Last days in Italy

Today is my last day in Paderno Del Grappa.  I have had such a great experience here.  I've met so many wonderful people and have learned a lot about myself.  I'm sad to leave, but excited for my adventures in London to begin!! I have one more exam in about 20 minutes...22 short answer questions (ahhhhh!!).  After that I'm headed back to Venice for the night.  Hopefully I can get some last minute Italian shopping in! :) Then tomorrow evening I leave from London!! SO EXCITED!!

Ciao!

When in ROME...

Rome was great!  We traveled by bus this weekend; the man who works at the front gate on campus, Alberto, organized a charter bus to take about 47 of us to Rome for only 90 euro (the train would have cost about 150 euro, if not more).  The bus ride wasn't bad, I slept a lot of the way.  When we arrived in Rome we were surprised to find that the "hotel" we booked was actually an apartment, complete with a separate bedroom, bathroom, pull out couch, balcony (with a great view), TV (which had English speaking channels), KITCHEN, and kitchen table!!! Let's just say we were super duper excited!!!






The girls I was with decided since we had a kitchen, obviously we had to buy groceries.  Although I wasn't too thrilled on the idea, because I didn't think we would have much time to do a lot of cooking and cleaning, it turned out alright.  We bought things to make sandwiches, which we used Friday for lunch, and they made pasta for dinner Friday night.  The rest of the time we ended up eating out because it was a lot easier (was I had expected).


Thursday night we went to an Irish pub down the street from our apartment with a couple guys from our program and just talked.  We turned in fairly early that night because we knew we had a big day ahead of us.

Friday was filled with sight-seeing.  We saw the Vatican, including the Sistine Chapel (where I snuck an "illegal" picture of the ceiling), the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, & St. Peter's Basilica (definitely my favorite), just to name a few.  Being in the Basilica definitely made me proud to be Catholic!  We also climbed to the top of the Dome at the Basilica, because apparently climbing to the top of buildings is what you do in Italy.  There were definitely more steps this time, more than 500 for sure, but once again the view made it worthwhile.  





















By the end of the day we were exhausted, but had to get ready for our pub crawl!! The first bar was nearly impossible to find.  I ended up having to have my mom look it up and text me directions because we had no idea where it was located, besides that is was near the Spanish Steps (more like 3 blocks away).  The pub crawl itself wasn't as impressive as we expected, but it was still fun.

We got a later start Saturday, mostly because we slept through our alarms (oops).  Good thing we had already seen most of the sights the day before.  We went to the Roman Colosseum and Palatine Hill.  We ended up paying for a tour of the Colosseum that came with a complimentary tour of Palatine Hill.  It was worth it for the Colosseum because we got to pass the giant line outside, but we couldn't really understand our tour guide, so we didn't end up learning much of the history.  The tour was great for Palatine Hill (we had a different tour guide) because otherwise we wouldn't of had a clue what we were looking at.

















Saturday night we went to the David Guetta concert.  The only word that can describe this night is INSANE.  The concert started at 11pm...and didn't end until 4 IN THE MORNING!!! The entire concert was techno, which I guess was to be expected.  Thank goodness we found a boy from our program to go with us because there were so many creepy Italians it was overwhelming.  The two girls I was with are really into techno music, so this was definitely more their element.  Me on the other hand, I couldn't tell one song from the next.  It was definitely an interesting experience...one that I don't plan on ever doing again.  Did I mention that the taxi system in Italy sucks at night/early morning, so we ended up having to wait until 6am to ride the subway back to our place.  Basically, I didn't get to sleep until 7am because when we got home I had to take a shower, seeing as the entire night I felt like I was in a sauna.  I guess I can officially say I've watched the sun rise...

3 hours after going to sleep, we had to wake up so that we could pack, clean the apartment, and catch our bus back to campus.  The three of us were passed out for most of the bus ride home.  Overall it was a good weekend.  Now we are in our final week of classes.  I have a paper, 2 presentations, 2 finals, and a 4 hour gourmet dinner standing in the way of me and LONDON...here goes nothing!!!

Rimini Beach

This past weekend was definitely more of a relaxing weekend, for the most part.  For once we had no problems getting to our final destination.  Basically, my friends and I are pros when it comes to the Italian train system! Once we arrived in Rimini we had to take the city bus from stop 1 to stop 24.  We could tell the locals were not too thrilled when about 30 of us, backpacks and all, tried to pack ourselves onto the first bus that showed up.  My first hostel experience was good.  The room was tiny as ever, with two sets of bunk beds that seemed a bit wobbly and a "shower" that was just a drain in the middle of the bathroom with a current around it.  Other than that it was fine.  The location was great, with only a 2 minute walk to the beach and the main road where all the shops and restaurants were located.  Our hostel also had a bar in it, which is always convenient! The first night we decided to go to dinner before getting ready because we were all so hungry.  I basically demolished my entire pizza, but who's judging!

After dinner, which didn't end until 10:30, we headed back to the hostel to shower and freshen up.  While we waited on everyone else to get ready, we headed downstairs to the hostel bar.  It was here that I met my first Australians.  There accents are just so cute!  Wouldn't you agree??

 When everyone was ready, we went out in search of a place to hang out.  After wandering around for about an hour (which was torture seeing as I felt it was a good idea to wear heels) we finally stumbled upon a place named Life (accompanied by a couple different Italian words that we didn't understand).  Once we got downstairs to the dance floor, we received an unexpected surprise.  FOAM PARTY!!! It was crazy and my outfit was NOT appropriate for the festivities.  My poor shoes were covered in foam by the end of the night.  Plus, the Australians and the Italian bartender from our hostel, who just happened to be there, thought it was hilarious to put foam on top of my head!!

The next morning we got up early for our complimentary breakfast, which consisted of two types of cereal and sandwich bread that you could toast.  Can you say yum?!?  After eating we headed to the beach!! We purchased some beach chairs and got our tan on (and by our I mean everyone but me because I had already coated myself in 100 SPF).  The beach was very nice and not too crowded.  There were a few topless women and men in speedos, both of which were quite awkward, but I guess that's the norm in Italy.  The water felt great as well.  

Before heading in we stopped at a little restaurant on the beach.  I order this great sandwich-type thing, but sadly I can't remember the name of it.  Either way, it was delicious!!  Of course, after being out in the sun for a few hours, we were all in need of an afternoon nap.  Our hostel had a free pasta party that evening for all the guests.  The pasta was about as "great" as the cafeteria pasta we are served every single lunch and dinner at school, but free makes anything taste a little better.  After eating we headed to a club named Rock Island that everyone had been raging about.  It took a little bit of traveling to get there, including the city bus once again.  The club was pretty cool.  They played a lot of American music, so we all danced and sang the night away.

The next morning we decided to pass up the complimentary breakfast and sleep in.  It was the first time since we had been in Italy that we didn't have to wake up to an alarm!!  When we finally woke up, we headed back to the beach.  BUT not before everyone and their mom wanted to use some of my sunscreen because their sunburns were beginning to hurt.  Sadly, they didn't really learn their lesson, seeing as they only put sunscreen on the places that got burnt the day before.  Lets just say some people did not sleep very comfortable that night.  After another long day on the beach, we headed back and got ready for our last night out.  We tried to go to a seafood restaurant we heard about, but it was all booked, so we ended up going to the same restaurant we had ate at Thursday night, because some of the group hadn't been there yet.  This time, instead of devouring another pizza, I ordered some tortellini!  Apparently dinner is not something you do quickly in Italy, because we were at the restaurant for probably over 3 hours.  At least we had delicious food, good wine, and great company to keep us occupied.  Once dinner finally came to a close, we headed back to the hostel to get some drinks and hang out.  There were a ton of students from our program and other programs, as well as some foreigners, all staying in our hostel, so it was a lot of fun to make new friends all night.

The next morning was hectic to say the least.  We had planned to leave early to catch the first train back to campus, since a few of us had a test the following Monday.  The train left around 7:45am, and the city bus we needed to take to get to the train station left at 7:15.  At 7am I was woken up to see if we still wanted to go early or not.  After wasting 4 minutes we decided to give it a shot.  Lets just say the next 11 minutes were the most chaotic 11 minutes of my life.  Somehow we managed to make it, although I honestly have no idea how.  I definitely looked pretty rough.  Even though we made it back to campus about 7 hours before everyone else, the morning was definitely a long one.  We had to take 3 separate trains, with hour layovers between each.  Worth it??...not so sure.  I was so exhausted and gross once we got back to school that I immediately took a shower and fell asleep.  Still, the morning was pretty entertaining, at least I thought so, and that's what this whole experience is all about - - making memories.

On a side note, this evening we were required to attend a European Seminar, led by the man in charge of the CIMBA program.  He started by asking how many of us holding a United States passport considered themselves American.  Most of the room raised their hand.  Then he showed us the statistic generated from other's answering the same question, which stated that 96% agreed that they would claim American before anything else.  "The other 4%", he coughed, "claim Texan!"  Of course, everyone started laughing, and I yelled out a little "wooo" in agreement :) Gotta love that good 'ol Texas pride!

I also decided it was time to do some laundry.  Since I never trust to dry any of my clothes, in fear that they may shrink, I currently have 2 weeks worth of clothes laid out around my room.  Always fun doing laundry!!

For now,
Arrivedercci!!

Mount Grappa

Yesterday I took a trip up to the top of Mount Grappa.  Since it takes about 6 hours to climb, I decided taking a bus was the better choice!

The bus ride was about an hour long, on a tiny little curvy road.  It was scary when we had to pass other cars.  I honestly have no idea how it managed to be a two lane road.  Up at the top, the temperature was about 30 degrees colder!  Too bad no one felt the need to warn us, so instead all us students were shivering the entire time in our shorts, tank tops, and sandals.



Once we got off the bus, we had to climb up these stairs to get to the monuments.  Lets just say it wasn't easy, and the altitude change did not help!  The view from the top was pretty great, although it was cloudy.  There are some great monuments up there representing the Italian soldiers who fought their way back up the mountain after being pushed off by the Austrians.







We were so close to the clouds!  It was kind of crazy to think about how high we really were up there!

Once we were done seeing all the monuments, we went into the restaurant located at the top of the mountain to grab a snack.  I still don't understand who would want to work up there...it's cold and close to nothing?  Plus, my ears were so clogged, and didn't get any better until about two hours after we had come back to campus!! Overall, great view but not really worth the trip...oh well!

Florence!

So, Florence may be one of my favorite places on Earth!! It was AMAZING!  But, once again, my adventure began with a rough start.  About an hour before we were to leave to catch the bus to Bassano del Grappa train station, my friend tells me that the hostel we booked wasn't looking too good.  Turns out the place had terrible reviews, complete with bed bugs, creepy owners who offer free wine in hopes to get the girls drunk and take advantage of them, and the police seem to have a strong interest in the establishment (that's never good).  There was absolutely no way we were staying in this place!  With about 20 minutes left until we had to leave, we finally found a hotel that was available for 6 people.  Of course ,it was much more expensive than we originally had wanted to spend, but at a time like this I don't think we really cared too much.  Lessons learned: NEVER let the boys book the hostel and ALWAYS double check the reviews on multiple websites.
Our rough adventure continued at the train station.  It seemed like everyone and their mom was trying to buy a train ticket when we arrived.  We finally found a self-help machine, but of course it didn't have the Florence train station listed on it, because that would have just been too easy.  Thank goodness we had looked up train schedules earlier in the week and remember that we would have to switch trains in the town of Padova, so we bought our ticket to there and decided to get the ticket to Florence once we got to Padova.  With 7 minutes until the Bassano train was leaving, we ran to the platform and jumped on!
The adventure do not end there... Once we got to the Padova station, we hauled a** to the ticket machine to purchase our tickets to Florence before everyone else got there.  With 4 tickets purchased we were going strong; only myself and one other girl to go.  What do you know, the train is full!!! SERIOUSLY what else could go wrong!  As we start to freak out we decided to check again, and again, and again.  Finally, it said the train we wanted was available again, but only first class.  We did not care at this point, and purchased them as quickly as we could! Woo, that was a close one!  We had about 2 hours to kill before our train left, so we headed to McDonald's (ew).

I ended up sitting with one of my travel buddies on the way to Florence.  Since we were first class and all, of course we got the best treatment around.  Free wine, little bread sticks, steak, and potatoes!  Just kidding, no steak or potatoes, but we definitely told our second class friends what they "missed out" on. ;)

After arriving in Florence, we ventured out to find our hotel, which turned out to be in a great location fairly close to everything!  Oh but wait, as soon as we thought everything was finally falling into place, the owner of the hotel was no where to be found! Not only that, but we were stuck waiting in this little hallway of an apartment-type building for 20 minutes because we didn't want to haul our stuff around anymore and he wouldn't answer his phone!

The rooms were very nice and spacious!  We immediately jumped in the shower and started to get ready.  When I went to plug in the hair dryer that one of the girls had brought, IT DIDN'T FIT!  Who knew Italians had more than one sized plug?!?! 4 girls and no blowdryer...what an experience!  This is one example of how you can dry your hair when you have little time and no blowdryer:

We had dinner at a cute little restaurant, where the waiter spoke a select amount of English, but was still great and hilarious!  Of course we had to get some wine, since it's "cheaper than water" around these parts.

After dinner we headed out to find a place to hang out, and happened to stumble upon a little gelato stand/bar.  Turns out to be the best thing that happened to us!  The owner, Julian and the other workers, Herman and Jerry (after he tried to tell me his name about 5 times and I still couldn't understand, he reverted to Jerry) were the best!  When I told Julian I was from Texas, his responded with, "Oh! Texas is the shit!"  I about died laughing.  Apparently a few years ago, some other Texans had come into the bar and said that and Julian quickly responded, "No!! Texas is beautiful!".  Obviously, he didn't understand the slang, but once they explained he fell in love with the expression!
After spending hours at our new favorite bar, we headed to a club named Twice, where a bunch of other CIMBA students were.  It was a ton of fun dancing around and bonding with all the new people we had met!  Around 4 o'clock, we headed home and went to sleep.

The next morning, on our way to find a place to eat, we ran into a couple guys from CIMBA who were headed to the pizzeria that the cast of Jersey Shore are apparently working at while they are filming in Florence.  Of course, we tagged along with them to see this soon to be "historical" landmark.  The pizza wasn't great but hey, when the show aires I can tell everyone that I've eaten there before, which basically makes me famous, right?

After eating, we all headed out to tour the city.  We walked around Florence for 8 hours straight, stopping at various things such as Dante's house, the fake David, a gelato festival, and the river.  Towards the end of the day, we climbed to the top of the Dome (all 463 steps), because my wise older sister said it was a must.  She was definitely correct, and my entire travel group thanked me for pushing us to do it!  The view was breathtaking, and we spent about 20 minutes up there just enjoying the beautiful view of Florence!

After the Dome, the girls and I decided it was time to do some shopping.  We all did a lot of damage, but found some great stuff!   I purchased a super cute pair of heels (I love shoes too much), a leather purse, a couple little gifts for friends, and a dress to wear out that evening.  By the end of the day, all of our feet were in some much pain it was almost unbearable.  Sadly, once we finished shopping we had to hurry back to the hotel and get ready for the night ahead!

The girls and I went to another cute little restaurant for dinner while the boys watched the big soccer game with some locals at our new favorite bar.  Once we were finished eating we joined them and the night began! By this time, we were all receiving free drinks and taking over the place.  At one point, I was serving gelato while the boys served drinks.  Later on we headed back to the club from the night before, but sadly it was not as much fun as before.  Way too many creepy Italian boys trying to hit on us, so we quickly left and headed back to the hotel for some sleep.

On Sunday, our train didn't leave until around 3, so the 6 of us wandered around Florence for a bit to waste time.  Thankfully, no we didn't run into any more mishaps or rough adventures getting back to Bassano del Grappa.  While we waited for the bus to take us back to campus, we decided to grab some  food.  Warning:  NEVER eat Chinese food in Italy.  It was definitely no Pei Wei.

Overall, the weekend was a great success and I am so happy that everything turned out great!  Now, back to another 4 days in the classroom before my next adventure.  The location is still undecided, but anywhere in Europe is going to be great and I can't wait to travel some more!

 Until then...Ciao!

From Texas to Paderno Del Grappa

So I am a little late on starting a blog, but better late than never.  The adventure to get to Italy had a rough start, including torrential downpour on the way to DFW, one of the entrances being shut down due to an oil spill, a 3 hour delay, and a full 7 hours of sitting in the London Gatwick airport (I did A LOT of people watching).  I finally made it to my hotel outside Venice around 12am Sunday, after a terrifying taxi ride I might add!  The Italians definitely don't care about speed limits, that's for sure!  My hotel room was strange.  You had to stick your key into a slot in the wall or the lights would randomly turn off, and my shower/bathtub had no curtain or door.  Oh, and it took be about 5 minutes to figure out how to flush the toilet.  Apparently in Italy, instead of there being a handle on the toilet, there is a large button-type thing on the wall that you press.  The elevators were extremely tiny.   The capacity was 8 people, but I would be surprised if you could fit 4 into one.  On Sunday I went into Venice and wandered around the city aimlessly for about 4 hours.  It was very pretty and I took tons of pictures (don't ask me of what because I have not a clue).  I purchased my first gelato of the trip while in Venice, and it was delicious!!!

Monday I headed to the Istituto Filippin, located in the lovely city of Paderno Del Grappa at the base of Mt. Grappa!  The campus is GORGEOUS!  Heaven on Earth!  The only problem is no air-conditioning, but I have managed so far.  There are also Italian boarding school students staying here; we share the campus.  It is quite entertaining to watch them all race outside every break they have to smoke as my cigarettes as possible before they have to return to class!  I have a single bedroom, which is how most of the rooms are.  I got very lucky because I have an actual shower in my bathroom, whereas almost all of the other rooms in my building have a shower head, drain, toilet, sink, and mirror all in one square room with nothing dividing them!  I might ad that I also got one of the best views from my room/bathroom!  Monday night I went to the campus bar (and yes this does mean that there is an actual BAR ON CAMPUS) with some girls I met on the bus to campus.  Almost all of the CIMBA (that's the program's name) students were there, and it was very fun to meet people!  Everyone has been so friendly!

Classes started Tuesday.  I am taking Entrepreneurial Strategies and Intro to Marketing Strategies.  Both my professors are great and make class fun!  It's a lot of work though.  Each class is an hour and a half long and in the afternoons, twice a week, we have a long 4 hour block in one of the two classes.  I already have a test tomorrow and we have been attending class for 3 days, but I guess that's what happens when you cram an entire semester into 4 weeks.  Tuesday evening some of the students went to the mall in a neighboring town.  It was so strange; one side had stores you would normally find at a mall and the other side was a Walmart-type place, with groceries and household items.  I purchased an Italian straightener (since my transformer decided to stop working the second day I was in Italy).

Tonight (Thursday evening) I am going into the town of Bassano with some other students!  The CIMBA program is great because they set up a ton of little bus trips to different neighboring towns, like the mall trip and the Bassano trip tonight.  I also took "Survival Italian" this morning (another thing set up by the CIMBA program) to learn a few key phrases that should make it easier to communicate with the Italians!

This weekend I am traveling to Florence with 7 other people in the program! We leave at 1pm tomorrow after classes! YAY YAY YAY :)