KT Says

Ciao!

This past weekend Ursinus organized a trip for all the students and the professors to Rome from Friday until Sunday. We left bright and early Friday morning (8 am!!) from the train station in a nice, comfy bus so we could get to Rome by 1 pm for our tour of the Vatican Museum. We arrived at our hotel, Hotel Albani, threw our stuff in a locked room, and got back on another bus to get to Vatican City on time. Ursinus was very nice and paid for 3 day bus and metro passes for all of us so we could get around the city with no problem. Anyway, when we arrived at Vatican City, I started to get very excited when I saw the dome for St. Peter’s Basilica rising above the other buildings.

We got through security and everything for the Vatican Museum and started our long, grueling, 4 hour tour. The museum is gorgeous, but it’s an art museum basically; it’s full of everything that previous popes collected during their time as pope and I was not aware that we’d be seeing MORE art in Rome! I love art, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve been living in Florence for almost 3 months–I’m all arted out!

I have to admit, however, that I have become much more of a sculpture-lover since I have lived in Italy, and there was no shortage of sculpture in the Vatican Museum! But after that part of the tour, Rita, our tour guide, led us into the Sistine Chapel. Now, a lot of people have said that the Sistine is sort of anti-climactic because everyone says how amazing it is and blah blah blah, it’s over-done. I did not agree with that at all. I was absolutely blown away. Michelangelo knew what he was doing with paint as much as he knew with marble…his figures on the ceiling as well as behind the altar (The Last Judgement) MOVED. I could have stood in that chapel for hours just staring at the magnificence around me: it literally blew my mind.

After the Chapel, we headed over to St. Peter’s Basilica. I can say with all honesty that this is the most beautiful church that I have ever seen in my life, and believe me, I’ve seen a WHOLE lot of churches.

My pictures are blurry and dark because we couldn’t take pictures with flash inside the church, but they’re there! I only regret not taking a picture of Michelangelo’s Pieta, because it almost brought me to tears. It’s in the Basilica and it’s behind a glass wall and, usually, surrounded by swarms of people. It’s breathtaking, and I recommend to everyone to see it with your own eyes.

That night we were given free time to do whatever, so Mary, Jasmine, me, Kelly, Cara and Bailey took showers and went out to a restaurant nearby. We got lots of food for not too much money, so I was satisfied! Then we came back to our hotel and just passed out. We had to be up the next morning pretty early for our walking tour of Rome.

All of us met in the hotel lobby the next morning at about 8:45-9 am to get the bus to the Colosseum. This is the coolest thing Italy has to offer, I swear! It’s this massive structure that’s still standing…even the rooms below the arena where they kept the animals and the gladiators are still intact. I think this was my favorite part of Rome, to be honest. I couldn’t imagine living in an apartment across the street from this and opening my window everyday to see it. I’m sure I’d take it for granted, but it really made an impression on me when I was there . We also saw some gladiators hanging around smoking…very authentic, haha. Apparently you can take pictures with them, but if you don’t offer them 2 euros per picture before you take it, they can charge you 10 euro. They’re a bunch of crooks if you ask me…but I suppose people have to be smart tourists!

Anyway, after we took our tour of the Colosseum, we went to see the Forum (which was amazing) and the Pantheon. These structures are thousands of years old and they’re just sitting in the middle of a huge, modern city. They’re literally things you have to see to believe. The Pantheon was converted into a church and Raphael is buried there, as well as two or three of Italy’s kings (I actually think they only had 2 or 3 as it was…).

Of course it started to rain at this point, so all of us were wandering around the city in the freezing cold rain without umbrellas. The umbrella salesmen were there to help though, don’t worry! Those guys are everywhere in Italy…if they’re not selling umbrellas, it’s scarves or little remote controlled Smart cars. They’re crazy and will follow you around harassing you. Just yell "NO GRAZIE!" at them…they’ll get the idea eventually .

We went to the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps next. The Trevi Fountain is the most gorgeous fountain in the world, especially at night. That’s one thing I think everyone should see once in their life. The Spanish Steps were cool, but I probably would have appreciated them more if they weren’t the last stop on our 5 hour walking tour and I wasn’t so exhausted…and wet.

At the end of our tour Kelly and I had lunch in a small restaurant because we didn’t want to join everyone else at Burger King (too much fast food is never good!) and we did a little shopping at some tourist shops. Overall, it was a nice day. That night a bunch of us went out for dinner…I think there was 11 of us. A nice outdoor cafe accommodated us, probably because they figured we were dumb American students that wouldn’t pay attention to our bill, but whatever works! I had a great time. It was very relaxing to sit around with the whole group and laugh and talk and have a good night.

The next morning we woke up and a bunch of us decided to go to the Vatican to hear the Pope speak at noon. We got there and couldn’t believe the crowd that was there, but it was absolutely worth it. He spoke in Italian for awhile, then French, English, Spanish and German. That really got me…every time he started on a new language another group of people would cheer and clap. It was a beautiful moment and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. It surprised me how much Italian and French I could understand–he spoke very clearly. I’m just very happy that I could witness that .

I took a video of part of his speech (he spoke for about 25 minutes) and I’m glad I did. I don’t want to forget that! I will post it here one day, but loading it onto a website is taking too long and I sort of want to pull my hair out. So…it’ll have to wait, haha.

Overall, I had a great time in Rome and I think it was one of my favorite places to visit! I recommend a trip to anyone who loves history: the city is absolutely teeming with it. Here are my Rome Pictures. I hope you enjoy them!

~Katie

PS-15 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well!

Needless to say, I love Dublin and I will be moving there in the very near future . I went with Kelly, Cara and Bailey and we left on Friday. Our flight was at 5:30 pm so we thought we would stop in Pisa to see the Leaning Tower, but that didn’t work out. Cara and Bailey had trouble printing out flight information, so we ended up just taking the train to the Pisa Airport and hanging around talking. The plane was late getting off the ground and it was crowded, so Kelly and I found seats in the emergency exit aisle, which was an adventure. One flight attendant came and wanted to stow my scarf in the overhead compartment because it would impede people’s exit of the plane in case of an emergency? That was strange, but anyway, the flight was great! It was a little turbulent at times, but I was lost in music and half asleep most of the time. For the last half hour I got into a conversation with the woman sitting next to me–she was from Ireland, about 50 miles from Dublin (I probably couldn’t spell the name of the town anyway) and the friendliest woman in the world. She asked about my study abroad experience and said how wonderful it is that young people have a chance to travel these days, and she told me her daughter is going to Dublin City University. She’s studying abroad in Texas next semester! I thought that was pretty neat, and I told her that I hoped her daughter would have a great time in America.

When we landed it was close to 8 pm, so we made our way out of the busy airport to find the bus that would take us near our hostel. We asked the bus driver and he was joking and laughing with us the whole trip! Then he drew out directions for us to walk and slowed the bus down a bit to point out where we were supposed to walk when he let us off. It was unbelievable! If you asked a bus driver in Florence for directions, he might deign to take his earphones out but then he’d just sneer at you…. We got a bit lost on the way to the hostel and while we were looking lost and forlorn on a corner, two women approached us and asked if we needed any help. Amazing again! That’s only ever happened to me in Ireland! We found our hostel alright, and we stayed at The Avalon House which was great. They really catered to students and backpackers, and we even got a free breakfast in the morning! (bread and butter…but breakfast all the same!) We went out to eat the first night and had really good food for not a lot of money, and just went back to the hostel and passed out. We saw a lot of people dressed up and there were some fireworks outside of the city, but we had gotten there late enough that most people were probably at parties or home already.

The next morning we went to Trinity College and paid for the tour and for our ticket to see the Book of Kells. Trinity College is beautiful!

It definitely looks the way a college campus should, much like Ursinus. It’s pretty big though, with about 15,000 students, but I think a lot of them live at home and commute to the college. A student there, Keiran (spelling?), gave the tour and all of us were pretty much in love with him by the end. He was a sweetheart and very funny, and I paid attention to what he had to say. After we saw the Book of Kells and took lots of pictures, we went to Nassau Street, which is right next to Trinity College, to do some shopping. Cara bought a Trinity College hoodie and I bought a few nice things for myself and for other people. Then, we went to buy tickets for the Hop On, Hop Off bus tour of Dublin.

This bus tour is great, they have them in all big cities here, even in Florence, and you get a continuous commentary about the city as you drive around. The bus will stop at specific places and you can get off if you want, look around a bit, and get back on. It’s great! Our first stop was St. Stephen’s Green.

This park is amazing. I was dying to see some greenery since Florence is all stone and pavement, and I really enjoyed this park. We walked around for close to an hour just taking pictures and joking around and having a really nice day. The duck ponds were really cute, and the grass was beautiful–everything looked really put together. This was definitely one of my favorite places in all of Dublin!

After that we stopped at Dublin Castle to look around. We were going to go in, but we would have had to pay for a guided tour and we didn’t really want to do that, so we just took pictures on the outside.

It was a beautiful building, and the tour guide on the bus said it was the seat of Parliament for 700 years. Also, it had been built (I think) when the Vikings came to Dublin, so that’s a pretty old building! After that, we grabbed lunch at a nice hotel nearby. That was also cheap and very good! It was so nice to be able to sit down to a meal and not worry about a sitting fee and if we were going to spend an arm and a leg for our food. I love Ireland .

After this, we looked in some more shops and hopped back on the bus. Kelly and I got off at the Guinness Storehouse to take the tour while Cara and Bailey went and did their own thing. The Guinness tour is in a building, and the tour itself goes up these stairs in a section of the building that’s shaped like a giant pint glass. At the top there is the Gravity Bar where you get your free pint of Guinness and 360 degree views of Dublin. It was so neat. I learned a lot about how to make a good beer, at least what I don’t already know from my dad, haha.

We walked back to Trinity College to meet Cara and Bailey at 6, and we decided it would be a great time to go back to the hostel, take our showers, and head out for dinner. We went to a place called The Porterhouse right next to Trinity, and it was delicious! Kelly and I both got "steak sandwiches," which were just small steaks on top of really good bread with fries and tomato salad on the side. The steak wasn’t that great, but everything else was. It was a bar, so it started to get loud by the end of our meal and we were all exhausted from the walking we did all day, so we went back to the hostel and went to sleep.

The next morning we had to get out early because our flight left at 12:20, and Bailey and Cara wanted to see St. Patrick’s Cathedral because it was closed for a ceremony on Saturday. We took the bus there, found out we had to pay to get in, and decided to just take pictures outside. If we had more time we would have paid and really taken in the church, but by this point it was close to 10:15 and we still had to catch the bus. We walked around in a small park right next to the cathedral for a few minutes, then we booked it to the bus stop. We got to the airport at 11:45 and RAN through security and check in, and made it to the gate just as they were boarding. We got pretty lucky.

This is where the not so great stuff starts. We arrived in Rome at about 4:45pm and we had tickets for a bus to take us from Rome Ciampino airport to Rome Termini train station, because it’s about a 40 minute right. Well, Kelly and I got on the bus with no problem, but Cara and Bailey didn’t. They just disappeared. As the bus pulled away without them, we saw them walking out of the airport…and we were confused. Apparently they were just making sure about their tickets or something so they went to the bus kiosk inside to clarify everything. Well, they called us and another bus was coming in 20 minutes, and we were only about 10 minutes into our own bus ride. We arrived at the train station and looked up times for the train to Florence and tried to buy our own, but it said we couldn’t for some reason and we had to go to a ticket window. Alright, that’s fine. We get in line and finally go to a woman and we say, in Italian "Four tickets to Florence, please." Well, she gave us a nasty look and looked it up for us and said there were no second class seats available, only first. Then she said the price, which was 216 euro. So I asked, again in Italian, "For 4 people?" And she repeated 216 euro in a short way, so by this point I was fed up with Italians and how rude they are, and I said louder "No, is that for four people?" in Italian. I’m not a mean person and I’m very shy, but this woman was making me so angry!! Finally, she told us a train was leaving at 8:30 and we could get on that one, which would get us into Florence by 10:30. Wonderful. So we just bought the tickets and she kept making faces at us and I kept having to refrain from yelling at her. Cara and Bailey finally arrived, and we spent two hours in McDonald’s in the train station talking about how much better Ireland is than Italy. We were just angry and tired from travelling, and not all Italians are rude, but a lot are. Especially to tourists. We were just fed up. We made it home fine and finally walked into Maria’s at 11:30pm, because of course the train was late. She had made pasta for us and it was delicious and Kelly and I just passed out as early as we could.

Despite the travel troubles at the end, I really had a great time. I think Ireland is one of the greatest places in the world! I’ve never met nicer or more helpful people, and I think everyone should go there one day. This weekend we are going to Rome with the school and we’ll be doing ALL the tours, so that’ll be another great blog entry with hopefully lots of pictures. I’m loving it here, but I can’t wait to come home–only 22 days! I can’t believe it’s so soon already. Well, I’ll let everyone go, and enjoy my pictures: Dublin Pictures. Ciao!

~Katie

PS-I’ll find out who our new president is tomorrow morning…I’m nervous!

Well, I suppose I should start from the very beginning because it was a long weekend! We left Thursday night at 7 pm from Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence (after, of course, grabbing a very nutritious dinner from McDonalds), and by we I mean me, Kelly, Cara, Bailey, Caitlin, Abbie, Amber, and Tanja. It was a big girls weekend! The bus ride was about 7 hours long and we had to stop by some shady, out-of-the-way train station near Rome to pick up three random girls who were coming on the trip with us (all in all, there were about 48 of us, plus two guides, on this trip). We arrived at our very nice hotel/hostel around 2:30-3 am exhausted, hungry, and dirty but we all just passed out right away so it didn’t matter.

This was the view from outside our room down into the outdoor courtyard (10 of us roomed together!). Our guides told us it wouldn’t be wise to judge future hostel stays based on this one alone, and I believe them. It was a pretty nice place; downstairs there was a bar and they served us breakfast. We could eat dinner there for only 5 euro a plate (mostly pasta) and they had a rooftop terrace for warmer weather.

We all woke up the next morning about 7:30-8 am and were out the door by 9 to get to Capri. We had to take a ferry over and it was pretty overcast, but it was worth every single second. Capri is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Even with a cloudy sky the water looked navy blue and clear, and I could tell that the people staying on the island or living there were mighty rich, based on the number of yachts in the bay and expensive cars parked on the narrow, winding streets. First, we took a boat to the Blue Grotto, which is literally a small hole in the side of a huge cliff that opens into a dark cave.

Kelly, me, Amber, and Tanja were in a small rowboat, and the guy who was rowing the boat just told us to get down low so he could yank on the chain and pull us into the grotto. I don’t get nervous about small spaces or anything like that, but imagine having to fit a boat into that opening! It was pretty scary, but so worth it. Once you’re in, it’s a big, dark cave and you can’t see anything until you turn around to face the bright opening where the sunlight is streaming in. It shines up out of the water and it looks like there are lights below the water that are illuminating it–it’s so blue it looks like pool water. With all the men rowing the boats singing Dean Martin and their voices echoing off the cave walls it sends chills down your spine–there’s no other place like it in the world. No description can do it justice, it’s only something you can see firsthand to really understand what I’m talking about.

After that we took a tour on the bigger boat around the entire island (which isn’t very big), but it’s so beautiful. A lot of it is just green grass and trees or tan and white cliffs with cerulean waters breaking against them. It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life (aside from Positano, which I’ll get to next!). The rock formations are amazing–I took a few pictures of natural caves, a natural arch, and a rock off the island that has an arch in it that we went under. It’s called the kissing rock and you’re supposed to kiss someone you love as you sail under it…unfortunately, I don’t love any of the girls enough to kiss them just yet, so I didn’t get to kiss under the kissing rock .

After the tour, we hiked (and I mean hiked) two miles uphill to the town of Anacapri to get lunch and walk around a bit. That’s when things got bad–it was so steep hiking uphill that a lot of our group had to stop towards the end because we hadn’t exactly had a big breakfast or a lot of water that day, and some of us were in danger of passing out. After the initial suffering, we all sat down at a nice cafe for some pizza and much needed water before setting out to do a little shopping. We took a bus further up on the island and found a cute little place with lots of little shops with Limoncello, jewelry, and clothes. I bought a pretty necklace with green stones on it and a few people bought Limoncello. One of the salesmen took a liking to Amber and I so he kept giving us free "tastes" of the Limoncello. He also gave us a lemon-chocolate bar for 4 euro instead of its original price of 8 euro, so we made a friend . We had to meet the group back down at Marina Grande, where the ferry dropped us off in the morning, to get back to Sorrento so we decided to start walking down early instead of taking a bus back. Well, that was a mistake. We walked the three or so miles down a mountain of stone steps in the pouring, drenching rain. The steps were so steep and slippery we were all afraid we would slip and fall and have no way of getting to a reliable hospital–it was very scary.

This was the view from the top where we started our trek–down where those small, teeny tiny boats are is where we had to be. Can you even see them? Yeah, I couldn’t either. Anyway, we made it down alive and rewarded ourselves with some delicious gelato (which is the most brilliant thing man ever invented) which only served to make us colder. We did make the ferry back to Sorrento, but we were all so drenched and cold that we just stayed at the hotel to eat dinner because it was still pouring outside (we would have to walk about 45 min. into town to get dinner at a restaurant). We passed out that night around 10:30, and I’m pretty sure my parents called me around 11 but I don’t think I was even conscious enough to hear my phone ring.

The next morning we didn’t have to be out of the hostel until around 10, so we were able to sleep in! After grabbing breakfast we were off to a day at the beach at Positano. The day was much sunnier and warmer than Friday so the whole group was anticipating a nice, relaxing day at the beach. Most of the girls wore bathing suits but me, Kelly, and Amber didn’t wear ours so we just planned to sit on the beach and read. We sat through a beautiful, scenic bus ride until the driver had to let us off in the middle of the road so we could walk the next mile down more steps (by this point we were ridiculously sore from the steps the day before) to get to the beach. Apparently the roads down to the actual beach were too narrow for any bus to get through. Positano is gorgeous.

I may be biased because Saturday was so much nicer and so the water was bluer, but Positano is such a cute place. It has many little shops and cafes and homes all on cliffs overlooking the ocean. If there were elevators I think it would be much nicer, but that’s just my opinion. I saw more than one elderly lady walk up and down those hills without even breaking a sweat, so I can’t really complain without feeling silly. What I didn’t do that was really stupid was wear sunscreen, and I got sunburn on my face and arms. I got it even worse on my legs, though, and last night they were purple–I called my mom in a panic thinking I had severe sun poisoning and I had very little time to live. I’ve never had or seen anyone with such bad sunburn, so I can tell you that walking to the hotel from the ferry that night was a miserable experience (because we had to shower and get ready and make that walk again to go to dinner). The restaurant we ate at was really cheap and really good though, so I can’t complain about that!

The next day we left at 11 am to go to Pompeii and that was an experience. Mt. Vesuvius erupted 2000 years ago and buried the town of Pompeii under so much ash that it wasn’t found again until about 200 years ago. Vesuvius used to be 10,000 feet high (according to Antonio, our guide) and when it erupted long ago 7,000 feet blew off the top of it. That’s amazing–nature is a stronger force than we think! So many parts of this city are still amazingly intact, like the town market, the town center, the public baths with a lot of the original marble floors, a brothel, a lot of murals, and also a few human bodies preserved in ash.

Coming back into Florence last night felt like coming home, and that was the best part. I was so glad to get on my familiar bus home and get into my familiar bed and say hi to Maria. I think going away finally made me appreciate Florence since I finally feel like I know where I’m living for the next two months. This weekend me, Kelly, Abbie, Caitlin, and Will are going to Oktoberfest in Munich for a day (9 hours on a bus there, 9 back–don’t even ask how we’re going to do that) and that’ll certainly be an experience, but that’s what’s next for my adventures! I hope you enjoyed my description of my weekend, and I suggest that everyone go to Capri and Positano and Pompeii if they can one day–they are the places where all those pictures on calendars come from! Here are links to slideshows with all the pictures I took with captions so you can get a better idea of what I saw this weekend: Sorrento and Capri, Positano, Pompeii.

Until next time!!

Ciao!
KT