I know, I know, I'm still so far behind. It's been weeks and my never ending adventures paired with preparing for finals has been keeping me completely occupied.
Right now, I'm sitting at school, watching as the snow floats to the ground from the gray sky, in the largest flakes I've ever seen. It's all piled up to about 2 inches in the past two hours. I'm plugged into my iPod that's playing Christmas music, and eagerly awaiting Carly to get out of class so we can go to Starbucks down the street and sit in their big comfy chairs, enjoy the snow and study with our grande latté du caramel et noisette.
I'm beginning to get very sad about leaving Paris. I only have a little over a week left before heading to Norway to stay with Ingrid for Christmas and New Years, and then I'm off to Bordeaux. I find myself getting anxious, and trying to pack in everything I've wanted to do since I've been here and just haven't gotten around to. I feel as though I've only scratched the surface of this incredible city, and there's part of me that never wants to leave. But, at least I have these last few days to start saying au revoir à Paris, perhaps just à tout à l'heure - I know I'll be back, no doubt.
So for now, I'll try to update you all on all the traveling I've been doing since Prague...since that was around midterms and now the semester is about to end.
Fall break after midterms consisted of 10 days of freedom with no worries of school, and only an opportunity to see some parts of the world I'd always wanted to see. We started in Barcelona, a day behind schedule thanks to more grèves en Paris. Carly and I with one other girl managed to change our flights on easyjet quite easily, while our friends Austin and Alex had a little more trouble getting out of France. Alex wasn't able to get a flight until Sunday night, when Carly, myself and the third girl would have already left Barcelona. Poor Austin was trying to use his train credit and since his original direct train had been cancelled, he had to make 3 transfers and take 4 separate trains. Unfortunately, his fourth train left without him on it, just inside the French border without any more Trains leaving to Barcelona for another 24 hours. We found him a bus and so he arrived the next morning at nearly 5, completely exhausted, but happy to have a day with nearly everyone before we left for Italy.
We stayed in the wonderful Hostel Central, wandered around the city, down Las Ramblas all the way down to the harbor, drinking steins of Sangria, stuffing our faces with paella, through the tapas markets and any interesting alley ways we could find.
Our full day with Austin, we hiked up to Park Guëll where we got an incredible view of the entire city. We walked back down through various other parks, to the hostel, grabbed more paella and sangria for dinner, then found our way to a bar in a random alleyway advertising 1 euro beers that provided us with a fun night with a lot of other friendly foreigners.The next morning we walked down Las Ramblas to the market to get breakfast, to find that it was closed, being Sunday. Instead we walked across the street to a place called Chiquitos, where I had the most phenomenal breakfast in my life: Hot Chocolate (sans churros :( ), fried eggs and the most delicious chorizo in the world - not kidding. I was quite pleased when we left an hour or so later, but Barcelona was such a wonderful city, warm and buzzing with a happy lively energy, I can't wait until I have another opportunity to go back.
That night, after our 14 euro easyjet flight, Carly, myself and the third girl arrived in Milan, Italy. It was Halloween, and Carly and I both being from Santa Barbara, we were a bit anxious to see what kind of festivities we would find. Unfortunately, we found none. We checked into EuroHotel, slightly disappointed with our room (only because we had had such a wonderful one in Barcelona), ate a mediocre dinner at the restaurant the hotel recommended,and head back to the hotel with the intention of going back out to seek some Halloween fun, but discouraged by the lack of social traffic in the city, as well as coaxed by our warm and dry room in contrast to the rain outside, we instead turned on the TV and watched a Czech movie until we fell asleep.
Milan as a whole was somewhat disappointing. I was excited to come back to Italy after the first experience I had there two years ago with my cousin, Lindsay, and my grandparents, but it wasn’t living up to my memories. The next day we wandered around in the pouring rain, starting at the duomo, to the basilica and to our first enjoyable meal in Milan at – artichoke risotto and sparkling white table wine.
We finished the day off with roaming around the Milano Castle gardens before heading home, stopping at a store on the way to grab some wine to help us warm up once we got back to our room. After ringing out our sopping wet socks and showering, we head back out on the town for dinner and hoping to find some more nightlife – apparently it hardly exists in the city. Dinner, however, was delicious. We found a little place that didn’t have a sign outside, and the menus only said “menu” on them, so we never learned its name. We shared a bottle of the house chianti and Carly and I shared the moment of trying octopus for the first time. The waiter didn’t speak English at all, so with the tiny bit of Italian I could muster and mix with some French, we were able to order and get by in small conversation. He ended up thinking that we were French, which was quite entertaining for all of us – maybe we don’t seem so American anymore, France must have been rubbing off on us more than we thought.Despite a couple good meals and the beautiful Palace grounds, Milan was overall quite disappointing and we couldn’t have been happier to get on the train to Bologna. We arrived in the small town in the middle of the afternoon. We walked into our hotel, the Caravaggio, and were welcomed by a smiling older man who didn’t speak a single word of English. Through hand gestures and easy vocabulary, he was able to help us understand him as he explained the rules and the amenities of the hotel as well as oriented us in relation to the rest of the town.
We weren’t very far from the old town center, so we began walking around until we got hungry for dinner, which wasn’t very long. By seven in the evening we began desperately searching for a restaurant, any restaurant – so long as it was cheap…ish. Apparently no restaurants open for dinner in Bologna until 8 pm or later. Everyone seemed to go out for drinks and appetizers, but no real food, I wanted a huge plate of gluten free pasta, or more risotto, or maybe a steak, as well as the rest of the cow. We finally spotted some red and white-checkered tables on a porch down a small alley – it was open, it was cheap…ish and we were starving. Our waiter was tall and thin, looked kind of like that guy from The Pianist. We ordered our pastas, and my beef and red wine risotto, and the least expensive bottle of wine but no water – our waiters seemed to like us for that. Being on the budget we were on, we always had to choose wine or water, never both as they generally cost the same amount. Our meals were delicious, but probably about a quarter of the size we were expecting. When we had finally paid and left the restaurant, we started looking for a kebap shop to get some cheap french fries or something to fill us up. In the search, we stumbled upon a small bar called The Sherlock Holmes, where three guys and a girl were standing outside, trying to convince us to come inside. Only one of them spoke English and translated for everyone else, they all seemed nice enough, and the sign said they had karaoke, so we figured we’d give it a try. The girl ended up being the bartender, and she was absolutely adorable. She made us a round of drinks, 5 euro each, and for just one euro more, we could help ourselves to the appetizer bar… PERFECT. We ended up staying there for a couple hours before we head back to our room to sleep.
The next day we didn’t waste any time before exploring the city. We head to the free medieval museum, where we ran into more Italians who were curious about our origins – one man stopped me and asked me if I was something that sounded like Scandinavian. When I gave him a confused look, he said “Icelandic”, I laughed and shook my head no. Guess number 3 – “AMERICANO!” Si, si, I am Americano. Guess we blend in better than most Americans, ha!
After the museum, and a church across the street (inside of which we got hassled by a beggar), we began again our search was food. You’d think in Italy it wouldn’t be so hard to find a restaurant, but again, we wandered for quite a while before we found one and no longer cared what was on the menu or really how much it cost. After lunch we climbed the tower, which probably wasn’t a smart thing to do on a full stomach on account of the millions of stairs, but the view was absolutely incredible and worth the work out.
That night we went to dinner at a place that we thought we knew the name of since we stole a sugar packet, but being that there are four names on the sugar packet, I’m not quite sure which one it really is. But it was good, delicious actually. Our waiter was about our age and spoke English, which helped us out a lot. He made sure we had a good meal, helped us to order a yummy, inexpensive wine, an appetizer of mozzarella and proscuitto since the melon we wanted was out of season, and he took my gluten free pasta and turned it into “the best pasta the chefs could make” – more seafood, but it was quite delicious.
For dessert I ordered a crème caramel, which he brought out with a little message written on it; “u’r sweeter than this”. He was very sweet, but it was quite awkward when he picked my my licked-clean plate, then asked if it was legible.We left the restaurant and head back to the Sherlock Holmes Bar to meet some of the people we had met the night before. We ordered a round of drinks and planned on going to a club down the street, but we never made it there. Instead we stayed at the bar until it closed waiting for more people to show up. Christiano didn’t speak a word of English, or any other language besides Italian for that matter. After being around him for a little while though, we were able to work out various hand gestures and putting “o” at the end of some French and Spanish words we were able to communicate with him – most of the time. One of the bar tenders told us that he sung very well, so we began pleading him to sing for us, which of course he refused. Carly made a deal with him, that if she sang, he would sing. Since the bar was empty by then, they turned off the music, and Carly pulled up “What’s Up” by Four Non Blondes on youtube and let it rip. The video is quite hilarious since Carly is quite the singer. However, Christiano never did sing.
The next morning we continued our journey on to Venice, the last leg of our fall break trip. We had only been in our room at the Ca’ Contarini a few minutes before a random boy came barging in, saying that he had been in our room the night before and he was missing some clothes. He just waltzed right on in, no excusing himself, no apologies, and helped himself to looking under then beds, in the drawers – we just kind of stood there flabbergasted, but it was hilarious. He abruptly left the room as soon as he had welcomed himself in, and we watched as his tall gangly figure sped back down the stairs. We called after him, laughing, and asked what his name was – Daniel. A few minutes later down in the kitchen, I ran into him again. He was sitting at the dinner table with another guy, an American, also named Daniel. For the rest of our stay there we referred to them in the order that we met them. Ginger Aussie Daniel that barged into our room was deemed Daniel #1, while the American Daniel from Brown, studying in Prague was Daniel #2.
With the Daniels, and a few other people we ran into from ACCENT we explored nearly every inch of Venice’s winding alleyways and waterways. 6 of us split a gondola ride with one of the most awesome gondoliers ever, though he didn’t sing like I was hoping. We spent a lot of money on food, not knowing about the cover charge that most restaurants charge on top of a service fee. After that lesson we all went crazy in a grocery store and cooked a feast together in the tiny hostel kitchen, after which followed one of the most epic nights of my life.
The Daniels and our group were sitting on the beds in our room. I had had to wrestle my pillow away from Daniel #2, which got me thinking – I want to go outside and hit random Italians with my pillow, just to see what would happen. When I verbalized the idea, Daniel #1 pointed out that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to hit random Italians…but we could hit each other.
The group of us began walking towards San Marco’s square, each armed with out hostel pillows.
At each smaller square we would break out into a full on pillow fight, laughing hysterically, unable to believe how immature we were being, but how fun and ridiculous it was at the same time. We drew in crowds of people, who would cheer us on and take videos. In one of the bigger fights, two older men in suits and smoking cigars joined in, trying to grab one of our pillows so they could go after someone. There was also a girl about our age coming home from the bars dressed in nice clothes and stiletto heels who managed to wrestle a pillow from someone and come after me. We had a good go at each other, laughing but still throwing all we had behind each swing – eventually we both got tired and shook hands to make a truce and exchange names and a laugh. A minute later I lent her my pillow while I caught my breath, and watched as she went after 6 foot something Kyle, who was running away from her and her stiletto ferocity, squealing.Our 10 days were packed with adventure and story after story, but I was so incredibly happy to come home to Paris. I guess it had started to grow on me a little bit.
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