The Adventures of Stoney Pockets in Publin

April 9, 2007

Lauren and I just got back from Dublin, and it was one of the best trips so far. Lets start on Friday. Lauren and I got up at the crack of dawn so go to the train station, and missed our train to Bologna by 3 minutes, the most either of us could do was stand there and laugh about it, cause it was just that frustrating. So began the long and tedious procedure of actually getting to the Forli Airport, which requires two trains, a bus and a taxi. We finally got the airport and got on our plane to Dublin just fine. My favorite part of our plane ride was the crazy guy that sat next to us on the plane, no honestly, he was crazy. The entire time we was headbanging when there was no music and he kept waking Lauren and I up to ask us what was out the window. Oh come on, honestly, who wakes someone up on a plane to ask them what was outside the plane window?! He was seriously crazy.

When we got to the airport, Lauren and I indulged ourselves in our fist bagel in 2 months, but not only that, but this heavenly bagel had mayo and turkey on it, it was by far the best meal ever. Haha. Then we had to take a bus to the center of the city, but we accidentally took the Number 2 bus on the wrong side of the road, which took us outside the city instead of into the city. So about 10 minutes into our bus ride, we discover this very important fact, have to get off, and catch another bus back to the airport and then to the center of the city. We stayed in the Abraham House Hostel, which was actually pretty nice. We stayed in a 20 person female dorm room. I really didn’t have a problem with staying in a room with that many people, we just made sure that we took our valuables with us during the day and left the rest of the stuff on top of our beds when we were out. So after we got situated in the hostel Lauren and I went out into the city to take a look around. It seems that whatever city that we go to here looks really big on the map but when you actually walk around its really not that big.

Dublin is a really beautiful city, it has a very interesting mix of old buildings and new, all with a certain Irish charm. The thing that we were enjoying the most the first day was that we could actually speak to people while we were there, it was so weird to hear people speak English everywhere at first, but I was so excited about it, because I could actually understand what people were saying to me in stores. The River Liffey runs through the city, splitting it in half.

Friday night we walked around a bunch and we ran into someone on the street pushing a ghost walk tour at 9pm, and by that time it was 8pm, so we didn’t really have that much time to eat. We ended up eating our first meal in Dublin at this semi-fast food restaurant called Abracadabras, where the food was kinda gross and there was too much honey mustard sauce on my wrap. Oh well. So we head out to go looking for the entrance gate to the Dublin Castle, where we meet the ghost walk tour and a couple people that were also going. There was an Irishman, a Scot, a couple from Australian, this old woman from Dublin that brought a ton of bags with her and couldn’t carry half of them, not to mention that she walked like molasses and we had to go back and get her sometimes, which really slowed up the tour, but she was amusing, so that made up for it. Our tour guide that started us out was this man dressed in a British military uniform, who proceeded to line us up against a wall, bark some military orders, and teach us to march in what was supposed to be the way the British marched, but made me think more of Hitler than anything else. So we marched around inside the walls of the castle for about 10 minutes, and the tour started walking, but was taken over by Zazimus, a peasant Irishman who was evidently the newspaper voice of the people. Since he was blind, he needed a guide to carry the lantern around on the tour. I was dubbed ‘Stoney Pockets’ and followed him around like a puppy for the rest of the tour. Haha. We walked all over the castle area and up near Christ’s Church. I thought that it was a really good way to start our time in Dublin for the first night…BECAUSE…all the pubs were closed the first night that got there because it was Good Friday. So Dublin was quiet the fist night, go figure, Lauren and I go to Ireland and the pubs are closed. Haha.

We woke up early the next morning and went to the cafeteria in the hostel. The cafeteria is in the depths of the basement, and breakfast was coffee, juice and a large roll. OOhh. Haha. I forgot to tell about the rat maze to get to the room G1, our room. When we went to go to the room, we must have followed a million signs inside the hostel to our room, around corners, through doors, up and down stairs, it was like we were mice following cheese, and everytime we went in or out of the hostel we couldn’t help but laugh at the trek down to our room.

On Saturday morning we thought that it would be most appropriate to start our day out the most Irish we could possibly think of. We headed out around 9am to see the Guinness Factory. We got the factory around 9:45AM. The Guinness factory and storehouse is huge, you get to see how they make the beer and then they let you sample a beer, which happened to be a foreign Guinness stout, which was ok, but then on the 7^th floor you can turn in this little token that they gave us when we bought our tickets in exchange for a pint of Guinness. So Lauren and I downed our Guinness’s at 10:30 in the morning.

For the rest of the day we walked all over the city, seeing everything that we could possibly see. We saw all the main streets on our side of the river, Temple Bar, Dame Street, Christ’s Church. We did a little shopping, which we both decided was a very anticlimactic experience because there really wasn’t any good souvenir shops to go to, plus everything in Dublin is so expensive, so we really didn’t buy anything, which I guess is a really good thing. For lunch we went to the place near Christ’s Church called Queen of Tarts, a recommendation of Let’s Go. It was soo good, we had a lentil soup with Irish Soda Bread. My new obsession is Irish soups and Irish bread, God’s gift to the Irish, or maybe it’s the gift of the Irish, either one works. Queen of Tarts had the best looking pastry I have seen in a long time, they had scones served warm with sweet cream, tons of pies and cakes, and bunches of types of tarts, but we stuck with the soup because it was the most affordable thing on the menu.

During the afternoon we went to St. Stephen’s Green Park, in the heart of Dublin it’s a 20 some acre park, that was so full of flowers and people that it was hard to believe. There were so many people in the park that green grass space was almost gone. We finally found a spot and fell asleep in the grass for an hour or two. This seems to be a recurring theme with Lauren and I, we go places and lay down and fall asleep in random places and cities, I like to look at it as the ultimate form of relaxation. When we woke up there were tons of people around us, within arms reach, and the weather was so nice. This in itself was a small blessing, I was really expecting rainy weather, you know, Ireland and rain seem to go hand in hand. But it was warm while we were there. That afternoon we walked around some more, and went back to the hostel to change.

Our dinner that night was a flop, we kept walking through the city looking for traditional food that was affordable, a concept that has seemed to completely escape Dublin. We ended up eating at the place called Flannigans, where I ordered a burger with BBQ SAUCE!!!!! Which was by far the most exciting part of my meal, I haven’t seen BBQ sauce since home, I miss it. The service was awful and the food worse, so when we went to pay our bill we refused to tip the waitress, seems like we have been trained well in Italy where they do not tip at all. It was kind of amusing, because we felt like convicts leaving the restaurant; looking around for our waitress till she couldn’t see us leave and then almost running out of the restaurant.

The best part of our night was our experience in Temple Bar that night. Temple Bar is an entire district in Dublin that has been almost entirely dedicated to restaurants and rowdy bars, full of singing Irish with Guinness in hand. I have never seen so many adults drunk on one street ever, with the exception of mardi gras I guess. We went to Temple Bar first, where I got a cider. The place was so packed that it was almost impossible to get to any of the 5 bars in the bar, and there are people singing everywhere, and chanting, and just being Irish, which was fantastic. Then we went to The Oliver St. John Gogarty bar, which had great music. Lauren and I were trying to get through the bar to get a drink, and Lauren got ahead of me, and I couldn’t get past this bunch of very drunk British boys. I ended up talking to this guy named Steven, who proceeded to buy me a drink. They were from Manchester and were having a bachelors party for his friend. They were all very amusing to talk to, and I know that its awful when people say that girls will talk to a guy to get him to buy her a drink, and usually I don’t stick to this, but in a bar where the Guinness is expensive, the boys are offering, hell if im going to turn down a free drink, haha. We had our drinks and left the bar, simple and easy, haha.

I have decided that I want to have a destination bachelorettes party. We saw a couple bachelorette parties while were in Temple bar, and they were hysterical, so I think that this would be very appropriate when I get married.

The next day Lauren and I got up early to go to church for Easter. We went to Trinity College before church. Trinity is so big and beautiful and it really made Lauren and I miss campus in VA. We had decided that we wanted to go to Church at St. Patricks church, which we were convinced was a catholic church. The mass was the most serious, boring and not-uplifing service I have ever been to, not to mention that it was so quiet it was weird. And worst of all, when we came out of the church after the service was over, that crazy kid that we sat next to on the plane was outside. Lauren almost ran away from the church. I think that we was wearing the same clothes that he was wearing on the plane. But I mean we cant really point any fingers there though, because Lauren and I packed really light and ended up wearing the same clothes for most of the weekend.

After church we went back to the Queen of Tarts for lunch, and then we walked around the city for a while longer. We made a point to see all the things that we didn’t get a chance to see the day before. And then we went back to the Queen of Tarts again for dinner, because it was so good and so affordable. We had an early night in because we had to get up at 4:30 am the next day so that we could catch out 7am flight.

Monday was a travel day, but it was so worth it. I really enjoyed Dublin. I would really like to go back someday to see the county, no the city this time. We really wanted to see the country, and we were going to try to make a day trip and see stuff on Sunday, but there really just wasn’t time.

The Week of the Danville Reunion

Our midterms are just starting this week, so the three of us and studying like mad people to make up for the fact that we have almost forgot what studying is. Lets recap:

Last week was the week of the Danville Reunion. The night after we had apertivo, Ben got here from Bologna. Classic Ben style, we not only fell aspleep on the train here, but then almost forgot to get off, which would have made it really interesting. We took Ben to Hani’s for dinner, where I could tell that Hani was doing a mental questioning session as to whether I was dating Ben or not. After dinner, we came back to the apartment and made some drinks. Lauren passed our because she had had a late night the night before, so Ben and I went to brave Florence. We were going to try to go the Robin Hood, but halfway down the street I lost the flyer with the directions, so we had to turn back around to get directions. By the time that we actually made it to the bar there was no one there, so we tried another bar, same thing, so we just came home and sat around the kitchen table for a while. Ben is the biggest bed hog I have ever met, first off he sleeps in the middle of the bed, not as a joke, but by default, and second, he unconsciously gravitates toward heat, so I was not only crowded but I had to fight off a sleeping Ben all night. The next day Andrew was supposed to get in around 10, so we waited and waited and finaly decided to leave to apartment and as soon as we stepped out of the door Andrew stepped out of the taxi. It was about the best timing we could have asked for. I took the boys shopping in the market, where they bought a bunch of meat for that nights dinner. We all walked around the city for a while, and got lunch at a small place near the Duomo. Kelly Mingle was also in town and we were supposed to meet her on the steps of the Duomo, so we did. She was with a group of around 10 girls for Carnegie Mellon, most of whom were conveniently at the front of the line to climb the Duomo already. So we ended up cutting infront of a ton of people, most of which were probably very angry with us and got to climb the Duomo. Kristen says that we climbed it before and I honestly have to say that I do not remember doing the climb, which really surprises me because I think that it was very memorale. There are about a million stairs to climb, and if the narrow winding staircases don’t get you on the way up, the little peep holes that sho you how far up you are will definitely give you a good case of vertigo. About half way up most of the people in our group were shedding clothes like it was summer and in full blown sweats. It was also pretty funny because I have been learning about the construction of the Duomo in my architecture class, so it was really cool to see how Brunelleschi hooked to two domes together. So I stopped to take a picture of the marble ribs and Lauren asked what I was taking a picture of, and with out thinking that it would be a weird response, I said that I was taking pictures of the bracing. This turned out to be the joke of the day, and I didn’t hear the end of it for a good two days after. I also found out that I am definitely not a fan of small tight spaces, especially ones that are crowded with people and there are people coming at you going down the stairs that really want to get out. Besides these things, the view of Florence was amazing, and we could see the door of our apartment which was very cool. After we made it our of the Duomo, we searched a better part of Florence for a bathroom and only after a million tries found one. We tried to convince the boys that Zara, one of our favorite stores in Florence, had a bathroom, which it definitely doesn’t, but we got to go in so that’s what counts. We showed Andrew the finer points of living, the Gelato, which is always a hit. That evening we got wine and cheese and let the boys make dinner in the apartment. After dinner, we took the boys on a whirlwind tour of the Florence night life. We took them to the Fiddler’s Elbow, which a very legit Irish bar down the street from us. We went to BeeBop, which was super packed so we left. And my favorite part of the evening was when we went to La Luna Rossa. When we first got there there was a soccer game on TV, so all the locals were plastered to the TV, cheering and screaming in the bar. So we are sitting there playing the movie game, which I am not very good at because I never seem to pay attention to actors names in movies so I lose every time, and who walks in? G walks in. Now this is after not calling me for almost a good 2 and a half weeks. He proceeds to come over to our table, try to make small talk, tried to make himself sound important because he had to go to some girls birthday party across town and wanted us to stay at the bar until he got back, and left. So we continued with our game, and just as we were getting our coats on to leave the bar, back in he saunters, proceeds to ask us where we are going, to which we answer to a bar to meet another high school friend, which was true. I was the last one to walk out and as I am leaving he tells me that I am mean and rude, which I just shook my head and smiled really big. This really should not have bothered me as much as it did, especially because he’s such an ass, but its just usually strange comments like that that sometimes really get to you. After that we kind of popped in and out of some bars and ended up going home.

The next day we all hopped on a train and went to Pisa for the day. The last time that I was in Pisa I have to say that I really didn’t enjoy it all that much, I guess mostly because we were there for a grand total of about an hour and it was tourist season and ungodly hot out. So that might have been it. This time was so much better. We walked around the city a bit and made our way to the tower, which was not straight. We pulled a classic, and laid on the grass under the Tower. We also saw the most American thing I have ever seen in my life. There was this bunch of American kids on the grass in front of the town and they were just standing around with the beer bong and a bunch of beers, and proceeded to do a beer bong in front of the Tower, given this was hysterical to watch, but at what point to you wake up in the morning and decide, the best plan of action for today would be to go to Pisa and shoot beers in front of hundreds of Italians who already think Americans have no class. Lovely. That night we had dinner at the apartment and went to bed early. Except this time I had a new bed buddy, Andrew, who sleeps like a dead person. I have found that I really do not enjoy have another person in my bed; I cant move around, I have to be fully clothed when I go to sleep, I have weird nightmares every night from another presence in the bed.

Between Monday and Tuesday we basically gave Andrew a map and let him wander around the city. We were talking about cologne the one night at the table, and he was going to let us take him out for one hour to fine cologne, but it never ended up happening.

Wednesday Andrew and I got up really early to catch the train to Cinque Terre. So we get to the train station and buy the ticket, which was pretty expensive to begin with. Now you have to understand that there are several different types of train tickets for Italy, one is for regional trains which is usually less expensive and the other is for interregional, more expensive and nicer trains. We ended up getting the less expensive one without even thinking about it. So we get on the train, and Andrew has his feet up on the seat because we were the only people in the car. The man who checks your ticket shows up and sarcastically asks Andrew if he is comfortable. Now, we seem to rarely encounter sarcasm here, and it is even less effective on someone who cannot speak the language. So his question, which meant ‘hey idiot, get your feet off the seat’, in my mind was a simple question which I smiled at, which was evidently not the right reaction. This guy got so pissed and ended up yelling at Andrew, and it turned into a scene. And on top of this commotion, we found out that we didn’t have the right tickets, so we had to pay more. So by this time is was very flustered, until a second man came around later on and tried to charge us another 17 Euro because we had 2^nd class tickets and were sitting in 1^st I have decided that it would be nice if they had written somewhere the rules of these damn trains so that we literally wouldn’t have had to be chased around the train the entire ride like a bunch of convicts. We finally got there and decided to take another train to the farthest town on the hike, Monterosso. class.

Cinque Terre is definitely one of the most beautiful places on this earth. I want to go back to Monterosso to go to the beach later on in the semester. The hike between Monterossa and Vernazza was so beautiful. The very narrow path takes you through lemon groves and olive orchards and up about a million and a half steps. The greatest part was that the weather was so nice and hot the entire day. I was hiking in jeans and a tank top and I was still in a full blown sweat, which really should be of no surprise to me I guess. When we got to Vernazza, we got lunch at this cute little restaurant and I splurged to get fish because I was assuming that a sea side town that was boasting fresh fish would have really good fish. But the fish that I had was soooo gross, it was fishy (who would have guessed) and unsatisfying. Oh yeah and before we had lunch I was trying to find a bathroom somewhere, and people directed us up to the bathrooms at the train station. So we go up to the train station, I look in the bathroom, and the bathroom is literally a hole in the ground. For about a good 3 minutes I stood there trying to come up with a plan that I A) would successfully not pee on myself and B) be able to balance enough while stooping over a hole in the ground well enough that I wouldn’t fall over in the bathroom. Needless to say, I refused to go to the bathroom there and a bathroom hunt ensued. Andrew and I decided that the best way to spend our afternoon was to take our books and gelatos down to the beach, find a nice rock to sit on, take off our shoes and lay in the sun for the afternoon reading.

It was really nice to just have an afternoon of pure relaxation and to just jibber jabber with a friend from home. I’m finding that its really important as we all are getting older, that you have to put some special time into staying connected with people from high school, because the fact that we all go to different schools makes it difficult enough. So it was good connecting time, I think. Andrew was visiting Ben the next day in Bologna, so we took separate trains on the way home.

He ended up coming home late on Thursday night, and left early on Friday morning. It was really great that he got to come and see Florence. I feel like we did a good job of showing him around, and giving him a kind of insiders view of Florence. But I have to say, Im so happy to have my bed back. I don’t have to sleep with anyone!! And every time I say that they girls laugh cause it sounds bad, but god almighty, its nice.

Part 2: Read the last post first

The Week:

After running around so much over the weekend, all I really wanted to do was relax, which I just don’t think was the greater plan for us. First off, we had been planning an apertivo party for Thursday night, which we began to plan for on Monday night. So Monday was a planning night. Tuesday was classes and the evening consisted of writing papers. I think that Lauren Tusso and I had a little nervous breakdown that night because we realized that we had a ton of work and a. had no time to get it done, and b. no motivation to do anything, much less write a paper. The classes and learning strategy here is so much different from home, that it has taken a lot of getting used to. On one hand you could say that we don’t do any work, we go to class as a way to fill the week, while we are waiting for the weekend. On the other hand, which I am a firm believer, you only learn as much as you chose to get out of it. If you go to class everyday thinking that it is boring and that there are a hundred other things you would rather be doing, you are missing the lesson that is being taught. The professors here are not only teaching us the geography lesson that the syllabus outlined for the day, they are teaching us the Italian perspective on life, they are teaching us hand gestures, culture, Italian, the Italian outlook on the family, love and life in general. I am finding that you have to read between the lines here a little to get the greater picture, if you don’t, then there really is no reason to be here. It would be like walking around blind, I think that it is better to be a sponge in every sense of the word. I’m trying to soak up the culture, the frame of mind, the culture, and yes I understand that there is no way that I will be able to effectively do this in 4 months time, but I am a firm believer that studying abroad will change a person forever. Not only on their perspective on life, or their views on traveling, but the general pace of you everyday activites slows down, you begin to really appreciate every second of everyday.

Tuesday was a bad day. Annie got a phone call in the morning from the states that her cousin had died on his 21^st birthday in a car accident. She spent most of the next two days sleeping and eating chocolate. Its very hard to watch a good friend be so sad and not really be able to do anything for her except make her dinner and feed her chocolate.

Wednesday Lauren went on a date to the movies with Justin, and half of his apartment, which was quite amusing.

Thursday Annie got a flight out of Pisa very early to fly home for the funeral. Later than afternoon, Lauren and I started getting ready for apertivo that night. The menu was: stuffed tomatoes, ricotta and aubergine pizza, porcini mushroom risotto, Lauren’s special pasta, bread, Nutella cake, and ridiculous amounts of wine. By about 10:30, about 15 people rolled up to our apartment with bottles of wine and a baby keg, straight up American style. Everyone really enjoyed them selves. We all went out afterwards to Bee Bop and Astor, two bars in Firenze, both of which were packed, so we ended up coming back to our apartment to drink here.

Friday, I went on a fieldtrip to Chianti with my geography class. We were told by our professor to meet at Piazza Della Unita, were we took a mini bus to the Chianti region. The dynamic in that class is very interesting, because there is a group of girls who are very disinteresting in everything that Luca talks about. They are the most disrespectful people that I have met, they talk while he is giving a lecture and are just generally very obnoxious. Besides, those girls didn’t show up for the field trip, which was great cause I probably would have thrown them off the bus. The winding roads up to Chianti had made me completely carsick by the time that we reached Verazzano’s Castle, where I had a crazy case of deja vouz when we were there in that deathtrap of a car, bailing out before we hit the stone wall and pushing it back up the hill. This trip was a much smoother ride, though probably not half as exciting. We walked around, continued to Radda, then went and had a cappuccino in Greve, and ended up at Castelo Meleto. We got a tour around the castle, where they have a lot of weddings and big dinner parties, and then proceeded to the wine tasting building, where they had a table set up for us with full place settings. We had a first course of a meat sauce pasta, which was followed by an onslaught of appetizers. We got to taste a couple different types of salamis and sausages, bruscetta, the vineyards olive oil, not to mention the fact that we got to taste the different types of Chiantis that the vineyard specialized in as well as a pretty good Vin Santo. Afterwards, we got to wander around the vineyards and buy some wine, just in time to hop back onto the bus and head back to Firenze. The great thing about the trip was that it was a very small group and we really got to get to know our professor, who is usually very quiet. He actually paid for all our drinks at the café in Greve. And it was a warm day, and the air smelled so clean and it was just generally a very relaxing way to see the country side outside of the city.

I appologize for the Long Wait: The French Riviera

Needless to say, I haven’t written in this journal for a considerable long time. Let’s see:

Last weekend I went on a school bus trip to the French Riviera. The first bus trip that I went on, I went with the girls in my apartment, but this trip I didn’t really know that many people going, with the exception of Justin and some of his roommates, this girl in my Geog class. We get on the bus and fishing early time, 4:30, after Justin and Larry had called me about 10 minutes earlier to tell me that they had just woken up and were proceeding to run to the bus. So we get on the bus, drive about a million hours to Nice. When we get to Nice, we check into the Hotel, which is considerably much nicer than the hotel that I was in in Venice. Our first thing is to have a guided tour around Nice, so we meet our French tour guide outside the hotel. She takes us across the park, which is the boundary between the old Nice and new Nice. Old Nice was fantastic; mix of narrow winding streets, pastry shops, small rotisserie shops. We saw the old church which is dedicated to St. Reparata, the patron saint of Nice. Legend has it that St. Reparata was a 14 year old martyr that went to Israel to spread Catholicism and was killed. Her body was sailed back to the bay of Nice escorted by a league of angels, the bay is called the Bay of Angels. Nice smells fantastic and was beautiful. We had the opportunity to have lunch in Nice. I went to the flower market, which Nice is famous for, and got a bag of olives and a foccaccia. Unfortunately, the bag of olives was a bag instead of a container so there was no way that I could open them which out eating almost two pounds of mixed green and black olives, which would have been borderline disgusting. So I stuffed my foccaccia and my olives in my purse (which unfortunately and fortunately has smelled like olives for about a week now), and walked down to the beach, sat on a piece of drift wood and ate by the water. Right next to me on the beach there was a colony of beach bums living in tents of the beach of Nice. I have decided that if someday I have to be a bum, this wouldn’t be a bad way to go, I think that I might even like being a bum in a situation like that.

After our very rushed visit to Nice, we piled back on the bus, and drove through the hills to the Principality of Monaco. Monaco is its own separate entity, with its own government, currency, and its crown jewel, the Monte Carlo Casino. The Principality was founded by a bunch of very right families who didn’t want to abide by the Italian rules, so they started their own country (given this is a very dumbed down version of their history, they would probably be appalled). The drive up to Monaco was a drive along cliffs that we high up and made the boats below look like ants. Our bus was very funny though because there were at least 80 US students plastered against the windows snapping pictures as we careened around hairpin turns, it a miracle that we didn’t fall over the edge. We went to the old section of Monaco, which is accessible by going up through a huge rock through a million elevators, which then puts you out on the edge of a cliff, facing the church where Grace Kelly was married and is buried in. Monaco seems to do double time with its fame, one for the fact that Grace Kelly fell in love with the location an basically saved the economy and way of life there after she married the Prince, second is the casino, which is the largest and oldest in Europe. Grace Kelly is almost viewed as a saint here, there are constantly flowers at here grave. Another interesting thing was that there were no pigeons here to poop on you, instead there were doves, which seems very fitting. While we were there I mentioned this to someone and they joked that with the amount of money that I floating around Monaca, they probably exterminated all the pigeons and imported doves to populate the city. Another interesting thing is that to buy 1 square meter on land in Monaco, one must be willing to shell out 150,000 Euro, needless to say, I don’t think that there is much new contruction going on in Monaco. Our next stop was in lower Monaco, where we paid 10 Euro to go into the Monte Carlo Casino. I figured that 10 Euro was well worth it because I have no idea when the next time will be that I’ll be able to afford to come back to Monaco. The inside of the casino was nothing like what you would expect to see in a Vegas casino; frescoes ceilings, sheer class..in one room there is a painting on the ceiling of 3 naked women. The legend has is that there was a beautiful woman from Portugal who was the mistress of many important men, who came to the Monte Carlo casino and fell in love with gambling and spent her life savings there, became poor and died with no money. In retrospect, which is seems to be the symbol of gambling, I’m not sure how putting her picture above a casino seemed like a great idea if all they really wanted was for people to spend money, she seems more like a warning, but that didn’t seem to stop some of the highrollers from throwing their lives savings away when we were there that afternoon. Outside of the casino was like watching a very expensive car show, there were Bentlys parked next to Ferrarris, and the selection seemed to be endless. After our time in Monaco was over, we were herded back onto the bus to Nice, where we got ready to go out to dinner.

Now before we left I had discussed with the boys that we wanted to get dressed up to go out to dinner because we wanted to go to the casinos later on. So I got dressed up in black patent leather high heels and a yellow silk dress. Down in the lobby the other girls were dressed in jeans, which made it a little awkward, but I didn’t care, I looked good. The boys were so cute, they were all hot in their dress pants and button down shirts, looking very Florentine, not Nician, because no one in Nice seemed to be dressed up. We walked to the restaurant. When we walked in all the French people that were eating there stopped eating, turned around and laughed at us. It was the most uncomfortable situation ever, and I really don’t think that we were doing anything wrong, we were dressed well and we were respectful walking into the restaurant. The French really just hate Americans, and make no effort to hide it. They are the most rude people that I have ever met. They bump into you, or maybe more accurately try to take you out in the street, yell at you in French, ignore you, basically any rude behavior that you could try out on someone that you don’t know. Dinner was awful. We were really hoping for some good French food, but they served us stuffed vegetables, which were very good, and then some sort of mystery meat and a desert that was obviously boxed and watered down wine. The whole time, they literally threw the plates down on the table, took dishes before we were done, and then the kicker would be, they asked us to please finish because they had another group coming in. Needless to say, the entire group that we were with was fuming by the time that we left the restaurant.

We then proceeded to walk through Nice at night. Nice was having the end of their Carnival that night, which meant a parade of really strange floats (like a float of an eyeball, and alien hand holding a football, etc.), thousands of people pushing and being French, and hundreds other who were armed with cans of silly string. In any other situation, being silly stringed every ten steps would have been fun and I probably would have bough a can and taken part. Exept that I was dressed and was getting targeted, so I was covered in silly string from head to toe, it was in my hair, in my shoes, in my mouth. We were on a hunt that night to find the casinos; me and the boys, some of the girls that we met that new Larry from college, and some of Larry’s friends who were also visiting Nice, all of which were dressed to the 9s. We must have gone to a bunch of casinos that night. It was a very typical scene: the men of the group dressed in dress pants and suits crowded around the blackjack table, drinking and smoking cigars, which the girls where drinking champagne and cocktails at the bar, within seeing distance of our men. This was us for the better part of the night. It was very amusing on the way back, the boys were walking in front of us doing the classic Italian walk, which I think that they have down pat by now. The Italian men walk in groups in Firenze with their hands in their back pockets, with their suit jackets pulled behind them, walking slowly.

The next morning we all had breakfast and proceeded to go to St. Paul de Vance, the artistic hideaway of many contemporary artists. When we were on the bus, Luca our professor, was talking about St. Paul being basically a nothing town because there really wasn’t much there. Our professors really do not like the French, and they aren’t afraid to voice their opinion, which I thought was very funny. I really enjoyed St. Paul because it’s a small village perched on the hills in France, chock full of tiny modern art galleries and amazing views. I walked around for a better part of the day with a new friend, also named Lauren. We walked around the narrow streets and had a cappuccino in the village square.

Cannes was our next stop, the home of the Cannes film festival in June or July. By the time we got to Cannes I think that we were touristed out. We ate lunch at a restaurant on the harbor and went and laid out at the beach.

I find one of the most interesting things about the places that we saw that weekend is the amount of money that is floating around the world. The yachts, the cars, the real estate.

On the way back we stopped at the Fragonard perfume factory in Eze, one of two perfume factories in France. I found out that it takes over a ton of rose petals to make one liter of fragrance. I bought two very small, overpriced bottles of perfume, which smell fantastic.

Our drive home took forever and a day though, because we got caught in traffic on the Autostrade. The thing about driving north in Italy is that you will go through a million tunnels, which I find fascinating because it must have taken forever to dig all of them. And the bridges here are equally impressive, because they are the highest bridges and span gorges, between mountains, and they are everywhere, with, of course, minimum railings.

Over all, I really enjoyed the weekend. The down falls were 1. the fact that the French were so ungodly rude, and though I really loved Nice and would love to go back because is was so beautiful, that might actually be what stops me from going back. 2. that with a tour group that is doing a whirlwind tour of a million places, you really don’t get to enjoy or absorb the places that you. I feel like you see the places like you would see them in a slide show, and that it takes a couple days for your mind to relax and begin to absorb what you saw and what you heard. But I have to say that they pros definitely outweigh the cons for the weekend. I met some really nice people, the French Riviera was one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Needless to say, I haven’t written in this journal for a considerable long time. Let’s see:

Last weekend I went on a school bus trip to the French Riviera. The first bus trip that I went on, I went with the girls in my apartment, but this trip I didn’t really know that many people going, with the exception of Justin and some of his roommates, this girl in my Geog class. We get on the bus and fishing early time, 4:30, after Justin and Larry had called me about 10 minutes earlier to tell me that they had just woken up and were proceeding to run to the bus. So we get on the bus, drive about a million hours to Nice. When we get to Nice, we check into the Hotel, which is considerably much nicer than the hotel that I was in in Venice. Our first thing is to have a guided tour around Nice, so we meet our French tour guide outside the hotel. She takes us across the park, which is the boundary between the old Nice and new Nice. Old Nice was fantastic; mix of narrow winding streets, pastry shops, small rotisserie shops. We saw the old church which is dedicated to St. Reparata, the patron saint of Nice. Legend has it that St. Reparata was a 14 year old martyr that went to Israel to spread Catholicism and was killed. Her body was sailed back to the bay of Nice escorted by a league of angels, the bay is called the Bay of Angels. Nice smells fantastic and was beautiful. We had the opportunity to have lunch in Nice. I went to the flower market, which Nice is famous for, and got a bag of olives and a foccaccia. Unfortunately, the bag of olives was a bag instead of a container so there was no way that I could open them which out eating almost two pounds of mixed green and black olives, which would have been borderline disgusting. So I stuffed my foccaccia and my olives in my purse (which unfortunately and fortunately has smelled like olives for about a week now), and walked down to the beach, sat on a piece of drift wood and ate by the water. Right next to me on the beach there was a colony of beach bums living in tents of the beach of Nice. I have decided that if someday I have to be a bum, this wouldn’t be a bad way to go, I think that I might even like being a bum in a situation like that.

After our very rushed visit to Nice, we piled back on the bus, and drove through the hills to the Principality of Monaco. Monaco is its own separate entity, with its own government, currency, and its crown jewel, the Monte Carlo Casino. The Principality was founded by a bunch of very right families who didn’t want to abide by the Italian rules, so they started their own country (given this is a very dumbed down version of their history, they would probably be appalled). The drive up to Monaco was a drive along cliffs that we high up and made the boats below look like ants. Our bus was very funny though because there were at least 80 US students plastered against the windows snapping pictures as we careened around hairpin turns, it a miracle that we didn’t fall over the edge. We went to the old section of Monaco, which is accessible by going up through a huge rock through a million elevators, which then puts you out on the edge of a cliff, facing the church where Grace Kelly was married and is buried in. Monaco seems to do double time with its fame, one for the fact that Grace Kelly fell in love with the location an basically saved the economy and way of life there after she married the Prince, second is the casino, which is the largest and oldest in Europe. Grace Kelly is almost viewed as a saint here, there are constantly flowers at here grave. Another interesting thing was that there were no pigeons here to poop on you, instead there were doves, which seems very fitting. While we were there I mentioned this to someone and they joked that with the amount of money that I floating around Monaca, they probably exterminated all the pigeons and imported doves to populate the city. Another interesting thing is that to buy 1 square meter on land in Monaco, one must be willing to shell out 150,000 Euro, needless to say, I don’t think that there is much new contruction going on in Monaco. Our next stop was in lower Monaco, where we paid 10 Euro to go into the Monte Carlo Casino. I figured that 10 Euro was well worth it because I have no idea when the next time will be that I’ll be able to afford to come back to Monaco. The inside of the casino was nothing like what you would expect to see in a Vegas casino; frescoes ceilings, sheer class..in one room there is a painting on the ceiling of 3 naked women. The legend has is that there was a beautiful woman from Portugal who was the mistress of many important men, who came to the Monte Carlo casino and fell in love with gambling and spent her life savings there, became poor and died with no money. In retrospect, which is seems to be the symbol of gambling, I’m not sure how putting her picture above a casino seemed like a great idea if all they really wanted was for people to spend money, she seems more like a warning, but that didn’t seem to stop some of the highrollers from throwing their lives savings away when we were there that afternoon. Outside of the casino was like watching a very expensive car show, there were Bentlys parked next to Ferrarris, and the selection seemed to be endless. After our time in Monaco was over, we were herded back onto the bus to Nice, where we got ready to go out to dinner.

Now before we left I had discussed with the boys that we wanted to get dressed up to go out to dinner because we wanted to go to the casinos later on. So I got dressed up in black patent leather high heels and a yellow silk dress. Down in the lobby the other girls were dressed in jeans, which made it a little awkward, but I didn’t care, I looked good. The boys were so cute, they were all hot in their dress pants and button down shirts, looking very Florentine, not Nician, because no one in Nice seemed to be dressed up. We walked to the restaurant. When we walked in all the French people that were eating there stopped eating, turned around and laughed at us. It was the most uncomfortable situation ever, and I really don’t think that we were doing anything wrong, we were dressed well and we were respectful walking into the restaurant. The French really just hate Americans, and make no effort to hide it. They are the most rude people that I have ever met. They bump into you, or maybe more accurately try to take you out in the street, yell at you in French, ignore you, basically any rude behavior that you could try out on someone that you don’t know. Dinner was awful. We were really hoping for some good French food, but they served us stuffed vegetables, which were very good, and then some sort of mystery meat and a desert that was obviously boxed and watered down wine. The whole time, they literally threw the plates down on the table, took dishes before we were done, and then the kicker would be, they asked us to please finish because they had another group coming in. Needless to say, the entire group that we were with was fuming by the time that we left the restaurant.

We then proceeded to walk through Nice at night. Nice was having the end of their Carnival that night, which meant a parade of really strange floats (like a float of an eyeball, and alien hand holding a football, etc.), thousands of people pushing and being French, and hundreds other who were armed with cans of silly string. In any other situation, being silly stringed every ten steps would have been fun and I probably would have bough a can and taken part. Exept that I was dressed and was getting targeted, so I was covered in silly string from head to toe, it was in my hair, in my shoes, in my mouth. We were on a hunt that night to find the casinos; me and the boys, some of the girls that we met that new Larry from college, and some of Larry’s friends who were also visiting Nice, all of which were dressed to the 9s. We must have gone to a bunch of casinos that night. It was a very typical scene: the men of the group dressed in dress pants and suits crowded around the blackjack table, drinking and smoking cigars, which the girls where drinking champagne and cocktails at the bar, within seeing distance of our men. This was us for the better part of the night. It was very amusing on the way back, the boys were walking in front of us doing the classic Italian walk, which I think that they have down pat by now. The Italian men walk in groups in Firenze with their hands in their back pockets, with their suit jackets pulled behind them, walking slowly.

The next morning we all had breakfast and proceeded to go to St. Paul de Vance, the artistic hideaway of many contemporary artists. When we were on the bus, Luca our professor, was talking about St. Paul being basically a nothing town because there really wasn’t much there. Our professors really do not like the French, and they aren’t afraid to voice their opinion, which I thought was very funny. I really enjoyed St. Paul because it’s a small village perched on the hills in France, chock full of tiny modern art galleries and amazing views. I walked around for a better part of the day with a new friend, also named Lauren. We walked around the narrow streets and had a cappuccino in the village square.

Cannes was our next stop, the home of the Cannes film festival in June or July. By the time we got to Cannes I think that we were touristed out. We ate lunch at a restaurant on the harbor and went and laid out at the beach.

I find one of the most interesting things about the places that we saw that weekend is the amount of money that is floating around the world. The yachts, the cars, the real estate.

On the way back we stopped at the Fragonard perfume factory in Eze, one of two perfume factories in France. I found out that it takes over a ton of rose petals to make one liter of fragrance. I bought two very small, overpriced bottles of perfume, which smell fantastic.

Our drive home took forever and a day though, because we got caught in traffic on the Autostrade. The thing about driving north in Italy is that you will go through a million tunnels, which I find fascinating because it must have taken forever to dig all of them. And the bridges here are equally impressive, because they are the highest bridges and span gorges, between mountains, and they are everywhere, with, of course, minimum railings.

Over all, I really enjoyed the weekend. The down falls were 1. the fact that the French were so ungodly rude, and though I really loved Nice and would love to go back because is was so beautiful, that might actually be what stops me from going back. 2. that with a tour group that is doing a whirlwind tour of a million places, you really don’t get to enjoy or absorb the places that you. I feel like you see the places like you would see them in a slide show, and that it takes a couple days for your mind to relax and begin to absorb what you saw and what you heard. But I have to say that they pros definitely outweigh the cons for the weekend. I met some really nice people, the French Riviera was one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Missing all at Home!

3 Things:
1. There will never be a time that I dont want a post card with a fabulously ripped man from the Caribbean. The eye candy here in europe is a lot, but men in speedos?...now come on.
Heres my address for those of you who have been wondering or want to send equally fantastic mail (which is always appreciated)
Lauren Shepulski
c/o Scuola Lorenzo de Medici
Via del Melarancio 6/r
50123 Firenze, ITALIA

2. Congrats to the Mary Wash girls basketball team!! Holy cow, nice job girls. Liz, I was really excited to hear that you all have been doing so well. Im guessing that youre feeling a little better about your playing than you were when I left, which im really excited about. I cant wait to hear about the season. Flan, the really sucks about the knee. Keep your chin up, you can always rock the next season.

3. Liz: Im super excited that youre going to camp this summer!!!!!!(i cant stress the exclamation points enough). Its going to be so much fun. Im a counselor for 6th grade girls, so im not sure if our groups will be uppers and lowers, or the same. but i guess that we'll have to see. Its problt going to be the best summer ever, hands down.

4. Mary Wash Crew - I Miss You! from the pictures that I have seen and the messages and whatnot, sounds like you all are having a kick ass semester. Hows the dog? Do we have any pillows left kat? Miss you like crazy!

Anywho, glad to keep hearing from people at home. Il keep posting, keep you all informed. Miss you all!

Another week in Florence

February 25, 2007

So the last I wrote it was my birthday, and quite a bit has happened here since. Wednesday, Annie and I ended up going back to Luna Rossa, and met G there, the guy that we weren’t huge fans of on Monday. So we sat down at the bar, kind of expecting a pretty low key night. We ended up talk to G and his friend, and we all really ended up getting along. He turned out to not to be a jerk, and is actually very nice and engaging. We had been talking to the guys for a while, and the bar tender started to get jealous that we weren’t paying attention to him (this is the same bartender that was very good looking from the night before). He ended up throwing ice down Annie’s shirt, who proceeded to almost throw down a fight inside the bar and had to be walked out of the bar by G and Raffaele. So we decided to leave the bar, and proceeded to Maracana, one of the dance clubs that’s pretty close to our apartment. We ended up staying at the club until the turned the lights on (around 4:30), which has never happened before. It was actually a really good time, the music was pretty good. So after this the boys walked us home. In the mean time, I was busy getting a date for Thursday night. That’s right. So, Thursday rolls around and he told me that we would be going out around 8:30 for dinner which later got bumped to 9:30. No where but Europe is it acceptable to take a girl out to dinner and pick her up at 9:30 and eat at 10. So he came to the apartment dressed to the 9’s, very impressive. We went out to dinner at this restaurant called Golden View, which is impressively located on the banks of the Arno River overlooking the Ponte Vecchio. I have never been on a date with someone who can tell the difference of two years in the same wine, or can cook like its no body’s business. We ended up not leaving the restaurant until 1:00. Over all, I would say it was a pretty damn good date. After this we went to a club, which was not so much fun for multiple reasons and finished the evening at Luna Rossa with cocktails.

Needless to say, those two days I had 1. a 9:00 am the next day and 2. an early trip to Lucca, and I got a total of 3 hours of sleep combined. Very worth it though.

Friday the girls and I got together with a couple guys that we have met and jumped on the train to Lucca, which is a pretty quite city but still very charming. We took it easy and mosied on through, ended up collectively falling asleep on a bench in the piazza for about an hour, walked around the wall that surrounds the city, soaking up the sun, and generally laughing like a bunch of crazy people the entire day. The guys are really nice, and its really great that we are starting to get a good group together. Most of the guys that were with us were Justin’s roommates (Justin is a guy that we met in Venice who was on the trip with us). Actually, two of them might come with Lauren and I to Dublin over Easter. That night we came back and had planned on going out to a cocktail party, but never made it because we had all walked and partied so much in the past couple days that we were out by around 8:00.

Saturday Lauren’s family arrived in Florence. We went to the airport to meet them and then went to their apartment. Their apartment looks like the Tajmahal compared to ours. It has an elevator (which is almost an unheard of luxury in these old buildings) and sooooo much room. Our apartment looks like a shithole shoebox in comparison. We walked around and ate dinner Piazza Repubblica at one of the cafés who had outdoor seating with heat lamps. Saturday night Lauren and I went out for cocktails at a bar down by the river with a couple of our friends from the Netherlands.

And today, Sunday, it was raining, again. So we walked around, did some window shopping, some eating, some walking and we are going to dinner down by the Ponte Vecchio this evening with Lauren’s family.

On a different note, I am on a mad hunt for shoes and dress clothes, which you wouldn’t think would be an issue in Florence, but things are soooo expensive here.

We are planning an apertivo at our apartment. We wanted to have people over for dinner, but we decided that would be impossible because our kitchen is so little. So we decided that apertivo would be more appropriate. So that is a work in progress.

Next weekend I am going to Nice, Monte Carlo and Cannes. Justin and one of his roommates are going and he was telling me how they might go to one of the casinos there, which means that the press for dress clothes is even more.

21st Done Right

February 19, 2007

First off, lets clear something up. In Italia, there is no such thing as a mixer for drinks, and even more difficult to find is sour mix, which obviously has not found its way to this country yet. With this in mind, we have been looking for sour mix for Amaretto Sours for a week. We are slowly and steadily bringing back the glory that is cocktail hour. Anyway, we had been searching in just about every alcohol shop in Florence, and concluded that we would just have to substitute with something else sour.

Appropriately, we went to the alcohol store yesterday, made our way through a group of men just off work drinking wine at the front of the shop and make our way to the liquors, and we are searching for something sour, but we cant find anything, so I decided that it would be a good idea to ask the man who works there, who speaks not a word of English. And I am trying to explain sour mix to him in broken Italian. My broken Italian, his shaking of the head, and then I switch into complete tourist, pull out my Italian-english dictionary, which was obviously the best answer. So there I am flipping through the book trying to decode sour mix, in the middle of the store, with the manager trying to help us find words in this book. This must have gone on for a couple minutes when he finally understands what im saying, and tells me, of course, they don’t have that. Very appropriate for 21^st birthday, having to decode with a dictionary in the alcohol store. So this is how our evening began.

With my party hat on,( and I mean this, furry crown that says 21 Where’s The Bar?!) complete with a flashing button that blares Happy Birthday, flashes and says, ‘Goodbye Bouncer, Hello Bartender’, Lauren, Annie and I went to Hanni’s for dinner. He was very excited to see us, and the wait staff, who we partied with last Wednesday, was pretty confused on why exactly I was in the bar for dinner with a furry crown.

The 21^st Birthday is lost on Italians, they have been drinking since they got off the bottle, so its rare that you will find an Italian who appreciates an American 21^st. They will humor you, but the glory that is the 21^st means nothing, which thank god for America, we have made it basically a national holiday.

Anyway, we had dinner and Hanni brought us dessert with a candle and we sang and the people in the restaurant thought we were crazy, stupid American girls. Oh well. We then went back to the apartment, made some cocktails and got ready to go out to the bar that we went to last Tuesday, La Luna Rossa. The girls assured me that we would live up the birthday appropriately, that they would wake me up for class the next day, dress me, push me out the door disoriented and point me in the right direction for class. This sounded like a good plan, so we headed out.

The bar wasn’t packed, which was great, and the manager recognized us from the week before. A lot of drinking ensued. We met some guy who dressed like a thug from NYC, who had it bad for Lauren Tusso, and we met some Italian guy who had it bad for Annie, which makes an amusing situation for me, who was sitting between the two girls. This said Thug proceeded to psychoanalyze us for around a half hour, and informed us that he could tell when kind of girls we were by the type of shoes that we were wearing, blah blah blah. And the kicker was when he basically called me the dumb one out of the group, because I had pointy toed shoes on. At this point I wrote him off, turned around and had another drink. That’s right, what a charmer. HAHA. And I had my first drink of Absinthe. It was another flaming shot, which must be a specialty of this bar, because I had a flaming shot last week too. I think that a flaming shot of Absinthe is a very appropriate birthday shot. And I have to say I was a little disappointed, no green fairies, no hallucinations…just a bad headache this morning. Haha.

So after we decided that we had done enough celebrating for the night, we went home. Oh yeah, we didn’t pay a dime, haha, the manager said it was birthday night for the birthday girl. I don’t say no to a free drink, haha.

Over all, I would say that it was a success. We have partied for a week and will probably continue on Wednesday, because we have been invited for Sushi and cocktails by the NYC Thug on Wednesday back at the same bar. We will not turn down these invitations, we live once, and thoroughly intend on living up our short time here in Europe. We make it to those pesky things called class, yes, but I’m finding that Florence never sleeps, so why should we?