MALTA!!!!!

Today six of us set out for the island of Malta! With one carry-on bag a piece nothing more! So I will be unreachable for seven days (just a reminder mom and dad). I will catch up with all of you when I return to school next Saturday! Ciao!

Rome

We saw so much in Rome. The Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Sistine Chapel, the Forum, everything! I cannot even put into words our time there. Running back and forth and exploring and eating on random steps with chopped sticks and crazy Italian people and being lost and and and...We had an amazing time there. It was beautiful and so much more than I had ever expected. I hope you all love the pictures, there are so many more!

Florence

This past week we traveled all over Italy. We left at three a.m. on Monday morning and went to Florence. We walked all over the city all day and then stayed the night in this old hotel that used to belong to the queen of Greece, she lived there when she was in the city. It was a crazy, busy, packed-full week. We saw just about everything there is to see...I am exhausted!
One of the pictures is a bunch of locks on a fence, it is tradition on the Ponte Vecchio Bridge for lovers to come and "lock" their love to the bridge and toss the key into the river, then their love will last forever...
We saw the bridge, the famous dome designed by Brunelleschi and the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore. We had to walk up over four hundred stairs in tiny spaces to get to that dome, I was so dizzy when we finally made it back down.
We saw the Gates of Paradise, we did not get to see David, which I was not too happy about, but I will be back to Florence later on and I will be seeing the lovely David then.

Piazza San Marco

Yesterday we began our study of Art in Renaissance Italy. I have not taken many art or history courses where I actually get to go to the places in the pictures I see in the textbooks. Next week we spend the week traveling from Florence to Rome and then on to Venice.
"The aim of art is not to represent the outer appearance of things, but the inner significance." -Aristotle

Doors

I have decided I am obsessed with the doors here in Italy. Why do they all have to be so beautiful? I am going to have a huge display of all of these doors in my house one day.

Plans...

So I am slowly planning ahead for my travels and it is so exciting! I have to catch myself so I don't miss out on anything here and now.
For my first big excursion five of us are going to the island of Malta for spring break. We found round-trip plane tickets for around $130 and the cost of our hotel room is like $120 and this is a resort hotel! Including breakfast! I couldn't believe it! We will be there from May 28 to April 4, probably the cheapest spring break trip ever and it's in Europe wooohooo! Next, I recently bought a ticket from London to Dublin, where I will spend a week or two, with some girls from here and another friend. The ticket, yes my friends no jokes, was $30 can you believe it?! Me either...After that I plan to fly to Spain which tickets range from $20-$30 at this point. After that I bought a ticket from Barcelona to Paris, France for $23! The moral of this story, save to get to Europe and go wherever you want! Ryanair.com is amazing! I cannot wait all these different countries and cultures and chaos!
I have been here an entire month, a month unlike any other month in all my years...

Missing. Not Missing.

Missing:
I miss venti-sized cups of coffee (but moderation is better right?)
I miss warmth, it is so cold everywhere here even indoors. Spring please come soon.
I miss baths, there is only a shower here
I miss dryers, all my clothes are saggy and stiff
I miss cheap food
I miss air popped popcorn
I miss huge bags of frozen vegetables. They only have frozen peas and this weird minestrone mix here, both are way expensive
I miss sushi!
I miss free public restrooms and rest-stops. Road trips are the death of me here.
I miss my clothes, selection here is quite limited
I miss movies
I miss cheap Diet Pepsi
I miss my complicated life...

Not missing:
I do not miss having a cell phone or paying for a cell phone, weird as that is
I do not miss having to take care of a car and paying for gas
I do not miss spending ridiculous amounts of time picking out what to wear;)
I do not miss paying rent every month
I do not miss school
I do not miss the constant noise everywhere
I do not miss days without riposo
I do not miss serving snotty customers
I do not miss the economy
I do not miss American mentality or the wasteful way we live
I do not miss my complicated life...