Murphy's Law Strikes Again

Finally got internet!!!! We'll see how long it lasts this time...

Anywho, here is the blog that I wrote on Monday!


Words cannot describe the weekend we had. VERY VERY last minute, Jess, Katelyn and I planned a weekend in Amsterdam and Germany. We literally bought the tickets the day before we were scheduled to leave (including hotel), which ended up being not the cheapest trip in the world, but still not as expensive as going to Oktoberfest in Germany.



So, here comes Friday morning. We leave at 8 am, so we can get to the earliest train to Pisa (where we were supposed to fly out of), even though our flight was at one o'clock pm we wanted to leave super early to give us some cushion time.



Everything is going great. We get to Pisa at around 10 am, ask for the nearest internet cafe so we can print our boarding passes (they charge an extra 40 euros a person if you don't print it out yourself), then head upstairs to print them out. Upon pulling up the email that contained the boarding passes on Jess' email, I spy something that makes me say “WHAT, WHAT, WHAT!!!!?!?!?!” Katelyn and Jess respond with an equally confused, “WHAT!”, then I point to the part in the email that says BOLOGNA airport. Not Pisa. Not anywhere near Pisa.



Freaking out, we ran down to the Ryanair counter, which told us that for an extra 100 euros we could get the next flight out to Frankfurt (since there is no way we could make it to Bologna in time for our flight). The only catch is that we would count as a “missed flight”, so to purchase them we had to wait till between 1 and 2 pm to buy the new tickets. So we hang out at the Pisa airport for a while, and take pictures like this:

At 1 pm we went back to the counter, only to find that the lady who told us the information was now off duty, and all the new people claimed that we couldn't buy the “missed flight” tickets because in order to do that you need to be at the same airport where the flight took off. Had we known that earlier, we could have made it to Bologna in time to do that, but now we're royally screwed. We lost money on both of our tickets, along as our 90 euro hotel room.



Spilling tears we exit the airport and decide to head back to Florence, where we can at least hop on a train that will take us somewhere exciting in Italy. We talked to our friend Paolo who is in the program and was currently traveling in Venice, so we decided to head up there and meet him (we wanted to go somewhere relatively cold, since all we had packed were clothes for rainy weather in Germany). When we got to Florence, we found the nearest internet cafe, book a night at the hostel, looked up the train schedule, then went to catch the next one that left in half an hour. Upon arriving at the train station the machines weren't working, so we waited in an almost hour long line to talk to a representative only to find that every single train to Venice is booked for the night.



We had never felt more defeated. Tears were shed, to say the least. We wandered aimlessly around Florence trying to find a place to stay only to find out that every hostel and hotel was also fully booked. Completely overwhelmed with loss, we decided to simply go home back to Siena, to find the best restaurant in Siena, and fill our sorrows with risotto, pasta, and wine.



Despite our epic fail of a weekend, we decided that the best way to look at the situation as a learning experience. Always have all three people check the itinerary, always DOUBLE CHECK. We saw it as money lost, but nothing we could really do about it but move on and consider it a small bump in the road of the many travels we'll have. We're sitting down and booking all the rest of our trips this week, so nothing is ever left unprepared again.



On another note, it's raining in Siena!!! It smells so good. It's the best first rain smell I've ever had the honor of smelling, because instead of smelling like fresh rain mixed with asphalt and car oil from the streets, it's purely fresh since there are hardly any cars in Siena. I love it. I find it so funny how big of babies Italians are about the rain. Italians are the complete opposite of people from Oregon or Washington (who will refuse to use umbrellas just because of their pride). Italians have absolutely no pride when it comes to rain. Stores will close, parties will be canceled, umbrellas will be pulled out, and people will remain inside if there is the slightest sprinkle outside. It's so amusing. I love walking in the rain, but if you walk in the rain you will find the streets almost deserted because people are afraid to go outside.

Edit: On Wednesday it POURED and I walked past at least 300 trillion (that's an exaggeration) people IN panchos WITH umbrellas, standing under doorways so they wouldn't get wet. HAH.


I love it though. It's so cozy. It is really cold though. I can already tell that I'm going to need more jackets, boots, sweaters, and long sleeved shirts. It's gonna get chilly.

Brief

Ahhh, I have seriously started writing this post four times, and I never get farther than the first paragraph.


Topics I touched upon:

1.My love for the amount of wiener dogs that are in Siena. I seriously see about ten a day. My favorites are these wiener/terrier mixes, so they have the body of a wiener dog, but the face of a terrier/scotty dog. I love them. Often they're long-haired and kind of scraggly looking, which makes them even more enjoyable. I love wiener dogs the way Chelsea Handler loves midgets. They make my days so much better.

2.How much my feet are starting to hurt from Italian style. I'm not used to wearing flats all day. I miss my Uggs. I miss being able to wear flip-flops without having everyone pass me on the street and eye my feet like they're covered in sheeet (that rhymes). I can't wait for winter and cozier boots.

3.As much a I love my host mother, Paula, I'M NOT USED TO BEING BABIED! I want to make my own eggs for breakfast (flipped, and not fried in two inches of oil), and I want to do my own laundry (and not wait four days for it to be ironed!). Every time I insist on doing something on my own, she simply won't let me.

4.That being said, I love, love, love her dinners. Every night we have a four-course meal. I keep wanting to learn the recipes from her, but she keeps saying she'll write them down so my mother can cook them when I get back home (HA!).

5.This weekend we went to Siena's soccer game. It was amazing, to say the least. If I had enough money, I would buy a season pass. I still don't quite understand soccer (I haven't played since my days with the Purple Penguins and the Pink Panthers), but we thoroughly enjoyed watching number eighteen....and eleven....and seventy-seven.....and twelve.....yeah, we'll be going back again soon. Plus I bought a jersey!!!


That's all for now! As promised to my mother, I'll post more pictures soon!

Cinque Terre, Bedbugs, Bidet and Whisky.

Sept 14

Tonight I walked into the bathroom to find Paola's monstrous orange cat “Whisky” lapping water from the running bidet (pronounced “buh-day", click link for a description). Apparently, bidets have many more uses that I originally thought.

In other news, I have eaten zucchini twice in the past week. That is two more times than I have in the past two years. Because I ate it the first night I was there, when she served it last night I was too embarrassed to tell her that it's my gag food. So I gagged it down, but also told her “mi piace....ah....cosi cosi”. Which roughly means “I like it a little”, hoping she'd get the idea that I don't really like it at all. I guess we'll have to wait and see.



This weekend me, Katelyn, Jess, Kelsey, and Kathryn went to Cinque Terre. The night before we stayed in Florence, which was beautiful, but our hostel was pretty repulsive. There were no sheets, there were hairs all over the stained mattresses and pillows, and we're starting to think they had bedbugs....the moment we got home, we washed all of our stuff, and bagged up our luggage. This is how I slept (blanket thrown over the mattress) so I wouldn't get bedbugs:

 I don't want to think about that anymore though, so back to Cinque Terre. It was beautiful, and somehow, I got tricked into hiking the entire trail. Cinque Terre is composed of five villages, which have no cars. The only way to get from one village to the other is to hike, or to take the train. The total hike is just over nine miles, and I'm not going to lie and say it isn't grueling, because it is. By the time we got to the fourth village, all of our legs were shaking and our feet felt like they were going to fall off. So, we cut the hike short and took the train to the last village, which is the one popular for it's beach. Within a matter of seconds of hitting the beach, we jumped in the water, and in a matter of seconds of hitting the water, Jess and our tour guide Leonardo got stung by jellyfish. Since the beach was too crowded for any of us to pee on them, they had to find the lifeguards and they put baking soda on their wounds.

School also started yesterday. Today for an assignment, we went to “il Bar”, which is basically a caffe, to learn about...well, coffee. It's incredible to me that we can sit through a three hour Italian class, and never get bored or feel uncomfortable. I love our teacher, she makes class so entertaining and interesting. And last night at dinner, Paola helped us with our homework (which I could get used to).


Another update: I won't have internet in my house for another four days. Right now I can only use the internet at my friend's mini-residence, which means I won't be able to skype anyone at night :( If you buy skype credit though, you can call my cell phone FOR CHEAP and we can talk ANY TIME! So message me if you want the number, I'm too scared of stalkers to post it on the internet.



Ciao!

Siena: The First Few Days

Sept 8


Hopefully now that I've made it to Siena I'll be able to relax and get into somewhat of a routine, which will make writing on this easier. Even though I'm no longer in Rome, I had to post the “Lessons Learned in Rome”, which Katelyn and I kept adding to in a little book as our journey progressed. Hopefully Siena will be pretty painless, which means I won't even have to have a “Lessons Learned in Siena” list.
 
After dragging all our luggage thirty minutes across town (walking), Katelyn checked into her mini-residence (much like the dorms) and I tried looking for a place to stay. Unfortunatley, there were only three hotels in all of Siena available for the night, two of them pretty far outside the city, and the other for 80 euros. After the night before I did NOT want to spend anymore money, so once again I thought I'd be homeless for a night. Luckily, the guys working at Katelyn's residence were nice enough to let me pay only 25 euro to stay in her room for the night (after much begging).
 
We basically spent all day meeting people from the program and exploring Siena. Since I'm doing a homestay, and the majority of the people are doing apartments and mini-res, I wanted to meet as many of the students as I could in the first few days before I left, just so I could get to know them a little bit better. Hopefully once classes start, I'll be able to hang out at the mini-res or apartments for a bit so I get some relaxing time in, before I go back home and am forced to speak only Italian for the rest of the night.
 
The day of my orientation, I went and got my Italian cell phone (which if you purchase a calling card, you can call me and it will be FREE for me! message me for the number), then got to meet my host mom! Her name is Paula, but her daughter Elisa picked me up from the hotel, along with my roommate Rachel. Elisa was so funny, and really, the only way to describe her is just as "jolly". She sang to Shakira's “Waka Waka” as she drove me home, and even did the dance. Elisa speaks a little bit of english, but Paula speaks NONE what-so-ever. Paula made made fried chicken for lunch, but it was much different than American fried chicken. It was pounded so it was very thin, then breaded with something that tasted like a cornmeal. It almost reminded me of abalone and the way I've had that cooked. It was delicious, but I was soooo full and then she kept pushing more food on me, like salad, bread, cheese, proscuitto, wine, and fruit. As my friend Julie says “Italian moms have no concept of fullness”.
 
After lunch Elisa took us on a walk back to the center of the city where she and her boyfriend of 16 years own a wine shop (literally right next to the Piazza del Campo). It was so cute, I can't wait to buy wine from her to take home to friends and family. For dinner Paula made tortellini con broda (tortellini in a broth), with a zucchini frittata (zucchini is my gag food and I ate every single bite. I didn't want to offend her, so I swallowed the bites whole, barely letting them touch my tongue), then she pulled out bread and vegetables with cheese and more proscuitto and fruit. Italian mothers truly have no concept of fullness.
 
Throughout the dinner Paula had the television on and was watching “Il Milionario”, which is the Italian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”. After dinner I was finally able to unpack, start settling in, and start uploading pictures! I'm so excited to post more! I just wish I had some photo editing software on this computer....though I guess Siena is so beautiful that it doesn't need any editing. Che bella!

The view from my balcony.

Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned in Rome:


1.Exchanging money in the airport terminal leads to a loss of half your American money.

2.DO NOT look street vendors in the eye, or they will hassle you non-stop to buy little light up models of the Collosium.

3.When you have nothing else to do and you're looking for something to entertain you, count the number of lovers/couples making-out. You'll count more people than the number of cars that pass my dad while driving on a freeway (that's a lot).

4.Carry hand sanitizer. If you sit down on a curb to eat some fresh Italian pizza, and rest your hand on the sidewalk, you will find that when you pick it up it will be black.

5.Get lost. Walk without aim. That's how we found the zoo (which we got lost again trying to find), the Pantheon, the Colluseum, and the best gelato shop.

6.When finding a Gelateria, pick one that has the ice creams displayed with pretty little things on top (coffee beans, cinnamon, hardened candies). Those are the real deal.

7.BRING THE GUIDEBOOK WITH YOU. You'll want to know why people are stepping in the fountains, then drinking out of them. You'll still do them, of course, but you'll also want to know why you are.

Later we found out that the fountains are just the source of drinking water for Italians. We thought this fountain was special, and was “the source of life” or would bring us eternal love. Oh well. At least it was cold.

8.Never take the train from Rome to Siena. Anyone and their mother (except the people we talked to) will tell you that it's better to take the bus. Wish we had known.

9.The minute you board a train, always ask or verify where it's going before you sit down and realize that the train is heading in the opposite direction that you want it to.

10.Get to the train station early. The trains will leave without you.

11.And last but not least, NEVER, EVER, take pictures of people dressed up in costumes. They will trick you and make you pay 5 euro after you do, even if the one picture taken comes out like this:

Lesson. Learned.

Roma

Sept 4


Rome has been an absolute whirlwind. I flew from SFO to Chi-town, Illinois, basically ran to my gate—barely had enough time to go to the bathroom and make three collect calls to my family (all unanswered, thank you very much), then boarded the plane for Italy. One chicken risotto dinner, The Karate Kid, Letters to Juliet, and a breakfast yogurt and banana bread later, we landed in Rome. I made my way to the train, bought a ticket, and squeezed my bag up the stairs of the train. I impressed myself by asking an Italian woman “Dov'e' Via Marsala?”, then walked away confused trying to decrypt her answer. Did “a destra” mean right or left?Leaving the train station the first thing I saw was a well dressed man lounging on the curb with a quarter full bottle of Champagne. I laughed, since it was only 11 am, then decided it was a good omen for the rest of my trip. The five minute walk to my hostel was near impossible. Lugging my suitcase down cobblestone roads, and weaving my way through vespas left me sweaty and embarrassed to meet up with Katelyn, a girl from my Siena program also staying in The Yellow hostel. I checked into The Yellow, which is apparently one of the most popular hostels in our area of Rome for traveling twenty year-olds, then Katelyn helped me exchange my money, and heave my suitcase up to my room. My roommates included a two girls: Karah Cara (from Australia) and Mel (from London), as well as quiet Leonardo (from Brazil) who seemed a bit overwhelmed to be rooming with three other girls. Karah and Mel cracked us up, both of them babbling a mile a minute, and freaking out that they were rooming with two California girls, and that I lived in the OC (“Like the show!” Mel told everyone).
Katelyn, who is also in my Siena program, and I decided to tour the city. We set out expecting only to go to the Scalinata Trinita del Monti (the Spanish Stairs), and the Fontana di Trevi (the Trevi Fountain), but ended up walking for hours, getting lost, and finding our way back (and then getting lost again). We unexpectedly arrived at the Pantheon after making a wrong turn (and were ripped off by two Romans in Gladiator costumes), as well as visited the Campo de Fiori, the Palazzo Montecitorio, multiple ruins, and the Colosseum. We at a delicious dinner at Binario 4, and I got gnocchi de pomodelo (gnocchi in tomato sauce), and Katelyn had tortellini con proscuitto (tortellini with ham). It was absolutely amazing and fresh, and only cost 14 euro total. My gnocchi tasted like a lot of gnocchi that you can get back home, but the sauce was absolutely amazing. You could tell with each bite that they used only the freshest ingredients to make it, using whole fresh tomatoes, not canned. Katelyn's tortellini was amazing. Each bite of tortellini was so tender and fresh we knew without asking that they were made fresh. I was exhausted after sightseeing all day, and realized that I had only slept one hour in the past thirty-six hours, so when we went back to the hostel, I climbed up to my bunk, and crashed instantly.


Sept 5
The next day Katelyn, Karah (Australia), and I decided to have a relaxing beach day in a small town called Sperlonga. We got to the metro station, got lost for about 30 minutes, finally found an information desk, then two minutes later we were on a train and one minute after that the train left the station. The train was packed to full capacity, so we had to sit next to three other girls, who just so happened to be doing the study abroad program in Rome. One went to UCSB, and the other two went to, what do ya know, UCSC. We talked with them throughout the entire train ride, then hung out with them all day at the beach. We went to a horrible cafe that served frozen lasagna and burgers (which were still cold in the center), then went for a swim. The water was incredible. It was warm, but not too warm that it didn't refresh you from the ninety degree weather. We laid out on the beach, which accidentally happened to be a private beach (which we were promptly escorted off of), then walked down to the public beach. We fell asleep in the sun, then (of course) got lost trying to find the bus stop. We got home late, since we had to wait an hour and a half for the train, and after dinner of pizza and salad went straight to bed. Karah and I met our new roommates, two girls from Canada, who told me everything I needed to know about Florence, then we met Katelyn's new roommates Kevin, Mitch, and Garret, whose window was right next to ours.


Sept 6
Our third and last day in Rome we woke up late, scrambled to get packed up and checked out, grabbed some breakfast, then Karah (Australia), Mel (London), our new friends Kevin and Mitch (Seattle), Katelyn and I set off to the Vatican. We got gypped into booking a group tour (complete waste of 35 euro), then set off through the museum. Right before the Sistine Chapel, the group got completely broken up, so Katelyn, Mitch, and I set off to see the rest by ourselves. We went to the basilica and even walked through underground and saw the pope's tombs. I really wanted to go into the crypt even farther below (ahem, Angels and Demons), but apparently that's not allowed for tourists. We were starved so after that we spent about a half hour looking for a cheap place to eat (which there wasn't) so we ended up going back to our hostel, getting pizza a place near by, then spending another hour and a half searching for gelato (which there was none of). As we were eating, Karah and Mel walked down the street, so we were able to say goodbye to them both before we left. We spent a while on the computer looking for directions to our hostel, then noticed the time and realized we had fifteen minutes to run and catch the last bus of the night to Siena. We gathered our stuff, ran, and literally got on the train AS IT WAS STARTING TO PULL AWAY. After about an hour, we got off at the right stop, but then were pointed in the wrong direction of the connecting train to Siena, and accidentally got on a train headed back to Rome. We got off at the next available stop, searched for a way to cross the tracks, then waited for the next train back to our original stop to come. When we arrived in Chiusi we realized that the last train for Siena had already left, and there were no longer buses running. We found a pay phone and spent about an hour trying to figure out how to call our next hotel, and a taxi. All in Italian. We never got a hold of a taxi, but luckily one pulled up front, and even though it was 120 euros, we had no other choice unless we wanted to sleep at the train station (which we contemplated doing). The taxi ride took forever, the taxi driver got lost, it was way more expensive than he said, he didn't know where our hotel was, he wouldn't let us use his phone to call our hotel...we were in tears. We had no more than exactly 120 euros cash, and thought that we were going to have to get out in the middle of no where, and just walk in any direction that had lights coming from it. Finally he pulled over to a payphone, called our hotel himself, figured out where we were going, then drove us to meet the owner of the hotel that would pick us up. When the owner of the hotel came, he was the sweetest man ever. Even though it was midnight and the hotel closed at nine, he and his wife waited up for us, then acted like it was no big favor. Instead of blaming us for getting there so late, he blamed Italy, and how complex they make everything. We drove into Siena and it was absolutely adorable. It truly does look like a medieval town, with skinny cobblestone streets, narrow tall buildings, and flags and lanterns hanging everywhere. We got to our room (which is the tiniest room with the biggest bed that I think I've ever seen), thanked the owner profusely, then finally started to unwind. There was a festival going on down the street that we checked out, but when we got there all there was were about fifty or so twenty year old Italians and foreigners gyrating on each other to a DJ playing Lady Ga-Ga and Usher. We stayed and watched for a while, because after such a long trip we both needed a good laugh, then headed back to our teeny-tiny room to pass out.