Rome, Nice, and Monaco

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!".

Last weekend I took a bus up with some friends to the French Riviera. We stayed in a hotel in Nice and I took a day trip to Monaco and Monte Carlo. First was our day trip to Monaco. Monaco was filled with fancy cars, boats and people. Everyone had Ferraris, Maseratis and Lambos. Especially in Monte Carlo. We had lunch on the bay in front of Multi Million dollar yachts in Monaco. Then we walked up to the Prince's Palace where we had a great view of the bays around Monaco. Then we ventured to Monte Carlo and the Monte Carlo Casino. The casino is the most famous gambling spot in the world. It was full of tux's and women covered in furs. I couldnt take any photos inside, but it waas beautiful. It was all very nice wood finished and large chandeliers. It was mostly tables, some of which people were playing like 5,000 Euro minimum poker. There were a few slots there and i tried my luck at video poker. I was up a little, but in the end i came out like most people do at Casinos, with a loss (only 20 bucks, dont worry mom). But it was great just to say I had gambled at the Monte Carlo.

Nice was beautiful and the beach was gorgeous. it was 65 the whole weekend. And it made for some great relaxin on the pebble beach. The reason we went to Nice though, was because it is the worlds largest Carnivale celebration. There was an afternoon and night parade on Saturday. The night time Parade was massive and was the biggest party ive ever been apart of. The music was great and everyone was dancing around the floats. Everyone bought tons of confetti and silly string. It was basically everyone's chance to be a jerk and get away with it, as it was encouraged to turn to ur neighbor and spray him in the face with silly string. You always tried to pick it off, but when anyone saw you trying to clean yourself, theyd jus cover ya with more. It was sweet, sweet chaos. The sights and sounds were great and I enjoyed the whole night. The bars we went to after also had great bands playin and everyone was up on the tables dancing. The whole trip was a great success and I would highly suggest everyone to make it there for Carnivale at least once in their lifetime.

This weekend: Pompei and Sorrento
And I think I'm going to the Canary Islands in 2 weeks for spring break. More on that later.

Ok heres my few albums from the weekends and 2 videos of the carnivale celebration, sorry about the shaky camera work,

Rome

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2536280&id=1950065&l=86eb0

Rome 2

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2536290&id=1950065&l=463d6

Monacco and Monte Carlo

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2538486&id=1950065&l=fff5a

Nice 

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2538504&id=1950065&l=c442e

Nice Parade 

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2538530&id=1950065&l=a377c

Carnevale Videos

Amsterdam

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. 

Amsterdam

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2532519&id=1950065&l=aa001

We had a lot of fun just watching all the interesting people around the town and the many crazy stores 

around the city. We also got to see a torture museum, the Heineken Brewery, and the Van Gogh Museum. Around the town you feel in a completely different universe with how liberal the whole city is. They are very open about sexuality and drugs every where you go. Its sad to say but I think one of the highlights of the trip was definetely the fast food stop where all they sell are french fries. We stopped there twice and once i got em covered in cheese and the second time I got their famous sauce called Fritesause, it was like a white cheddar / mayo sauce. I really have no idea what was in it, but it was delicious. 

So this upcoming weekend I go with my program to go to Rome and the next weekend I'm planning to go to Nice, France for the biggest Carnival celebration in Europe. I already got my mask for the trip.

Interlaken and the Swiss Alps

So I spent the last weekend in Switzerland and it was a great time. We took a tour group bus to Interlaken. Several people from my program all decided to go this weekend, so it ended up being a blast hanging out with all my friends in a different city. I decided to ski for two days and i night sledded the second night. It took us about an hour to travel by bus then by train then by another train and then by gondola to get to the ski lodge everyday at Jungfrau Mountain. The sights were beautiful though, probably some of the most breathtaking ive ever seen. I hope some of my pictures can do it justice. I really was worried, thinking it was the swiss alps, so it had to be really hard, but i was happily surprised to find out that majority of runs were moderate difficult so i did very well across the whole mountain. So i spent about 2 days on the mountain and in the end when i looked at the map of where i had gone, i probably hit like 30-40% of the mountain. It was huge! The second day we stopped at a lodge on the mountain where i had the best brat and beer ive ever had, they were glorious.  We had some complications coming back from skiing on the second day and my friend and i missed our night sledding time. Luckilly they had some opening the hour after ours, so we missed going with people from our group, but at least we got to go. And it was probably the best thing i did there. 

We sat on small classic looking sleds and went high up the mountain in a gondola and then went down trails about 10-15 feet wide very very fast. It was completely dark and the only way you could tell where you were going was that the snow was white looking and every thing else (rocks, trees and cabins) were darker. You controlled by sticking your feet in the ground and the trails were super winding and crisscrossing all over the mountain. It was intense. I must say that my friend and i were actually getting quite good at it and actually were racing against our guide at the front the whole time.

The hostel we stayed at was called the Funny Farm. It was very clean for a hostel and we got private rooms. The bar downstairs served great food and great drinks. A friend and I played pool all night and it was a great time. The town was quite chill and made for a nice quiant village to walk around when we werent on the mountain.

My next post will be about my trip to Amsterdam this past weekend which also went well. So ill talk to you all later.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2530079&l=fc860&id=1950065

Sienna, San Gimignano, and a Chocolate Festival

So many things have happened since my last post! Sorry bout not keepin it updated frequently. I just got internet in my apartment so I'll be able to catch up and update it weekly hopefully. So 2 weekends ago we went on a day trip to 2 small towns about each an hour away from Florence. Sienna which is a city quite comparable in size to Florence, although a little smaller, and San Gimignano is a much smaller town on a hillside. The latter is quite famous for their 13 medieval towers still standing throughout the town. And I climbed the biggest one, a 56 meter bell tower. Sienna is quite famous for its architecture, museums, and art around the town. Although the most popular event held in Sienna is most likely the horse race around their main piazza. It was shut down for a few years because it was getting quite violent (as there are basically no rules and they race on rough cobblestone and very close buildings). But it has recently been brought back. I also heard (although i have not seen) that the race is highlighted in the beginning of the new Bond film, Quantum of Solace. Both towns were beautiful and despite the drizzle and eventually rain during the day we still had a great time. 

Also that weekend, there was a huge chocolate festival highlighting tons of chocolate companies from around the area of tuscany. It was held in front of the Santa Croce church (where Galileo and Michaelangelo are both buried). There were definetely free samples and chocolate rum drinks to be had. The different companies would try to out do each other with highlighting each of their most famous products and flashy chocolate colors and shapes. Some had more different varieties of truffles I never knew existed. Also for the first time I had a taste of chocolate liquer and saw chocolate beer! I unfortunately did not try any of that because it was kind of out of the price range of a simple student living in Florence. 

I'm including 3 links here to more photos. The first one is Sienna, the second is San Gimignano, and the third is the Chocolate Festival. I just got back from Interlaken Switzerland so hopefully I'll have those up by later this week, and then I'll have all my trips and pictures up to date.

Sienna
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2527151&l=2ddb8&id=1950065

San Gimignano
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2529566&l=89e5a&id=1950065

Chocolate Festival
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2529722&l=f2686&id=1950065