite a few reasons. first, i got to see all the different parts of the city at night and not feel really sketched out about walking around at night. so we started at the spanish steps and then headed over to the pantheon and then out to piazza navona. My friend lisa's friend lives in the church on Piazza Navona and it had the most amazing view of the square ive ever seen in my life. Ok here are the pictures from last night.

Here's the view of the crowded Spanish Steps from the Hotel Hassler at the top of the steps.

The Church on the top of the Spanish Steps.

This is the view of the fountain from Lisa's friend's window. He lived in the Church right on Piazza Navona and had the most beautiful view of the square I had ever seen. I think that was definitely an experience most people will never get to have in their life.

these two pictures are the view of the square from the same window. I honestly was so mesmerized by the view that I just stood there and looked out the window for like 25 minutes.

this is the church that Lisa's friend lives in. the windows with the lights are the ones we were looking out of. so amazing.

ok so it's sunday here and i'm pretty much a ridonc waste of life. i got up around 2 and then gave money to my roommate to buy my italian textbooks so that i don't have to go buy it myself. it's almost 5 here so im probly gonna shower and get out of my pajamas and maybe go buy some pizza or perhaps cook something for myself. i know this was a long post but its pretty much what ive been doing. hope you enjoyed it :-)

2006-09-06T19:52:00.000+02:00

so its currently 759 pm here in rome. this morning i got up at like 800 and got ready and then conversed with a woman in the local bar while waiting for my cappucino to be brewed. surprisingly i did ok given that i dont remember pretty much any italian. granted, we talked about almost nothing and she was amused by the crazy asian who came in attempting to speak italian but you know, whatevs.

so after i finished blogging yesterday another group of IES students came by our apartment and our italian student companions made us two delicious pasta dishes. granted, they were simple- spaghetti with gravy and bacon and egg noodles with gravy as well as a bread which was like a mix between sourdough and wheat. yumm. my roommates are cool. i was just telling my sister how i have one comment on the people in this program...theyre just nice. i mean like i have no problem with them besides that its a mixture of people from so many different schools so the intellectual level isnt exactly the highest, but other than that theyre just...nice. i mean like im just not used to it, i guess. considering half of my friends arent even my real friends (yall know who you are). well yes that is all i have to say about that.

so starting at 930 we did a bus tour of rome where they showed us all the places that were important for us to know. including the bookstore, the hidden treasures, the main bus and rail stations, and the places we shouldnt find ourselves at night. it was pretty useful, i would say, but i was pretty tired and the stopping and going of the crazy rome traffic didnt quite do it for me. so then they took us to Villa Torlonia where we dined for many hours at a place called la limonaia. it was amazing, first they brought out riceballs, zucchini flowers, and potato croquets. it was funny cause every1 else was like what is this stuff?! and i was like people, step it up! and i had to explain what everything was. then they brought out bruschetta which is even more amazing when made with the correct olive oil. then we had a pasta primavera type dish which was super excellent since the farfalle was ACTUALLY al dente. then they served us a spring mix type salad and fresh buffalo mozzarella with a balsamic vinegar. yum. then it was desert. i had a pignoli creme tart which was amazing (and if you know me at all you know how much pignoli nuts pretty much rule my life). then we headed over to the university of malta which is where i'm taking classes and had a small orientation session where they just explained stupid things to us. whatevs. yeah so im gonna head out and just hope that the grocery stores and things are still open. im pretty beat and kinda just wanna finish unpacking. after seeing my clothes, i see that i brought far too much but now im just gonna force myself to wear every piece. and then just throw out the stuff i dont like. and i already know that i will soon be discarding my flip flops. so it shouldnt be too bad. i totally understand the importance of food and travel so i know i wont be buyin much of anything while im here.

ok well im gonna venture out to explore the nomentana region a bit. ill post pictures later tonight if i take anymore. woot for wireless in my apartment.

2006-09-05T20:43:00.000+02:00

im in rome!

so my sisters gave me the brilliant idea to start a blog and to keep it going while im here. so here goes.

i arrived in london on time despite leaving from JFK an hour late. regardless, i got very little sleep on the plane ride over the pond and still had 4 hours to waste in heathrow. im not really sure what i did with my time but i somehow made it bearable and was pretty much completely knocked out for the entire flight to rome. i arrived in rome and made friends pretty quickly with other students in my program while trying to find the baggage claim. check in was painless and in the airport where they arranged to have a taxi take me to my doorstep which was kinda nice. my apartment is pretty...its pretty nicely sized and my bedroom is big. its in a nice apartment building in the nomentana section of the city. my roommates are pretty cool, ridonc in their own way is actually how i would describe them. its hard to take pictures of my apartment cause there are no good angles to do so but here are the best i could do.

thats the corner of my room you see from looking in through the door. the bed near the window is my roommates and the one along the wall is mine.

thats the entrance hallway as seen from my room.

the other half of my room (closets and shelves and things)

my bed and desk and my erupted suit cases on the floor.

the kitchen with the washing machine?

ok well thats my post for now. we have guests and are having a homecooked meal now ill post again later as im unpacking.