Italia!

Ahh well yesterday I spent a while updating my first couple of days of my trip, and I think it got deleted, so I'm giving a just a brief overview of this.

I got into Rome on Friday and visited the Colosseum, Roman Forum, and Palentine Hill. There were so many ancient Roman ruins, it was really interesting! My friend Kimberly didn't meet up until Saturday though, and although it was very interesting, I learned that I much prefer traveling with people!

Saturday we decided to head to the Vatican after Kimberly came. We headed in and wanted to visit the Vatican museums with the Sistine Chapel. It said though, that it was closed at 12:30 on Saturday, and since it was Easter weekend, it was also closed on Sunday and Monday, and we would have been gone by then. This is my one regret of the whole trip, that I didn't get to see the Sistine Chapel. Also, we could not get into St. Peter's Basilica because they were setting up for the Mass that night. We walked around the streets and got some gelato, and then went to sit on the steps of the square. We decided to wait and watch the mass on TV because there were people lining up for mass about 3-4 hours in advance! Write as people were going in, a couple came and offered us their tickets. We decided why not and went to the Easter Vigil in the Vatican! It was very cool and the Pope came to baptise the new people and do thier first communion and confirmation. The Basilica was awesome and it was just a fun night!

Sunday it was rainy, but we still did a lot. We visited the Spanish steps and threw our coins into the Trevi Fountain. After this, we just walked around and discovered so many beautiful Churches. All you have to do is walk around and you'll find something in Rome. We eventually found a really cool park and walked around in that looking at the statues too. That night we had a really nice dinner outside.

Monday morning we headed by train to Florence. There, my friend Sid picked us up from the train station and told us where to go. We were planning on going to the museums that day and spending the next day with him. Then as we headed to our first museum, we realized that all of the museums are closed on Mondays! So we had to come up with something else to do. There is a really awesome cathedral that we went in, and then we took a tour up to the top of the duomo (dome). In the dome there was a really amazing painting of The Last Judgement, it was incredible, and we were up so high and the view was amazing.

Tuesday we went to see where my friend Sid had been living for the semester. I didn't realize that he has been living in a castle- but he definitely has been! Their school's program has a villa, which is just like a castle. They live and have class in there, there is a personal chef, and they have huge gardens- it's so cool! We started off the morning by hiking through the Tuscan hills and finding some waterfalls. It was really beautiful and really cool to see the not so touristy things. We ate some great lunch with him cooked by their personal chef, and then Kimberly and I set out to do all we had planned to do the day before while Sid went to class. We first went to the Boboli gardens which are really expansive and pretty gardens. Then we went to the museum with the statue of David. It was amazing I had no idea. First of all, it was a lot bigger than I expected. It also was soo human-like I am still amazed how he got stone to look like that. There were vains, wrinkles in his skin, fingernail beds, everything that a human had I expected him to walk off the platform. We spent our last night hanging out with Sid at his castle : ) after a very yummy dinner of course.

Wednesday was a day of traveling- alllllll dayyyy longggg to get back. I got back about 12:30 am.

Thursday I had a creme brulee lesson with the host dad of one of the students. It was very fun and I'm glad I know how to make it now.

Today, I was planning on going to Dijon for the weekend with some friends. However, there has been a strike with the trains, and there are no trains to Dijon! It is a huge bummer and I am really hoping that we can leave early in the morning, although they would not sell us tickets because they just did not know. Strikes are sooo annoying, they also made me 45 minutes late to class!

So hopefully this will be my last post until Sunday, because then that means that I will be in Dijon tomorrow. I will put pictures from Italy up soon!