Venice

I definitely forgot that I never posted a blog about Venice! My bad. From Cinque Terre, we headed to Venice, and met up with another one of our friends from Strasbourg there. When we originally booked the trip we forgot one minor detail.. it was mardi gras. In Europe, the biggest mardi gras celebration happens to be held in Venice. Turns out we were there exactly on fat tuesday! I swear this was not on purpose, believe me, I think I'd have rather gone when it was a little bit more calm.

The town of Venice is beautiful, it's so crazy there there isn't one car anywhere, since the entire city is made up of islands. If you want to take a cab or public transportation, the only option is to take a boat. Lucky for us, we stayed on an island near everything, so we never had to use the boats. I'm sure they're fun, but it's not cheap!

During the day, we walked around, fought the crowds, and checked out all of the amazing costumes. People dress up in these costumes you will see in my pictures, and they are completely in character. They never speak, they walk really slowly, and they just stand in different positions to pose for everyones pictures. It was cool, but real, real creepy. The couples were ok but the people that were by themselves were just straight up weirdos. Anyway people had really beautiful and elaborate costumes!

The first night we were there, we randomly stumbled upon this huge party in the middle of a square near the touristy area. It ended up being so much fun, the music was great, we met some really nice people, and ended up dancing all night. It was cool because it was like going to a club.. except it was in the middle of a historical square in Venice. Amazing! The next night we tried to have a repeat of our fun night out.. but it was fat tuesday, and everyone in the town of Venice was a drunk mess. We went out for about 20 minutes, got completely fed up with how disgustingly drunk everyone was and headed right back home! Does this mean that I am getting old? I think it might..

All in all Venice was a beautiful city and I did enjoy our stay.. but I was more than ready to leave after 3 days of dealing with pushing crowds and tourists everywhere! I need to go back one day when it's not Carnival so I can see what the city is really like.

Cinque Terre

View from our room in Vernazza

Manarola.. my favorite!

Hey guys!

This is possibly the most beautiful place I have ever been! The Cinque Terre is on the west coast of Italy, on the Ligurian Sea. The name means "The Five Lands" in Italian and is made up of 5 villages, all on the coast. The five villages are called Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso. We stayed in the fourth village, called Vernazza. Kristen booked our hotel for 2 nights, and a few days after our booking we got an email from the owner. They said that our room was already booked, but they could put us up at another one of their rooms. We ended up staying in a room that was wayy nicer and paid less than half of what the rate normally is. It was still really small.. and we had to climb about 100 stairs to get to it.. and there was no heat.. but once we saw how pretty the town was we didn't even care! We had the most horrible trip there, that I won't even go into detail about, but once we arrived we were so happy to see that we made a great choice on a place to visit. And wow I almost left out the best part.. Cinque Terre is the birthplace of PESTO. OMG. I think you can guess what I spent my 3 days eating..

The main thing to do in the Cinque Terre is to hike all the 5 villages. The hike is about 5 hours, it's a bit difficult, but according to my old pal Rick Steves it is well worth it for the amazing scenery. Rick is the man, and he was totally right. We woke up early the next morning, put on the closest thing we had to "hiking gear" and headed out. Thankfully it was the nicest, sunniest, warmest day we had the whole time we were in Italy. When we arrived at the train station, we saw a huge sign that said TRAILS CLOSED TODAY. WHAT? We came here to do this hike.. you have got to be kidding me. Luckily we got the inside scoop from a lovely lady in a local boutique, who spoke with the thickest Italian accent I've ever heard. I wish I could type out how she sounded but it just doesn't work as well as ze french accent when written. Anyway she said that they just say that the trail is "closed," in theory, but in reality there aren't any gates or anything to stop people from hiking it. So of course, being the rebels that we are, we decided to venture on for our hike.

You start at the first town of Riomaggiore and work your way up, and as you get to each town the hike gets steeper and more difficult. The first hike was a breeze.. it was a hike down "lover's lane" on valentine's day. It is literally called that. This specific trail was open just for Valentine's day. Many couples thought it'd be a nice idea to get intimate on the way of the hike.. how romantic. Anyway I was having a big problem with my ankles for some reason, so I appreciated this leisure stroll while it lasted. During the last hike that small knot in my ankle turned into agonizing pain in both of my ankles.. but that's another story! As we continued through the villages things started to change.. the trails got a lot narrower, rockier, and steeper. There was never a point where I didn't want to continue though, everything was so pretty it was completely worth it. We stopped in the middle for our picnic lunches (obviously another pesto-based meal), we "accidentally" trespassed into a local vineyard and had our lunch there. As we were eating we found out quickly that there is a very big problem with stray cats around these parts.. I have never been so creeped out in my life.

Eventually we escaped the stray cats, and the actual hike time ended up taking about 5 hours in total. We got to the last town just in time to see the sun setting. Needless to say we got a really good nights sleep this night.. minus the fact that our room was NO JOKE about 30 degrees! Oh and also.. I'm so glad that we put on our hiking gear, because I think that every other woman that we saw on the trails was wearing high-heeled boots. Italian chicks are crazy. I still can't figure out how they did it! More to come on VENICE the next stop on our little Italian holiday :) Ciao for now!

Manarola.. 2 towns down, 3 more to go! We still look so peppy..

Lover's lane.. couples lock the locks together and throw the key in the sea. Kristen and I skipped that part..

Quick trespassing for an afternoon picnic. I guess we were into the thumbs up on this day.

Manarola got smaller and smaller as we headed to Corniglia

If you look closely you can see the first town in the distance too

The trail gets a bit more difficult and deserted

Made it to Vernazza, the village where we stayed

The trail gets a bit narrower.. yes those small rocks are the actual "trail" and at one point there was definitely a cliff on one side of us.

The sunset! and this rock reminds me of the Little Mermaid!

Last view of Cinque Terre. Next morning it's off to Venice bright and early!

Florence, Siena and Pisa

CIAO! My roommate and I had a February vacation for 2 weeks at the beginning of February. The vacation is usually meant for skiing but we decided to head south and crossed our fingers for some warmer weather! I'm over the snow. We started off spending 4 nights in Florence. I had been there just once before, with my sister on a cruise. We only spent one day there and I have always said that I need to go back. The city is so beautiful! Definitely one of my favorite places I've ever been. We had a lot of time there so we just took our time doing everything. We went to the museums, saw the statue of David, saw the famous "Birth of Venus" painting,

climbed to Michelangelo square for a view of the city, and of course, ate LOTS of goooood food. So amazing! The food in Italy is to die for, and to make it much better, it's way cheaper than in France. You can get a good 3 course meal for like $15. That would never, ever happen in Franc

e. It also made me feel more at home having all my Italian comfort food! Almost the same as a night at the Fisco's. Luckily I haven't gained any weight since all we do is walk all day! I should have worn a pedometer.

From Florence we decided to take one day trip, to a town called Siena. There isn't much to do there, it's just a pretty place to go and see. We left early in the morning, found a cheap bus to get there, and spent about 6 hours in the city. The church there was gorgeous, and we also climbed up the tower to see the whole city. It looked really cool from up above because all of the roofs are orange, and it kind of looks like all the houses are stacked on top of each other. We lucked out on our timing on this trip, because as soon as we climbed down from the tower, a huge rain/sleet/snow storm started up. It was awful! Italy is definitely not prepared for snow, and neither were we. So much for going to Italy to escape the cold weather. All the brick roads are so slippery, we were falling all over the place. We headed

back to our bus stop right away. Luckily there was a bus there waiting for us, otherwise we couldn't have taken much more. Our shoes were soaked all the way through to our socks! Lucky for us the storm didn't last too long, and by the time we got back to Florence the snow was gone :)

The next stop on our trip was a place called Cinque Terre, on the east side of Italy on the sea. We were checking out the trains to get there, and we discovered that we had to stop in Pisa on the way for our layover. I never had much of an interest in going to the town, but I figured since we were there we might as well get our picture of holding up the tower. We stayed for 2 hours, ate some pizza, got our pics and were on our way.

More to come on Cinque Terre!

Florence from Michelangelo square

me and Kristen in front of the duomo

The Ponte Vecchio

Gusta Panino.. the most amazing panini shop ever.

Siena

The leaning tower of Pisa

Val Thorens

This past weekend.. ahem.. more like 5 days.. I went skiing in Val Thorens. Thibaut's parents know someone who rents an apartment there so we got a good deal for the trip. Val Thorens is in the French alps, and it is part of the biggest ski resort in the world. We left early on Saturday, and it was a long train ride to get there! It took over 8 hours, then a 3 hour bus ride (which was only supposed to be an hour) following that. When we got there we were a bit grouchy but happy to find a nice apartment and a really cute ski town! We literally could jump out our balcony onto the slopes. We skied Sunday and Monday, the snow was perfect and the views were even better. This place must be a hot tourist spot for English and German people, because I'm pretty sure Thibaut was the only Frenchie in the entire town.

One of my favorite memories of this trip is finding a discothèque right in the middle of one of the slopes. Sooo French! Gotta love them. There was a DJ outside on a balcony playing dance music, and tons of people dancing outside in their ski clothes. There were even people dancing on the tables. It was so funny coming up the chairlift and seeing all these people smoking, drinking and dancing outside in the middle of the Alps. I saw some awkward dance moves, considering that everyone was still wearing their ski/snowboarding boots. Of course the first thing I thought of was uhh doesn't this put a bit of a risk for avalanches? It was loud techno music, that can't be good in the middle of the alps where there's a risk. I decided to trust that they know better than I do, and we sat down to have a few beers. Well, scratch that, the beers were too expensive. So we people watched for a bit with our 5 euro beers and headed on our way. I would have really liked to see some of these people get down the mountain after drinking beer all day. Can you get a DUI on skis?

The only thing that was not good about the trip was the unbelievable cold! It was -24˚ Celsius on the mountain, which is about -13 Fahrenheit! I've never been so cold in my life. It actually felt like my hands were asleep they were so cold. Luckily I was well equipped with lots of layers to help handle it!

Notice the empty chairlift.. we were the only ones crazy enough to bear the cold. Ouch.

La Folie Douce.. the discothèque in the middle of the mountain

Everyone trying to awkwardly dance to the DJ in their ski attire

Me and Thibaut hanging out in the "club"

The view from our balcony

3200 meters up!

Val Thorens from the slopes