Ciao,
Sorry it's been awhile since my last post (Mom, I know you've been waiting not so patiently :) - I've been having a hard time finding time to blog with studying for midterms and Fall break so brace yourself for a long post!
If you read my last post, you know that I stayed in Rome last weekend (October 12). Friday night a group of us went to an Apertivo, which in Italy is like a "happy hour" with appetizers. You pay a cover and it includes a drink and unlimited appetizers. We went to a place called Fluid, which was uniquely decorated and had really good appetizers!
Saturday, six of us set out to rent vespas. The plan was to take them to a hot springs in Tuscany called Saturnia, which is about three and a half hours away. This plan flopped, which was probably a good thing since I don't know if our vespas would have made it all the way to Tuscany. We ended up taking them to Lake Bracciano, which is closer to Rome. It's one of the major lakes in Italy with black sand, volcanic origins, and really warm water. We made it to the lake right after sunset. I'll spare all the details from the vespa ride (for mom's sake), but it was quite an experience. I'm glad everyone made it back safe. I'm glad that I can check riding a vespa off my Roman bucket list, but it was a little scary riding through Rome with the crazy traffic and crazy drivers. The fact that it was raining didn't help things much.
Sunday and the rest of the next week was spent studying for midterms. The most un-stressful midterms week that I've ever had, although they were all on the same day. Some girls in my history class were nervous about the midterm and when they asked the professor about it, he said, "don't worry about it. go to the calcio game the night before, and go to beer and pizza afterwards, and you'll be fine". So we'll see!
After such a stressful midterms week (haha), my school gave us a week-long Fall break, in which pretty much everyone travels. Several people stayed in Rome for the whole week, but it was like a ghost town the one night I stayed in the dorms. A lot of people went on school sponsored study trips to Greece or Poland. I would have loved to go on the Greece trip, but it was just too expensive. So I found another way to get myself to Greece.
Friday, I went on a day trip to Perugia, Italy for the international chocolate festival with my Fall Break travel companions, Marymar and Catherine. Perugia was an unexpectedly beautiful medieval town near Tuscany, about a three and a half hour bus ride away. The chocolate was to die for! All kinds of food, drinks, and other objects made of chocolate. PARADISE!
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| Chocolate shots at the Chocolate Festival! |
Sunday, I ran the Hunger Run 5K in Rome. Several kids from my school, and several faculty participated. I was a little nervous about it because of how out of shape I am considering my gelato and pasta intake, but it was great! I surprisingly ran the whole thing, and we ran past the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and Baths of Caracalla. It was such a beautiful route to run, something I'm not used to when running at home, so it seemed like a lot less than 3 miles. There were fans (and tourists) all along the route cheering us on so that was really cool too. After the race, students from Loyola and other students were invited to the US Embassador David Lane's house for an all-American BBQ with hamburgers, hotdogs, and chips (YUM). We ate on his roof-top patio which had a gorgeous view of the outskirts of Rome, the old wall that lead out of the city, and the Via Appia, which is the street where all the crucifixions took place because they couldn't take place inside the city. We drove on this street and past all the catacombs later Sunday night while heading to the airport to catch our flight to Budapest, Hungary!
Our first day in Budapest, we spent at the Szechenyi Bath and Spa, which had 16 different rooms of pools and saunas with different minerals, and different temperatures. It was very relaxing and crowded. For dinner we had kebabs. So good! That night we checked out the night-life. Budapest is known for it's ruin clubs, which have old, random pieces of furniture as decorations. Like bathtubs instead of chairs and couches. The Hungarians have their own, unique style of dancing in clubs, haha it was very strange. I couldn't stop laughing at them. I'm sure they were laughing at me too though.
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| Szechenyi Bathhouse |
Tuesday, we took our rental bikes around the city. The bikes were free, but were incredibly squeaky and loud. Everyone would stare at us as we squeaked through the city. Budapest is the capital of Hungary. It is divided into two parts, Buda and Pest, split by the Danube River. We biked to some famous monuments including the Chain Bridge, the Parliament building, the Castle, and Fisherman’s Bastion. We definitely got quite a workout and we had beautiful weather the second day. Tuesday night we hung out at the apartment. We actually watched a re-run of the Presidential Debate because we were so starved for English speaking TV, and that was the only channel in English. We went out for dinner at a nice restaurant close to our apartment to try some traditional Hungarian food. I had goulash, and chicken wrapped in bacon, which were both delicious. You know how much I love my bacon, and I very seldom see it in Rome.
Wednesday morning, we went on a free walking tour of Budapest. It was freezing this day, and silly me, I forgot a jacket. It suddenly felt like winter and snow, when it hasn’t even felt like Fall yet in Rome. Budapest was great because it had a lot of free things to take advantage of, or things were a lot cheaper than in Rome. They use a different currency, forinths. These Hungarian are crazy, 1000 forinths are equal to about 3.5 euros. Thank goodness I have a currency app on my phone or I would have been so confused about the ratio. It still felt weird to spend 950 forinths on a coffee, it seemed like so much, when actually it was cheaper than Rome. (Mom, I finally got my first Christmas ornament!)Even though Hungary is part of the European Union, they aren’t ready to switch over to the Euro yet economically. Our tour guide said it could be 20-30 more years before that happens.
Our impression of the Hungarian people (besides being strange dancers) is that everyone was very nice and eager to help us, but the people seem to be more sullen, sad, and more poor than the people of Italy. Our tour guide explained that the Hungarians have a more pessimistic attitude because of all the oppression they have experienced throughout their history. They were constantly on the losing side of every war, and had to rebuild physically, but also emotionally after all the devastation they experienced. We were there on their big national holiday that celebrated the anniversary of their revolution from the Soviets. There was a massive anti-government protest going on downtown. After our tour we walked around the city for a little longer before catching our plane. We got back to school around eleven at night, repacked our bags for Thessaloniki, and went to bed.
We had to leave school at seven to catch our flight. Before even getting to the airport, we had a lot of traveling to do. From school, we have to catch a bus, to catch the metro, to catch the shuttle, to catch the plane. We did this all back to back Tuesday night to get back to school and Wednesday morning to get to Greece. It was weird that we were doing everything twice in less than 12 hours, so we were a little tired when we got to Thessaloniki. But, we almost didn’t make it to Thessaloniki. Our shuttle from Rome to the airport’s door broke. By the time we got a new shuttle, we were stuck in morning traffic. Everyone on the bus was pissed off at the driver and shuttle company. Talk about Italians being passionate, they sure are when they are angry. But we made it to the airport, and luckily we made our flight. We would have missed it had we been 15 minutes later. The flight went smoothly. After finding and checking into our hotel, (Hotel Atlantis), we walked around the city. Thessaloniki was bigger than I was expecting, although everywhere we needed to go to was within walking distance (except for the airport, and the beach). Thessaloniki’s on a port, and the apartments reminded me of Rome. We caught our first Greek sunset Thursday night at the harbor, which was beautiful. We had gyros for dinner. I absolutely love them! Thursday night we went to some bars along the harbor.
The night life in Thessaloniki is great because it’s a college town, so most of the crowd was our age. Because of all the riots about the economy that have happened in Thessaloniki, we didn’t want to tell people we were American because it might have made us a target for pickpockets, so we pretended we were from London for the weekend. This was a little hard for me because I’m not the best liar on my toes, but good thing I had Marymar and Catherine with me haha. And it’s a good thing Marymar had traveled to London a couple weeks ago when we ran into some actual people from London who had a lot of questions for us. Haha what are the chances!
We spent Friday at the beach, which was about a 45 minute bus ride. The water was a little too chilly to swim in, but it was a sunny day and perfect for laying in the sun in a swimsuit. We ate lunch with our toes in the sand on a restaurant on the beach! I had a REAL Greek salad and some Greek seafood. Delicious. The feta cheese was to die for. For dinner we went to an outdoor restaurant with live music. There was some Greek dancing and glass throwing (OPA!).
Saturday was rainy, so we went on a bus tour of Thessaloniki, and learned a lot about it. We did a little shopping afterwards although a lot of stores were closed because coincidently we were there on Thessaloniki’s national holiday also. Who knew haha.
Sunday we packed up and headed back to Rome. Even though I didn’t see or ride a donkey, I loved Greece. I can’t wait to go back someday and see more of it, especially the more touristy parts, where all my friends that went on the Greece trip went to, like Athens and Santorini.
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| Arch of Roman Emperor Galerius |
I’d say my Fall break was really successful. Marymar and Catherine and I got along really well traveling together for 10 days. It was weird not knowing any Hungarian or Greek, and I can’t say that I picked any of it up haha, especially Hungarian because it’s a bizarre language. It’s a non-indo European language with over 40 letters in it’s alphabet, compared to about 26 in most languages. It was interesting that I noticed a lot of similarities between the two places that I went to, and also similarities to Rome. Both places had national holidays while we were there, both were a lot cheaper than Rome, and both had Starbucks, unlike Rome. Both were part of the ancient Roman empire, and Thessaloniki had some actual ancient Roman ruins still remaining. Both places had bath-houses influenced by the Turks, and really cheap flights from Ryan-air! Haha both were luckily graced with our presence for Fall Break too =)
So back to Rome. Sunday, I was sweating around running a 5K, and when I get back the next Sunday, it’s definitely Fall in Rome. By law, our school isn’t allowed to turn the heat on in buildings until November 1st, so thankfully we only had two days of cold in our building. Last night we had our school Halloween party, and tonight’s Halloween calcio.
I’ll be staying in Rome this weekend, playing tour guide to some friends from Madrid!
Happy Halloween!
The Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, school provided us with a Thanksgiving dinner, made by our adorable mensa ladies (mensa is Italian for cafeteria). Besides having mashed potatoes, corn, bread, and turkery, we had fresh cranberry sauce, vino of course, and pumpkin ravioli-which is up there on the list of some of the best things that I have eaten while I’ve been here. It was so cute. The tables were arranged into one big table, and you could tell by the decorations that they were trying to make it feel as warm and homey as possible. 
Friday morning, we left bright and early on the train for Napoli on the way to the island of Ischia. After the train ride, we hopped on a ferry to the island. I did not like what I saw of Naples. I already had a bad impression of it from what people at school had said about it: dirty, and smelly. This was spot-on. They don't have dumpsters or trashcans so there's trash everywhere. My fifteen minutes in Naples was more than enough, I'm really glad we don't have a trip planned there, because I don't think it'd be worth it. But the ferry ride of Naples from afar was very pretty. We stayed at a bed and breakfast, right on the port of Ischia. There were about 15 of us who went on the trip. 3 of the boys were scuba certified so our dives were separate from theirs.We wet-suited up when we got there around 1. Our first dive was in shallow water, about up to our necks. We learned all the basic stuff and got used to all the equipment. It was a little difficult the first day, especially since our instructors spoke very broken English. It was also weird having weights wrapped around your waist to hold you down, a big tank of oxygen on your back, and having to think and remember to breath like normal into the tank. After our practice dive, we all went to dinner together and then went out that night on the town with our scuba instructors. The nightlife in Ischia was pretty quiet since summer's over and it's the off-season.
