A Week in Italy!

Hey guys! Sorry it's taken me so long. I've been craaazy busy, but I wanted to get at least one post out before my next school week started. This post will be fun and lighthearted--to contrast with the two I'm writing about the most recent two weeks, which will be an Emotional Rollercoaster.

Okay, let's get started! Monday (of two weeks ago) was the first day of our study abroad program's break week. That means no school, no responsibilities, and the ability to go wherever in Europe (within reason) we wanted for a week! 

I went with Rachel and Jacob and spent a week in Italy, which was honestly so so fun. It might be a bit hard to get all the stuff across about that week that I want to, but I'll do my best!

I met them at one of the metro stations to ride to the airport. While I was looking for them I happened to witness something extremely interesting. So metro stations have these little ticketing places where you have to scan your ticket in order for the gate to let you through. There are normal-sized ones, but there are also bigger ones designed for people with wheelchairs and stuff. Those ones look something like this:

So as I'm walking around with my suitcase and backpack, trying to find my friends, I walk past one of these ticketing gates and see something that catches my eye: on the other side of the gate, there's this guy struggling to carry a massive (like, nearly as big as him) bulky object wrapped in plastic. As he gets closer I see that it's a great big arm chair. I stop and watch what follows, as this guy is helped by another dude to maneuver the chair through the wheelchair-accessible ticket gate, because it's too heavy to just lift over the top of the gates. They get through and walk on into the metro station and out of sight. That was the last I saw of them, but it definitely got my imagination going.

Where had those two gotten an armchair? Why were they so excited about it? And what, exactly, were the people on their train going to think when these two dudes just brought their chair onboard? I was left with so many unanswered questions, but I had to hurry and meet up with Rachel and Jacob so we could get on our way.

We were all pumped to visit Italy, and I was so happy to be going with them, because they're both so much fun to talk to--we had some great conversations during the week.

Unfortunately, before our trip could actually get going, we had a couple hiccups--two, to be exact. Nothing earth-shattering, but they were definitely exciting. First of all, Jacob forgot his passport (seriously though, man, it's no big deal--happens to everyone) and went back to get it, while Rachel and I went on ahead to the airport. When we got there, though, we had troubles of our own.

So I should preface this by saying that both Rachel and Jacob brought only backpacks on this trip. I had done that for my London trip, but wanted a little more space for souvenirs and such, so I brought my backpack and a suitcase, thinking that (like most airlines) I'd be allowed one carry-on and one personal item. However, the airline we'd booked with was cheap--and that came at a price. The nice guy we asked for directions warned me that only one carry-on item was allowed, so I'd have to either pay a fee and check a bag, or figure out how to consolidate my backpack and my suitcase.

Thus ensued the most stressful/funniest moments of mine and Rachel's day so far. For the next fifteen minutes, we shoved all sorts of items into different pockets of my suitcase, trying to empty and flatten my backpack, jamming it inside the top pocket, and desperately zipping it closed in between pauses for hysterical cackles. Candid shot of me in the middle of all this:

If you look closely, you can see the hysteria in my eyes.

Actually, you know what, I think you can see that even without looking closely. That picture is vaguely terrifying.

After that, we then made it to our gate, re-connected with Jacob, and got on the plane. Check out the absolutely GORGEOUS view from my window as we flew into Pisa!

So our plane landed in Pisa, but we were staying the night in Florence because that was where the bed and breakfast we were staying at was. I had bought a ticket to this bus service between Pisa and Florence a few weeks before, but Rachel and Jacob hadn't been able to get tickets in time, so they bought tickets for a train instead. We split up so they could catch their train and I could catch my bus.

Apparently, though, this wouldn't be as easy as it seemed. When I got to the bus stop I was confronted by a sign that said that service was 'temporarily interrupted' which just meant my bus service wasn't running. So I had to buy another, more expensive ticket for a bus leaving a half hour later and get on that one instead. So far so good--not perfect, but okay. 

Then I got on the bus and went and took a backseat. I should say that it's a lot (a lot) warmer in Italy than it has been in France, which makes sense because Italy's further south and has a milder climate in general. That's probably why I randomly reached up and found a GIANT BUG IN MY HAIR which was just the icing on the crazy cake for the day so far. I tried to snap a picture, but the thing scuttled away too fast. Suffice it to say that it was several inches long, multiple colors, and verrrry spindly.

Although I was shuddering about the bug for the entire hour and a half ride from Pisa to Florence, I was able to meet up with Rachel and Jacob at the train station without a problem, and we walked to the bed and breakfast where we were staying.

In order to get there, we had to go through a super suuuper sketchy little tunnel-thing that was absolutely covered in graffiti. It was only eight or nine at night at the time, but it was still kinda creepy to walk around down there.

#thuggin

When we arrived at our bed and breakfast we were all too tired to go out again for dinner, so we decided to get pizza. Rachel and I had already discussed how pumped we were for authentic Italian food--some of her favorite food that she's had here in France has actually, whoops, been Italian. So when we called in to a pizza place(they got pizza, I ordered chicken and potatoes with spinach), we were expecting some gooood eats.

I would like to inform people of something important. In every place on planet Earth, there is one thing that is universal: the ability to accidentally stumble upon The Worst Restaurant Possible, not know that it is The Worst, and order from there. That is what happened to us.

When our food finally arrived all three of us were ridiculously hungry. I could have probably eaten a walrus. But I did not get a walrus.

I got this.

Yes, I'd eaten most of it by the point this picture was taken--and yes, my fork did break halfway through eating it. But this meal was literally one of the smallest, saddest meals I've ever eaten. The potatoes were cold, the chicken was floppy and dry, the spinach had an unpleasant texture/smell, everything about it was extremely unimpressive. It was basically like an Ultra-Lean Cuisine--it actually was just a sealed microwaved dish. I was like, what the heck??? I came for authentic Italian cuisine and you give me radioactive depression chicken?

Rachel's meal was not much better. She'd gotten four-cheese pizza, but one of the cheeses they put on the pizza was goat cheese, which she despises because her family raises goats, so eating goat cheese tastes the way goats smell to her. I can totally sympathize with that. Poor Rachel! I think Jacob's pizza was okay, though, so there's that.

We kind of all bonded over the collective pathetic-ness of our meal, as well as the one (1) free can of 7-up (not bottle, can) they gave us to go with it. Boy, oh boy. We couldn't stop giggling.

After such a craazy first day, where so much stuff went wrong, we were all a bit apprehensive for what our next day in Rome would hold. But we managed to get back through the creepy graffiti tunnel and along the Italian streets to the train station on time, and soon we were in Rome!

This picture isn't very pretty, but Rome sure was. I was fascinated by the way the trees looked like they belonged on some tropical island, and the crazily bright colors of the buildings--well, they seemed crazily bright to me, at least. Salmon and a kind of beige-y orange, with dark green window shutters. It was completely different from what I've seen in France, which was cool!

We spent a lot of time on the bus that day. I have a ton of videos of the view outside the bus window, because there wasn't really anything else to do but look out. Here's one of my favorites:




 See what I mean about the different colored buildings? Super cool. I liked how they looked in comparison to the grey sky that morning.

Our first stop of the day was the Rome temple site, which is actually on the outskirts of Rome--we went past a supermarket to get there. The temple hasn't been completed yet, but construction is well under way and it looks really really cool!

(A glimpse of really exotic-looking trees as well--they look like they belong in the Sahara!

Here's a cute group shot of us in front of the temple as well. It was Rachel's uncle's wish for her to visit the Rome temple, because he served his mission in Italy. So glad we got to fill that wish!

Next, we headed back into town on the bus and jumped on a metro to go to Vatican City! 

Now, all three of us had discussed the things we wanted to do, and since we only had one day in Rome, we collectively agreed that there were some things that would have to go undone if we wanted to be able to actually enjoy ourselves and, y'know, eat. So we decided not to go inside the Vatican Museum (which costs money and takes a loooong time to go through) which meant no Sistine Chapel :,(  But that was okay, because we went inside St. Peter's Basilica instead, and that was absolutely gorgeous!

We had to wait in a loooong line to get inside--luckily, all of us had umbrellas with us, as it was raining a fair amount. Rachel was nice enough to snap some pics of me as we were waiting. The cute normal one:

And the one where she made me laugh:

Also, get ready for that powder-blue jacket to become a Theme on this trip. I'm wearing it in nearly every picture because it was too warm for my coat, but too cold to go without a jacket.

It didn't actually take that long to get inside the Basilica, but maybe it just didn't feel that bad because we kept bantering with each other and telling horrible puns. Those two crack me up, no joke.

Example: we were standing in line to go through the metal detectors and we saw this sign:

And decided that the words had nothing to do with the pictures beneath it, the sign was just really annoyed with our shenanigans and saying, "Okay, NO."

(Also I thought that little colorful thing was a parrot divebombing into the water bottle and not a baseball hat because I'm an idiot haaaha)

Inside the basilica was absolutely gooorgeous. I didn't take too many pictures because my camera kinda stinks at interior shots, but here are a few:

As always, pictures totally don't do it justice. It was amazing. 

Also, I didn't get a picture of it, but there was some kind of . . . bronze-cast body of a priest or something . . . wearing a Santa hat and coat? Like, I don't think it was literally supposed to be St. Nicholas, but the bright robe and hat sure reminded me of him. It was weird--partially because the bronze cast was laying down inside a glass coffin like a dead body. Dead Santa is nobody's favorite Santa.

Moving on! We wandered around and took pictures inside the Basilica (and created a 43-step plan to get a Cute French Boy from church to fall in love with Rachel--don't ask), visited the gift shop, and decided to head out. Jacob thought he forgot his umbrella inside, though, so he went back into the Basilica and was in there foreeverrr. We didn't know until later, but he'd actually walked in in the middle of some kind of service and they wouldn't let anybody leave while it was going on. So while he was in there, Rachel and I waited at the exit, flanked by giant gorgeous pillars:

And as I've already mentioned, I kind of have a Radar that seeks out places I'm not supposed to be and says, "I wanna go right there. Nowhere else, just there." This happened again here--there was a tiny little corner next to two pillars at the exit of the basilica that was the perfect spot for me to perch. The legendary pic of me being such a rebel:

I promise I can take normal pictures too . . . 

Shortly after this photo was taken, a guard came out to look around and saw me sitting there. He kinda just stared at me all tired, like he'd seen this a million times, and shook his head--that was it. No reprimand in Italian, no nothing! I hopped down, of course, but in a way I was kind of disappointed I hadn't been chewed out. I was being a Rebel, dang it! 

Oh well. Jacob came out eventually, and we took a few more pictures of the exterior of the basilica. It really is gorgeous, and sooo huge!

There, see, I CAN take normal, cute photos!

But inevitably, I also take photos like these--prepping for an epic hair-flip:

And ba-BAM:

Proof that my hair knows how to party.

At the end of our photo-taking session, the sun was starting to emerge from behind the clouds in a beautiful fashion:

But it made us realize the sun was starting to head towards setting, and we still had two more items on our agenda! We booked it back into the main town of Rome and headed over to the beautiful Trevi Fountain, which is apparently in a lot of movies, and I can definitely see why:

Seriously sooo pretty! The water in the fountain was a beautiful blue as well, mostly because of the interesting blue tiling at the bottom of the pool at the base of the teeny waterfall. Of course we did the classic over-the-shoulder wishing thing:

If you look closely you can see I'm wishing that I was better at being the subject of candid photos.

We didn't spend long here--just long enough to make our wishes--because we had to hurry over to the Colosseum!

We didn't get to go inside (again, can't do everything) but even just from the outside it was suuuper cool and imposing. Way too big for my lil' phone camera to capture all of:

And props to Jacob for taking a photo of me:

This was basically the end of our day in Rome. Overall, I give it an 8/10 on my Travelling scale. It was pretty, there were a lot of ancient monuments to look at--but there was soooo much graffiti. On everything. I didn't really take pictures of it, but dang. All over the place. It didn't exactly ruin the aesthetic, it just detracted from it. But the rest of the things we saw were suuuper awesome!

The next two days we spent in Florence itself. Sadly, my phone freaked out and deleted the photos from our first morning there, but I'll do my best to describe what happened anyway.

We sepnt our morning at the San Lorenzo market, which is just this great big outdoor market where they sell silk ties and scarves, real leather bags and jackets (I watched multiple vendors take little lighters and brush the flame along the bags to show they were real leather) and all sorts of other souvenirs. It was really fun--but let me just say that Italian vendors are way waaaay more loud and persistent than French ones. You literally don't even have to look in the direction of what they're selling, they'll just start yelling at you. Like, calm down man, I'm just trying to walk, I don't need an artisanally crafted tea tray today. Just  . . . dial it back a few notches.

After an hour or so in the market, we got bored and went to see the Duomo (proper name Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore), which is this absolutely incredible church (not my photo because my phone messed up, credited to red-travel.com:)

Isn't it gorgeous? Every surface on the outside was decorated so extravagantly. It absolutely took my breath away.

Unlike in this picture, on the day we were there, about a bajillion people crowded in the little square to take pictures, since this is one of the most famous sites in Florence--oh, and in the middle of all that I totally almost got run over by a horse-drawn carriage, so that was fun.

The inside of the Duomo was actually pretty plain compared to the outside. I was in awe of this cool candle-tray designed to look like a tree, though:

There was also this neat ceiling that is part of the Duomo (dome) itself:

Featuring . . . a skeleton, for some reason?

After we finished looking around inside the church, we hopped on a bus and shuttled over to the Bardini Gardens, which I think were owned by a lord of some sort? Anyway, the gardens are on a hill that ascends above the city so you can see everything.

Wowee wow, am I right? Rachel and I both agreed that if a handsome nobleman asked for one of our hands in marriage while gesturing over the city and saying he would give us 'allll this' in exchange, we wouldn't really complain.

Seriously, this garden was so peaceful and beautiful. We were just about the only people there (except for this sweet old Scottish grandma who needed help to take a photo on her iPhone and then chatted with us for a while). I wished I could have stayed there forever.

Here's a photo of me in the garden to make up for the lack of photos from that morning, as well:

After a while in the garden we walked over to this other lookout point called the Piazzale Michelangelo, because we were going to meet up with Scarlet, Skye, and Kate, who also chose to spend the break week in Italy. While we were waiting it started to rain a little, as the sun went down, and I got this heavenly photo:

Also, cute umbrella pics were a must:

After we met up with the three girls, we talked for a while at the lookout point and then, when it randomly started to monsoon rain on us, headed back into town to get some dinner.

I got this pasta with . . . salmon, I think? It was yummy.

The highlight of that dinner visit, though, was when I went to the bathroom and it was super-sketchy looking, and then the lights just turned off halfway through and they wouldn't go back on, so all I could think was, 'I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, somebody's gonna crawl through a vent and MURDER ME while I'm in this restroom, ahhh' but luckily that did not happen. It freaked me out, though.

After dinner we went to this gelato place that Rachel's relative had recommended. As it turned out it was right by the Duomo, so I got to take (blurry) photos of it at night!

The gelato we had was really . . . interesting, I guess? It was good, just unusual. Freshly-made lemon meringue, chocolate, and apple flavored gelato (the red-flecked one). Whoever thought of making apple gelato was a genius, in my opinion. It was sooo good.

We split off into our two groups at that point, happy and full, and went back to the places we were staying.

The next morning something happened that made us all laugh really hard. Obviously in foreign countries, sometimes the translations aren't perfect. But in Italy, I noticed waaay more typos than I've seen in France, on things that are supposed to be professionally printed. For example, I saw mistakes like this all the time:

Which, yeah, is pretty funny, but by far my favorite misused English phrase came when we were taking turns getting money from the ATM and when we selected English as the language, this came up:

Excuse me, I didn't know that to withdraw money in Italy, you have to be a smuggler or a spy. My international schemes are nowhere near devious enough to use this ATM . . . 

Anyway, we withdrew money so that we could head to the Galleria dell'Accademia, which is the museum that houses Michelangelo's David.

(Sorry for the horrible quality--I'll explain in a minute).

It was definitely a highlight of this trip to see that statue in person. One thing that I've loved about being in museums and actually getting to see things in person is that everything really is sooo much cooler than in pictures. This statue was no exception. Every little detail was so perfect in person, I was absolutely in awe of it. (Also, the David is huge. Like, think Incredible Hulk-sized.)

However, like most great works of European art, this statue was extremely nekkid, so it was a bit of a trick to get a picture of or with it that wasn't explicit. I did my best, though:

Anyway, that's why the frontal picture is so blurry and only David's upper half, haha.

Also, not-so-fun fact: The David is so famous that it's featured in a lot of souvenirs. Some of them are very serious and tasteful (little figurines or books about the statue) but the vast majority are clearly meant to be used as cheap gag gifts. And let me tell you, you only need to walk past aprons and boxer shorts decorated with the David's torso and . . . lower half . . . three or four times before you feel the desperate need to wash your eyes out with bleach.

Moving on! The David wasn't the only exciting thing we saw in the accademia. There was also an exhibit of ancient musical instruments that included violins made by Stradivarius:

The first upright piano of all time (*squee*):

And an illustration of this instrument that I didn't know existed, but which I am so happy I know about now (thank you, Jacob, for showing me):

Boys, if you want girls to speak to you, you must learn how to play the hurdy-gurdy. I don't make the rules, sorry.

(It also helps if, while playing, you start to sing along with a voice like the Swedish chef from the muppets, btw.)

Last of all, on our way out, we discovered this absolute gem of a medieval engraving.

You can't see everything that's going on in the picture, but you can see just enough to ask, "Why on earth does that man have his fish on a leash? Why is the dog smaller than the fish? What???"

Personally, I never want any context for any of what is going on in this. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen--I don't remember what it was called, though, so it might take a little more digging to find a better photo of it. Anyway, it was great.

We met up with Scarlet, Kate, and Skye again and got lunch at a nearby trattoria (basically a restaurant), and then spent a little time in the San Lorenzo market. Funny story: on this day the hecklers got even more involved, with one guy just calling random things, like "Lady Gaga! Gucci! Huh? Huh?" at me and Rachel even as we walked away very quickly. There was another vendor who took one look at me (and I should preface this by just mentioning that, yes, most Italians do have very dark coloring, so I definitely stand out) and said in a very flirtatious voice, "Oh, red hair, wow!"

Umm, no thank you, sir.

After that, of course, more gelato was necessary, this time at what is ostensibly The Best gelato place in Florence.

Ohhh myy goshh, it did not disappoint. Not only were the serving sizes huge, the flavors were absolutely amazing. The grey one was some kind of . . . peanut flavor, I think? It probably would have been kind of meh on its own, but with the combination of the other flavors, it turned out to be perfect.

At this point in the day, we had to start heading back toward our bed and breakfast because Rachel's relative Heather had invited us to eat with her family that night. We made our way back--albeit slowly, as Rachel and I just had to stop in the middle of this bridge and take photos of the gorgeous view:

And a photo where I am the gorgeous view:

Kudos to Jacob for being so patient with our antics.

As we continued to walk back, we moved through Porta Rossa, which is this area full of reaaaally high end shops, and that's probably one of my favorite memories of the trip, because we got to just talk and laugh and joke with each other. Rachel and Jacob are both incredibly funny people, and I of course am The Queen of humor, so you can probably imagine that we cracked ourselves up walking past shops with fancy clothes and imagining what it would be like if we were ultra-rich and could afford them. The highlight of the walk was this matching bathrobe set we walked past. 

Just one of the bathrobes would have cost 1400 Euros, which for some reason all three of us found hilarious. We created a little narrative around it, like, "Daaaahling, how rich are we today?"

"Let me check. We have--"

"No, no, wait, let me slip into my 1400-Euro bathrobe. All right, now you may tell me."

Yeah, you kinda had to be there. But we still make reference to The Bathrobe in our conversations all the time.

I think Florence gets a 9.5/10: great food, great views, and incredible company. -.5 for that time the light turned off on me in the bathroom. Not cool, man.

Dinner with Heather's family was really fun! They had two companionships of missionaries over as well, and we ate Hawaiian haystacks, which is by far the most American thing I've put in my body for several months.

Just a quick, vaguely related note here--you can expect me to be a complete food snob when I get back to the US--if I ever come back, mwahahaha. I got a glimpse of what it's gonna be like when I tried real Italian bread for the first time on our trip to Rome and I was just like, eugh, this is the nastiest thing ever, where's the moisture? I was not a fan of Italian bread, probably because I've been spoiled by French bread for so long. So yeah, the point is that eating things may become a bit of a trial for me once I'm back home.

That basically ended our night, as we all wanted to get enough sleep for our last day trip of the break week to Venice!

All the same, the next day dawned a little too bright and a little too early for me. I woke up late and it takes so long to walk to the train station that we had to sprint the whole way in order to make our 8:30 train. My lungs felt like they were trying to explode and then escape through my nostrils--I was not prepared for that much running. But we made the train!

Venice was a crazy, crazy adventure. As soon as we stepped off the train we were greeted by this sight:

It was absolutely beautiful! The water was so, so blue, and the sun was shining on everything . . . ahhh. So good.

Our first order of business after getting off the train was not, actually, in Venice itself, but on a little island right nearby called Murano. Hannah had suggested we visit it--apparently the island is famous for making glass and glass-related items, and we hopped on a water bus (yes, that's a thing) and went to a glass museum while we were there. Picture dump! (And disclaimer: yes, everything you are about to see is really made of glass, and yes, it was even cooler in person.)

These are just a few of my favorites. I have waaay too many pictures of glass things now, but I don't mind--all of it was cool!

After the museum, we all agreed that it was time to find some lunch. We passed this cool store, where there was glass blown to look like balloons:

And eventually came to this beautiful little restaurant where the outdoor seating was actually situated on top of the water--like, on a port that jutted out from the rest of the island. It was sooo pretty!

Now, since this whole area is really big on fishing and fish and stuff, as you could expect there were a lot of fish-related things on the menu--which made me very happy! Although, I am pretty sure the guy who took mine and Rachel's order got it wrong, because when you order the 'Fried Fish' and he brings you a plate that looks like this:

It's pretty clear that the 'fish' part was lost in the translation somewhere. Like, yes, this is seafood, but it's shrimp, squid (I think?) and some kind of tofu thing. No 'fish' involved. Ah well. I liked it anyways!

The weather here, as I have mentioned before, was absolutely perfect, which means that waterside selfies are necessary.

So are photoshoots on the side of the water as you're waiting for the water bus to come take you back to Venice:

Yeah, if you're friends with me on Facebook (which . . . I assume most of you are? Idk), you've seen this picture before because it's now my profile picture. But whatever, I just love it too much to not put it on the blog.

The water bus finally came and (slowly) took us back to Venice. We were all weirdly tired all of a sudden, so we kind of napped most of the way back, but I was able to take some pretty pictures of the water out the window:

We finally landed back on Venice, where our first stop was at the San Marco square to grab some more gelato (#gelatofordays) and then look around for a while.

The sun was just barely starting to set as we got there, which meant that the Basilica San Marco was lit up really nicely:

Shortly after this, we finally did The Quintessential Venice Tourism Thing, even though it was super-expensive. Yes, that's right:

We got in a gondola.

It was actually the perfect time of day to do it, because the sun continued to set and the light bounced off the water and we came out onto the Grand Canal and--you know what? Why don't you just enjoy it yourself? Put the video on full screen and just pretend you're in Venice too!

It really hit me while I was on the gondola that . . . man. We only had a month left. (Of course, at the time this is gonna be published I'll have a little more than two weeks left HAHAHA) My crazy adventure, that one time Alaina went to Paris, wasn't going to last forever the way it sometimes felt like it might. I think it was while I was on that gondola that I made a pact with myself that I wasn't going to waste a second--I wanted to get everything out of the rest of this trip that I could.

And the world seemed to agree that yes, this was a good plan. Just look at that sunset:

Venice gets a 10/10 for aesthetic.

After our gondola ride was finished we still had a little bit of time before we needed to head back and catch our train, so we wandered amongst the many stores in the teeny little alleyways all over Venice. We found lots of stuff, like postcards and tshirts (obviously) but more than anything else what we saw were masks:

And more masks:

And even more masks:

Okay, at what point does 'lots of masks' become 'TOO MANY MASKS?' Because I'm pretty sure Venice has just about reached its limit.

The masks were all really cool, though. There were the ones that were clearly pretty cheap, but also as you can see some extremely high-quality stuff being made. 

Also there were character masks for everyone from Harry Potter:

To My Dude the Phantom:

Side note: seeing the Phantom mask in Venice was actually pretty bittersweet (mostly bitter) because of what I found out at the beginning of October. I kind of mentioned this before, but the fire in the theatre where Phantom was going to be showing was a lot worse than I thought. The theatre is closed until the end of 2016 at least, which means . . . well, meant, since by now the date I was gonna go see it has passed . . . no Phantom.

Insert crying gif here, I guess.

Anyway, yeah, I have been super suuuper bummed about it, but when there's so much else to do here in Europe it seems kind of a shame to focus on that. 

A picture of me on a bridge on the grand canal! Venice really was so sooo gorgeous, even more so at night. I'm so glad I got to see it.

That was, essentially, the end of our trip to Venice. We got a little lost following Google Maps but eventually made it back to the train on time. I had a headache so I bought myself a bottle of water and some Oreos, but on the two-hour train ride back I simply could not get the water bottle open, and Rachel and Jacob were in a different train car so I couldn't get them to help. So anybody sitting nearby saw me desperately try every three or four minutes to get the dang water bottle unscrewed, then stop halfway through trying because it made my head hurt, then try again because the water was the only thing that was going to help--I probably looked ridiculous, but I was struuggling.

The next day was our last day in Italy--so sad! We packed up our stuff and headed to the train station. Rachel and Jacob's bus had been cancelled just like mine was at the beginning of the trip, so we all hopped on a local train line and headed into Pisa, where our flight was leaving from. Initially our plan had been to visit the leaning tower of Pisa while we were there, but we had a group conference and decided that we were simply too tired and it would take too long to get to the tower and then back to the airport. So we skipped that. Yes, I know, I'm crazy for missing out on such an iconic monument, but to be honest, the tower of Pisa has never really been on my must-see list, I'm not sure why. Anyway, if anybody has a problem with the fact that I skipped out on it, I will gladly photoshop myself into a photo with the tower.

Instead of doing that, we found a little mom-and-pop Italian restaurant close to the train station we came out of, which resulted in the actual best meal of the entire trip to Italy. I got noodles and shrimp (surprise, surprise--I'm obsessed with shrimp), Jacob got gnocchi, and Rachel got spaghetti with . . . bacon, I think? We all shared with one another and it was absolutely an excellent decision. Just look at it:

I can still taste those noodles. Perfection. (The bread still wasn't as good as French bread, though.)

We headed over to the airport then, and that was basically the end of anything notable that happened on the trip(I decided to just check my bag so I didn't have to go through the crazy STUFF IT INSIDE THE SUITCASE thing again)--oh, except for when I went to connect to the airport wifi and saw some of the private wifis nearby:

Don't let your memes be dreams, everybody. I think that's a good note to end this blog on.

So there you go! That was my trip to Italy! 

Whooo, it took a lot longer to write that than I thought. Kudos to anyone who actually read the whole thing (e.g., my mother). I hope to have the two blogs about last week and this most recent week up soon, so I can be caught up! We'll see if that's even possible, haha! :,D

All right, to finish off, a little bit of explanation about the song for today: I looked online like I always do to try to find an authentic song that would fit, but to be honest, most of the ones I listened to were traditional songs that just made me bored. I wanted to do an Italian song for this post but all I could find was classical music and Italian opera arias. Like, don't get me wrong, I love classical music and I love opera, but it just doesn't fit with this post, you feel me? Which is why I eventually caved and decided that Yolanda Be Cool's song 'We No Speak Americano' was the only viable option. (The words, by the way, aren't technically in Italian, but in Neopolitan--the language of Southern Italy. I know, there's kind of no rules to this anymore.)

 Please listen to this song and dance as awkwardly as physically possible. It's a guaranteed way to get people to like you.

All right, I'm out. Peace for now!