Hello everyone! I just finished my first week of school since spring break and it feels good to be back "home" but im kind of missing the 85 degree weather of the Canary Islands. I had a blast. On the 13th i travelled from Florence to Pisa via bus and then flew to Birmingham, England and then a flight to Tenerife South Airport in the Canary Islands. Tenerife is the major island and is also the one with all the touristy resorts on it. Tenerife is more desert than the other islands, as it gets less rain and contains more fields of grasses and cacti. The other islands like La Gomera and La Palma are much more tropical but as I was trying to spend as little money as I could, we decided against taking a flight or ferry to other islands. But we still kept busy on Tenerife. Everyday I'd wake up in our 2 bedroom apartment with 4 of my friends, pour myself some cereal and sit out on our balcony which we could see the ocean from and the rest of the downtown area. Then I'd throw on my swimsuit and a tank top and set out for whatever plans we had that day (which was usually finding a new place to lay out and relax or fool around in the ocean.) The water was a lil cold, but you get used to it quick and i had a blast in the big waves of the less protected beaches.
The first day I was the first one there so i grabbed my ipod and headed to watch the surfers on the big waves by the coast basicaly the whole day. I sat out in my bathing suit on some rocks and for a few hours, didnt buy any sunscreen (which i would later regret as my shoulders were thoroughly toasted). The area reminded me of miami or california with the boardwalks and tons of shopping and restaurants. Thank god it was the off season and the recession is takin its toll on the hotels and restaurants because everything was incredibly cheap. There were great deals on food, drinks, and housing.
Once the rest of my crew got there we had a blast walking around, people watching, going down to the resorts and using their nicer pools, laying out on the beach, bodyboarding on a cheap board we picked up early in the week, eating, and going out to the local clubs and bars at night. Their publicity runners would always mob you walking down the street to get you into their bars. All the bars are very much pointed to tourists (as is most of the island). They were a lot of fun and it was also fun being the only Americans we saw all week. Apparently Americans are pretty rare on the islands. Majority of the people were british, german, spanish, swedish, scandinavian and a few italians. So when we'd go into the bars theyd yell "the Americans are here!"
By far the best thing we did there was renting bikes for two days and traveling up the coast to get away from the tourism center of the island. The mountain, fields, flowers and rocky coast were beautiful. (It's quite mountainous and has an active volcano in the center that formed the islands.) We were trying to get to these huge cliffs called Los Gigantes but we never made it. We kind of took a wrong road and dead-ended at a gated community. The hills were absolutely awful for biking, it was really tough, so once we went the wrong direction we decided to make new plans since doing it all over again didnt seem apealing. So we went to offroading and decided to follow a lil dirt path through a field toward the coast. And thats where we found the secret cliffs and a secret beach. It was gorgeous and only way to reach is going through a cactus covered steep hill or by boat. It was a huge beach with beautiful cliffs and a few native people enjoying it. I was with two of my guy friends and we get down to the beach and realized the 8 or so native people on the beach were mostly all nude. So when in Rome.... We dropped all our clothes and stuff on the beach and went out to swim in the ocean. The waves were huge there and were a lot of fun. It was a great time being somewhere that very very few tourists or visitors ever see. We felt like guests on the locals hidden beach.
That same day we also found a quiant little fishing town to have lunch called La Caleta. You could see all the fishingboats there and decided it would be a great place to try the local fish. I had the fish and seafood sampler with red snapper, few other fish, calamari, large prawns, smaller shrimp, and muscles. It was soooo good and fresh and decently cheap.
The next day everyone else was too worn out to go biking so i trekked out by myself and decided to go to the southern tip of the island that day. I ended up biking up and down some very steep hills on a highway with very little space for bikes for about 11 miles that day. I reached a beautiful little town close to the southern point for some beautiful stretching fields and a nice coast. Along the way i stopped at a small bar for some water and had a great little conversation with the bartender there (all in spanish). Even while we were speaking, he was still dancing and singing to the music in the bar as he was cleaning up. I had a great time on my lone adventure and it turned out to be one of the hardest physical feats i had ever done. Reaching the final big peak before heading to la Playa de Las Americas, where i stayed for the week, was heavenly and it was a great feeling of achievment. - Also another lil interesting fact: It was called La Playa de Las Americas because its where Christopher Columbus left for the new world.
Anyway, I had a great time and came back much tanner and relaxed. Hope you enjoy the pics, and this weekend is a small daytrip to Arezzo and Cortona in Italy with my school.
Canary 1
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2552429&id=1950065&l=5f5536457d
Canary 2
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2552437&id=1950065&l=8ace986441
Hey, been a while since i posted, so ive got a lot to fill you in on. So two weekends ago i went to Rome with my school. It was a blast. We had 2 days of a tour guide showing us around the whole city. Saturday was all churches and fountains and the vatican, including the vatican museum and the sistine chapel, which was breathtaking. You're not supposed to photo the sistine chapel but i snuck one blurry photo of the ceiling. And sunday was all of classical Rome. I was so excited to see all the ruins. The coliseum is the one place i've wanted to go my whole life and it was great to see it all. There's a lot of photos up so I'll let those show you my trip. Although there is one unfortunate thing that happened. I was in line to go into the coliseum and my camera died! So my photos end at the coliseum, but i saw all of classical Rome after, like the forum, tons of ruins and the Circus Maximus race track. All of which ill get photos from my friends for at some point. Saturday night we also went on a Roman pub crawl which was tons of fun. We left from the Spanish steps and i got to see a lot of Rome's night life from it. And i got a sweet shirt saying, "I came, I saw, I crawled!".
I had a great trip with my roommates to Amsterdam this past weekend. I was really surprised by the quality of architecture in the area. I suspected something like a small British town, but it was quite large and had some breathtaking buildings. The many many canals of the town also created an interesting experience as well. They had tons of tours taking you all around the town completely by water. 
