Roma!!! (day 1)

These were written in random order (Perugia, Assisi, Roma) – Rome was too overwhelming to write about right away.

Roooooooommmmaaaa

            Rome was intense. Filled with fear from horror-stories about being mugged in Rome, I was a stressed mess by the time we got off of our train from the airport to the middle of Rome (Estazione di Roma Termini). While our hostel ended up being only a few not-very-confusing blocks from Termini, the directions about where to exit the station confused me a little and I was freaked out by all of the people aaaaaand it was night.

Mom and I have very different styles of navigation. I know that she is paranoid about people watching and following us and whatever but she still fairly calmly looks around, trying to figure out where we are. My attempts at figuring out where I am are totally different. I try to look like I know exactly where I’m going and walk quickly in one direction, checking street signs or whatever. While this seems to usually end up getting me lost, as long as I avoid back-tracking, it’s fairly affective in the long run and makes me feel more comfortable. However, with me walking briskly, dragging mom by the hand as she twirls her head around like a bobble head, trying to see where we are, I’m sure we looked totally vulnerable, and I was totally freaked out and crabby and mean. Of course, nothing happened and we arrived safely at our hostel, but my first thirty minutes or so were kind of a nightmare.

But, from there it just got better and better. We went out and had beer and our first Italian pizzas (which were amazing). We then got a good night’s sleep, and woke up early to go figure out another metro and to sight-see. Our first stop was the Coliseum. We rode the metro for two stops, got off, went up an escalator, took a couple steps toward the opening to outside and saw the massive stadium before us, in the middle of everything, just there. It was crazy, it was totally breathtaking. It literally stopped me in my tracks =). We went in and it only got more incredible. Walking around the outside of it, it is obvious how all of the other stadiums that I have been in have been built in its image, which makes total sense since the design is amazingly efficient. When we got up to the top and stood in the little outlet overlooking everything, it began to rain. The rain picked up and, next thing you know, it was totally pouring down. Everyone was scurrying around, trying to find placed to hide from the rain. My little walking-tour speaker thing was telling me about how overhangs were built to protect the people from sun and rain, but I thing these must have fallen apart or something because they were nowhere to be found. Eventually the rain died down, and we were able to continue our exploration. The whole thing was incredible.

After this, we ate at a little restaurant right by the coliseum. We had pesto pasta and a vegetarian pizza which was even better than that of the night before and, of course, wine. After this, we walked/metro’d back to the hostel, changed out of our soaked clothes, and look a little nap before going to the Vatican.

St. Peter’s square was not at all like I imagined it. First of all, I thought it would be a square, and its not. The pillars, and buildings that create the oval-shaped piazza are decorated with statues and carved with beautiful artwork. To me, the basically was almost secondary to the plaza itself, which was beautiful, and encompassing of all within it in a way that almost made me feel as if I was inside a church or museum even though I was outside in the rain. The “square” was all set up for the Christmas mass (it was Christmas eve). There were white screens everywhere for the mass to later be projected upon for the public to see. There was a beautiful nativity scene set up and, shortly after we arrived, one of the cardinals came out and into it, where he said some stuff and did some stuff that I didn’t understand. We talked to some guards dressed in dress-like outfits, which were pretty cool. We bought gifts, and then trudged our way back to the metro and returned to the hostel.

We, for some reason, went to sleep at like 8 or 9 every night in Rome and would wake up at like 3 or 4 in the morning with nothing to do until 7.

... tbc...

Assisi

Assisi

Little streets, churches, nuns, birds, shops, priests, AMERICANS!!!, olive trees, field-trip, St. Francis (S. Franchesco) look-alike, tomb of St. Clare ( Santa Chiara), HILLS, mom bare-foot in monastery paths, creepy stalker in train-station, back-packer with old-fashioned coffee pot, couple from Leche (???), due capuchini DOPIO!!... =) 

 

Perugia

DISCLAIMER: sorry for this being so long and detailed, but that’s way muh daddy wants it =). Feel free to skip boring parts. Also, its kind of hard to explain this place because its magic is mostly in the feeling of it… but details help, so, yeah. Grazie!!

Perugia (Pair-oo-juh??)

            People definitely get lured into little rooms and tortured to death here. Just kidding, but if meg were here she would totally be thinking the same thing =). Everyone is more kind than they need to be and everything is quiet except for the church bells. (this is just the part of the town that we’re staying in; there is a lot more activity near the university)

            When we first got here, we came off of the train and were politely faced with a nice set of stairs, up which we needed to lug our gigantic bags. I took off with mine (I was gonna go back for mom’s, I swear =/ ) and when I looked back, a little woman was holding one side of mom’s bag as they carried it together up the stairs.

Within about thirty seconds of leaving the train station, we became lost. As we turned around after walking a few seconds in a direction which I declared was “certainly not the right one”, a man in a suit stopped us and asked where we needed to go. We told him that we needed to get to the Mini-Metro and he walked us in the direction where we had turned from (oops). As we walked, he told me that he had only met two people here who spoke English. He told me that he was from Armenia and asked me where I was from. Well, he asked “Is your land?”, which I, of course, thought was adorable. Once he got us a few feet up the little path thing to the metro, he turned around and walked where he had been going.  

The mini-metro is this amazing little automated rail-system. It goes from the top to the bottom of the hill on which the town is built and has about ten stops. About every minute or two, a small, one-car “train” comes. It is similar to an airport shuttle but tiny, like maybe ten feet long and five feet wide. We bought our tickets (1.5 euro), went up the lift and, obviously, caught one going the wrong direction. Before we realized this, we went a few stops down the hill. We passed a little park with a shiny turquoise ping-pong table and a school which had graffiti on the side saying “Welcome to Hell. Fuck”. The grass and trees were a beautiful green and looked way more hydrated than I was.

We finally realized our mistake and got off and back on one in the other direction. We had yet to see another person since getting on the mini-metro, until we got to the next stop, where a little lady, who was probably in her 70’s or 80’s, hustled her way up the stairs and joined us in our car. Since basically all that we knew was what direction to go toward, mom asked the lady if she knew where our hotel was. Of course, our version of asking a question like this is “Dove (where)…?” and pointing at a piece of paper. She thought for a couple seconds then gave a detailed explanation of where to go… in Italian. I’m pretty sure that at one point she looked at mom and said something about me not understanding anything that she was saying. But when she said “Ultima fermata (last stop)” I was like “oh! Ultima fermata” and then we said ultima fermata back and forth a few times, nodding to confirm/affirm that I had understood. A little later, she seemed to understand some of our conversation about how the car-rails must go in a circle because they had conflicting instructions in them (too difficult to explain without hand gestures) and when mom said “it must be a loop” and made a circle with her finger, the lady said “si, si” and nodded, making the same gesture with her hand.

We were in a tunnel for a while, and when then we came out at the last stop and were faced with a magnificent view of mountains and nature, and some houses. Thank goodness, we passed what I believe was a British family here visiting the wife’s mother. The father had seen what he thought was our hotel (and ended up being very close to it) and so explained to us how to get there. We followed the directions which led us through a series of narrow, curving streets. We found the thing that he was talking about, realized that it wasn’t our hotel, and continued walking until we came to a piazza (plaza). Here, we called the guy from the hotel, who told us that we needed to ask someone. So, we did. We asked this woman who was selling bracelets and earrings and she tried to point us in the right direction but looked doubtful that it was going to work out for us. We bought some bracelets from her, and she laughed at our trying to scramble together 18 euro from our coins (I forgot that I had 30 euro in my pocket). After this, she asked the man vending next to her if he could watch her table and she walked with us for about four blocks, until we could see the steps that we had asked her to lead us to.

From here, we wound around roads, up and down stairs. We passed churches and people—most walking arm-in-arm and talking in quiet voices, as the sound of the plastic wheels of our luggage turning along the diagonally-ribbed roads reverberated off of the tall walls of the narrow corridors, disrupting the calm of the town. After a couple more phone calls, the lady who worked at the hotel walked out to the large church (the closest certain land-mark) and led us from there to the tiny road where our hotel was waiting for us.  

Mom let me rest for about twenty minutes (I got little sleep during our last night in Rome) and then we went out to find the restaurant that had been recommended to us.

We got lost… again.

But this time, we were grateful for it. Our wrong turn led us to a road which curved up a hill. We hit the curve of this road and were presented with a view of the town, descending down from us with churches, houses, roads, and cars, all seemingly still. Mountains rose up from the town all around, some of them capped with snow, some of them green, some almost blue under the most magnificent sun-set that I have ever seen. It encompassed every aspect of every beautiful sunset that I have ever seen. There were parts where the clouds appeared to be on fire; there were rays coming down and up from the sun as it barely peeked out. There were puffy clouds and wispy clouds; there were blues, purples, pinks, and oranges. Between mom and I, we probably took about thirty pictures. I haven’t looked at them yet, but I can guarantee that none of them really captured it.

We followed this up with amazing pizza and pasta, little potato dumplings, and wonderful bread and wine.

Welcome to Perugia =) 

interneeeettttt!!!

okay, i havent had internet for a while, and my writing has been in random order so im just gonna put them up in the order that i wrote them =)

flight + MADRID!!!

Okay, so, its finally real now. The nine-hour flight from dallas to madrid was pretty treacherous, but it was filled with spanish children and adorable spanish men (there were women too, but, yeah). Everyone was speaking spanish and mom kept asking "are you sure this is spanish?" because the accent is so different. The view of spain from the plane was not what we expected so much, it was all seperated into crop areas. Oh yeah, i love seeing all of the cities from the plane because you can see the way they are organized =). Okay, so, we fiiiiinnnnaaalllyyy landed in Madrid at like 11 o'clock (madrid time). The Barajas airport is incredible, we're gonna take pictures when we come back. The hotel guy who drives us to and from the hotel and the airport (where we catch the metro) is really nice and speaks slowly for me. Im getting used to my spanish and realizing that i can really say a lot more than i thought i could, i'm like thinking in spanish at moments, it's pretty cool. So, we checked into our hotel, which is awesome!!, Meg would looooove it, pictures have been taken but they don't really express the place adequately.

After we checked in, we were excited to get out and see madrid, so we looked in our spain books for a good area to go to for tapas, got a map of madrid from the hotel, and sat in the lobby trying to figure out where we were. Thats when the shuttle guy looked at me and said "el metro? cinco minutos", and thus we discovered that we had a ride to the metro, which was awesome. Once we got to the airport, the shuttle guy explained to me (using had gestures) where to wait for him when we returned, buuuuut i should have asked him where to go to get to the metro because it took us like 15 minutes to come up with the bright idea to ask the information desk people. But finally we did, and got our day pases for the metro. Mom, who doesn't ride lightrail and bart all the time, took a while to understand it, but the organization of it made it really simple to understand. the metro here is pretty ornate, and has a different platform for every train with plenty of signs telling you where to go. san jose really needs one of these. Anywaaaaaay, we finally got to "El Centro" which i guess is just the area which is pretty much the center of madrid. It was totally like classic from a movie. when we first got off it reminded me of berkeley right when you get off bart. we pretty-much immediately abandoned our map and took off walking down whatever little streets we liked the most. The plazas were beautiful, i really want to be here during some kind of festival because i could just see them packed with people and people on their balconies and stuff. The streets that were made for walking were all cobble-stoney or whatever and they were narrow with tall, classic buildings.

After walking for a while, we decided to look for the place that we wanted to go to from the book, but, of course, we had gone the opposite direction. by that point it was raining pretty hard and we had, of course, left our umbrella at the hotel. mom was getting frustrated with my lost-ness but we soon semi-figured out how to get to this one place that we had passed that looked interesting. We went into the little restaurant which was halfway underground, and we sat by a window and watched thebottom half of people as they walked by it. Our waiter was adorable, and i don't know if he spoke slowly for me or what but his spanish was really easy to understand. So, when we got our menu, we realized that we had no idea what tapas were; we just knew that we were supposed to eat them. we basically ordered three random things and sangria, because mom had heard that the sangria was amazing here. IT WAS. it was the most incredible wine that i have ever had. they served it in a mettle pitcher thing; it was cold and fruity and had some spice... it was amazing. So, our tapas ended up being some potatoes with some delicious sauce on them, these things which we think were black-beans and rice, but like squashed together and put in sushi shape and wrapped with some unidentifiable thing and served with some little peppers. the third tapas looked kinda like jalepeno poppers but had like, i don't even know what, in them. i know that they were supposed to be ham flavored or something but they were white and squishy and soft. idk, but the whole meal was delicious.

 we left there feeling warm and happy from the sangria =) but this soon turned in to exhaustion as we navigated our way through the metro. at one point i closed my eyes for a couple seconds during which we went two stops. we didn't get robbed or anything tho... i think. we finally got back to the airport, found a bathroom, and then ended up coming out at the exact perfect spot and our shuttle came like 5 minutes later. When we got back, i went on the internet to let people know we were alive, and then we passed oooooouuuuut. it is now about 5 in the morning here (we went to bed around 7) and we are getting ready to find food and then catch our plane to roma!! every second is awesome here, lol.

 - TC
      - detailed enough for you, dad?? <3

OMFG!!!!

okay! i'm leaving for the airport in 25 minutes, still waiting for something to go wrong. I finally finished packing two hours ago. I got very little sleep, but its all good 'cause my mama just went to get me a four-shot white mocha!!! This is like christmas morning right now, i'm so nervous and excited. I have learned a lot of italian in the last couple days; i think i'm pretty amazing. My mother, however, is struggling drastically with the simplest phrases. It's actually pretty entertaining. I'll be by her side the whole time though, so no worries. Okay! gotta go do last minute thingamabobs!!! OMFG!!!!

 - TC

My First Blog!!!!

Hello non-existant followers!!

   I have never done a blog before but my dad asked for me to keep an amazing journal of the next twenty days of my life (which will be spent in EUROPE!!!) as a christmas present to him, aaaand, since i have no money to buy him anything, this'll have to do. Also, the name of my blog comes from my older sister's blog, "better left said"... we thought it was witty. sooo, yeah. I will be boarding my flight to madrid in approximately 27.5 hours!! I'm super excited; i've never been to Europe and, yeah, i don't even know... i can't sleep, lol. Okay, well, i guess i'll update later? if thats how this works... and i should probably go recruit followers, lol.
   Buona note e sogni d'oro!!

- TC
  - oooooh, and CONGRATULATIONS BILLY MEYER ('cause he's graduating in 5.5 hours)!!!