Me Encanta Italia

11 days
10 cities
4 planes
6 metros
11 trains
5 busses
2 shuttles
6 boats
4 hostals
10 friends
1 backpack
countless amounts of fun

So I got back from Italy early this morning and I have so much to write about! Sorry that this is going to be so long! It was such an amazing trip! Italy has been my favorite country since I visited it with my grandparents a few years ago and I am still in love with it! I am going to split this post into the cities we went to so it will be easier! Sorry for the A.D.D. style that I write in. I have never been  writer and never will be haha so enjoy

Rome

So on Thursday I packed eleven days worth of clothes and necessities into ONE BACKPACK! I am the overpacker of the century so this was definitely a learning experience but I did it! The airline we take called Ryan air is really cheap but checking a bag is about 45 dollars and you can only have one small carryon and no purse soooo it was tough but somehow we all did it. However I did have so many things in the pockets of my jackets and hiding everywhere because if they see you and they think your bag is too big they make you check it so it is a challenge every time we get on the plane! My curly hair products got taken up the second time we went through security so that would be why my hair looked atrocious for the rest of the trip!  When we were on the plane they were selling smokeless cigarettes! Spanish people can't last an hour without nicotine! its ridiculous! So we got on a plane after class on Thursday afternoon and flew to Barcelona. We then spent the night in the airport because we are cheap college students and we had an early flight to Rome the next day.  Everyone pretty much slept most of the night except for me and my stupid insomnia so I did not even lay my head down haha it was an experience.  The next morning we flew to Rome and checked into our hostel.  It was called the Pop in hostel and it was precious! Four of us had a private room so that was nice too! When we got there we met a guy from Australia who had been in Rome for two weeks and he showed us around. We walked around and saw just about every main thing there is to see in Rome from the outside and by the time we got back to the hostel to go to sleep I had been awake for 38 hours.  Lets just say I could barely walk straight! The next day I slept in while the other 3 went to the Vatican (I had already been before and I needed sleep) and then I met them at the Colosseum.  We went into all of the cool stuff and saw the Trevi Fountain at night while we ate gelato. Wonderful. The next day we did a little more sightseeing and hopped on a train to Florence.

(Side note: me and Alaina got Carmen rosary beads from the Vatican because she said one time how special they are.  They are so nice and pretty and they have a cool leather carrying case! So we gave them to her last night and she FREAKED out! It was the cutest thing I had ever seen! she kept on kissing us on the cheeks and saying that she will think of us every time she prays and how precious they are to her…. adorable!)

Florence
Ahhhh Florence.  This city was my favorite when I first went and I only grew to love it even more the second time.  Florence has the most character of any city in Italy and it doesn't even need a huge attraction like the ruins in Rome or the whole being built on water thing in Venice. (Not to bash Venice which is also amazing) I am just obsessed with Florence.  We spent 3 nights here in an awesome hotel in the center of the city and we woke up staring at the Duomo every morning from our balcony.  So awesome and so cheap! When we first arrived in Florence we checked in and walked around and decided to go to my favorite restaurant in the world that I have been talking about since last time I went to Florence.  It was every bit as good as I remembered and everyone else fell in love with it too! It was awesome!! The next day we went to an awesome market where I probably could have spent my life savings if I had any life savings.  They also had an indoor food market where we had sandwiches that were freshly sliced and awesome! We also had dried strawberries that were soooo good! We met up with 3 girls from the study abroad group in Sevilla and a girl that studies in Florence, Claire, who is absolutely precious.  We went up to a lookout over all of Florence and it was a breathtaking view.  After that we went to Claire's apartment and we all made dinner and laughed a ton. The next day we all wanted to do different things.  Ashley and Devin waited in line for 3 hours to see David.  Some others went to an art museum and me and one of the Sevilla girls (Allison) decided to wander around the city and go into anything that was free.  This was sooooo funnnnn!  We found a bizarre museum with paintings of Marilyn Monroe mixed with classical paintings! We found these big glass bottles of water there that were free (we think) so we carried them around with us for the next day or so but they died in pisa haha.   We also went to a perfume museum and tried on awful perfume that we smelled like for the rest of the day. 

Italian men are waaaayyyy worse than Spanish men about cat calls.  It is so funny what they think they should say to you in English.  Some good ones were "Your eye is beautiful", "Can I take your eyes from you?", and my personal favorite "I realize that you are the most famous person". Hahahah who taught them English??  After a long day we walked for what seemed like forever to a family owned restaurant outside of the city center that was soooo good.  We got a pizza called "secret" and it didn't tell you what the ingredients were but it seriously had everything in it and it was amazing!  After we could not eat another bite we went and got gelato and it was wonderful!

Pisa
Early the next morning we hopped on a train to Pisa. We all got separated 3 minutes before the train left and we literally ran to the train and barely made it before it left.  We stopped in Pisa for about an hour because there is absolutely nothing in Pisa except the tower.  We took the cliché pictures and laughed at all the other people taking them haha it was so weird.  After that we hopped back on a train to Cinque Terre!

Cinque Terre
This was probably the most beautiful place I have ever been. We were sitting on the train going through a tunnel and all the sudden the tunnel opened up and all you could see was ocean.  All of us gasped and started freaking out because it was awesome!  Cinque Terre is five small cities on the coast and there are trails from one to the other that are in the mountains overlooking the ocean.  We stayed in the bottom city called Riomaggiore in a hostel but it ended up being our own apartment because they had 7 person rooms with a kitchen and bathroom and we had six people in our group so we got the whole thing to ourselves and it was so fun!  After we checked in and put all our stuff in the apartment we went out to this port and just sat on a wall overlooking the crashing waves and we just stared for over an hour.  It was awesome!

We then explored the city that we were staying in and it was adorable! All the buildings are different colors! So cute! We went to a grocery store and bought wayyyyyy too much pasta and we all cooked a yummy pasta dinner! It was so much fun!  We went to bed early and woke up at 6 AM and took a train to the city that was farthest away.  We hiked from that city to the next one and it was supposed to be the hardest part of the hike and they weren't joking! I do not think I have ever walked up that many stairs! But it was totally worth it because every view was breathtaking!  We made it to the next city in about two hours and explored that city and got fresh focaccia bread because it originated in Cinque Terre and it was so good!  Sadly it started to rain but we needed to get back anyways to go to Venice so we took a train back to our city and took a train to Venice. 

Venice
The cheapest train from Cinque Terre to Venice meant that you had to change trains twice.  Our first train was late so when we got to the first train switch the nice train man told us what platform it was on and told us we had to run.  So there we are with our big backpacks sprinting through the train station and we barely made it.  The doors closed on Devin's backpack and we had to pull her in while the train was moving! On this train we met an Italian girl who was adorable and we talked to her the whole way and she called her friend to figure out stuff for us to do in Venice! She was precious! When we finally arrived in Venice, it was around 9 pm and we had no earthly idea where our hotel was.  All we had was the address and we showed it to countless amounts of people who kept on telling us to go to a different person. 

Somehow we ended up at the bus station and the guy told us to take the Padova bus so while we were waiting for it we had to call the hotel and see what stop we were supposed to get off at.  After talking to the hotel 3 times we finally figured out that we were supposed to get off at Oriaggo.  So the bus came and by this time it was raining and the windows were fogged so we couldn't see the names of the stops. I had to walk up to the front of the bus and I started talking to this lady who looked nice and she spoke no English, she only spoke French (random).  So I kept on saying "Oriaggo?" and she would spout off a long answer in French and I would have no clue what she was saying so I would just say "Ummmm, Oriaggo?" This went on for about 5 minutes until she somehow conveyed to me with hand signals that she would tell me when we got there but I wasn't exactly sure if that is what she meant.  So at every top I would point and say "Oriaggo?" and she would say nooooooo.  This lasted forever because it was a 45 minute bus ride to Oriaggo but she was so nice!  So we finally got to our stop and the hotel said to turn left at the stop sign and it would be right down the road.  So apparently right down the road means 20 minutes down a deserted road.  It was really creepy and we had to ask random people walking there dogs where we were going.  The hotel was supposed to be number 213 but 213 was a house.  So somehow we made it!  It was actually a decent hotel and thankfully there was a shuttle for the rest of the trip.  There were four of us staying in a room and when we got to the room there were only three beds (two twins and a couch bed) and we were like ummmmm what? The man came in and pushed something on the couch bed and it popped up into bunkbeds! So weird! The next morning we took the shuttle into Venice! We had to buy a pass for the water bus which was pricey so we got our moneys worth out of it!

We kept on calling it our "boat tour"  We sat on the back of the boat and just road it all around and saw all of Venice it was so cool!  We then got of and went to St. Marks square and then just got lost in the city on purpose.  It was so cool to just wander around! We were all so exhausted from traveling so we were ready to take it easy!  Right after sunset we took a gondola ride and our gondolier had been doing that for 35 years! he told us all about the sights and he sang to us (because we told him he had to).  He sang Backstreet Boys, Billy Joel, and some Italian songs.  Ha so cool. It was an awesome and realizing end to an awesome trip! We got up early the next morning and took a train to Milan and flew back to Barcelona to spend another looooong night in the airport!

Granada
When we got back to Granada early Sunday morning I had never been so relieved for my bed and for hearing people speak a language I could somewhat understand! I never thought I would be relieved to hear Spanish!!  I went straight to sleep until Carmen woke me up to go out to lunch with her and her friend at a Chinese buffet. Ha wow so weird. Carmen hated it and every time her friend got up she would look at me and say how much she didn't like it haha love her!  I then came home, went BACK to sleep, Carmen woke me up at 11 pm to eat a small dinner and then I went right back to sleep and didn't wake up until school the next day! Crazy!

This was seriously an amazing trip! We had so many more stories and adventures but this is already way too long!! God was really with us on this trip because we had no clue what we were doing, where we were staying, where we were going, etc. and everything worked out perfectly! We had so many helpful people that we randomly met!  I have mastered the art of any sort of public transportation that you can imagine and I can play charades with people who don't speak English really well now too.  This whole experience is teaching me so much in such a short amount of time and I am trying to soak up as much as I can! Hope everyone had a great Easter!

Chau!!!