The Cinque Terra

I'm going to try to get this published tonight. We spotted a restaurant down the street advertising "Free Wifi!" and we're going to eat there tonight for mostly that reason. The hostel we're staying at charges 2€/hr for wifi usage, which I think is nothing but extortion -- and expense they've incurred from buying a cheap wifi router would have been repeatedly paid for by the people who pay even more to use their computers. Whatever. This does mean, though, that we're not going to Skype home on Sunday like I told Papi we might. I don't remember off the top of my head if our place in Nice has wifi but I really hope they do.



We're in the Cinque Terra! Out of the five villages, we're staying in the one called Manarola, which is the second-most southern of the collection. It's also (according to my travel guide) the best place to swim with the least amount of people, home to the best ice cream out of the five villages -- a claim Andreina will vouch for -- and yearly lights up it's hills with the world's biggest Nativity Scene illuminations. Since getting here yesterday afternoon, it's been almost nothing but unbelievable beauty.

We left Milan at about noon. Andreina had an assigned seat number but I was free to sit wherever there was room. The couch she was assigned to, weirdly enough, was also being occupied by a trio family from Utah taking a yearly vacation, having just gotten in Milan that morning and headed to the same area we were but to another village. At first, I sat across from her, but then an older American lady came in and politely pointed at the seat I was in so I sat out in the passage hall on a very simple seat. The lady left after a few stops and then I reclaimed my spot in the compartment.

The family from Utah kept up a very lively conversation for most of the three hours we were together. Our talk ranged from the Twilight series to the problematic solution of nuclear power for energy. They were extremely, extremely well-traveled due to the fact that the dad was a retiring pilot. When they got off at a few stops before us, I felt very talked-out. The only person left in the compartment astride from Andreina and me was this Chinese boy who had stayed quiet for almost the entire time before joining in to the conversation with very shaky English. He got off the train with us in La Spezia and we went our separate ways.

When we finally made it to our base village of Manarola, we started following the simple directions that the hostel had emailed to me, and immediately discovered just how inhumanely steep the roads are here. Our hostel is towards the top of the hill and every time we leave or come back, it makes us sweat! The first time up, in fact, I was pretty much breathless getting in through the door way. We checked in, the down our things, looked around for a little bit, and then took off to find some sea water for swimming. The nearest sand-beach was three villages over, but Manarola has rock beaches with huge boulders to lay out on in the sun -- or to do back-flip dives off of to a three or four story fall! We got to watch countless daredevils egging each other on in their cliff-diving competition. It's not something that I would ever do myself -- the water is obviously sufficiently deep, but no way!!

We came back after some time, changed from our wet things, then took off again to walk the town. It was only around 6pm or so in the evening; originally, I just wanted to see the area immediately surrounding our village.

Instead...disaster struck!

We ended up getting lost following what we thought was a trail through the vineyards in the terraced landscape above the village. We wound about, going further and further up the hillside, the village getting tinier and tinier. On the far other side of the valley, we could see another person making their way down another path and we reasoned that certainly the path we were on, should we follow it further, would eventually rise to the top of the hill and connect with the opposite path so that we could make a complete circled back into the village.

We walked and walked and walked, and then suddenly the path we were on ended with no explanation whatsoever! We walked across some barren landscape and ended up on another oath that, later on, also ended abruptly. From there, we climbed up to yet another path (I had to give Andreina a boost to get up from the level we had initially been on to this higher path, and she had to help pull me up) that also, surprise surprise, ended abruptly. We were near the top of the hill. The far side of the valley, in people's probably private vineyards, with no clear way whatsoever of getting back down, and had taken so many twists off what had been our initial obvious path that we couldn't even properly backtrack to return to the village.

On top of all that, it was getting later and later in the evening. It was passing 8pm. And I had been doing all this extraneous hill climbing through gravel, dirt, weed, and rock, wearing a skirt and flip flops.

Andreina started getting obviously spooked. It was still very light out, but you could see the shadows creeping into the corners of the valley. I took the lead and bull-headed my way through obviously private property, beneath a vineyard and scrambling up a wall then down another, and finally we joyfully fell across our first well-missed path back to town. Just in time to get to the outskirts of the village and make out the sunset over the sea behind the distant hills.

The entire thing is going to be a very, very funny memory! Best of all, neither of us could stop laughing once we realized we'd gotten lost, neither of us could stop laughing once we realized we'd have to backtrack, and even when Andreina started getting truly anxious we still kept up a streaming repertoire of jokes, possible news headlines, and likely sources of food for our stranded condition. It was, to the end, a blast.

Plus, the entire time, we shameless snacked on the tons of grapes from the vineyards as well as the tons of wild blackberry bushes. The blackberries were my favorite, the grapes Andreina's.

We made it back into town and found a comfortable spot to just sit and chat for the next few hours. We watched the night get darker, watched the waves that crashed into our beach boulders get inkier and inkier, and then wandered around the sleepy village in search of something to eat. Unfortunately, by then only the most expensive restaurants with exorbitant prices were still open. We remembered that our hostel had advertised an in-house menu with one of the catch phrases being how much more affordable it would be to eat in compared to the other prices in town. But when we got back to the hostel, it was after 10pm and the kitchen had closed at 8:30. Our dinner was leftovers from breakfast we'd squirreled away from Milan with the promise of a fresh, delicious breakfast in the morning.

We washed some clothes and then made one final tour of the city because I wanted to catch some of the starry skies and the reflection of the moon off the black waters. There was no sight of the moon, though, and we wandered back down to the shore for a little more chatting before finally heading back to the hostel for the night. My shower made me feel like a new person as I snuggled into me clean sheets to read a bit. Andreina declared she was going to write in her own journal, but I could hear her sleeping not ten minutes later, completely drained.

I couldn't sleep, though, whatever the reason, tossing and turning for what seemed like forever before I lost track of it all and passed out. I was plagued by a too-active mind, going through all the plans I have for myself in the future, repeating all the conversations I'd had with my sister, my thoughts wired like I'd taken too much coffee.

In the morning, I woke up to ringing church bells from the sanctuary next door with sweet birdsongs to follow. It was 8am and our hostel has a policy where it's doors are locked from 10 - 4pm. Andreina was still sound asleep so I read for a bit before waking her a little after 9 so that we'd have plenty of time before our lock-out.

Today's ambitious plan was to walk the trails that connect the five villages. I'd heard that a regular person could do the walk in about five hours, which would occupy us for the entire day. We grabbed a good omelette for breakfast then took the local train to the furthest village, Montorosso, and began our walk at about 11am.

At first, we stayed near the town, going up the hills just next to it, and then we started on the real trail to the next village over, Vernazza. It was, in short, a killer of a hike.

It was steep. The path was narrow and dangled over the cliffs like they delighted in freaking you out from the view. It was unpaved loose stones, some of which rumbled unpleasantly beneath your shoes as you walked, making you skittish of a roll.

The day stared out as heavily cloudy and a little chilly, which accounted for our somewhat muted moods especially compared with our hyperactive conversations from the night before. We grabbed chocolate croissants before heavily hitting the trails and the chocolate was a huge mood boost. But the trail was so unbelievable hard -- both of us wore our swimsuits beneath lights shirts and stripped down to them as we went along, sweating profusely because of just how incredible steep the path became. Several times we had to stop for short breaks, and the trail just kept climbing higher and higher.

What had seemed like a chilly day because an intensely hot day. When we finally made it to the town of Vernazzo, we'd only spent about 90 minutes on the trail but it had felt like days. I proposed we nix the idea of the rest of the hike and simple get into the sea for some much-needed swimming. Andreina, who I'm sure would have voicelessly pressed on if I'd made the move to, agreed instantly.

The two towns, Montorosso and Vernazzo, are much more commercialized and touristy than our base village. I had been very impressed by how quiet and beautiful and uncrowded Manarola was yesterday; today I got to feel the press of the tourist season I'd expected. Montorosso is the most accessible of the villages by train, and Vernazzo it's neighbor, which explains why they seemed so much more run-down than Manarola. We were very lucky with our hostel location.

After deciding to just go to the beach instead of hiking a few more hours, we wandered down to see Vernazzo's shore and we're both repelled by it's crowds, deciding to rather catch the train back to Manarola. A tour group followed us there and for a moment we were upset at the idea that even Manarola's beaches would be crowded, but luckily they weren't. The turquoise blue waters had only a small amount of swimmers and cliff-divers; we found a spot among e boulders and spent the next few hours alternating between swimming in the refreshingly chilled waters and sun-bathing on the sun-warmed boulders.

I got us moving again after that, wanting to get Andreina's unprotected skin out of the sun before she went through the type of burn I had gone through in the Netherlands. We took the very gentle walk over to the next town over, going along a road known as the Love Trail that was cut into the side of the cliffs overlooking the sea. We stopped for a snack of brochette with delicately seasoned tomatoes and mozzarella then passed through the graffitied walked of the Love Trail, where people of all languages tag their names, initials, messages, poems, cartoonish figures, artwork, and more through the cliff-cut walls. It's a place made for the declaration of love, from your one-and-only to your country to yourself. We made it to the village of Riomaggiore, wandered slowly up it's hilly streets, and after a while wandered back the way we'd come to finally take a break in our hostel.

It's where we are now. Right now it's near 7pm and, as I mentioned at the start, we're going to eat dinner at a place with free wifi. Andreina, understandably, was bone-tired even if she wouldn't admit it to anyone who asked. When she easier what we'd be doing now, I mentioned I'd like to write a bit in this blog before we left to eat and she agreed, delighted with the prospect of a nap.

Tomorrow will be a good lazy day. I want to walk up the hills again first thing, but slowly this time, and do some foraging for grapes and berries. It's going to be our dedicated beach day as well after I make sure we both have on sunscreen. I still remember how painful it was carrying a backpack on burnt shoulders. If either of us have any energy, we might pick up the trail again, but I'm very sure tomorrow morning we'll be waking with aching, aching leg muscles that would much rather float weightless in the water or bake happily in the sun over any more hiking attempts. After tomorrow, it'll be off for France! Andreina's eyes light up every time she hears the language being spoken in the passing so I know she's bottling up some explosive excitement over the country.

I've taken so many pictures of the Cinque Terra. The land is beautiful! It comes so close to what Hulme describes as a place possible of totally meeting every human need without human labor. I could imagine living a foraging lifestyle in a place that provides for your every bodily want, berries growing abundantly and the seasons nothing but temperance. I'm afraid that I've fallen into terribly philosophical thoughts for the better part of the day and talked Andreina's ears off about human nature but then she talked mine off and we, I think, are even.

Location:Manarola, Cinque Terra, Italy

Big news!

Big news for today! First and foremost...Andreina is here! Yay!!

I admit, I was getting a little anxious waiting at the bus stop for her to arrive. She was taking a shuttle from the airport to the central train station; I sat on the sidewalk, watching tons of shuttles come and go, each time standing up and hawkishly inspecting each of the travelers, ech time sitting down in discomfort when she didn't appear. It was an hour ride or so, I knew, from the airport to the train station; since her plane was supposed to land around 3:30pm, and I fudged her 30min to get out and find the shuttle, I expected her to arrive sometime around 5pm.

Instead, 5pm rolled around and no sign of her. 5:15 came, and I agreed fudging some numbers to explain why she hadn't arrived yet: maybe she took an awful long time to get off the plane, maybe they trolled about on the runway like they sometimes do, maybe she stopped to go to the bathroom or to get some food or, or, or --

And then, finally, at about 5:30, another shuttle bus came and I went up to sourly glare at all the passengers coming off who weren't her, and then, up in the window, I realized some maniac was pounding and waving and trying to get my attention -- and it was her! Yes! Finally!! Because, not only was I a little concerned about why she was taking so long...but also, I had needed to go to the bathroom for about an hour but I didn't want to leave my appointed spot until she got there! So as soon as she came down and we hugged, it was off to McD's for a time out before we went on towards our hostel.

The other good bit of news (for me) is that I've successfully enrolled myself into my fall semester classes, online and on time. I'm a little bummed, having found out that they enforce a strict 18-credit hour limit (and I think a 16-hour limit for incoming transfers/freshmen) so I had to narrow down my desired selection a bit. When I first started thinking about fall, I admit I was all for going in with. 21 or 24 credit hours, but I had already shorted that list down to only 19, and when I had to drop another class, I was seriously sour about it. Oh well. I also got an email from Boulder telling me that I needed to be on campus by 11:30am on the 16th, which should work out (hopefully) with a scheduled arrival of 9:30am to DIA! Crisis averted!

Yesterday was a straight-up wait and travel and wait day, having gotten to the train station for what was supposed to be a 9:50am departure for Milan, only to find out that the train had been cancelled and the next departure wasn't until 10:50. I waited impatiently, people-watching until my train finally rolled in. Onboard, I claimed my window seat and then secretly laughed when two obviously Texan tourists sat across from me. They were complaining about the heat so I obligingly pulled down the window and struck up a conversation. I could tell by their surprise that they took me for an Italian at first; the guy turns out to be a certification engineer of sorts, here on business to inspect machining parts for his oil-and-steel production company based out of Ft Worth. After having completed his inspection, his company (which had flown him and his wife out on company money) had graciously offered to let them tour through Europe for about two weeks before flying them back.

I am a little jealous. Though, I don't think I want to ever be associated with the oil industry.

They got off at a stop about two hours before mine. I took a nap on the train for a bit and when I woke up, I saw that a guy a few seats down the row was wearing a Colorado t-shirt. I'm pretty sure I totally weirder him out, staring down at him for some time before my inner self kicked me and said "hey, it's a little weird to just stare at people, why don't you go and say hello?" So I did. He ended up being a Londoner who had studied at CU Boulder for a semester a few years back, and was just wearing the shirt on a whim. Him and his buddy (who was passed out in the next seat) had been cycling through the norther parts of Italy for 10 days and were just now on their way back to London. We had an awesome conversation, mostly because he was very generous with his praising of Boulder and Colorado as a whole. I'm sure my head puffed up to the size of a hot-air balloon and the expression on my face was smug pride. At Milan, I waved goodbye to them as they walked on, bicycled in tow, and then I settled in for what would turn out to be a 3-hour wait for Andreina to show up.

Which is nothing compared to all the waiting she's had to do these last two days!! Goodness, I asked her what she did to pass the time and I'm just really, really proud of her.

We got lost once on our way to the hostel, walking the wrong way down a street until we hit a metro stop that was definitely in the opposite direction, but we made it and threw down our bags and headed back out to the center of the city, catching sight of the beautiful Duomo of Milan, the world's third-largest Christian church. Andreina, I've found out, is almost deathly afraid of pidgins, which was sadly funny because of course there are hundreds of pigeons everywhere, especially in a huge square where there are tons of people who take fun in feeding them birdseed. Oe bird flew straight into us it's ratty wings brushing against our legs, and she screamed. I know I should be laughing, not now and certainly not then, but I can't help it -- it was hilarious!!

When she first got off the plane, she was pretty energetic; after we headed back from the Duomo to our hostel's neighborhood in search of pizza, she got more and more tired, visibly dragging along. After we grabbed some pizza and got back to the hostel to eat, though, the situation flipped itself once more: I was ready for bed at about 10pm, and she was wired up and bright-eyed. It was annoying! I wanted to say "hey, go back to being sleepy, that way I don't feel like the old person here!!" ^_^

We're just eating breakfast now, and it's a little after 9am. The train I'm hoping to catch isn't until noon so we have quite a bit of time to eventually make it out of our hostel. Today we're heading to the Cinque Terra, a collection of five small villages scattered within walking distance along the northern coast of Italy, very close to the border of France. I'm very excited, personally, with the idea of hiking again. Venice was so flat and easy to walk around in, and my legs have gotten too used to being strenuously used each day, that the entire time I walked around that narrow city my body still felt like it was asleep, still felt like I'd never quite started the day going. I feel like all my muscles are tensed, waiting to spring into action, waiting to feel used and purposeful and strained. I've warned Andreina to let me know when she gets tired because she obviously isn't going to be as used to this as I am; I don't think she's gotten it into her head, yet, how much I mean to do. But she will very, very soon!

Location:Viale Regina Margherita,Milan,Italy

French guys

I don't want to fall for a stereotype buuuuut.... The French guy in my dorm room smells. Bad. It's the sort of stink that makes you take a step back after opening the door and exhale sharply, trying to get it out of your nose. Ever since I let him borrow my iPad while I was Skyping home, he's been making subtle French hints that he'd like to borrow it again to check out his Facebook wall. I'm all for helping people out, but not as a permanent fixture, so I'm sorry to say I've played the "Eh, what? Sorry, I still don't speak French, not even today."

It's my last day in Venice and I'll admit, I'm going to be glad to move on. It's much better in the evenings, when all the street hawkers have put away their goods and all the tourists have settled in for a meal. It's also a lot better in the sunshine: this morning for example, was all sunny and I had a good walk about the place but it's now turned cloudy again and the mood has taken a similar turn. I hadn't realized how very much affected I am by the weather, but I like to just blame it on the city instead. I feel boxed in, walking through all these narrow streets. I'm sitting outside my hostel right now and everything I see is cut off by buildings not 50 ft in front of me. Is a hard change after being on a hilltop in Florence, being in a camp ground in Rome, and just having much more open spaces in all the other cities I've visited.

The best things I liked about Venice were the smell of food in the air during the evenings and the way the light reflects off the water surface at night. Having no cars in area to worry about is a strange experience that I'm still only vaguely aware of and, even though it's a prominent figure of the city, it's not something that comes to mind immediately.

I tried some cannoli, which has to be among the best desert foods ever, and took the water bus for a spin last night just to enjoy the sensation and the sights. I fell for the "Venice" flavored ice cream and was disappointed to find it's just vanilla with candy bits sprinkled in. I looked at more masks, but even the most elaborate ones through the shops start to look like copies of each other.

I'm just really excited for when Andreina comes into town. In a little less than a day, I'll be walking with her in Milano! Now, if only this day would go by faster!!

Location:Salizada San Geremia,Venice,Italy

Verona

We're just leaving now. Its an hour train ride back to Venice. It's a gloriously sunny day outside and I'm in a gloriously sunny mood!

I got up this morning and grabbed a ride to Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet. I've spent the day walking around. The only thing I really knew about Verona was, well, that it was where Romeo and Juliet take place! Turns out that there's more going on in this city...but not too much more.

Verona has it's own mini-Colloseum, of all things! It's called the Arena here, but it really looks like a better-kept, albeit smaller version of the one in Rome. It's also got a few canals of it's own a la Venice, but the water moves too fast for gondolas and you're allowed to drive in this city, making cars a better option than water taxis anyway. There were still tons of tourists everywhere.

The best part about the city was Juliet's Balcony. It has no reason to be called that, no historic Juliet having lived there, but it's on a house belonging to a family whose name sort of resembled Capolete, so......insert huge tourist trap here. There's a courtyard beneath the balcony and the walls are literally coved in graffiti from thousands of people writing their initials in hearts, pasting up love letters with gum, and trying to capture some of the romance from Juliet in their own relationships. It was really cool! Especially for the romantic!

The courtyard has a statue of Juliette in the middle of it. I hope it's some sort of tradition for people to go up and rub her right boobie, because otherwise she's being ridiculously mo rested and has been for some time by the. Look of how rubbed down that spot is!

Maybe there's just a curse of cloudiness over Venice right now, because it was cloudily when I left there but sunny when I got to Verona, and now that I'm leaving Verona it's beginning to get cloudy again. I hope not!

Tomorrow is registration day at Boulder! At any time after 8am (4pm for me!) I can register for my fall classes! Hurray! I hope all the other engineering kids sleep in and I get all my top picks. I've got another day (that being tomorrow) of being in Venice before catching a train to Milan...and Andreina! She gets into Milan at about 3:30pm (I think, I'll have to look back at her ticket to be sure) and the bus from the airport should get her into the city at about 4:15-4:45-ish. Just a few hours until then!

Location:Train back to Venice from Verona, Italy

Venice

My first impressions of Venice were all of being breathlessly in love with a fight that seemed made for romance. I'd arrived in the early evening and it was heavily overcast by thick, thick grey clouds; the lights along the canals were just beginning to turn on against the night as I started to explore.

It's a city on a lagoon with canals dicing up every few streets. It left an impression on me of a ball of yarn being let to unravel messily, threads spreading out in a vague circular form -- that's what the streets and canals are like here in Venice, messy and confused and thin.


For my first night, I walked with the unabashed newness of a first-time tourists. I'm very chocked by how many mask shops they have here, everything ranging from a blank eye cover for you to decorate yourself to hugely ornate rhinoceros and elephant heads that I can't imagine anyone possibly putting on without two or more people standing by, helping to support the weight.

I grabbed a pizza and returned to my hostel, which isn't called a hostel but goes by the more formal "studio"; the difference, it turns out, is that the owners, while being friendly and courteous, are also extremely strict with their rules and very stern about noise at night. Normally, that's no problem for me, but I had a rude conversation with the night manager when I was Skyping home.

While I was Skyping, one of the people I was sharing my room with -- a Frenchie who speaks practically no English -- walked up and took a seat nearby, just sort of chilling for a good bit before finally (after hanging out for like 10 minutes) interrupting my phone conversation to say something in French while pointing to the nearby computers. I was talking with Andreina at the time and she tried to translate some stuff from school, but all I got from him was a very confused look. I let him borrow my iPad, which was charging next to me, since it cost about 1€ to use 15 minutes on the studio's computers. As soon as I finished Skyping, the night manager came up to us and basically pleaded with us to go back to our rooms and go to sleep.

Yesterday was my first full day of walking around the city. I manage to snag a great map of the city that two girls had left behind when they left for Rome, but the map was still only minimally helpful in the crazed tangle of streets, plus the weather continued to conspire against me and stayed cloudily for most of the day. I've gotten so used to the intense heat that the cloud cover really threw me off; the entire time I walked around, I felt like I should be sleeping, like I was walking around in a dream, and only felt normal when the sun broke through the clouds for a bit in the early afternoon.

Walking around all day has left me with very mixed feelings for the city. It's still beautiful and very romantic...but it's dirty as anything! The streets are lined with bags of trash. I don't know if there's a trash collection program but I didn't see anyone picking those bags up the entire day. The streets are endlessly confusing. Yeah, it's sort of fun to get a little lost the first time, but in this city "sort of" lost turns into "hopelessly lost" in an instant, and then you're driven nutty trying to figure out where you are. It's not a big city at it's center. You can walk the major islands from one end to another in just about two hours...provided you don't get lost.

I've gotten very used to big cities having tons of greenery, with huge majestic parks. Venice, with few exceptional is limited to only the flower boxes hanging from every couple of window sills. It's a very cement-mortar-stone-canal city. They have a park on the far southeast side on the furthered island, but it's not very big and it's not very creative. It's a bunch of grass, trees, and playgrounds for the kids. Every so often, you can catch sight of a tree growing behind a brick wall, but for the most part it's a green-lacking place.

There is plenty of blue everywhere. Or, off-blue, since the canals aren't exactly the cleanest waters.

This is beginning to come off as depressingly sour! I still retain my initial impressions of the city, my very wonderful introduction, and it's a marvelous place to see that first time. Maybe I'm just still spoiled by how marvelous Florence was. Venice, though, comes off as a very big tourist trap, what with all the mask shops and glass shops and tons of other shops all selling many varieties of the same goods. It also feels like I'm continually walking through a back alley somewhere, with how narrow the streets are. It's an interesting experience to walk around in a place that has no cars whatsoever -- no scooters, no bicycles, just pedestrians and water transportation.

I'm also possibly being completely overwhelmed by the mental countdown going on until Andreina gets here. I can't wait until she flies in!!

Location:Verona, Italy

And the long way to Venice

So I woke up at a pretty good time yesterday morning, meaning to write a few emails and take a shower and still be able to leisurely make my way to the train station to catch a 10:30am train to Venice. All was going exactly according to plan with the exception of the weather: as soon as I left my campsite and started the 40min walk to the train station, it started thundering ominously, and then it started a light sprinkle, then a drizzle, and then an unrighteous downpour came down on my head and chased me to the station. Luckily, it didn't get really heavy until I was within sight of the station so I just sprinted the last few blocks.

I was so exhilarated about getting out of the rain, my heart thumping happily with the the sprint, that I paid little attention to any of my surroundings. To get to Venice, I had to first catch a train to another station on the other side of Florence, and then go onward from there. That train ride was easy enough; within 10 minutes, I was waiting at the right station, thinking that I had about a 15 minute wait until my train was scheduled to arrive. It was supposed to take 2.5 hrs, landing me in Venice at about 12:30pm, where hopefully the weather would be a little better. The rain had slowed down to just a light sprinkle again but the clouds were still heavily overcast, making the day feel like it had started too early.

That was when I realized that I was the only one waiting on the platform. Normally there are at least another half dozen people for even the very remote trains; on a train to a city as popular as Venice, I would have expected at least that. Figuring it was because it was a Sunday in a highly religious country, I settled down to dry out and wait.

My explanation came a few minutes later, right about the time when I was expecting my train to roll up to the station. Over the loud speakers, an Italian voice made some announcement involving my train number; an English voice translated immediately after, informing me that my train had been delayed. By 90 minutes.

Whhhaaa????

I got off the platform and headed inside to the designated waiting area where I found the crowd of people I'd initially expected, all crammed inside to get out of the rain, Ann irritated and bustling into each other, an horrendously long line forming in front of the ticket counter. I grabbed a seat and pulled out my phone, meaning to pass the time until my train showed up as there was nothing else I could do. There was a board displaying all the different trains scheduled to arrive along with any delays and I realized that something was a little funny when a train that was supposed to have arrived earlier was still delayed by 105 minutes.


As I sat there, the time delay for my train only increased in ever-bitter increments: 95 minutes, 105, 120, 150, finally topping off at 195. I'd been in the station for over two hours and it looked like I had yet another 90 minutes to wait. Many other long-distance trains were experiencing the same phenomenon, with all the short regional trains coming and going almost cheekily. I wasn't the only one waiting, and I was no where near the most irritated one: as I sat there, I got to watch authentic Italian drama first hand when two older ladies came in screaming at the top of their voices, gesturing wildly, marching up to the front of the ticket counter and angrily pounding against the plastic barrier between them and the ticket woman. I have no idea what they were saying, but they left and came back and left and came back, each time screaming what I can only imagine were obscenities as loud as they could.

When my train delay hit 195 minutes, my stomach started growling angrily and I decided to catch a ride back into the central train station where there were ample food stops. I took my time getting a sandwich, noting that even at this central train station all the times were off by about two hours. I ate, figured I had yet another 30 minutes of waiting at the second train station, and then decided to just wait on the platform instead of the waiting room still stuffed full of angry people.

I got to my platform again and had waited there for about 15 minutes before a lady in uniform came up, asked me where I was headed, and then bluntly informed me that my train had been cancelled and I would have to go back to the central train station and try to find another way from there. It was 3pm by that time.

I hadn't really gotten worried or worked up until that point, because there was nothing I could do but wait for the train and also because the train was still on it's way and would eventually get there. Now, though, I had a flash moment of "oh-man-oh-man what am I going to do???" I booked it back to the central train station and with a sigh of relief/exasperation, I saw a train headed for Venice that wasn't supposed to leave for another hour, having been already delayed by 3 hours. Then I noticed another train, scheduled to leave in about 5 minutes, headed to Milan but stopping at one of the same intermediate stations. Better yet, the train was physically in the station and filling up quick. I went for it, jumping in and cramping myself up anchovie-style along with as many other people as could physically fit into the cars.


It was a long, long 75 minute ride to the intermediate stop and I had to stand the entire time, getting jostled back and forth into strangers who were getting jostled into me. When I got to my stop, it was like playing shuffle trying to move past everyone to get out. The next scheduled train heading towards Venice wasn't supposed to arrive for yet another 90 minutes and so I waited dejectedly, extremely bored with the train station and the train ride and the delays.

This was when I finally got a hint of what had happened: an announcement came over that translated into "Rome is going through a fire brigade practice exercise today," though why that would make all the trains north of Rome (and Florence is about 3 hours north) so terribly delayed is still beyond me.

Surprisingly, a regional train pulled up not too much later, heading to Venice and taking a little over two hours to get there. I hopped on it, took a nap on board, and cruised along, finally getting into Venice at 7pm, about 9 hours after I'd initially gotten to the train station that morning and taking 7 hours longer than I'd imagined it would.

The weather hadn't improved at all. Venice was depressingly overcast. As I walked off the train, finally, I was sure that I'd be in a grumpy mood and I'd hate the city and that I should just go to my hostel until the morning. I even started heading that way...and made it about 15 steps before I realized I was in Venice! And it was beautiful!


There are more tourists in Venice than there are actual Venetians. And they crowd about, taking pictures of everything. So I followed suit.

The streets smelled like you would imagine Italy to smell like: pizza, garlic bread, prego sauce, fresh rolls -- walking around was like eating a meal. There are a million Venetian mask shops and Venetian glass shops and Venetian souvenirs. The canals are toured by water buses, water taxis, and gondolas; the canals are everywhere!!


I made it to my hostel, dropped off my bag, and then spent two hours getting lost in the maze-like street pattern that they have, where the roads narrow until you almost have to go sideways to get through, and where corners suddenly turn into dead ends. I really felt like a mouse going through a maze and it was with an extreme feeling of relief that I made it back to my hostel.

It's not exactly a hostel I'm staying at. I still sleep in a dorm with three other people; but they close the reception area at 1am and expect people to be in their beds, sleeping quietly. That's why I got asked to keep it down and I was almost whispering when I called home last night. I didn't understand it either, but that's what it is.

Spent today walking around Venice, but I'll write about those thoughts later.

Location:Salizada San Geremia,Venice,Italy

Siena and Firenze

Right now I'm sitting on the restaurant balcony of my hostel. One again, it's not a traditional hostel at all -- it's another campsite and this time, I'm sleeping in a hose tent with two other people. The campsite is to the southeast of city center, high up on a hilltop, and we've got a breathtaking view of the area.


The hike up the hilltop is a killer, though, and it's totally it's own workout. There are almost 300 steps to the top, going up at a 50 degree angle. The first time I walked up this hill, I was panting like a marathon runner by the time I finished. As I went back down later, I mentally scoffed at myself, thinking, "What was I being such a baby about? It's not nearly as bad as I remembered." And then I went back up and felt like I was dying again... Lol, I have a very selective memory for pain, it seems!

Yesterday I left Rome bright and early, catching a train to Siena. Siena was a very beautiful little city -- all it's streets, though, are the ridiculously hilly, 45+ degree angled streets. And cars are outlawed in the center of the city, pretty much, with only a few exceptions. I thought that was awesome! No cars = no worries about crossing the street, right? Wrong! It means that the scooter population triples and they cruise around like maniacs!

Siena is home to a yearly horse race on the streets. They take this horse race very, very seriously and I even was told that they treat any tourist who happens to be in town during this time as a terrible irritation. I'm about two weeks too later for the first part of this race and two weeks too early for the second part, but the signs of it were still everywhere.

I wanted to stop here as a smaller Tuscan city to get a taste of Tuscany before Florence, and I was blown away again by just how spectacular the city views are. I hiked up another hill to get to the city center and walked their hilly streets, and it's all very gorgeous. The history of Siena kinda runs like until recently, it was a very poor city which is why no modern buildings have been built. Now with the tourism of the city making it rich, they've passed laws stating that any new buildings must match the decor and keep in with the historic feel of the place. The biggest items of interest were the huge tower in the middle of town and a huge church close to the top of the hill.


I also stopped by this pastry shop called Nannini, which has been around for over 100 years. There's this special cake that they only make in Siena and a nearby town which is about 10x smaller than Siena, and the cake is called panforte. I bought a small portion to try. It's pretty much packed brown sugar mixed in with honey, to make it more chewy than crumbly, almonds, hints of lemon, and then covered in powdered sugar! It was like a brick of sugar! It wasn't the best thing I've ever eaten, but it's definitely the most sugary. I'm glad I tried it once, but I don't think I'd ever recommend it to anyone else who doesn't enjoy the sense of a brick in their stomachs. (And I only ate a small portion. I couldn't imagine eating a whole slice, or a whole cake!)

After a few hours, I Jumped back onto the train and headed to Florence, getting there in the early afternoon. Once again, I was blown away by how beautiful it all is. It's like someone took all the most romantic landscape pictures and blew them up to enormously life sizes and then surrounded the city with it. Everywhere I look, it like the most picturesque view I could imagine.

It's also a very creative and art-driven city. The duome in the middle of the city dominates the skyline -- you can see its dome in any panoramic view of the city. There are tons of sculptures everywhere. It's the land of Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Amerigo, Dante, Machiavelli, the Medici family, and almost every other famous Italian has ties here as well. This place breathes of history. It's also a very small city, especially after spending the last few days in Rome! It's extremely manageable, and you can walk through it in about 30 minutes. The views, though, make me want to just sit and take it all in for hours at a time.


There are three copies of Michelangelo's David here: one in the museum, one outside the museum, and one near the campsite I'm staying out in a place called Piazza de Michelangelo. I went to the museum to go see the marble copy, but the line was at least two hours of waiting so I don't know if I'm going to try to wait through it all or just feel that the other two copies are good enough.

You can find artists almost anywhere, from on the sidewalk frantically sketching away the street in front of them to under bridges trying to capture the sun on the water. There are musicians everywhere, men on accordions playing romantically Italian songs and cello players rocking next to a guitarist. There is good smelling food everywhere. I had lasagna for lunch today and the noodles almost melted under my fork, it was so tender.

The other girl who's sleeping in my tent is an English girl from about 3 hours south of London. She and I took a walk last night to get a view of the city at night from our campsite and it turns out that she's been traveling for almost exactly as long as I have. We've gone through a few of the same places -- Amsterdam, Brussels, Berlin -- but while I went to Greece, she went through Hungary. We were both in Rome at the same time. I'm heading up to Venice after this, though, which she was at before Rome; she's going to Barcelona, which is where I was. It's pretty fun to just meet up with people like this whose travels copy and mirror your own! The last person is a Mexican boy who I didn't get to talk to at all before he took off this morning even earlier than me!

I really like Florence! It's so relaxing. The beauty of the city being constantly around me makes me feel like I'm drifting through a Romantic dreamscape.


I've tried to upload the pictures I've taken since Seville but the wifi connection here is stupid slow. It was the same in Rome -- when Elena and I tried to Skype each other, it was horrible! I probably won't upload any of my pictures until Venice where, hopefully, the connection speed is better. I love all the comments on any of the ones I've posted (Mami!) and I can't wait to make you all sit down for hours while I explain what each of the pictures mean to me!!

Location:Florence, Italy

Trains and Rain

I'm on the train toward Siena, with the intent to spend a few hours in the city before ending up in Florence for the night. The countryside is gorgeous: rolling, gentle hills littered with tons of lush green trees, houses made of small white bricks sporadically appearing and disappearing again as we move along. It's the sort of landscape that painters droll over and have tried their best to capture for hundreds of years. Plus, there are thousands of sunflowers everywhere!


The best part about my day yesterday happened at night. A little before the sun had completely disappeared, rain clouds bunched up and began sprinkling down fresh-scented drops that hit the roof of my bungalow like notes on a harp. The storm came in waves of intensity, sometimes only barely drizzling and sometimes unleashing a torrent of water. Thunder and lightening came later, as if the storm wanted to wait until the full of night for it's light show. The thunder was very muted but the lightening was brilliant!

I drifted off to sleep smelling the rain in the air, listening to the music of my rooftop, and seeing splashes of white light throw beautiful reliefs out on the dark.

Location:Train ride to Siena

More Romans!

I'm the only one in my room right now. The two Polish girls left early this morning to catch a bus to Bologna -- the floor creaks loudly every time someone walks around so I got to listen to that,
plus the random rustlings/bustlings that go along with packing up to leave a place, all morning until they finally got out of here. The Russian left yesterday but is supposed to come back today and in her place was some girl I haven't even talked to yet since she was sleeping by the time I got back last night.

Yesterday didn't have nearly as many landmarks thrown in as the day before but the ones I did see were particularly impressive: the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, Palatino Hill, the Trevi Fountain, and the area around where the Pope maintains his summer residences, near two tiny villages in Rome's suburbia.

The day started off inconspicuously enough. I got up and took off for Rome, meaning to catch sight of the Pope at his weekly Sunday address to the crowds of St Peter's plaza. As the train went through the stations, I noticed one on my way labeled "St Peter Basilica" and on my map, a stop marked off as St Peter's which was located just north of the plaza. Thinking that I'd hit the jackpot (and not taking in any of the physical facts, such as the stops immediately before/after that one were still about 20/10 minutes south of city center, respectively) I jumped off and took a running start in the directions my maps told me to head. After about 15 minutes of seeing nothing which would correspond to my maps, I bumped into another metro station and realized just how off track I was. It turned into a frustrating game of "Where am I?" that actually worked out in my favor as, once I was on the train again, I learned that the Pope doesn't live in Vatican City during the summer and that I wouldn't have seen anything in the St Peter's plaza this morning aside from the normal Sunday crowds.


I got off near the Trevi Fountain instead and took my lunch in a cafe overlooking that massively impressive piece of work. The crowds were also massively impressive -- nothing but tourists as far as you could see. The cafe's waiter started getting really uncomfortably friendly so I finished off my plate of Italian antipasto (slices of deliciously cured meat, olives, and cheese) then took off nice more, grabbing a cone of coconut and Nutella ice cream to keep me cool ^_^

I passed by a wax museum with a model of Albert Einstein staring dejectedly out into the street, as if it were saying, "Physics, nuclear theory, and now...this job." I ran into this enormous white building and discovered it was the Victor Emmanuel Monument, Italy's first king. The building is amazingly huge and was completed pretty recently, in Roman time, only finished in the early 1910's.


It was there that I met a guy who would turn out to become my unofficial tour guide for the rest of the day. His name is Dominic and he's an old math teacher who's about two months away from retirement and speaks only halting English. We were near the top of the Victor monument, I was enjoying the view, and he started up a conversation about what the word "view" was in Italian, about how magnificent the scenery was.

The conversation turned to where I was walking to next, since I could see the Colosseum from where I was standing, and he asked if I would want to go with him there since, being a teacher, he was entitled to skip the lines and get in free and would be able to get me the same deal. I enthusiastically agreed and off we went.

On the way, we stopped first at the Roman Forum and Palatino Hill. They are these ruins that heavily reminded me of the ruins in Athens, here you see the remains of what was once great meeting halls and enormous arches. All that's left now are blocks lining the hill like skeletal remains. The lines to get into these sites were ridiculously long and incorporated no shade in to keep tourists cool -- I felt pretty freaking lucky to walk passed all those people and head straight in.


The Colosseum is even huger than I imagined! It's also very tore up inside, very much rotting way. You definitely have to use your imagination a lot to enjoy the view. The steps going up and down levels are very steep and slippery from being worn down through so many ages. The number of tour groups and tourists is astounding. Aside from the people selling information, everyone was a tourist.

Afterwards, we grabbed some fresh juice that he said was orange juice but it was definitely red and tasted slightly like grapefruit, only not nearly so bitter. I'd mentioned how I'd started off to see the Pope this morning only to learn that he was outside Rome itself, and Dominic suggested we take a quick trip out to see the Pope's summer residence. It was about 20 minutes outside of Rome, the Pope living in a huge house overlooking one of the most beautiful valleys I've ever seen.


Nearby were two other small villages that we stopped at, Marino and Froncisti, and we grabbed some authentic Italian dinner, nothing more than slabs of roasted meat on huge chunks of bread. There were the stereotypical Italian musicians strumming away on their guitars, singing hopelessly romantic tunes in the most musical language I could imagine.

The sun was beginning to set and when we got back to Rome, I said goodbye to my one-day friend and hopped onto the metro to get on my 40-minute way back to my room. I got to my stop and hopped onto the shuttle bus that would drive me back to the county club where a girl sat down next to me who looked frustrated with her very drunk American boyfriend, giving him a solid smack on the back of the head and telling him to stop harassing the Italian man he was sitting next to, an Italian who obviously understood nothing the American boy was saying. I struck up a conversation with her, noting how she was shepherding him around like a child, and we had a great ride back to the country club. I found out that she was Italian but had studied for some months in Wisconsin with a Colorado roommate, that she was giving her boyfriend a tour of her home city, and that she was half Venezuelan of all things! We excitedly exchanged stories about our visits to the country while her feeling-left-out boyfriend shot her sad looks and funny faces, trying to get her attention back.

I got back to my room a little before midnight, having stopped at the pizzeria because I was hungry again and hadn't gotten in my pizza fix yet.

Location:Viale del Circuito,Rome,Italy

The Eternal City!

I was just walking through the dinky little country market when this little young boy comes walking up behind me and taps me inquisitively on my hip. "----" he babbled in Italian, making crazed hand motions in the air. I look helplessly over at his dad, standing back a few feet, replying, "Ummm, I don't speak Italian." The boy keeps up his crazy waving and his insistent babbling and, with an apologetic shake of my head, I continue walking down the aisle. A second later, I feel that same tapping on my hip and look down at this ridiculously cute child. "Beautiful," he says in struggling English, pointing at me.

OH MAN, I LOVE ITALY!!!

The dad laughed and said something like "Italian baby," like there's nothing you can do with these children. The kid followed me around, gabbing like a chipmunk the entire time, and I didn't mind at all. The only other word in English he knew was "yellow," and the rest of it was just a bunch of nonsense words to me. But I understood the "beautiful" part and I'm grinning like a fool even now, back in my bungalow.


That's right -- bungalow, not hostel. And I'm quite a distance from the center of Rome right now. I had to take a suburban train for 40 minutes, and then a shuttle bus for another 10 before I got to this place I'm staying at for the next few days called Country Club Castelfauno. It's pretty rad, I gotta say. It's something like a campground mixed with a youth camp mixed with a bunch of old people (...like 50 years old ^_^) in pretty sturdy looking shacks. There are families here, tons of little kids running around, and apparently an influx of German teenagers here for a few weeks of summer camp. They've got two pools, a "supermarket" (the selection is pretty bad), a restaurant, a pizzeria, grills, shuttles to a beach that's about 2km away, shuttles this to the train station to get you back to Rome -- like I said, it's really, really cool!

At least it is right now. It's only about 9pm here. This place also has two "chill out" spots which are just really shabby dance clubs with bean bags to couch on. One of them opens earlier and closes earlier -- around midnight -- and the other doesn't have a closing time as far as I can tell. Guess which one is riiiight next to my bungalow?

The dorm I'm staying in houses four girls. I've met two of them, both of them Polish girls who are traveling in a group of about a dozen Pollocks. She immediately asked me if I had any earplugs to sleep with and then went on to describe how nightmarish her first night was: German teenagers screaming and partying all night long, the noise keeping her awake, and someone even pounding on one of the windows in the dead of night, waking everyone up. When she looked out to see who the heck was outside, the person had already run off. Also, there's absolutely no AC in our room, something that hit me as soon as I walked in the first time and felt like a physical blow. Also, there are no sheets on the bed. They're available for rent for another 2€.

...I still love it! I'm going to use my beach towel as my sheet and rough it for the next four nights. Now that it's evening, I wouldn't have wanted the AC on anyway. And the last girl, the one I haven't met yet, is a Russian who's prepared with bug-be-gone candles and spray, meaning that my mosquito nightmares are over! (By the way, I woke up with another four bug bites, pretty impressive considering I only slept for three hours. One of those bites -- and it's definitely a bite, because pimples don't itch like this! -- is right on my right eyebrow. Smooth, mosquitos. You win this round.)

My day was very awesome. Last night, everyone in the hostel was hyped up about some beach party and I distinctly felt like the loser of the house because I was going to bed at about 10pm. Or at least, I tried to. The place was too noisy until everyone finally piled out of the hostel at around 11pm. I got a few hours sleep, jerking awake at about 1am when something outside went off like a tire exploding and then getting up at 2am to catch a bus to the airport for my flight. I hit a panic moment when I realized that the metro, which I was counting on to reach the only bus running to the airport, was closed until 4am; luckily, luckily, luckily there was a nitbus stop right next to the metro exit and I was able to grab one heading in the right direction.

The "yea, you're old" feeling that I've been having during my entire stay at this hostel returned in full force when I noticed that, aside from a few other people on the bus also packing some suitcases and heading off to travel, everyone else on the bus was one massive crowd of young partyers loudly living up the night and only catching the bus on their way to the next big thing. I shook it off, caught my flight, and took to the air just in time to watch the morning sun rising. It's exactly the second time in my life that I've seen the sun rising from above the clouds and I gotta say it's quite the seat!

When I landed in Rome, it was still hours before I could check into my hostel -- excuse me, my bungalow. I'd found out about a series of free walking tours that a for-tips company offers for Rome and figured that I'd make my way to where the tours start, find a good nearby park bench, and take a much-needed nap before the tour started, which also wasn't for a few more hours. On the bus ride from the airport to the nearest metro station, and the on the metro ride to the station near the tour starting point, the only thing I could concentrate on was just how exhausted I was, how little sleep I'd gotten, how easy it would be to just fall asleep here on public transportation.

That all changed as soon as I got to my stop and stepped out into Rome for the first time. I was at the Spanish Steps!


The Polish girl who warned me about the German screamers also very accurately that sightseeing here is different in that, for most things, we've all seen a picture of the site somewhere before, that we've all long grown accustomed to images of the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps. For her, that meant the sightseeing was more of a bore; for me, though, it's the difference between seeing a pizza and having a bite (of course I'm going to include pizza! I'm in Italy!)

I basically had a ball and nearly destroyed my camera in the process, taking pictures like a madwoman, like the stereotypical tourist who oozes and gasps over every little mundane thing. Any thought of being sleepy disappeared completely; the only thing I was focused on was what was right in front of me and where to go next.

In most hostels, they have a book exchange set up. I had, er, procured a cheesy book from my hotel in Kos; in Santorini, swapped it in a series of book changes as I sped-read my way through their collection, ending up with Russian Dotochsky (still can't spell his name right) work that I took with me to Athens. In Athens, I was delighted to find an in-depth tour guide to Rome that someone had left behind and have been lugging that book with me ever since. It's over a decade old (and still deals with the old currency, how to operate a public telephone, and has no information on Wi-Fi hot spots) but in the last few hours I've been here, it's been amazing to have. Streets haven't changed, nor have the monuments and their histories, so I feel like I have the secret "in" for Rome.

'The only thing,' I thought wistfully while wandering through one of the gorgeous parks here, 'is that I wish I had a regular, complete street map with the important monuments conspicuously marked. This book has very good maps of Rome, but the city is too big to fit on a single page so they're all in pieces over a few pages and it's sort of sucky to have to try to mentally stick them all together -- well, well, well, what have we here?!?'

There, on the ground, lay a complete tourist street map. Just for me.

Like I said, I had a ball in Rome. I love it, and it seems to love me. I don't know where I got the energy from, but I didn't stop walking from 8am until almost 4. I got to see the Spanish Steps, the Roman Pantheon, St Peter's Cathedral (from a distance; the line to get in was unbelievably long and I didn't want to wait for the four or five hours it would take to get in only to be told that, since I was wearing a tank top I couldn't go in), tons of fountains and pillars and obelisks, plus a freaking pyramid.


Some emperor built a pyramid to himself right in the middle of Rome. Because that totally goes with the rest of the local decor.

My tour guide for the free walking tour was this really boring lady who recited facts out like they were boring her, too. It was nothing compared to the very lively guy in Seville who talked like the history was his one and only passion and who sprinkled in plenty of jokes to keep our attentions focused. I ended up gabbing with an Australian girl for most of our walking, getting some good advice from her about what to do since this was her fourth and final day in the city. We walked from the Spanish Steps to the entrance to Vatican City and she left us there to get lost in the rest of the city for ourselves.

I grabbed some pizza for lunch, and it tasted delicious. It was very simple but I savored every bite. I also had more pizza for dinner -- hey, I'm in Italy! Today was pizza day! Tomorrow will be pasta day! And then Italian ice day!! Italian meatloaf! Italian lasagna! Italian salad -- no way! More like Italian cookies!



Finally, around 4, I made my way to the nearest suburban rail station, following the directions that the hostel/campgrounds had sent me when I'd booked. I went to check in and...for whatever reason, they only charged me about half as much as I'd expected to be charged! The total cost of the next few days will be less than a single night cost in almost every other place I've stayed at so far. (Which might be due to the sheets/AC/screaming, but still! I'm happy with it!)

The main thing I wanted to do at that point was to jump into some cool water and give my slightly-burnt shoulders some relief from having carried my bag around all day on tender skin. When I got to the pool, I was just in time for a free class of water aerobics, led by a guy who was wearing a dress, a wig, a plastic flower luau, and lipstick. While he was getting jiggy with the funky music playing, he would give us directions on what to do. It was some of the most fun I've had this far in my trip! He gave me a shout out, something he did to everyone else at random too, and when I said I couldn't speak English and wasn't Italian but American, he groaned and rolled his eyes but kept saying to me "are you ready?" after that whenever he changed the move we were doing.

It's past ten now and I haven't heard any screaming Germans yet. I'm ready for them, though! Tomorrow, I plan on getting up early and going for a run throughout the dirt paths they have here and then getting back to Rome, starting in the opposite side of the city and walking around like a crazed devil once more, trying to see all the sights I can. There's no way I'll be able to make it into the Vatican on a Sunday so I'm going to save that for Monday; there's so much to see here, I'm going to need to just keep walking nonstop for the next few days to feel like I did the city justice.

My Polish roommates are out celebrating their last night; my Russian roommate is taking a shower. My energy is beginning to droop towards "exhausted" and I'm pretty sure my speech is dropping towards "rambling." I love you all and miss you and I hope you're having a good day too.

Location:Viale del Circuito,Rome,Italy

Beach bumming

I'm a tad red from being at the beach all day.



It was perfect weather for it: not so hot that you felt your skin turning into leather, a cool breeze every now and again, and the water briskly cool, enough to shock the heat off of you the moment you dive in but warm enough that you quickly adapt. I'd told a group of people here at the hostel that I'd go with them today, but I woke up early and they partied until very late the night before so I took off alone. There were only a few dozen other people on the sand when I first got there -- it felt like the shore was my own.

That changed quickly over the course of only a few hours when a couple hundred other people dragged themselves out of bed and joined me at the beach. And then came the hawkers; "Beer? Cola? Water, cold? Cervesa? Cola? Aqua frio?" they shouted in the same flat tone, dozens of men wandering up and down the sand. "Massage? Good massage?" the ladies asked, going from beach towel to beach towel.

I alternated between swimming through the waves like an overgrown Nemo and drying out on my towel. Even now, hours later, I can still almost feel the movement of the ocean in my bones, like the waves are still surrounding me and are just about to sweep me over by force. I once read a study about the reason why people like shores and waterfalls so much is because the water breaking releases more oxygen into the air. That's how I feel now, like I've taken a deeper breath of life, like my body is lighter now for all the sun and water and sand it got today.



Getting back to my hostel, I had some time to talk to the hostel owner for the first time. He's a young guy from Crete, 26-ish, and the co-owner is a silently surly older woman that I found out is not his mom, like I'd initially assumed. He's a party animal. I haven't really talked to him before because he was too busy promoting partying with all the other people. Even today when we talked, it was with a continual reference to some beach party going on that I had to continually turn down. I feel really out of place in this hostel. Everyone is only interested in partying, which is the norm at hostels, but it's so small that there're no real place to get away from it except on my bed. That's where I've spent most of my time when I've been back here and it makes me feel like some sort of invalid constantly tucked up in her sheets. Oh well.

I did end up waking up with a wonderful new collection of bug bites. Any guesses to how many? 5? 8? How about 10? Nope, none of the above: I've got 12 bites all over, from right on my knee to on my left index finger to on my forehead (Ok, that miiiight be a pimple...but I'm going to blame it on the bugs anyway). Its pretty ridiculous! And sitting here typing all this up, I see a mosquito out of the corner of my eye zipping back and forth, taunting me as if it were saying, "And just wait until tonight!"

The beach really was wonderful. I think, though, that my favorite part of Barcelona will be the huge open-air market. The sheer selection of fresh goods offered there (...and selection of candy) is still amazing to me. I went there 3 days in a row and still loved it. I want to find something like it in Boulder. Maybe without the fish.


My flight out to Rome is very early tomorrow, at 5:55am, leaving on the last spiral of this journey through my last two countries. I got a Let's Go Student Travel Guide for this trip that was originally some 800 pages long. Before I left, I tore out all the countries I wasn't going to visit and as I've gone along I continually tore out the pages of places I left for good. Today, I tore out Spain. It's a pretty picture of what more I have left before coming home:

Location:Barcelona, Spain

A Long Walk

I left my hostel this morning intending to check out this work-in-progress cathedral that, according to my map, was located right outside the "Sagrada Familia" stop. I hopped onto the metro and was a little surprised to see that the Sagrada exit was only two stops down the line. I jumped out at Sagrada, walked around a bit, and then... Realized that there's a huge difference between Sagrada and Sagrada Familia. Like a 2 mile difference.

Yikes. Go me!

Since I'm conserving me metro tickets, I decided to just hike the city, purposely getting lost and seeing where I'd end up. Barcelona is such a beautiful city and it's so well designed that even if you get lost, it's very easy to find yourself again. And it's so clean that even when I found myself on the poorer side of town, it wasn't too shabby.

I managed to find my way to the beach and through several parks, heading from my hostel which is more to the northeast side of town all the way to the far south of the city (no small distance!). And from there I managed to look back towards the city with a happy sigh...


You can't really tell in this picture, but from where I was standing I could actually see that Sagrada Familia cathedral I'd initially left my hostel to see, all the way back from the seaside! What the heck?! Or so I said to myself, feeling like that cathedral, that I'd spent a good chunk of time looking for earlier, was purposely messing with me. I knew it would be about an hour walk to get to where it was, but I couldn't let that thing get away with openly mocking me!

I got to it, happy to snap a few pictures, and then moved on. This cathedral has been a work in progress for like 80+ years and it's still not slated to be completed for like another 30 more years. The designer is some guy named Gaudi who I guess was a really important architect. He designed a few other buildings in Barcelona that I went to check out, all of them being pretty weird.


The first one is the cathedral.



Next is some sort of weird house.


I'm not even sure what the last one is supposed to be.

There's a park with more statues by him that I want to walk through tomorrow. I had thought about just using tomorrow as "beach day" but since it looks like it's going to rain in the morning, I'll do that Friday.

I love Barcelona! It's such a relief after being in scorched Seville, where the temperatures didn't drop below 85F the entire time I was there (including the evenings). In Seville, I'd set out for a good walk feeling energetic and refreshed...and I'd get back feeling like the weather had brutalized my body. Today it was sunny outside and a balmy 75F with nice breezy winds to keep the air circulating. Whenever it got too warm in the sun, it was easy enough to just step into some shade and immediately get relief. Not that it was really too warm! It was a perfect, perfect day!

I've walked for 9 hours almost nonstop, just moving from one interesting place to another. I even ended up in a H&M for a little bit, contemplating buying a summer dress because I was in such a good mood and summer dresses seemed like the perfect way to compliment that. I wandered into a music store and listened to the samples from an album Lucas raved to me about, grabbed some fresh bread from the marketplace, and was just very happy. After about 6pm, it started getting uncomfortably warm so I made my way back to my hostel and wandered the nearby neighborhoods for a bit -- I just couldn't stop walking!

Now I'm streaming Indie music onto my phone, chilling in my bed and contemplating the night's dilemma: to shut the room's windows and keep out the mosquitos, or leave them open and sleep comfortably. Last night, the other girls in the room -- they've been here for a few days and were very wise in the ways of the windows -- insisted that we shut them, saying the the mosquito population is out of control here. I went to bed only to wake up a few hours later sweating terribly and feeling like all the air had turned stuffy, getting nothing but terrible sleep for the rest of the night. Right now, the windows are wide open and I've already killed like 4 or 5 of the bugs. But it's so nice and cool right now, and I really slept poorly last night... *sigh* that's what a cheap hostel will get you: no AC and no screens for the windows.

Location:Barcelona, Spain

A day of traveling

The people I met in Seville were awesome. On my first night there, the hostel hosted a delicious dinner on the rooftop and we all sat around like old friends just laughing and relating stories about our countries. The next night, I met an Australian guy, a Chile guy, a girl from Uruguay, and a girl from Mexico; we commandeered the common room, watching Spanish MTV, listening to music on our phones, and just talking until 1am. Last night that same group (minus Robert from Chile, who had left) got together again cooking up green spaghetti and just having a blast. I really, really had a great time.

I caught a morning train from Seville to Barcelona. It took six hours for the trip, landing me in Barcelona in the early afternoon. The train ride was a nightmare: I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before and planned on just sleeping the entire trip, but the seats were uncomfortable and stiff, the lady sitting next to me hogged the armrest, and there was a young girl sitting behind me who had no volume control and spent the six hours nearly continually shouting random Spanish phrases out. The kid seriously would not stop talking in her yell and her voice was pretty scratchy by the time the train rolled to it's last station.

My hostel was easy enough to find and I'm pretty happy with it's location. It's in the more homey part of the city, a quiet and clean neighborhood with a convenient metro stop. When I checked in, the receptionist was a guy who looked like he was my age; he took down my name and threw me some keys and then went back to watching YouTube videos of old rock music! Normally, when you check into a hostel, the receptionist is loaded with great tips about what to do in the city, how to get around, places to eat, etc, and when this guy just left me alone I felt a little lost.

I threw down my bag and headed back into the city, spending the rest of the afternoon exploring a small part of the city.

There's a pedestrian street section of the city that's full of markets and street performers and tourist traps. It was amazing to walk through -- especially the huge open air market place! I took so many pictures of the dozens of food vendors, selling tons of fresh fruits, vegetables, spices, candies, nuts, olives, breads, and meats. If I lived here, I would just visit those markets and get fresh food every day! The seafood section was weird and I tried not to notice how the lobsters were still twitching on their ice beds.

Barcelona also has this mall and entertainment section built on the sea and floating peacefully next to the yacht yard. There were hundreds of people walking around with me. It was a very cloudy day with the smell of rain in the air, a very welcome break from the scorch of Seville. I got to the Christopher Columbus monument and had a chocolate crepe to celebrate!

When I got back to my hostel, my other roommates had shown up: two guys from Finland and two girls from Australia. Aussies are everywhere! You can't escape them! They're all very friendly. I caught the girls playing a round of Go Fish in the kitchen.

Now I'm the only one in my room. I'm just about ready to pass out and sleep until dawn. No one believes me when I saw that I'm going to bed. It's like I'm breaking the unwritten code of the hostel to party until dawn. Hopefully tomorrow is cool and cloudy like this afternoon was. I feel like this entry is particularly plain and boring, but I'm just so tired right now that my mind isn't spinning in its usual pattern.

Tomorrow is going to be a good day.

Location:Carrer Gran de Sant Andreu,Barcelona,Spain

Seville!

I went on a free tour of Seville today. The guide was a guide named Meddi from Morrocco -- he made this three hour tour one of the bet chunks of time I've spent so far on my vacations! He made great jokes, told amazing historically true stories, and weaved in local legends to our tour that I feel like I could meld into the Seville spirit.

There's another free tour tomorrow morning. I'm going to wake up and go to morning mass at the city's cathedral, so that I can get in without paying the 8€ entrance fee that's required for every other morning. And then I'm going on Free Walking Tour Pt 2! It's making me ridiculously happy in excitement.

Seville is way cooler than I could have imagined!

Location:Calle Adriano,Seville,Spain

Humanity

Dear Jessica.... ^_^

I'm on my last day in Madrid. Yesterday, I went on a 3-hour walking tour of the cit with the hostel receptionist. Most of the places we went to were thing I'd already seen on my own, but it was really nice to have someone along narrating the scenery. My favorite place (outside of the enormous gardens, which are incomparable) is at the foot of a huge statue of Don Quixote and Sancho. I went to the rail station afterwards to get my seat reservations to Sevilla and Barcelona, where I'll be spending my last week here in Spain.

I do really, really like Madrid! Everything is so beautifully engineered. My tour guide was telling me about how, at one point, architects were given free range to design all the buildings alongside one of the main roads here; the result are this beautifully, classically designed structures that gracefully stand alongside an endless stream of traffic, engraved with all sorts of very minute detailing. I think that I could waned these streets for months and always discover something new.

Not to mention the food! The tapas are very cheap and I had a great time trying a bunch of different "fish tacos" from one of the markets, each costing only 1€. The food is so fresh! And there's so, so much selection! The tapas menu ranges from delicious olives to kebobs to cheeses to anything you can possible imagine. My favorite so far is the goat cheese and raspberry jelly, it was just such a good combination! I really want to have little tapas parties when I get back, or just finger-food parties, because it was so much fun to eat!

The Spanish slur is hard to get over, though. It sounds like everyone is talking with a bad lisp. And the Madrid nightlife is a bit out of hand. People don't go out for dinner until after 9pm, don't start going dancing until after 2am, and don't get back home to sleep until after 7am. I her them from my hostel windows -- each night, it was another loud situation, from a pack of women nearly fist-fighting at about 3am to a group of young people rowdily racing and whooping down the streets at the same time the next night. I get that it gets suffocatingly hot here in the middle of the day and that most people sleep their siesta, so it's easy to stay up all night, but I like my sleep and I like getting up at a decent time, and eating dinner at a decent time! And not partying every night! These people are crazy!

I spent the evening yesterday going through the Prado Museum, an art museum on par with the Louvre in Paris. The Prado has this great "free after 6pm until 8pm" thing that they do, so I was able to wander through works by Raphael, Goya, Rembrandt, and more at no cost to me. The museum was enormous and by the time it was closing, I still hadn't managed to see all the different wings...but I was more than satisfied. I like museums, I like art, but I feel like I get my fill after a few hours and then I'm good for another month or so. I like sculptures more than I like just paintwork, for the most part, and in paintings I love the dramatic, emotional images that make you pause your life to gaze at. There was one painting like that in the museum, this huge, huge, huge piece portraying the last moments of a group of liberals who, after being expelled from Spain and then caught sneaking back into the country, were being lined up and blindfolded for execution. The expressions on their faces in that painting were stoically determined, fearless, angry pride in the lift of their chins and pointed gazes. I think that my whole two hours could have been spent just staring at those expressions.

While I was walking around, heading back to my hostel, I heard this strange noise like a deep duck quack or bark or gurgle. Curious, I walked towards the sound and found to my horror that the noise was coming from a man with no arms, a plastic cup clenched between his teeth, the noise being his attention-grabbing cry as he shook his head rapidly from one side to the other, shaking the coins in his begging cup. He was wearing a sleeves shirt and the pitted scars from where his arms should have been were hideous to see. The image is branded in my mind like a burn.

Later on, I had grabbed a snack of some fresh grapes and was still walking. Another man on another street came up to me with a piteously expression, begging for money or food. He limped on one foot; the other was this decayed and rotted and twisted thing, turning inward on itself, skin turning into a wrinkled black cloth. I hurried along, trying not to feel his haunting eyes staring at the back of my neck as I went.

There are men with no arms and legs propped up against sad signs and waiting cups; there are children who ply accordions that seem too heavy for their skinny arms; there are mothers with their babies wrapped up in rags who passionately hold the small infants up as proof of their need.

There is so much need, not just here but everywhere. The man with no arms, his jingling cup with dully-clanking coins, has been hovering over my thoughts since I've seen him. I was waiting for the subway to come up to the platform, and out of nowhere the thought occurred to me that I could so easily get clipped by that same subway, by a passing bus or car, and then that the armless man's fate would be my own. It would be so tragically easy for such an accident to happen. The thought chilled me to the bone, giving me goosebumps that ran up and down my spine.

I don't know what can be done for the people who are in so much need. I don't know what story led them to this situation. I don't know why it is that their begging is the best option for them right now. They are everywhere, though. They are everywhere and they (for me) represent a break somewhere in the path humanity is supposed to be taking. I have trouble trying to put my whirlwind thoughts into the right words, about how things like the begging children aren't supposed to exist despite the fact that they do in great abundance. That we are supposed to be a creature that strives towards perfection, towards greatness, and that the poor are a symptom of an illness that infects all of us, that our blindness to them is a chink in our excellence.

Location:Calle del Desengaño,Madrid,Spain

Timelines

A few days ago, Orbitz sent Andreina and me separate emails informing us that our return flight to Denver was going to be delayed by two or so hours, not taking off from Newark until about 7am (previously 5:50am) and not landing in Denver until 9 or so.

I immediately wrote them that, while I understand the airlines reserve the right to change flight times, especially since our flights were booked so early in advance and that their schedules may have been forced to shift, the time delay was unacceptable. They wrote me back basically saying "sorry, SOL."

See, CU Boulder, like many other schools apparently, also has a mandatory freshmen and transfer student orientation. There are several sessions that they offer throughout the summer for the freshmen students lasting three days, but the one for transfers only a single day of lectures and is explicitly only offered on August 15th. The day we're flying back from London.

As soon as the orientation schedule came out, I wrote to the Dean of Admissions for the Engineering College and explained that I would be out of the country until that very day, but that I'd be flying back into Denver early the next morning and asked if there was anything we could arrange to work out this schedule kink. She wrote back that I could attend certain parts of the freshmen orientation over the course of the three days and that, luckily, the last freshmen orientation was scheduled for the 16-18th of August, fitting my timeline in scary perfect fashion.

I have no idea when the first orientation lecture that I must attend will start on the 16th, but every since that flight change has come in, I've become a bit frustrated in the back of my head to think about it. I'm to write to the dean again when I register for classes on the 27th, reminding her of my special situation and getting a confirmation as to which specific classes I have to attend during the orientation. With any luck, I won't need to be at the campus until late morning. With any luck, I'll be able to get to Boulder in a hurry from the airport -- it seems to be about 40 minutes by tollroad with no traffic. This does mean that, if I have to be there that morning, if I have to book it straight to Boulder upon landing in Denver, that any tearful reunions will have to be put off until the afternoon...and that I'm going to need a driver willing to get me there ASAP!

In the meantime, I'm keeping up my petitions to the airlines that they rebook Andreina and me on earlier flights, if possible. For one thing, we leave from Boston to Newark the night before at 8pm, and the idea of spending another two hours in the airport is extremely disagreeable. For another, I know Andreina will be just as anxious as myself to get home as quickly as possible. With any luck, sometime in the next month our flights will be rebooked onto the same departure time, if not earlier.

It's just something I'm thinking about and needed to vent on. I was texting Jessica about it, but wanted to out the whole things into words for my own satisfaction.

Madrid was very nice today. The temperature was cool throughout the day and only started getting unbearable warm towards evening. I got to walk around with a fresh breeze while I explored an ancient Egyptian temple that had been donated to Spain, removed from the African continent brick by brick, and then rebuilt precisely as it originally was here on Madrid soil. Unbelievable. I also explored the Palace Real and more of the tremendously beautiful and awesomely groomed gardens of the city. You can definitely tell all the touches of royalty here, from the precisely-kept hedges to the decorative street signs. It's so fancy!

I got to text Lucas a bit, too, and missed him. Everyone here in Madrid seems to be walking hand-in-hand with their loved one, spontaneously breaking out into a make out session on the subway, romantically lounging about the gorgeous grasses of these great gardens... It sort of sucks to see them all so happy and in love. I want to magically transport him here for a few minutes, enjoy the view, and then hold my head up to the city as if to say "See, there, I am not void in this romance department, I too can become ridiculously passionate on these graceful streets."