I'm spending a semester in London, and while it will seem strange that I don't discuss London or studying much, please forgive me, I am on a once in a lifetime adventure across Europe during my free time, so feel free to follow me. Please don't tell my parents.
Arrival: Four friends and I got into London on Sept 3rd and left on Sept 4th for Rome via Ryan airlines. Problem No. 1. I forgot my printed boarding pass at home and has to pay Ryan Air £15 to print a new one. Lil basterds. That hurt. And I had to scarf down one of my small packs of applesauce at security because apparently its a liquid. (Blame that on security not Ryan air)
Rome: What an interesting city and first stop in our journey. Saw the major sites: Coliseum, Ancient roman city. Got some Ahhhhmazing pizza.
General thoughts of the Italian people of Rome: They're a little closed off. Not out of their way nice to tourists. I felt the language barrier there.
Funny Things: We climbed the Basicilica something Paul maybe..... It was near the Vatican, so we.... Actually I don't know what we thought, so we climbed like 300 stairs. Thought my heart might explode but we made it to the too and SURE glad we did. Because if we hadn't, we wouldn't have seen how beautiful it was up there.
Near the Vatican area we had some AMAZING food at a restaurant. The name was Renovation or something of that sort, it was really close to the Vatican and the basicilica.
Florence:
Ohhhh what sweet sweet joy Florence was. The people were so much nicer, friendly and.... Spoke lots of English. We also ran into many american touristy types and study abroad folks.
On our first grocery trip, I actually was recognized by a girl I'd started following on Instagram because she'd been featured on @Travelnoire. It was kinda cool to get recognized especially because it was my teal blue glasses she actually recognized.
Walked around a lot.
Interesting experience: I ordered a spritzer or something. This drink basically looked a fanta colored sprite. And tasted..... Like Bad cough medicine. It was awful and I guess the waitress didn't understand that I hated it because when i said I didn't want it, she took it but it still was on my bill. Yea, anyway. Florence was amazing. On our last night, a friend from back home told us to check out a Gelato place that he said was the best in Florence. It was a mile from where we were and I THOUGHT we should have gone because, well.... who knows when next I'll be in Florence. Anyway, we didn't go. That's kinda what happens when you
travel with people. Free will is diminished a little bit. Oh well. I'm over it... I think.
Pisa: We took a day trip to Pisa and it was such a GROSS rainy day, so we had to buy umbrellas and take pictures while trying not to ruin our cameras and phones. Had to see the leaning tower of Pisa, or like the Simpsons refer to it, the Leaning Tower of Pizza. Yummmmm.
Dumb idea of the day: The information we read online made it ambiguous about whether we could actually return to Florence with the same ticket we used to get to Pisa. Cuz there wasn't any barrier to stop you really from getting on a train without a ticket. Our wager was quite the fail because amidst my sleep, an inspector came, we smiled and showed her our ticket and she looked at us, like.. OH NO, wrong one. And we acted....confused. Lol, that's what's happens when you have four law students deciding to enjoy the ambiguity
of the rule. Soooo she made us pay the fair there. Which isn't the biggest of deals, cuz it was actually €2 cheaper than we'd have paid if we'd bought a new one to Florence. Anyway, it all worked out, we saved money and got to play the stereotypical idiot tourists.
