Hello again! It's been awhile! So this blog will quickly run through my spring break, but I did A LOT and my internet's not good enough to load all the pictures I want, so I'll have to just do the big things.
So! I left for spring break Friday, April 13th and got back to Paris Monday, April 30th. I love french spring break! It's so long! I visited 3 countries: Italy, Germany and Ireland, so I'll divide the blogs up by country.
Italy:
Florence:
We took a flight from Paqris to Florence, Italy on Friday the 13th. I was a teensy bit nervous about flying on Friday the 13th, but we landed fine. The pictures below are of our first day wandering around Florence.
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| The Duomo |
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| The Duomo from the top of the Campanile next to it. There were only stairs... |
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| Me at the top of the Campanile |
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| The line we stood in to go into the Duomo. |
Day trip to Cinque Terre:
The second day in Florence we took a day trip to the coast of Italy with a company called Bus2Alps. Cinque Terre means "5 Lands" in Italian referring to the 5 little villages along the coast that we hiked between.
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| Our first trail was called "Via dell'Amore" which means roughly the path of love. People put locks along this trail and through the keys into the sea. |
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| example of some locks |
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| There was recently some bad weather in the area so trails 2 and 3 were closed, so naturally we all decided to take the difficult path that went up into the mountains to the next town instead of taking the train. I was wearing toms... they were my only shoes for spring break... |
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| Me and Anna at the top of the trail looking down on the town we hiked from. |
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| The town we were hiking to |
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| This was the view I got while I ate lunch in the 4th town, Vernazza eating their specialty, Pesto Pizza. As beautiful as that looks, it actually started pouring rain by the time we got our pizza and we had to run inside to finish it. haha |
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| Down by the Sea... in the rain :) |
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| We heard there was a good view of the town on a trail so we took it until we saw this amazing view and then climbed back down to take the train to the next town because we didn't have a lot of time left. |
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| My favorite town: Monterosso. The clouds broke and the weather was absolutely beautiful while we were here! Anna and I mostly stayed on the beach. |
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| The beach wasn't sand but rocks instead. It kinda hurt, but I was putting my feet in the Mediterranean gosh darn it! |
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| A big wave came up behind me and got me wet all the way up to my butt! |
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| Oh look, a big rock... LET'S CLIMB IT!!! |
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| Some guys who were also climbing the rock took our picture |
Back to Florence:
The next day we wandered around Florence again.
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| This bridge is a famous old bridge called "Pont Veccio" that still has shops on it. They're mostly fancy jewelry shops. |
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| Apparently the week we were in Italy was National Cultural Week, so all state owned museums and such were free to the public! Good timing! |
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| This is Palazzo Pitti; an old palace they turned into a museum. I liked the gardens best. |
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| We saw a lot of big bathtub looking things in Italy... |
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| I bought beautiful new shoes in Florence!! (because my toms kinda died on the hiking trip) |
Rome:
We went to the train station and bought a ticket to Rome!! We got there and the weather was absolutely beautiful! We only had 2 days in Rome, but I loved every minute of it. I thought that Rome would be too touristy for me, but I think it's one of my favorites.
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| First view of the Colosseum! |
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| The Trevi Fountain |
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| Pantheon |
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| Piazza Navona: we got gelato and walked around looking at art and listening to music played by people on the street. |
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| There were poppies everywhere in Rome! |
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| One night we hung out at the spanish steps in Piazza de Spagna... |
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| and met 2 young, good looking Italian police men :) This one's name is Claudio. |
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| And this is Lucas; he didn't speak much English... |
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| The Roman Forum and Colosseum |
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| Lunch break in the Roman Forum |
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| Supposedly back in the day, priests would use this as a lie test. They kept scorpions inside the mouth and if you put your hand in and got stung, you were a liar. I didn't get stung :) |
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| We found a cute little area of town and wandered around a bit until we found this cute little pizzeria/restaurant. It was delicious! |
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| This is a crazy room full of paintings inside the Vatican Museum |
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| I knew we wouldn't be able to take pictures inside the Sistine Chapel, so I took a picture of the sign. |
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| The Swedish guards have funny uniforms |
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| The Vatican Church |
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| Everything inside the Vatican was so elaborate! |
So that was a few of my adventures in Italy! I loved it! I hope I can go back someday! Maybe then I'll learn a little bit of Italian instead of barely getting by with grazie and preggo like I did this time :) We took a flight from Rome to Munich and we had to stay the night in the Barcelona airport. So my next blog will be Germany!
