Words are flowing out

(Latest 20 entries) (Calendar) (Friends) (User info)
Navigate: (Previous 20 entries)

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Monday, April 7, 2008

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

10:00AM - FYI

Just a note to any/all who used to read my journal - as you've no doubt figured out by now, I don't really post any more. I didn't like the reactions it was producing in me, and I never had much to say anyway.  I'm still quite active on LJ in the community apt_aye_aye so feel free to stalk me there.  I also check my friends' posts and might comment once in a while; if you don't want me reading, modify your privacy settings accordingly :).
In the event I do start posting again, my posts will almost certainly be friend-locked.  (That means YOU, random internet stalker).  Give me a heads-up if you want to be on the list.

Current mood: quirky

(5 love bites | bite me)

Friday, January 19, 2007

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

5:28AM - where have I gone?

Another sporadic post:

I had a second to catch my breath this evening, so I started straightening up my room a bit and began to find things I hadn't even thought about for two or three weeks. It was as if I'd left off a train of thought maybe a month ago, and as I've been cleaning I've found things that make me pick it back up. The project I started - making origami cranes to decorate my ceiling - is still lying unfinished on my art table. I keep finding printouts of old resumes and publicity pamphlets from the job fair I went to, and that's reminding me that I really should start thinking (again) about what the hell I'm going to do after I graduate.

It's so surreal to find little pieces of my life scattered around my room. It really is like that part of me was just lost under all the work I've been focusing on for the past couple of weeks. I really miss writing in my little journal, and meditating, and having time to sit and think once in a while.

On a happy note, it's my birthday this weekend! I don't think anything resembling a party will come together, but it looks like I will have time to spend a few quality hours with awesome friends at various times. I'm just hoping for a really relaxing and fulfilling weekend :)

Current mood: calm

Current music: Massive Attack - Butterfly Caught

(bite me)

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Sunday, October 8, 2006

Wednesday, October 4, 2006

12:26PM

This week, I devote my life to making a blanket.

Current mood: sleepless

Current music: none

(bite me)

Saturday, September 16, 2006

12:02AM - Heh, about that . . .

It's been a while since my last update - a lack of an internet connection, extreme business, and a generally tepid attitude toward livejournal conspired to prevent me. Now, though, I've set up my internet ($26 a month PLUS the $45 installation fee?!?!), I have a semi-free evening, and I feeling livejournally mananimous.

This is clearly going to be my busiest year of college, not only because of schoolwork, but also because I'm living off campus and the commuting time is making it a huge hassle. Technically, I'm very close to campus - about a 20 minute walk - but the part of campus I'm close to is . . . the lake. 5 out of 6 of my classes are on the other side, a good 30 to 40 minute walk for me. Schoolwork is mounting steadily, too; but since I'm spending 90% of my time immersed in art, it doesn't seem so bad.

The less I use it, the more my interest in keeping this thing going wanes. I have a written journal that I keep now, and keeping lj updated with mundane details seems kind of pointless these days. Who knows? Maybe some exciting boy-centered drama will happen to me and I'll feel the need to publicly vent it.

For now, though, I'm going to go burn some incense and take a bath :)



oh PS - I'm using this icon as a base for my first print in screenprinting!

Current mood: loud noises!

Current music: missy elliot blasting from upstairs

(bite me)

Monday, August 28, 2006

4:22PM - the first of many posts from the library

This is what it looks like when I make a post from a library computer in between classes! Expect a few more soon, filled with sentencesthatlooklikethisbecausethespacebarssuck.

I decided I didn't want to pay a full price when I'd be using the internet for only half a month, so I'm not hooking my computer up until the 8th of September. Hence the library post.

Oh, my apartment is cool. I have sweet neighbors to the right of me, above me, and below me. The girls across the hall and the guys up above seem neat but we haven't hung out yet. I made my first meal of heavily garlicked chicken and enjoyed my first incredibly unhealthy meal of pizza and breadsticks (free! thanks to Victoria's boyfriend). It's slowly starting to feel like home.

I've had a couple of classes today, got one more at 5:30. The first day of school seems less climactic when you've done it for . . . what, 15 years now? I did, however, have to pay for lunch since what I packed (leftover chicken from the other night) was embarrassingly garlicky and I decided not to scare people away on the first day. In doing so, I discovered an amazing granolayogurtfruit thing at Market One which I will be eating again, soon. Yum.

It's raining outside and I'm going to go play. Bye!

Current mood: dancing!

Current music: badly drawn boy - everybody's stalking

(bite me)

Sunday, August 13, 2006

3:51PM - I have this problem

I have some awesome scented candles that I bought for a couple bucks, and which I burn occasionally. The weird thing, though, is that they don't seem to give off a scent when I'm burning them. I notice it more right after I've blown the candle out.

I just thought that was weird enough to be worth writing about. Anyone else have this problem?

Current mood: bouncy

Current music: Ramones - Cretin Hop

(1 love bite | bite me)

Saturday, July 29, 2006

10:44PM - lookit what I got!

I bought a car.

( isn't )

Current mood: pleased

Current music: the rolling stones - miss you

(15 love bites | bite me)

Friday, July 21, 2006

9:42AM - to recap

Well . . .
here's a general update on some of my adventures in Europe, for those who care to read. I'll start with Venice, skipping over some of the boy-induced drama that occurred the week after we went to Rome . . .

EDIT: After writing about Ireland, I realized I'm going to have to reserve a special update just for that part of my trip. I'll post that in a day or two. For now, here is . . .

( VENICE )

Current mood: calm

Current music: Foo Fighters

(bite me)

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

10:41PM - back

Hey.

I'm back home, finally and unbelievably. I'm going to make a post tomorrow with some excerpts from my travel journal and some thoughts on Europe in general. I feel like I've changed a lot over the past couple of months! I can't wait to pick up my life in the US again . . . and to continue to write and reflect about all the changes I've felt over the past months.

For now, though, I'm going to bed.

PS: Here's a quote from a shirt I saw at Mill Mountain today -

"There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don't."

My inner geek is pleased :)

Current mood: indescribable

Current music: led zeppelin - no quarter

(1 love bite | bite me)

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

3:57AM - from IRELAND

Hi everyone!

Expect another post with a meme in it tonight. I decided to save money and stay up all night at an Internet cafe in Dublin rather than pay for a hostel. I'm going to want to kick myself in the morning, but I had made the decision to stay here all night unfortunately prior to getting mom's email that "you shouldn't worry about spending money in Europe, we'll figure out how to pay for it later." Pointless games, compulsive away-message-checking, and endless facebooking are in my future!

Oh, and I'm in Ireland. It's been kind of an up-and-down trip. I'll post more later!

Current mood: geeky

Current music: oingo boing - insanity

(bite me)

Thursday, July 6, 2006

4:19PM

Hello!

I'm done! Classes are over! I'm packing now for Ireland!!

I cannot believe that the eight weeks are over. I'm so in denial about it, and I'm really really sad to be leaving Florence. It's definitely become a home to me. I feel like I've really bonded with my homestay signora, too. I can hold a conversation with her in Italian now and she's so much fun to chat with. I can't believe I have to leave Italy tomorrow! I'm not ready!!!

When I post again I guess I'll be back in the states... I'll try to be concise, but there's a lot to tell!

Until then.

Current mood: recovering

(bite me)

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

4:58PM - ROME

Rome trip!

It's time again for another long and detailed post about something that happened a few weeks ago in Italy . . . get ready kids, because today it's Rome!

Friday, June 16, 2006
We met (all 30something of us) in the train station at 8:30 to catch our luxury train to Rome. I'd been on a Eurostar train to get to Milan before, so I knew what to expect (tray tables, window screens, and a dining car). I don't think the train itself is worth the cost, by the by, but what is worth it is having a nonstop train. It only took us an hour and a half to get to Rome.

Here's an excerpt from my journal on the train:
"Traveling by train to rome . . . it's a strangely detached experience to travel so quickly in trains and planes. Far away, the landscape flows by so serenely and so passively. This far away you can't think about all the small concerns that must fill it - it all passes away and rolls by. You look at it for a second and then move on. You think about all the places you're not going as you pass them."
I think what I was trying to say is that when you pass through a place on a train you have a very distanced view of it to the point that it loses meaning, whereas to drive through the main streets of a town would give a more connected experience.

Anyway.

We walked around Rome and attempted to follow our crude map, which ended up taking us to Vatican city (across from Castello Angelo) when we had been trying to find the Spanish Steps. For those of you who don't have your map of Rome handy, I should tell you that those two things are kind of nowhere near one another. Personally, I didn't consider it a total waste, A - because I'm always in favor of getting lost and finding myself when visiting a city for the first time, and B - we got to see Castello Angelo, which is featured in the book ANGELS AND DEMONS. Has anyone else read it? I managed to fly through it a couple of days before we left for Rome. It made things SO much more interesting.

So. We got lunch (mmm, fried eggplant sandwiches) and staggered back to our hotel for a nap before the walking tour of ROME with the whole group and a tour guide.

To give you an idea of my tour, I should start by telling you that the people in my program have a physical impairment that prevents them from walking quickly and staying close in a group when they're on tours of big cities, art museums, or really anywhere else where it would be helpful if they stayed close to one another and walked quickly. I should also mention that we were all wearing little walkie-talkies withe earphones so we could hear our guide even when he spoke only quietly. These are a good idea in theory, but in practice they ended up being full of really annoying static that hurt most people's ears and made it impossible to hear the tour guide. But don't start thinking that those things made me not enjoy the tour of the city, because they didn't :)

The first place we went was the PANTHEON. Let me tell you how close it was to our hotel: it took us about 2 minutes to walk there. There, now I've told you. The inside of the Pantheon is amazing. It feels so round inside, like the roundest place you've ever been in. I loved it and wanted to stay and sketch. Having taken latin it was really cool to see a monument we'd learned about so much in class. It kind of sucks that it was converted into a church though . . . I mean, it did save the monument from destruction, and I guess in a way it could be seen as an instance of Christianity embracing historical aspects - i.e., Christ's salvation in a way working backwards through time to the pagan era - but in the Pantheon the church things look SO GAUDY. It makes you wince to see them, and you want to see the Pantheon as it had been built and in the function for which it was intended.

After the Pantheon we walked past a monument to the unification of Italy (which was only in like 1865 or 1868). It was big and white and most impressive :) We also saw the outside of Mussolini's office and his little balcony. Around the corner from that is a piazza designed by Michelangleo with a little dot in the middle that's supposed to be "where all the roads lead". I'm not sure that I buy that (I have a feeling the tour guide was joking...). Then we walked past a little fountain where an acqueduct has been bringing water for about 2,200 years, continuously. I'm kind of sorry I dind't stop to drink out of it.

Then just a few steps away is the ROMAN FORUM!!!!! This was VERY cool for me to see (Latin again). It's really quite large - I wasn't able to take any pictures that really do it justice. I was so impressed by how many ruins there were and how much there was to see that was SO old. We saw the place where Julius Caesar's ashes... I think... uh... well there's a monument to Julius Caesar, and the big triumphal arch, and some ancient roads, and the palace of the vestal virgins, and the... place where the senate meets (can't remember the name). It really had an ancient feel to it. I could almost picture the oratories that must have gone on there.

Then, again just a hop, skip, and a jump away, was the COLOSSEUM. This was the best fun for me, and I took like 50 pictures. As we were going in I felt like I should be wearing a stola and going in with my husband to watch some games... it's really an incredible experience. I always thought that pictures of the Colosseum looked lame, but having seen it in person is much more exciting. I also have to say, though this might sound dumb, that I'm glad to have seen the movie Gladiator. I actually have heard that it's very faithful to the design of the Colosseum - it shows.

The tour of Rome took about 3 hours, but I loved every minute of it. I was fairly comfortable most of the time - it was hot but definitely not unbearable. Somehow my feet miraculously weren't that sore, either. After our tour Sherry and Jess and I went to the supermarket to buy cheap food for dinner. I got two rolls, some salami, cheese, and peaches all for about 3 euro, which was fantastic. We took our food with us to the TREVI FOUNTAIN, which is a very famous and lovely place. There's a ton of big statues there and the water is incredibly blue. If you've ever seen La Dolce Vita, there's a scene there where an american actress goes into the fountain and walks around and her italian friend comes in to bring her out. We had a relaxing dinner by the fountain and some gelato on the way back, then ended up crashing really early.

Let me pause now to tell you how bad my first night was.
- I had nightmares all night
- people were snoring
- people in the next room were talking (loudly)
- either dogs or demented people outside were making noises that sounded like maniacal laughter (hence the nightmares)
- birds were making noises
- I was unbearably hot

It may have been the worst night's sleep I've ever experienced.

On top of it all, we had to get up at 6 the next morning to get to the VAtican archives early. Now, I'm not a morning person really, but I do freely acknowledge that mornings are glorious. Walking around Rome at like 7 in the morning was really amazing - no people anywhere, and that clean fresh air you only get in the morning... so nice. Also, here we saw another of the sites from ANGELS AND DEMONS - the fountain in the piazza navona. Rock.

We crossed the bridge to Vatican city (GORGEOUS view of the river and St. Peter's; you can see it in my FB pictures when I put them up), walked to st. peter's and around to the back, and then waited an hour in line to get into the museums. Apparently it's nigh impossible to get in - keep in mind we got in line at about...7:45, 8:00 in the morning, and the museums open at 8:45. So whoa. We spent a long time in the Vatican museums talking about the sistine chapel and then proceeded to not go into it for another two hours or so. I mean, the other things we saw were interesting, but it would have been nice to know we wouldn't be going in right away. I saw a famous statue of Laocoon and of Apollo and lots and LOTS of antique Roman and Greek statues that were pretty cool. We also saw THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS by Raphael, which is among my favoriteist of paintings :) I had no idea it is so large in real life - it fills an entire gigantic wall. Actually seeing the fresco seemed a little bit anticlimatic, but I learned a few things that are new about it. My guide also said that everyone in the fresco is silent... (meaning that no one is pictured as talking to one another) I'm not sure that I agree with him, but it makes for a very beautiful idea.

Now we come to the Sistine Chapel. I really liked being inside, but I was disappointed that the room was very poorly lit and we were only allowed to stay in there for 10 minutes. I really wanted to sit down, sketch, and reflect. Many people feel it's less impressive to see it in person (it does get awfully built up) but I felt it was still amazing. The genius of it is that it the design is so conscious of the shape of the building it's in. It's not just a fresco that's slapped up on the ceiling - the architectural elements are absolutely essential in creating a rhythmic, balanced, and pleasing composition. It's very elaborate and quite beautiful, but yet it avoids becoming gaudy and rococo like SO many other ceilings I've seen.

Then we went into st. peter's bascilia, which felt smaller than it actually is because the scale is so enormous. We spent some time in there seeing various things (it was fun to be there, too, having studied it in art history) and then were free to go.

We ate lunch near the vatican, then rested, then went to find the elusive Spanish Steps. This time, we made it, walked up, looked around, then walked back leisurely to the hotel, where my 3 roommates rested while I went back to the pantheon to sketch. I ended up getting distracted when a flirtatious Italian man sat down next to me (Italian guys? sleazy? never....). I get so self-conscious when people try to talk to me when I'm sketching. I mean, it's not something that lends itself to conversation if the other person isn't also an artist. It's about being somewhere for aesthetics, so I'd be moving around, lying on the floor to get an angle, thinking, etc. rather than talking (if I could). What with one thing and another my sketches of the pantheon were largely frustrated.

On my way back I got lost and wandered in a church where I stumbled on some paintings by Caravaggio, another of my favorites. Who knew? Then it was naptime again.

We went to dinner as a group, which was SO much fun. We had a trattoria mostly to ourselves (it was really early; I have no idea why we ate so early but it was like 6:30). It was the kind of restaurant where there's no menu - they have a specialty or a number of dishes they usually make, and you just sit down and eat whatever they bring you. It was a lot of fun - the food just seemed to keep on coming! We had:

-bread (of course)
-deep-fried potato chips (!?)
-olives
-prosciutto (ham)
-veal
-fennel
-pasta
-salad
-mozzarella balls (mmmmmm)
-amazing dessert
-fresh-squeezed peach juice

No wine, sadly, since the bill was being paid by JMU, but as a consolation prize we all went out to a bar together afterwards! This was incredibly fun, especially since our 50something program director Alessandro came out with us. He's a professor as well as the director, and it was so funny to be going out to a bar with him. We all went into a sports bar to watch the Italy-US game and had fun being raucous and trying not to get mobbed by everyone cheering for Italy. The game ended up in a tie but I think we all had fun anyway. Afterwards Steph, Jess, and I went back to the hotel briefly and ended up taking slightly drunken pictures with Alessandro, then went to the trevi fountain (we hadn't seen it at night), took pictures, and found our way back to the hotel for sleep.

I slept much better that night, by the way.

Also we didn't have to get up super-early. we were all checked out by 10 and most of us walked with Alessandro to the Vatican for the Angelus (where the Pope blesses everyone in st. peter's and says some stuff). Apparantly that day's Angelus was interesting because there were like 100 ferraris that pulled into the square to get blessed. It was kind of blatantly hypocritical . . . but yes, I got to see the Pope (from very far away)!!! His voice is really nice and soothing. I wish he was my grandfather. I didn't understand most of what he was saying but I caught some words here and there. It probably would have been more fun if I was catholic, but it was still interesting.

Then I walked around, sketched, wandered around rome, ate a ridiculously messy lunch, and met up to leave Rome. We took a bus to the train station, caught a train, and a couple hours later we were back in Florence.

I like Rome best of all the cities in Italy I've been to so far. There's tons to see and do, but like many cities it's still a place you can walk around in. I would say that I could get from one end of my map to the other in 45 minutes or an hour. Rome seems bigger and cleaner than Florence, and somehow you just don't notice the tourists as much.

So, there's my update. Here are some quick highlights on my life since then:

- I'm planning my trip to Ireland and getting more excited by the minute!
-last week was . . . interesting. Things happened that made me kind of homesick
-among the things that happened was this: my meal money for the weekend was stolen. We get an allowance of 75 euro per week for meals, and I had about 40 of it still left on Friday. I had just bought some fruit for dinner from the supermarket and was on my way out when an Italian man came up to me and showed me a police badge. He asked (in Italian) to see my receipt, checked on what I had bought, asked that I open my purse, looked inside, said something about a video camera, and left. The whole interaction took about 30 seconds, and on my way out I realized that at some point he had managed to take my change purse where I keep my meal allowance. I'm mad that I let that happen, but also very, very glad that I keep that money separate, because he wasn't able to take my entire wallet that way. Still, that was 40 euro down the drain, plus a very unpleasant experience to boot.
-I had another equally unpleasant experience on Friday that I may or may not end up writing about
-it's so hot in Florence :(
-I went to some gardens today
-I went to Lucca this weekend!

I'll keep you guys posted. Peace!

Current mood: accomplished

Current music: No Doubt

(1 love bite | bite me)

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

8:11AM - Bologna

As promised, here's my update on my day trip to Bolonga!

Two weekends ago I took a day trip to Bologna. I went by myself and played everything by the seat of my pants. Let me give you an example: I went to the station at about 9 in the morning, not knowing when any of the trains were or even if there would be a train to Bologna that day.
Lucky for me, there were several trains, many of them cheap, so I hopped on one for about 8 euro and rode for about and hour and a half. Here I should pause to tell you how exciting this train was: it was one of those trains that has the little compartments of 6 seats with a little sliding door and everything and it was really exciting for me. I'd been wanting to ride on a compartment train ever since I got to Europe.

I got into Bologna and wandered around until I found a suitably cheap map, which wasn't really helpful since I kept getting lost. The getting lost part wasn't so bad since I got to see different parts of the city. It reminded me of Charlottesville in some weird way I can't really define. While lost, I passed a nutelleria, which you can see in some of my facebook pictures. It was a food shop based on the concept that nutella is amazing. Stupidly, I decided not to go in, since I wanted to eat closer to the centre of town.

After an hour or so of wandering, I found the center of town, which is a square with TWO leaning towers (take that, Pisa). One of them isn't really noticeable, and the other one is leaning like whoa at like... an 75 degree angle. It's intense. Having found the centre of town I proceeded to find the nearest restaurant that looked cheap, which turned out to be a place called Ristorante Bis Pastarito. I got gnocci (a kind of pasta made with POTATOES and flour rolled into little squishy balls) with some kind of sauce that I didn't really like and some wine.

Then I climbed up the less leaning tower (complete with a terrifying wooden staircase that I was convinced was about to fall off the wall), looked out at the view, and climbed back down. I explored the big basilica, which I think is called San Pietro, and which is gigantic. It was kind of annoying inside because there were all these signs saying "silenzio!" and whatnot, but there was also REALLY LOUD construction going on, so the concept of silence was kind of... not silent in this church. Sigh. Anyway then I wandered around various buildings near the church, including the office of state (I think?) which had a lovely little well in the courtyard (you can see that picture on facebook too). At one point I went into a museum with an exhibit called "the world of canes"! I wasn't aware that canes had their own private world. NOW I KNOW BETTER.

I wandered in and out of more churches, got gelato, found an antique market, and started to head back to the train station when I found a random parade of college-aged hippies having the absolute time of their lives being dressed up and dancing for no apparent reason. This was really exciting for me because they had some awesome drum cadences that reminded me of marching band. I watched the whole parade, then walked to catch up with the front of it and follow/dance in it. This was awesome because the whole parade would stop periodically so everyone watching could dance as well. At one point the entire parade got silent and they got the spectators to shut up for about 5 minutes of silence before everyone burst into song and dance and music again. SO cool. By this time I had to run back to the train station to catch the 8:20 train back to Florence, which was quick and easy.

And that was my day in Bologna.


Updates on Rome coming soon!!!

Current mood: still hungry

Current music: ceiling fan

(3 love bites | bite me)

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

4:50PM

Sorry it's been so long! School just kicked into gear here and I'm trying to crank out a paper on Dante's Inferno. Anyway, here's a brief report on Paris:

Day 1: Friday June 2
I got in on the trip to Paris with my friends/acquaintances from school: Sherry, Lola, and Leslie, and we spent two full days in the city together.
Friday was . . . an adventure. Our train left for Milano at about 11:00, and we had an embarrassing few minutes finding our seats (we had no idea they were reserved - the trains we'd been on before were just first-come-first-serve). Two and a half hours later, we were in Milano Centrale. This is where things get interesting: we had to ride on a bus for an hour to get from the station to the airport. We were prepared for this and managed to find the bus and get ourselves to the airport... but we had no idea where our check-in counter was. We wandered around lost for a while and finally found out we'd have to take another bus to our terminal. (Keep count of how many buses I ride on: we're up to 2). At the airport we had a bit of a break to drink some beer and admire the Alps until it was time to check in. After check-in, of course we had to take yet another bus out to our plane, which left quite late, but provided us more breathtaking mountain views AND complimentary chocolate bars from the airline. When we landed in Zurich we had to take another bus to the terminal and literally run to our next gate just in time to catch the following plane from Zurich to Paris. An uneventful plane ride with more chocolate later, we landed at Charles du Galle airport. Now things get really interesting: we had to take a bus to the train terminal and a special train into the city. Of course, we had no idea how to do this, so we ended up asking several random strangers (who, by the way, were very nice) for advice. One way or another we managed our way onto the train into Paris, where a very nice stranger spent the 40 minute train ride writing a huge list of things for us to do in the city. From the train we had to take a metro that let us off near the Louvre museum, and then it was a mere 20-minute walk to our hotel.
So, let's count together:
1 metro +
2 trains +
2 planes +
5 buses =
10 modes of transportation
And, I might add, our entire journey took us something like 12 hours altogether.

BUT

Our hotel was spectacular :). I encourage you all to go here to look at it. It was easily and by far the most posh hotel I've ever stayed in, and the best part was that the father of one girl on our trip footed almost the entire bill for us! (I'm still not sure why he was willing to pay so much money for 3 complete strangers to stay with his daughter in a nice hotel in Paris... but I'm not complaining).

and PS - the hotel provided complimentary champagne and a bowl of fresh strawberries in each of our rooms when we arrived :)


Saturday June 3:
We were up early for a ridiculously extravagant (and incredibly multicultural) breakfast at the hotel, then we walked over to the Louvre. Getting there early was a great idea: the line was maybe... 200 people strong (not that big at all) and it moved constantly, so we had to wait only about 10 minutes to get in. We all kind of went our separate ways when we were in, with plans to meet back at the hotel later in the day. I spent about 5 hours in the Louvre looking at sketching. Here's some of what I saw:
the Mona Lisa
Madonna of the Rocks
Victory of Samothrace
Venus de Milo
Napoleon by Ingres
the stele of Hammurabi (Hammurabi's code)
the oathtakers by David

and much, much more!
When I finally made it back to the hotel I had about 20 minutes to lie around before we went out to a shop called (I think) Vigne. Or vino. Something having to do with wine - because the shop sold about 30,000 different kinds of wine!! There were people there advertising their wines who let us taste them for free, which we did, finally buying an interesting blush from some guy. The best part about the shop is that you could take your wine upstairs to be chilled and opened and sit to drink it for free in the little bar. We made friends with the owner and managed to get some free bread and olive oil, too. We had a quick dinner and Lola and Leslie headed out for a cruise and a show at the Moulin Rouge (!) while Sherry and I took the metro up to Montmarte to look around at artisan shops and restaurants. My biggest regret of the day is not having eaten up at Montmarte: there were restaurants all over every block and they all looked spectacular! It was a very bohemian-feeling part of town.

I had an interesting encounter while Sherry was looking for a painting to buy: I had wandered off a few feet to take a picture when a man came up and tried to ask me something in french (of course, I speak no french) - but lucky for him, he couldn't really speak french either, and I heard him drop a few Italian words! By now I know enough Italian to have an elementary conversation. It was so interesting to me to be able to have a conversation with someone in a language other than English or French... in a country where I know none of the language it was so comforting to hear "a foreign language" that I could understand.

So we went up to Sacre-Coeur and watched the sunset, then spent a while getting lost and trying to find our way down to the moulin rouge. We eventually did (after much frustration) and I bought a spectacular chocolate pastry nearby. We took the metro back and fell into our beds of down comforters and feather pillows.

Sunday June 4
This was by far the most frustrating day for me. I felt ill most of the day, so that put a damper on things, but what was harder to deal with were my tripmates. One girl is easily the rudest person I've ever met - and I feel bad having to say that, but it's true. She's the kind of stereotypically rude American that people in other countries probably picture when they say they hate us. Another was starting to get on my nerves, too - I'd rather not go into it, I hate gossiping, but suffice to say it was unpleasant. We did get to go to Notre Dame and I attended morning prayer, after which I had a few minutes to poke around in the cathedral and the surrounding gardens. After that it was shop, shop, shop (that's really all two of my tripmates were interested in). Of course, it being Sunday many shops were closed, so we got to see some more interesting things in Paris, like the Arc du Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower...! Fueled by the most disgusting waffle I've ever eaten, I was proud to climb up 700 steps to the second floor rather than pay the 8 euro difference to take an elevator up. The view was okay - Paris isn't that exciting of a view for me. I kind of hung around the general area of the Eiffel Tower afterwards (our group split up) and eventually found my way back to the hotel, but now before making a trip to the lovely chocolate shop right next to my hotel! Ahhh, such amazing chocolate. I spent quite a bit on chocolate - more than I had on anything else. After a quick nap I met my tripmates in the hotel to walk to a famous restaurant - the restaurant where I hear the last episode of Sex and the City was filmed...? I haven't seen it. It was fun to order a drink at a bar - I got a white russian! It was a little (read: A FREAKING LOT) heavy on the vodka, so I actually got pretty drunk off it, plus it didn't taste that great since the vodka was overpowering. Our meal was lots of fun though. The restaurant is visually very hip - up on the top floor of a building with big windows all around; lots of light and an interesting view. The food was spectacular: I had squid and asparagus for an appetizer and sea bass with ricotta cheese and spinach for my main course. The total bill, including my drink, was 65 euro! Well worth it, I think, since I barely ate anything else in Paris. Sunday night was early again, since our plane would leave at 7:30 the next morning...

Monday June 5
We were up at 5 to get ourselves to the airport. There was a bit of confusion during checkout, and we almost had to pay ourselves, but it was all sorted out in the end, after a very rude interaction on the part of my endearing tripmate. From there (start counting again) we took a metro to the train and a train to the airport, and a bus to the terminal. Check in included another lovely outburst from you-know-who that I was afraid would get us kicked out of the airport. We made it through (somehow), got right on the plane, and headed to Zurich (more chocolate en route, plus a hilarious flight attendant with whom we went through the airplane's magazine and circled pictures of the hot boys). Another brisk walk to our gate and another plane to Milano, then the bus to the train station and some waiting around listen to everyone complain, a train back to Florence, and we were home.
so that's
metro +
2 trains +
2 planes +
one bus =
6 modes of transportation (much better than on Friday)

Overall the hardest part was dealing with my tripmates. I guess I didn't realize how easygoing my family is when we travel. I would have loved to have been with them on this trip instead of the others... that would have made it perfect.

I hope it doesn't take as long to read this entry as it took me to write it... thanks to everyone who read this far!!

Up next: a report from my day trip to Bologna!

Current mood: juuust finished a paper. Rock.

(9 love bites | bite me)

Navigate: (Previous 20 entries)