Southern Italy Field Trip

We went on a school field trip for 5 days to Southern Italy. We visited a lot of ancient Roman villas, Pompeii, Herculaneum, Almafi Coast, Castellammare, Sorrento and Tivoli. We had a great time and the weather was really nice! The sun was out most of the time and we saw some really amazing sites.

Hadrian's Villa. One of the decorative pools.

Naples, Italy. I love love love Naples. Northern Italians compare the South to Africa, in which they are very prejudiced. To be honest, I found the South and Naples to be so amazing. The people are so friendly and it's so rich with culture. Granted, there is the mob presence, but there is no sign of it at all.

The weeds had heart-shaped leaves

Three course meal in Naples the first night. Alla nostra (cheers, to us)

Greek temple, Paestum.

Seren and I

Where there are vast flower fields we will take jumping pictures. It's tradition since way back on our Rome trip in Cerveteri. Andi, Seren, Sarah, Jackie, Me and Alexia.

So, Doug, our director loves this black hat of his. He tends to be a little aloof sometimes, which I probably would be too if I had to deal with 80 something crazy college kids at all hours. Anyway, he dropped his hat in the street and Adam found it and picked it up. Well, we took it from Adam and decided to have a little photo session in Doug's hat. Here's Colton's winning pose.

In front of one of the Greek temples of Paestum.

It was such a beautiful day in Paestum. We haven't seen sunlight in ohhhh about 4 months, so it was so nice laying in the sun in the flower-filled fields. Untilllll Sarah decided to tell me that there were lizards EVERYWHERE. Luckily I didn't see any, cause that would have definitely rained on my sunny parade. However, Colton and Cole came running up right after the other screaming "lizard" from behind me trying to scare me. Well, it worked. Hope they felt bad because that definitely knocked my anxiety level up 9845948 notches.

Andi and I in Pompeii; the ancient Roman city that was completely devastated and covered by Mt. Vesuvius' (in the background) eruption in 79 A.D. Pompeii is the second most visited site in Italy, along with the Vatican which is number one. At a low point in Italy's economy, it was difficult to keep up with the maintenance of Pompeii, and Disney offered to buy it from Italy, but the Pompeiian's and those who live in the region were not having it.

When Mt. Vesuvius erupted for the first time over Pompeii, it took the lives of every human and animal within its eruption radius. The ash casted the victims as they were when they died. A Pompeiian man.

This painting was above a door inside a Pompeiian brothel. Each room would have a painting describing which sexual act the woman awaiting would perform.

While we were staying in Castellammare, we took a little dinner trip to Sorrento; about 20 minutes by train. Sorrento is famous for their huge lemons and limoncello. It is such a beautiful city along the Alfmafi Coast. We didn't make it there in time to make the sunset, so we didn't get to see the coast during the day, but nevertheless, Sorrento is gorgeous.

View from our hotel veranda, Mt. Vesuvius in the background. Castellammare, Italy.

The Romans must have been little shrimps. Shawn always makes fun of me for being so short and I was proud to find that in this ancient Roman villa, I could reach the ceiling of a doorway.

This is one of the canals running through the Villa D'Este in Tivoli. This Villa was so massive and imperial. It is known for its elaborate fountains, so impressive.

C'e sole!

Villa D'Este

Outside our hotel, the Vesuvian institute in Castellammare, we found a little puppy wandering around, so we took him with us on our day trips. I'm not quite sure what his actual name is because everyone decided they were going to give him their own name so; Olee, Pinto, etc...what have you, was so presh. Made me miss Xavi and Lucy.

To sum it up, this field trip was a success. Oh, I almost forgot to mention Paolo, our little hottie archeologist tour guide that lives in Castellammare. We got to hang out a lot and he taught me how to play Briscola, a Neopolitan card game, which I loved, because I won almost every time. What can I say? I love games.

Well, it is currently midterms week. Two down so far, three more to go. I should be studying, but for some reason I cannot for the life of me bring myself to do it. It's thunderstorming in Florence right now...the thunder is super loud and the lighting is striking basically right outside my window. I can't wait for this week to be over because Sunday, it's spring break and I leave for GREECE!!! In other news, Jason's ex-girlfriend, Megan is here visiting and I just love her. She spent the night last night at our place and she, Andi and I stayed up until like 5:30a.m. talking. Sleepover of sorts.

So, I am pretty much up to date on my blogging. Shoutout to my bestie Janelle who I just discovered reads my blog. I just write it mainly for my own benefit of documenting my trip in the hopes that someone will read it. I'm so glad to know that other people are sharing this incredible journey with me :)

Little Vacayyy: Belgium, Scotland, England

I'm seriously behind on my blogging. Gotta keep up that resolution of mine. Ok so, we had a semester break for school in February, and I was supposed to go to Egypt with the VDN kids. However, that didn't work out and I chose to go last minute on a trip to Belgium, Scotland and England with my friend Shawn. We were gone for almost two weeks, skipped the first couple days of school (oops), but nevertheless had a great time. There are so many pictures and stories from this trip, so below is a summary:

First stop was Brussels, Belgium. Our hostel was really cool and so was Brussels, but it was freezing and pretty much snowed the entire time. We walked around the town, I got a really pretty gold and pearl bracelet at this antique jewelry store, shopped at a flee market and ate some Belgian fries. The next day we headed to my favorite city of the trip: Bruges, Belgium. The windmills aligned the river.

We went on a tour of Half Moon Brewery where I had the most delicious unfiltered blonde beer. Shawn and I were there for a few hours telling stories and drinking these delicacies.

Bruges is known as the romantic city of Belgium and coincidently we were there on Valentine's Day! It was funny because the map we had had hearts marking the romantic spots on the map. We walked to this little pond full of swans, they were so cute. Sidenote: I had Rolos in my pocket. Yep, they had my favorite chocolate in Belgium, which one would think is strange that I am in Belgium eating American chocolate, but heyyy I'm deprived of these things in Italy. We later on went to this guy's house that he converted into a bar and had really great warm rum punch. The place was essentially underground with a jazz band and Cuban music. In a park in Brussels...it was so cold.

Cute cottage in Bruges.

Seaport castle where they used to hold prisoners in Antwerp, Belgium. Antwerp was amazing. Our hotel room window looked straight out to the Kathedraal, which was absolutely gorgeous.

Me with the Kathedraal in the background. Antwerp, Belgium.

The Edinburgh Castle in Scotland. The Scottish crown jewels are held here, which were really cool and had a bunch of different exhibits.

So after Edinburgh, Shawn and I headed to Inverness, Scotland hoping to be able to see the Northern Lights. We weren't far enough North unfortunately, such the bummer, but we still got to see Inverness, which was absolutely gorgeous.

Along the Ness River. Inverness, Scotland.

After Inverness, we went to Glasgow Scotland where we walked around all day taking pictures and saw Avatar in 3D. We found this little park on our day adventure and snapped this great night shot of one of the churches. We had time to kill before our movie started; we slacked and didn't get a map of the city so we invented our own game called "green man". The pedestrian signs in the UK are characterized by a walking man instead of a hand or the word "walk". The man is either red or green. So, we walked around and only crossed the crosswalks where there was a green man, leading us around the city. We ended up lost, taking us a good hour and a half to find our way back to the movie theater, just in time for it to start.

The next morning we caught the 5:30a.m. shuttle to the airport to make our 7a.m. flight to London. Took us a while to reach the Victoria Underground because of traffic, but we finally made it to Shawn's friend, Colleen's, flat in London. She lives there with her husband, Frits. They are great. We had such a good time staying there and it was such the relief to finally be staying in a normal place, out of those dang hostels. I had an open mind with those hostels, but after a while, let's be real...I don't do well with communal showers and possible bed bugs. They took us around the city, so here I am by the Tower Bridge in London.

Another view of the Tower Bridge on the other side of the Thames River. There was this really cool statue of a dolphin and a girl. It was such a nice day, the sun was out; it was still cold, but at least it wasn't raining!

On Bus 15. This bus took us everywhere and thanks to our trusty Oyster Cards that allow you to just jump on and off the public transportation all over the city, we were able to see a lot. In this picture we were on our way to St. Paul's Cathedral where we actually go to stay for evening mass called "Evensong", and we got to sit next to the choir, it was a great experience. Overall, London was amazing, reminded me a lot of the United States, made me miss home a little.

All in all, I had a great trip! It was a little exhausting to say the least, jumping from city to city, country to country, but I suppose I need to get used to it cause traveling has just been amazing. Definitely a trip to remember.

Going to work on another update now because I went to Southern Italy for 5 days, have really great pictures and stories from that trip. I'm heading to Greece a week from today!!! This is the trip I've been waiting for, and best of all, it's for spring break. I can't wait. Until next time...

XO-Ash

Carnevale in Venice

Hey all, I know it's been a few weeks since I last updated my blog, however it has been with good reason. I've been so busy lately, but I can't complain too much because I've been busy mostly traveling and relaxing as our semester break was a couple weeks ago.

The little adventure to Venice wasn't during our break though, it was the weekend before finals. Crazy one might say considering our debacle of a time there, but we wanted to be there for opening day and our travel plans for semester break wouldn't allow us the opportunity to go when we got out of school, so here en lies the story of our mini-vaca to Venice.

Seren and I went to Carnevale in Venice for a day. Now, when I say a day, I literally mean 24 hours and then some. We are a little crazy and I'll be it, broke. So, in order to save a significant amount of $$$ we took the 5 hour, 4:30a.m. train from Florence to Venice. The ride wasn't that bad once we got ON the train, you see, Seren forgot to set her alarm and woke up just in the nick of time for she and I to sprint to the station and jump on the train with literally one minute to spare.

Once we got there, we had such a great time. Everyone was dressed from head to toe in their Carnevale attire; masks, gowns, costumes, face make-up, full body paint, the whole thing. It was great. We walked around Venice seeing the sights and visiting every public bathroom we could find, and mind you they are a prized commodity in Italy since there are NO public restrooms. In effort to be prepared for our entire day's festivities she and I packed each a bag FULL of goodies: make-up, a smorgasbord of food, hairspray, hairbrushes, socks etc...pretty much anything your little imagination could muster up, we had it. I took a page out of my Abuelita's book and made sure I was prepared for anything or any act of God. Anyway, whenever and wherever we found the treasure of a public bathroom, we took the liberty to set up a beauty shop in each one, nevermind there were long lines of eager women waiting to probably do the same outside the door. People probably thought it was quite strange when two girls dressed exactly alike head to toe (we predetermined to wear the same exact outfit) entered the bathroom together. There was nothing we could do, we were there from 930a.m. and were going to be there until our train left at 3:11a.m. the next morning, so we needed to freshen up from time to time. Anyway, I'm pretty sure restaurants and bars will think twice about letting two girls dressed alike in glittery gold party dresses use their bathrooms for free.

We then proceeded to find this really cute bar on the coast of the port and sat for 4 hours drinking wine and rum and cokes. We made many friends, mostly guys who just wanted to harass us, would come sit at our table and talk themselves up like they were the kings of carnevale. It was fun to entertain their efforts though, Seren and I got a good laugh out of it. Italian men can be so ridiculous sometimes. A few drinks and a few hours later, we ended up participating in the opening ceremony parade and getting kebabs that we don't remember getting or paying for, for that matter. We found our way back to the train station after a more wild series of events, but nevertheless we were safe and back on the train. Not to mention however, how the train ride home, I was praying to the porcelain (gross plastic in this case) god of the train bathroom because I "luckily" encountered a bout of food poisoning. I don't know, maybe from the kebab. Anyway, we made it safely home around 7a.m. the following morning, all in all...it was a great time. The following pictures are the evidence:

I found some Italian smurfs

In Costume

Our packed lunch, including tupperware!

Really cool mask boutique

Matching Masks!