Man you go on vacation for 10 days in Italy and all of a sudden it is the middle of a new month. Crazy! Today is our official midway through the semester day, which is hard to believe! I had an amazing vacation in Italy with Bria, Tia, and Charlie.
We started out our trip on Thursday night (Oct 7) by going to spend the night in the Madrid airport. We didn't sleep at all but sat there talking all night until we could check in and go through security. Even after staying there all night we were running late to our flight because the lines were so long and we were not sure which line we had to be in. Madrid is a very confusing airport. We caught our flight though at 6 am and I slept the next two hours. We arrived to Bergamo airport which is outside of Milan. We didn't even bother going into Milan but magically found a bus that took us to the train station where we bought tickets to Venice. Friday was by far our longest travel day especially after not sleeping. Our train was delayed so it took us three hours to get to Venice instead of two but I officially got to ride on my first train! :) Before we got on the train we got to talk to a homeless man from England that told us his life story....he even told us how he got kicked out of England and the United States. Needless to say that was an interesting conversation that kept us entertained until the train came and we split from him really quick then! lol We finally made it to the train station in Venice. We were so hungry by then we didn't even make it out of the train station to eat but just ate McDonald's in the station which is always good! We were so sick of figuring all the transportation out by that point that we just split a taxi fare to get to our Holiday Inn hotel, which meant I had my first taxi ride that day too! What an awesome day! We rested for a couple of hours in the hotel and then decided to go into central Venice by taxi again to see the Gran Canal and find some dinner. Venice was beautiful! We found a cute pizza place for dinner and some gelato. Gelato is SOOOOO amazing! I wish we had that in the USA! It might even beat DQ (Shocking right!?!) The language was very overwhelming at first because it is just close enough to Spanish that my brain was constantly trying to figure out what people were saying. A lot of the trip it was easier to use Spanish to communicate with the Italians because if they only knew a little English then they usually understood the Spanish better. Italian is a beautiful language though and I want to learn that next!
On Saturday we went exploring by the hotel to try and find some groceries for breakfast and lunch to save some money. We found lunch stuff and then had coffee and croissants at a cafe. Their coffee is so strong in Italy it is even stronger then Spain's so I was set on caffeine for the day! After the cafe we stumbled upon a street market that was so big I don't even know how many streets were lined with stands. I found my cute boots I had been looking for and some bananas. They had clothes, food, candy, and everything you could think of. We ended up spending the morning walking around there which was fun and then went back to the hotel and ate lunch and rested. Around 3 we headed into Venice and we walked close to the Piazza de San Marco to find a gondola. We found a gondola guy that knew English and we went on a 40 minute ride for 20 euros a piece and I felt like I was apart of a movie. It was SO much fun and was so pretty!!! After our ride we walked to San Maco cathedral and the biggest part of the canal. The cathedral was beautiful and we spent some time there just watching cruise ships coming in. I want to do that someday! For dinner I had alfredo at a cute and really good restaurant. After dinner we did some souvenir shopping and of course had gelato. While we were walking to catch a taxi....Charlie's gelato ended up on the ground and while we were all laughing at him 2 guys and a girl asked Tia to take their picture. We found out after the picture that the two guys were from Madrid, so we got to practice our Spanish and talk with them. If felt so good to use Spanish again! We got one of their phone numbers to call when we are in Madrid to hang out with them! After visiting for a little while we headed back to the hotel, drank some wine, ate some chocolate, and bought our plane tickets home from Rome. We found out the train ticket would have been as expensive as the plane tickets and didn't want to have to deal with a whole day of traveling again.
On Sunday (Oct 9) we left on the 11:30 train to Florence. We had McDonald's again before we left....you would swear it is Red Lobster or Olive Garden over here the way we think of it as a huge treat! We took the high speed train which was way nicer then the older sketchier one we took to Venice and it was our only option and was more expensive. We arrived at the train station in the middle of Florence and then walked to our hostel in about a half hour walk. It is a good thing Ricardo has had us walking a lot on excursions so that it "wasn't too bad of a walk". I would not have said that a few months ago! Thank goodness our hostel was not sketchy at all! We had a four bed dorm room setup with our own bathroom. Not too bad of a deal and it was secure and had cheap wifi to use. It was a little far away and a little noisy outside but we didn't have to pay for a taxi everyday to get home so it was good. Later that afternoon we went and just walked around and explored and found that quite a few things were closed being as it was Sunday. We went and saw the "street of gold" which is off of the last shopping bridge that survived the attacks of World War II. It is called "street of gold" because it is lined with jewelry stores upon jewelry stores full of stuff that I can't afford. lol We of course found more pizza and more gelato for dinner. We also found the H&M there which is my new favorite store, I found two cute dresses there on clearance. We headed back to the hotel kind of early because we were tired and needed to relax. We watched "I am Legand" on Tia's IPad....bad idea for the first night in the hostel for me since that kind of mutant stuff freaks me out!
We got a good night's sleep and then on Monday (Oct 10) we went to the museum that has the real Statue of David just to find out that it is closed on Mondays, so we ended up just walking around. We saw the Duonmo Cathedral which was beautiful! this trip was different then any of the family vacations or group trips I have been on because we would just wander and experience the cities and the culture which I enjoyed. By doing so we discovered another beautiful church that we went inside and looked at. For lunch we ate at a cafe and I ordered a chicken burrito thinking I actually found mexican food here...only to get a cheese and chicken wrap type thing more then a burrito but at least it was good. It just didn't satisfy my mexican food craving, bummer. After lunch we headed to meet for our vineyard tour. We went on a bus with around 50 other people to the Tuscany countryside about 45 minutes from Florence. It was beautiful! We saw fields and fields of vineyards. We headed to a castillo were they make Chianti wine which is the wine Italy is known for. When we got there we got the option of an english tour which most of the people were there to do, but we went and did the tour that was in spanish. That was awesome! We saw the wine cellars and learned the basics of how wine is made and then aged. We walked around the castillo and took a lot of pictures. We then sat down at a table with two couples from upper state NY and talked with them while we sampled food and 4 different wines. They would just set a bottle at our table every time with a new plate of food. It was so much fun! The couples from NY could not believe how lucky of college kids we are to be there while our parents sat at home in MN, they thought it was so funny! We got to try a pink wine, a red wine, a darker red wine, and a dessert wine that was a golden color that we dipped biscotti in. All of the wines were strong especially the dessert wine, but were good. I didn't buy any though because shipping was ridiculous! After that we got back on the bus and went to a little town out in the countryside and there were shops to look around in. We walked around the cute town, ate gelato, and then got back on the bus to head back to Florence. Overall the tour was 4 hours long. When we got back Tia and I went and walked around Florence again and Charlie and Bria went to get groceries and head back to the hostel. It was fun to walk around just the two of us and explore shops and to see the cathedral at night. We called it a short night when everything started to shut down for the night.
On Tuesday (Oct 11) we had a slow moving morning we all were tired. We started out our morning with bagels at a cafe for breakfast, real bagels...yum! Then we went to wait in line at the museum to see the statue of David, and on our way there we ran into Suzanne and her mom who just had finished the museum, what are the chances! Sometimes it is a small world! We waited in line for about an hour and twenty minutes which would have been worst if it wasn't so nice out, and we also had gelato in line while we waited, of course :) Addiction I know! The statue was way bigger then I expected but cool to see. It was kind of a joke that we had to pay 11 euros to get in basically just to see him, but you got to do it if you are in Florence. It was close to 3 when we finally got done and we were starving and so we found a restaurant. I was excited because I got a lettuce salad which is probably the second one I have had over here and I was adventurous and tried Gnochi and a four cheese sause and they are really weird noodles but are very good. Charlie headed back to the hostel because he was sick but us girls were going to go up on a look out and see all of Florence. The problem was we kind of lost our navigator and there were shops all over, so we ended up shopping instead, opps! It was fun though! We even found chocolate at a Lindt chocolate store! Our next adventure was to find me a suitcase because they were cheap there and after shopping I knew my things would not all fit into my backpack much less my 1 big suitcase back to the USA. I found a nice one and it ended up that I only had to pay 15 euros to check it back to Spain, because Ryan Air is so cheap. Our tickets were cheap too, and the only scary thing is that they play circus music and clap when they land...a tad bit unnerving but funny! I wish we had a cheap Ryan Air in the US! After bargaining for my suitcase we went and had pizza again (pasta for lunch = pizza for dinner) lol and then found gelato again before we headed back to the hostel.
On Wednesday (Oct 12) we left at 9 am for a two and a half hour train ride to Rome! We got there a little early and had lunch at McDonald's again lol It took us about 30 minutes to find the metro that would take us to our bus. Our Best Western 4 star hotel said on it's website that it was in the middle of Rome...try the outskirts of Rome. It took us an hour by public bus to get there. Had we not been helped by a man that lives near the hotel from Mexico we would have NEVER found the random bus stop under the grafitti bridge. Our hotel according to this man who helped us was in the worst part of Rome. When I asked the front desk if it was safe to go out at night their response was what time....that was reassuring not. Our hotel was really nice though and we had connecting rooms that were very secure. The hotel was also full of cops the whole time we were there because apparently they were training or having a conference but at first we didn't know that so we got a little freaked out. At least some of them were attractive young ones. lol When we got up to our rooms the first thing we wanted to do was go swimming because we were hot from traveling and it was around 80 degrees out. We got our suits on and went downstairs and when we couldn't find the pool asked the front desk about it and they looked at us crazy Minnesotas and said it's outside and closed for the winter. Seriously? You are in Rome in a totally tropical area! Anyways we took the bus back into the center center a little while later which took forever but was so worth it. We got to see the Trevi Fountain at night, make our wishes, and we sat outside at a cute restaurant and had dinner looking at beautiful Rome. We also got to walk smack in the middle of the protest/riot that made headlines in Rome, but nothing happened except we couldn't use the street we wanted because cops were blocking it off, the whole place was surrounded including a helicopter above. After dinner got our daily gelato and took a taxi back to the hotel which only took 20 minutes verses an hour.
The next morning (Oct 13) we took the hotel free shuttle into Rome which was a 30 minute ride. We then took the metro all the way to Vatican City where we did a tour of the Vatican Museums, St Peter's Basilica, and the Sistine Chapel. It was AMAZING! I learned so much and it was all really cool to see. We had just missed the Pope blessing the day before which was okay since 25,000 people were there. After the Vatican we did lunch and then went and signed our names at the guestbook in the Pantheon. We also went and saw the Spanish Steps at night before heading back to the metro to catch the last shuttle at 8pm back to the hotel. We only had gelato twice this day lol At the hotel we just relaxed after a long day, had dinner at the hotel restaurant, and played speed (card game).
On Friday (Oct 14) Tia and I got up and went to the free breakfast and then caught the 9am shuttle to go explore Rome more while Bria and Charlie slept in. We went and took pictures by the Trevi Fountain during the day and got our souvenir shopping started. We then got a cookie gelato and met up with Bria and Charlie at the Collesum. We waited an hour to get in but it was so cool. You could see the platform that used to hold the animals below, where the three tiers were, and were the emperor used to sit. It was really cool! We then headed over to the Roman Forum and Palpatine Hill which were really old ruins that were cool. We ate lunch after that and I had lasagna. Yum! We then went and took pictures by the very crowded Spanish Steps. There were men everywhere there selling stuff and it got really annoying! We then went and got some gelato before Charlie and Bria headed back to the hotel. Tia and I went exploring on our own and found more souvenirs while looking for the H&M we never did find. :( We decided to eat before catching the shuttle back and found a really good restaurant with alfredo and rissotto for Tia, and because we were not FULL enough we squeezed in another gelato thinking it was our last opportunity! We went back to the hotel on the free 8pm shuttle with the London couple we met the night before to go on the hotel's "Tour Rome by Night" what we thought was a 4 hour driving tour of Rome. We got on the shuttle AGAIN to be dropped off in the freezing night for an hour by everything we already had done, and then got picked up again to go to another spot and do the same thing. We each had paid 25 euros to go...what a joke. We talked to the hotel and can only hope we get some sort of response but it is Italy so nothing will probably happen. We did get to meet a cute couple from Australia and South America though and found some warm coffee to drink while we waited, and we also saw the Trevi fountain one last time.
On Saturday we slept in until breakfast, went and ate, then packed up, and we checked out of the hotel at 12. Since we had no clue how to get to the airport we split a taxi there. We ate lunch and waited around at the airport until our delayed flight left. We got to Madrid at 6:30pm and were home by 10pm to Segovia. It felt SO good to be "home" in Segovia. My host sister, Angela, could not contain her laughter when I returned with a big suitcase home after leaving with just my backpack. I loved Italy and will never forget all the memories that I have there. What an amazing vacation! I am so blessed!
This week it is back to classes, getting homework done, practicing Spanish, working at the daycare, and starting to work on Thursday at the elementary school finally. I hope you are all doing well. God bless you all this week!
Love,
Jennifer <3
