Thursday, March 10, 2011
Since we last saw each other...
We finally got home from Vienna. However, we weren't without our troubles. Out of pure boredom, Lyndsee and I decided to just go to the airport a bit early. After hanging out for an hour at yet another Mcdonalds, it was finally time to check in. We made our way through security (no need to take off shoes here!) and went to the terminal. We waited about an hour before we were informed that our flight was delayed 2 hours. Which pretty much sucked since there wasn't much to do in the airport after we went through security. There was a caviar bar :( some cheesy gift stands and an overpriced sandwich place. So we grabbed a sandwich, waited for another 2 hours, and finally got on the plane! Once we landed in Rome, we had to figure out how to get to our B&B. We weren't quite sure were the B&B was so we thought it would be nice to have a driver just take us there for just 15 euros a piece (same price as a train ticket). We found a service to take us but they wouldn't go anywhere until the car was full. So we waited for around 30 minutes and then decided to give up. We just wanted to get to our room and go to sleep since we had to wake up so early the next morning to make it to class by 9:30. So we went to the train station and tried to buy tickets, but all the machines were down. They wouldn't accept cash and the credit card option said "host offline." So we went back to the taxi service. I felt a lot like the prodigal child... We were still the only customers thus far so we had some more waiting to do. The driver let us go to the car to hang out. I immediately called Levi and gave him the company's information in case 2 unidentified American girls ended up in river. Finally 3 more girls came and we were off. Made it to the B&B, got to sleep, and 4 hours later.... time to wake up! We got to the train station, and then there were some ticketing issues. To make a long story short, out lack of sleep got the best of Lyndsee and we had to go wait in line for a refund on a ticket. We had 3 minutes to get to our train, and missed it... The platform was reallllly far away. It was actually outside the train station so there was no way we could have made it. The next train wasn't until 8:45, so we had a good 2 hour wait :( So there we are.... in another Mcdonalds... I slept like a homeless person while Lyndsee did some catching up on her Journal. 30 minutes before our new train was to depart, we made our way to the far away platform. Our train was waiting for us, so we hopped on, and I passed out again. And finally.... an hour and a half later, we made it to Orvieto; almost 2 hours late for class, but we made it... :) It always feels so good to be home! Since then, we have just been having a low key week here in Orvieto before we head out Monday morning for our trip up North. We will be visisting the home of Romeo and Juliet (Verona), Vicenza, and Venice. After that, I will be hopping on a plane to head down south to Barcelona! Stay tuned :)
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Sunday in Vienna
Pretty much everything is closed.... So today consisted of visits to the exterior of museums. They were actually open, we were just too disinterested to go inside... Not to mention, we were lugging around the world's heaviest backpacks. Not quite sure why we decided to take the latest flight home possible. We pretty much covered everything Friday. Silly girls... So we wandered around, killing time, spent a few hours in cafes since we were freezing our buns off. We did go to a super fancy cafe called Cafe Sacher that was recommended by Markus, the invisible tour guide. I kept feeling like I had been in there before but I was 90% sure I hadn't, and then I saw that there is also one in Salzburg, and it clicked! I went there!! We paid 2 Euros to check our coats then partook in the eating of some delicious desserts and coffee. I must say, the apple strudel was scrumptious! After finishing up, we made our way to the bus station and purchased tickets to Bratislava. Because if you're going to the airport, of course you want to go to the one in Bratislava and not the one right there in Vienna. That makes sense, right? Hm... Didn't see the logic with that one bus ticket lady. But thanks... I think I'll go back to Italy where I have a slight chance in understanding the language. So anyway, we were sitting inside, avoiding going outside since it was cold. We figured, we would just go outside and get on the bus when we saw everyone else board. You see, there were lots of people standing outside with suitcases, and if they have suitcases they must be going to the airport! Wrong... They were waiting for some other bus and our bus was out front, all ready to go. We got there with 1 minute to spare. Phew! So now Lyndsee and I are sitting in the airport, ready to check in, and this means I must go!
All Prague in a Day
19.99€ to Prague, Czech Republic? Heck yes. Best decision ever. Lyndsee and I boarded the bus at 8:00 am, arrived in Prague at 11:30 am, and roamed around until 6:00 pm, when it was time to re board the bus. Our first stop was Old Town Square. There we saw The Church of Our Lady Before Tyn. Not too sure what that means, and we never figured out how to actually enter the church, but the exterior was quite lovely indeed! After searching for the entrance to the church and never finding it, we went up the city hall clock tower to look out over Prague. And no need to google any of these this time around! Pictures have been posted to facebook! Anyway, ever hour, on the hour, a trumpeter sounds his horn on each of the sides. At this time, on the clock on the front face of the tower, Jesus (not the real one, in case you were confused) and his 12 apostles march out. This is why so many people are standing below the tower in one of the pictures I have posted on the previously mentioned facebook album. After getting to the bottom of the tower, we asked the nice trumpet man to point us in the direction of a delicious authentic meal. He directed us to Hotel U Prince (the U isn’t said like our “U” I believe he pronounced it “Oodah.” Either that or we went to the wrong place. Oh well…) So there we dined on the 6th floor terrace and enjoyed some amazing Czech food. I believe the meat I inhaled was duck. Lyndsee took the safer route with a nice Chicken entree. Both were delicious nevertheless. After lunch, we made our way to a Frank Gehry favorite, Dancing house. This would be the crazy building behind us in so many pictures. From there we just strolled along the river, actually it was more hauling buns than strolling since we only had a couple hours left, but it was still fun and there were numerous photo opportunities. This is the bittersweet thing about Prague… It is an amazingly beautiful city, my favorite by far, and I wanted to take pictures of everything, but camera cards only have so much space… Moving on… We walked down the river and made it to the Old Town Bridge, also known as Charles Bridge. This bridge leads up to an enormous castle at the top of the hill. Unfortunately, 6 hours didn’t leave us enough time to go inside of it. However, just seeing it was good enough for us. After the Charles Bridge, it was time to head back to the bus depot. On the way back, we stopped at a small hole in the wall bar to try a Czech beer. Lyndsee and I decided that it would be wrong to go to a country known for having the original pilsner, and not try one. So we did! And……it was good! We (that’s right, both of us) actually liked it. For those of you who may not be aware of this, both of us pretty much despise beer… So we tried the beer, inhaled some second hand smoke and got our buns back to the bus depot. The bus ride home was pretty bumpy, so my plans to pass out didn’t work out too well, but it was nice to just relax. Once we got back to Vienna, we hopped on the underground and headed back towards the hostel. On the way back to the hostel a drunk Polish man sat across from us and made us highly uncomfortable. We were both starting to contemplate what we would do if he decided to stay on the underground until we got off. After discussing later, we had both decided that we were going to just keep getting on random undergrounds until he left us alone so he wouldn’t know where we were staying. However, creepy old drunk man was finally able to get off the underground. He had attempted once before but his drunk butt waited too long and the doors closed. So anyway, he left. Bullet dodged. Safely got back to the hostel and tucked into bed.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Got some catchin up to do!
So this blog is now going to be a bit out of order... I'm pretty lazy about doing this so there are quite a few weekends that have been left out. So since the trip to Assisi and Civita, but obviously before this current trip to Austria I have been quite a few places.... Here they are!
1. Florence
Trip 1: Chocolate Festival (this one was actually before the Assisi trip)
So we found out there was a Chocolate festival in Florence! yay!! We were going on a school trip to Florence the next weekend, but we didn't want to miss chocolate fest.... so of course we had to go! I have to admit, my first impressions of Florence were not good... It was quite a bit dirtier than Rome, it pretty much smelled bad, and there was a good layer of fog that day. So anyway, we make our way through the city to the chocolate festival and bam! protesters. Apparently, the Italians aren't too keen on their President having affairs. Who woulda thought?! So they were banging on their pots and pans, saying "Italy is not a brothel!" So that was pretty exciting. However, chocolate fest was a bit of a let down. There were maybe 8 tents, each with 2-4 vendors. It was just quite a bit smaller than we thought. So anyway, we got there, grabbed some chocolate, ate some food, and made our way back to Orvieto. It felt pretty good to be home. Now this brings us to.....
Trip 2: Back to Florence! And guess what?! Chocolate fest is still going on. Super glad I spent like 6 hours on the train the previous weekend to make it in time. Oh well... I do have to admit that this trip to Florence was significantly better. The city just didn't seem to suck as much as it did the weekend before. This trip, we ended up going to Santa Croce, a church in Florence. It was pretty, but to be honest with you, if it was that great, I would remember a little bit more about it than I do... but Michelangelo and Galileo are buried there so that's pretty cool. Santa Croce really didn't get a fair chance though because the Apse was under renovation so it was completely blocked off and we couldn't see it. That was a huge let down. (Side note: going to everything in the off season is great because there are no lines and whatnot, but almost everything is being worked on during this time so waiting in lines is probably worth it.) After that, we were released from our school duties and we just roamed around Florence. I bought a leather coat from a guy that kept calling me Jennifer Lopez (I apparently have a bubble bum) and a super cute leather bag that got soaked with tea at a later date. No worries though, it made a miraculous recovery. This now brings us to....
2. The South of Italy!
Now, our teacher warned us that the south of Italy is significantly poorer than the north of Italy. This is very true. While I'm sure there are some nicer parts, we did not see them... Everything looked similar to the projects. I kid you not. Nevertheless...
First stop: Ercolano, or as we know it (or maybe not) Herculaneum. This is one of the many sites left in ruins from the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. It was pretty small, but I was really interesting to see. We spent a couple hours there exploring and whatnot. It was really cool to see the old kitchens and living rooms. It was fairly common to have either a biclinium or a triclinium in your living room. Basically it is built in couches. The biclinium is 2 concrete couches facing each other with a pool in between, the triclinium had 3 concrete couches with a pool in the middle. Now what were these pools for you may ask? Why to float platters of food and alcohol on of course! These couches were more like beds and the ancient people or Ercolano and Pompeii pretty much knew how to host a party... haha :)
Next Stop: Pompeii (the town, not the ruins site). This is where our hotel was. I believe it was called Hotel Mystery or something like that. Definitely not a good name... Pompeii was a pretty sketchy town. Lets just say there was a prostitute seen pooping on the train platform. Yup, that sums up Pompeii for you. Lets get to the ruins site now... Amazing. Coolest thing ever. I loved exploring Pompeii. Every time I thought that the city would come to an end, nope! There would be more. It was just never ending. We did find one of the brothels that is still standing. This was pretty interesting... So in ancient Pompeii, there were around 40 brothels. A pretty ridiculous number for a small city. Anyway, in this brothel you will find a menu of services. The menu is comparable to the menu at Mcdonald's. It basically consisted of a series of pictures of different services one could request. To see an example of the images on the menu to a google image search for "Lupanare of Pompeii." I did take photos of the frescoes, but I don't know what facebook's policy is on ancient porn. It was pretty funny though... After that we found where they keep the bodies of the people they were able to recover. That's when it really hit me how incredibly tragic the eruption was. I could see their faces. I could see the look of fright. Some of the bodies were curled up, knees to face. Some were laying down as if they had just accepted what was going to happen. One of the bodies recovered was of a dog, curled up, guarding his face. It was awful to think about what that last day in Pompeii was like. One minute everything is fine, and the next you're an artifact. Something for tourists to take pictures of.
Oplontis: This was the 3rd ruins site we went to. Oplontis is just one large villa that was very well preserved. There are really beautiful frescoes on all the walls that for the most part, are still intact. We really didn't spend too much time here, but it was definitely worth the stop. Also, I'm going to name my next boston terrier Oplontis, but I shall call him Opie. Get ready Dexter... you're going to get a new brother some day...
Casserta: Once a royal palace, now a museum, gardens, and air force barracks. Casserta was really pretty. (google it) First, we went to the gardens and walked down most of the way towards the end. It was verrry long though and we only had 30 minutes before our tour of the palace so we had to cut it short. The palace was beautiful though. Typical palace stuff... (My apologies on the lack of elaboration, I'm so tired of writing at this point.)
Casserta finished up the school trip part of the week. By the way, this trip started on Wednesday and we are now on Friday :) After we were released; Lyndsee, Erin, and I took the train down to Sorrento. Sorrento is a gorgeous coastal town. We got a hostel there with some of the guys from our school and just explored. Our first night there, our group went out to dinner and just went back to the hostel. The boys all snored like bears and it was awful. They are no longer allowed to share hostels with us... The next morning was a little rough due to the hibernating bears, but we managed to get out of bed and make our way towards Vesuvius. We were bound and determined to hike up that beast. So we took the train to Ercolano (the city, not the ruins site) and went to this little company that takes people to Vesuvius so they can hike up. We got there around 10:00 am and they told us that we would leave at 10:15. Well we were the only 3 people there so they kept waiting for more customers to show up so that they weren't wasting gas on just 3 people. So we waited until 10:45. During that time, man after man after man, showed up to this business exchanged keys, received papers, smoked a couple cigarettes and left. There was one much much older man, and around 30 other men coming and going. One man came up to the business, exchanged newspapers with the guy that ended up being our driver and then left. Now I really didn't think much of this until... We were half way up the mountain and the driver stops in the middle of the road. A random "stranger" on the side of the road, opens up he passenger side door, grabs the newspaper that our driver had received from the previous guy, shuts the door, and our driver just goes on like this is completely normal. Now we weren't sure if they were mafia (keep in mind we are in the south, home of the mafia) or drug dealers. Either way, there was some shady business going on and they have a nice little cover project taking people up to Vesuvius. So anyway, we hiked up Vesuvius. It still smokes. Its was cool, and we had the most amazing view of the sea and all the surrounding towns. After Vesuvius we were all tuckered out and we decided that going back to Orvieto sounded too amazing to pass up. So we made our way to Napoli and grabbed a train that went straight home! Welp, now Levi is on skype so I'm going to jet and I'll finish this later. I still have another trip to Florence to blog about. Stay tuned!
1. Florence
Trip 1: Chocolate Festival (this one was actually before the Assisi trip)
So we found out there was a Chocolate festival in Florence! yay!! We were going on a school trip to Florence the next weekend, but we didn't want to miss chocolate fest.... so of course we had to go! I have to admit, my first impressions of Florence were not good... It was quite a bit dirtier than Rome, it pretty much smelled bad, and there was a good layer of fog that day. So anyway, we make our way through the city to the chocolate festival and bam! protesters. Apparently, the Italians aren't too keen on their President having affairs. Who woulda thought?! So they were banging on their pots and pans, saying "Italy is not a brothel!" So that was pretty exciting. However, chocolate fest was a bit of a let down. There were maybe 8 tents, each with 2-4 vendors. It was just quite a bit smaller than we thought. So anyway, we got there, grabbed some chocolate, ate some food, and made our way back to Orvieto. It felt pretty good to be home. Now this brings us to.....
Trip 2: Back to Florence! And guess what?! Chocolate fest is still going on. Super glad I spent like 6 hours on the train the previous weekend to make it in time. Oh well... I do have to admit that this trip to Florence was significantly better. The city just didn't seem to suck as much as it did the weekend before. This trip, we ended up going to Santa Croce, a church in Florence. It was pretty, but to be honest with you, if it was that great, I would remember a little bit more about it than I do... but Michelangelo and Galileo are buried there so that's pretty cool. Santa Croce really didn't get a fair chance though because the Apse was under renovation so it was completely blocked off and we couldn't see it. That was a huge let down. (Side note: going to everything in the off season is great because there are no lines and whatnot, but almost everything is being worked on during this time so waiting in lines is probably worth it.) After that, we were released from our school duties and we just roamed around Florence. I bought a leather coat from a guy that kept calling me Jennifer Lopez (I apparently have a bubble bum) and a super cute leather bag that got soaked with tea at a later date. No worries though, it made a miraculous recovery. This now brings us to....
2. The South of Italy!
Now, our teacher warned us that the south of Italy is significantly poorer than the north of Italy. This is very true. While I'm sure there are some nicer parts, we did not see them... Everything looked similar to the projects. I kid you not. Nevertheless...
First stop: Ercolano, or as we know it (or maybe not) Herculaneum. This is one of the many sites left in ruins from the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. It was pretty small, but I was really interesting to see. We spent a couple hours there exploring and whatnot. It was really cool to see the old kitchens and living rooms. It was fairly common to have either a biclinium or a triclinium in your living room. Basically it is built in couches. The biclinium is 2 concrete couches facing each other with a pool in between, the triclinium had 3 concrete couches with a pool in the middle. Now what were these pools for you may ask? Why to float platters of food and alcohol on of course! These couches were more like beds and the ancient people or Ercolano and Pompeii pretty much knew how to host a party... haha :)
Next Stop: Pompeii (the town, not the ruins site). This is where our hotel was. I believe it was called Hotel Mystery or something like that. Definitely not a good name... Pompeii was a pretty sketchy town. Lets just say there was a prostitute seen pooping on the train platform. Yup, that sums up Pompeii for you. Lets get to the ruins site now... Amazing. Coolest thing ever. I loved exploring Pompeii. Every time I thought that the city would come to an end, nope! There would be more. It was just never ending. We did find one of the brothels that is still standing. This was pretty interesting... So in ancient Pompeii, there were around 40 brothels. A pretty ridiculous number for a small city. Anyway, in this brothel you will find a menu of services. The menu is comparable to the menu at Mcdonald's. It basically consisted of a series of pictures of different services one could request. To see an example of the images on the menu to a google image search for "Lupanare of Pompeii." I did take photos of the frescoes, but I don't know what facebook's policy is on ancient porn. It was pretty funny though... After that we found where they keep the bodies of the people they were able to recover. That's when it really hit me how incredibly tragic the eruption was. I could see their faces. I could see the look of fright. Some of the bodies were curled up, knees to face. Some were laying down as if they had just accepted what was going to happen. One of the bodies recovered was of a dog, curled up, guarding his face. It was awful to think about what that last day in Pompeii was like. One minute everything is fine, and the next you're an artifact. Something for tourists to take pictures of.
Oplontis: This was the 3rd ruins site we went to. Oplontis is just one large villa that was very well preserved. There are really beautiful frescoes on all the walls that for the most part, are still intact. We really didn't spend too much time here, but it was definitely worth the stop. Also, I'm going to name my next boston terrier Oplontis, but I shall call him Opie. Get ready Dexter... you're going to get a new brother some day...
Casserta: Once a royal palace, now a museum, gardens, and air force barracks. Casserta was really pretty. (google it) First, we went to the gardens and walked down most of the way towards the end. It was verrry long though and we only had 30 minutes before our tour of the palace so we had to cut it short. The palace was beautiful though. Typical palace stuff... (My apologies on the lack of elaboration, I'm so tired of writing at this point.)
Casserta finished up the school trip part of the week. By the way, this trip started on Wednesday and we are now on Friday :) After we were released; Lyndsee, Erin, and I took the train down to Sorrento. Sorrento is a gorgeous coastal town. We got a hostel there with some of the guys from our school and just explored. Our first night there, our group went out to dinner and just went back to the hostel. The boys all snored like bears and it was awful. They are no longer allowed to share hostels with us... The next morning was a little rough due to the hibernating bears, but we managed to get out of bed and make our way towards Vesuvius. We were bound and determined to hike up that beast. So we took the train to Ercolano (the city, not the ruins site) and went to this little company that takes people to Vesuvius so they can hike up. We got there around 10:00 am and they told us that we would leave at 10:15. Well we were the only 3 people there so they kept waiting for more customers to show up so that they weren't wasting gas on just 3 people. So we waited until 10:45. During that time, man after man after man, showed up to this business exchanged keys, received papers, smoked a couple cigarettes and left. There was one much much older man, and around 30 other men coming and going. One man came up to the business, exchanged newspapers with the guy that ended up being our driver and then left. Now I really didn't think much of this until... We were half way up the mountain and the driver stops in the middle of the road. A random "stranger" on the side of the road, opens up he passenger side door, grabs the newspaper that our driver had received from the previous guy, shuts the door, and our driver just goes on like this is completely normal. Now we weren't sure if they were mafia (keep in mind we are in the south, home of the mafia) or drug dealers. Either way, there was some shady business going on and they have a nice little cover project taking people up to Vesuvius. So anyway, we hiked up Vesuvius. It still smokes. Its was cool, and we had the most amazing view of the sea and all the surrounding towns. After Vesuvius we were all tuckered out and we decided that going back to Orvieto sounded too amazing to pass up. So we made our way to Napoli and grabbed a train that went straight home! Welp, now Levi is on skype so I'm going to jet and I'll finish this later. I still have another trip to Florence to blog about. Stay tuned!
The hills are alive!
with the sound of music of course!
March 3, 2011
Phew! What a day… Lyndsee and I are on our way to Austria. So far, the road is a little bumpy... We left Orvieto at 3:45, and….. I forgot my bag. On the bench. At the train station. It was quite the ordeal. Luckily there was a train guy standing next to me when I went frantic and luckily good ol’ Rachel Cooper was still at the train station waiting for her train to Castiliogne Fiorentino. She went and grabbed my bag and the nice train man called someone he knew at the station in Orvieto. So Lyndsee and I got out at Orte and met the train coming with my bag on it. This is when the day gets better. There are 3 types of trains: Regional trains that stop at every station and take forever to get to your destination, Intercity trains that just stop at the main destinations like Rome and Florence, and then there is RV trains, and we don’t know what the heck those are… Anyway the train we were on was a regional train because it is super cheap and the train my bag was on was an Intercity train. Originally we thought we were going to have to wait for the next regional train since that is the type of train we purchased the ticket for, but the conductor let us get on the Intercity (IC) train since there was a crisis at hand. There were many “Grazie Milles” to the conductor. So now we are sitting on the train, my laptop battery about to die, on our way to the airport. More to come!
First day in Vienna! March 4, 2011
So a bit of a scare last night when we got in. The hostel lost our reservation, and all their rooms were booked....except for 1: a room for 20. Luckily, nobody else was in it. So Lyndsee and I got our private room with plenty of beds to choose from. It was really hard to decide which bed would be best. The really small bunk bed with a yellow pillow and comforter from the 70's or the really small bunk bed with a yellow pillow and comforter from the 70's. Thank goodness for clean sheets and a clean comforter cover. And they were sparkling white, so I KNOW they were clean. Today the hostel made up for the mistake though with a much nicer room. Now the comforter and pillow are patterned so I can't tell that they are gross. Still have the clean sheets though... this is good. But almost sure you aren't reading this to find out about my sketchy hostel situations. So here is what we did today...
We started the day off with a tour of the Schonbrunn Palace. Or as I prefer to call it, the yellow castle. Next we went to St. Stephens Cathedral. You should probably google it since it will be forever before I get pictures on facebook, but it was beautiful. The vaulted ceilings were amazing. They weren't barrel vaulted or handkerchief vaulted, but more like spiderweb vaults; just beautiful... After that went to Mozart's Viennese house (his longtime residence was in Salzburg, but Vienna likes to take credit too). Then we just explored Vienna for a bit. The metro system is super clean and ridiculously easy to use so it doesn't really matter where you want to go in the city, you can be there in a matter of minutes. And thats all for now!
March 3, 2011
Phew! What a day… Lyndsee and I are on our way to Austria. So far, the road is a little bumpy... We left Orvieto at 3:45, and….. I forgot my bag. On the bench. At the train station. It was quite the ordeal. Luckily there was a train guy standing next to me when I went frantic and luckily good ol’ Rachel Cooper was still at the train station waiting for her train to Castiliogne Fiorentino. She went and grabbed my bag and the nice train man called someone he knew at the station in Orvieto. So Lyndsee and I got out at Orte and met the train coming with my bag on it. This is when the day gets better. There are 3 types of trains: Regional trains that stop at every station and take forever to get to your destination, Intercity trains that just stop at the main destinations like Rome and Florence, and then there is RV trains, and we don’t know what the heck those are… Anyway the train we were on was a regional train because it is super cheap and the train my bag was on was an Intercity train. Originally we thought we were going to have to wait for the next regional train since that is the type of train we purchased the ticket for, but the conductor let us get on the Intercity (IC) train since there was a crisis at hand. There were many “Grazie Milles” to the conductor. So now we are sitting on the train, my laptop battery about to die, on our way to the airport. More to come!
First day in Vienna! March 4, 2011
So a bit of a scare last night when we got in. The hostel lost our reservation, and all their rooms were booked....except for 1: a room for 20. Luckily, nobody else was in it. So Lyndsee and I got our private room with plenty of beds to choose from. It was really hard to decide which bed would be best. The really small bunk bed with a yellow pillow and comforter from the 70's or the really small bunk bed with a yellow pillow and comforter from the 70's. Thank goodness for clean sheets and a clean comforter cover. And they were sparkling white, so I KNOW they were clean. Today the hostel made up for the mistake though with a much nicer room. Now the comforter and pillow are patterned so I can't tell that they are gross. Still have the clean sheets though... this is good. But almost sure you aren't reading this to find out about my sketchy hostel situations. So here is what we did today...
We started the day off with a tour of the Schonbrunn Palace. Or as I prefer to call it, the yellow castle. Next we went to St. Stephens Cathedral. You should probably google it since it will be forever before I get pictures on facebook, but it was beautiful. The vaulted ceilings were amazing. They weren't barrel vaulted or handkerchief vaulted, but more like spiderweb vaults; just beautiful... After that went to Mozart's Viennese house (his longtime residence was in Salzburg, but Vienna likes to take credit too). Then we just explored Vienna for a bit. The metro system is super clean and ridiculously easy to use so it doesn't really matter where you want to go in the city, you can be there in a matter of minutes. And thats all for now!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
So much to tell!!!
I'm verrry bad about this blogging thing. First of all due to the fact that getting on the internet is a pain in the buns. Secondly because by the time I write it all in my diary and tell Levi all about it, I feel really repetitive by the time I share it with the world wide web. With that said, THIS is everything I have done since Rome. Last weekend we went to Assisi to see the Church of San Francesco. It was pretty much the most amazing thing I have ever seen. I'm pretty bummed that taking pictures was forbidden, but I feel like maybe its better because there is no way pictures could have done it any justice. Google it... After seeing the church, we hiked to the top of this hill to this old castle. Exploring the castle was pretty fun. I went up into a watch tower and then on my way back down, I noticed that the stair case also went down a little further into a corridor. So I took that staircase down and started walking down the corridor. It was really narrow, really short, and really long. I didn't have any idea where I was going, and then I came upon another staircase that went up. After what felt like a thousand stairs I found myself on the top of the tallest watch tower. I just sat up there all by my lonesome and took in the view. From there, I could see the Appenines covered in snow, the Church of San Francesco, and all the little towns below. After sharing a bedroom for 3 weeks, and not having any place to call your own or be alone, sitting up on the watch tower by myself was the most refreshing feeling I could possibly imagine. Eventually I went back down the staircase, down the long corridor, and reunited with civilization. After that, it was back on the bus to Orvieto, home. The next day, a group of us girls decided to go to Florence for the Chocolate festival. To get there, we walked from the train station along the Arno River, past Ponte Vecchio, through over crowded streets, aaaannd..... Sadly to say, the chocolate festival wasn't quite what we expected, but we got to see some angry villagers protesting the Italian President. Apparently, they weren't too keen on his extracurricular 'affairs.' The signs displaying "Italy is not a brothel!" indicated that... After the delicious, but somewhat disappointing chocolate festival, we walked down the main road to the Duomo. Wow, is pretty much the only word that can be used to describe it. It's absolutely amazing, huge, breath taking, overwhelming.... you name it. Then we just walked around, and eventually made our way back to the train station. Today we took a little local field trip to some smaller town around the Orvieto area, going to towns like Civita di Bagnoregio. Very small, but an amazing view. Google it... And yes, that little bridge only allows pedestrians. The walk sucked. But very worth it. Anyway, I'm out! Off to Florence tomorrow for an official school field trip, and then with friends Saturday.... to Pisa! xoxo
Sunday, January 30, 2011
RoMa, Ro Ma Ma
Welp! Finally made it to Rome! First stop The Colosseum. Not going to lie, it was pretty amazing stepping out of the train station and being completely overwhelmed by an architectural masterpiece. Pretty much the only thing I could do was smile, well until I discovered that I left my SD card in my laptop.... Luckily someone had an extra with them. THANK YOU LYNDSEE!!! A day in Rome without a camera would have been a shame. So after the Colosseum, we walked to Circus Maximus, or whats left of it anyway. Which is pretty much just some gravel and a dog park... Definitely no chariot races happening anymore these days. Next stop was Capitoline hill - not as impressive as one would think... But..... The Pantheon was freakin amazing! Definitely no disappointments there. We finished up the official school tour there and then the group split up. From there, most of the girls and I walked along the river toward the Vatican. We didn't get to go inside because time was limited, but it was beautiful! After getting yelled at by a mean scarf man that was upset about his prices being too high and getting mocked by some ass handing out fliers, we made our way to the Spanish Steps and then from there to the Trevi Fountain. By that time we were all so tuckered out from walking a good 10 miles all over Rome that all we wanted to do was sit and drink some wine. So we found a little Italian restaurant on the way back to the train station and filled up on pasta and wine. Then it was back to the train and back to Orvieto. My lumpy bed never felt so good....
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