Eight Planes in Seven Days

Now that I've finished all of my exams (I just wrote for two hours about a character named "Gelinda." Unfortunately, not Galinda from Wicked, although how awesome would that be? I'd ace a Wicked exam with my eyes closed), it's probably time for me to inform you all about the shenanigans that occurred last week in Cannes and Prague with my wonderful roommate Michaela. I should also probably finish packing, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

HAHAHA. Crossing the bridge. Get it?!

SO like I said earlier, I spent last week in-between exams travelling around Europe with Michaela! She's studying in Cannes at the infamous College International de Cannes, aka French Middle School, this semester. Since I had a week off, and she had a few days off from school, I decided to make it a long trip and visit Cannes and Prague, returning right before my last exam. I flew to Cannes on Tuesday and spoke French like a champ (it was necessary in order to get to the College from the airport. I'm proud). Michaela showed me around the College and we dined on chicken nuggets for dinner. Dinner was thoroughly exciting for me, because there were PEOPLE FROM CHAPMAN there! It was so cool to hang out with people and discuss how much we hate webadvisor with people who actually understood everything that I was saying. We talked about how class registration for sophomores is terrible etc etc. It was just nice to be around familiar faces. Not that I don't love everyone I've met here at Glasgow, because I do. It was pretty awesome though.

Tuesday night was open mic night at one of the pubs in town. We headed over to Morrison's (the pub) and listened to a few people perform. Two people from the College (who also happened to be from Chapman) were performing that night, so we stayed and watched them. So yes, I did fly all the way from Scotland to go to an Irish pub and hear people from Chapman sing Scottish songs. Mel Problems.

Wednesday was a bit more exciting. Michaela had class until noon-ish so I just slept in/stayed in my room until she came and collected me. She also brought me a croissant (BEST ROOMMATE EVER) and then we headed off to explore town! She showed me all of the Cannes hotspots (aka the Palais du Festival) and then we stopped in some stores. We got crepes from someone who clearly should be working at BagelFail back in Orange and so we tried to eat those as best we could without making a huge mess of ourselves. It didn't work. On our way back, we stopped for some ice cream which was delicious (duh, when is ice cream NOT delicious)! Once we got back to the College, we mostly just lounged around and figured out our schedule woes and how to fix them, or whether or not we should try and fix them. Chapman Problems.

Michaela had class until 3:30 on Thursday, so I spent my day at the beach! The weather was SO nice, and I got to use a bit more of my French. I also got pretty sunburned, which was unfortunate, but it's mostly faded into a tan by now so that's pretty cool. Believe it or not, I also studied for my exam (that I just took today) while relaxing on the beach! I found Michaela after her class and we went shopping again. We also managed to exchange some Euros for Czech money (which was far more complicated than it should have been) and we printed our boarding passes, because Friday we were leaving for Prague!

Prague was beyond exciting. I have always wanted to go to Prague and I can't really explain why. I just have. So I was super stoked that I was finally going! We flew Swiss Air where they give you FREE CHOCOLATE on every flight. Fortunately, we had three more flights with them before our weekend was up, so we were definitely looking forward to that. Anyway we made it to our hotel which turned out to be a mini-Las Vegas... there was a bowling alley, casino, and like, five restaurants in there. We chose to eat at the Fairytale themed one. There were benches covered in lambswool and the whole place looked like Snow White's cottage or something. It was entertaining.

Saturday we left to explore Prague! We figured out the metro system and also got really lost. We walked into quite a bit of souvenir shops and things like that and ended up buying a TON. Everything was really cheap, so obviously we had to buy a lot of it. Our main goal was to find the clock tower. We walked in the direction we thought the clock tower was in, which of course was incorrect, and we somehow ended up at a cafe so we decided to stop for lunch. After lunch, we eventually found our way to Old Town Square and the clock tower. We took the typical tourist pictures and then continued on our merry way towards the Jewish quarter! Once we got there, we realized that everything was closed because it was Shabbat, so we headed back to the hotel and decided we would go back again tomorrow.

Once at our hotel, we somehow ended up following a group of Italian teenagers to their pre-paid dinner. And they let us in. Which means we didn't actually pay for dinner. But it was good, and nobody seemed to notice or care, soooo that's cool!

Sunday we trekked back to the Jewish quarter! We went into the Old-New Synagogue and looked around in quite a few Judaica stores. Unfortunately everything was crystal and cost around $1000 otherwise I probably would have bought things. Also, nothing else would fit in my backpack. Anyway, after that we headed over to find the famous bridge. We had lunch at a small cafe on the river with a beautiful view of Prague. We then crossed said famous bridge and bought a few things from street vendors, where we were warned about the large storm coming our way soon. We continued along the other side of the river for a few minutes before deciding we should probably listen to that guy and head back to our hotel before the storm started.

We had almost made it back to our hotel before the heavy rain - it was drizzling as we were crossing the parking lot, and then I promptly screamed at the sky "NO!! YOU CAN'T START YET!! WE'RE NOT IN THE HOTEL!!" and then it started pouring. Of course. After that, we printed our boarding passes for our flights home (four flights and five countries in one day for me, I think that must be some kind of record) and headed off to dinner, which we actually paid for this time. I felt much better knowing that we were no longer stealing food. Although that free dinner was quite enjoyable.

Monday came time to part ways. We flew from Prague to Geneva and from Geneva to Nice together, and then we bid each other adieu and I headed back to London and then on to Glasgow. Now that I've finished my exams and this blog entry, I suppose I should finish packing.. ahh.

Love you all! See you soon!!

PS I have over 30 postcards that I still have to send, sooooo you'll probably get those.. soon...ish... okay.

Paris, je t'aime

kitties!!

Well, as many of you know, I spent last weekend in Paris!! My "aunt" Suzi (she's actually my mom's cousin, so whatever relation that is to me, but I call her my aunt) flew out from Chicago to meet me there, so I was pretty excited. In case you were wondering where that picture of the cats came from, it came from my Aunt Debbie's camera, which she so kindly lent me since I broke mine in Istanbul. Thanks Debbie!!!!

I had unsuccessfully planned a trip to Paris three times already this semester, so I was stoked once one finally worked out. We met at Charles de Gaulle airport early Saturday morning and then headed to our hotel! We only got lost once, so I thought we were pretty successful. After dropping our bags off and wandering around for a bit, we decided it would make the most sense to go to Disneyland that day, so off to Disneyland Paris we went!!

Disneyland Paris was a lot of fun. I was really excited for it because I have been having Disneyland withdrawals. It was kind of strange because it looked almost identical to Disneyland in Anaheim, although they were lacking a French Quarter (duh). There were other slight differences, like the fact that there were approximately six rides, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. We went on Pirates, which was Captain Hook themed instead of Jack Sparrow, Peter Pan, which was basically the same, except they had two rooms over London instead of just the one, and it's a small world, which was actually different. They didn't have a whole room for each country, it was kind of just everything packed into like, three rooms. And they included a LOT of countries. They even had the Loch Ness monster in there!!! I was pretty happy to see that. And then we wandered around for a while trying to find somewhere to eat. The restaurants were all different - they had one that was Hakuna Matata themed and another that was Colonel Hathi's Cafe (he's the elephant from the Jungle Book, in case you had forgotten). Unfortunately they were all either packed, closed, or didn't have food I would eat other than pizza. We ended up at this place called "Cinema Mickey" where we dined on club sandwiches while watching old Disney cartoons like Steamboat Willie and Mickey's Garden. It was actually pretty neat.

Sidenote: Disneyland Paris happened to be celebrating their 20th birthday. You know who else just celebrated their 20th birthday? MEEEE!!! So that was also awesome. 

After a long day at Disneyland Paris (okay, it was only a few hours, but we were both exhausted from traveling and such) we headed back to the hotel for bed.

Sunday morning we started our bus tour! We stopped at the Eiffel Tower (duh) where we were greeted with a 3+ hour long line to ride the elevator to the top. Being the top-notch athletes that we are, and because we really didn't want to wait three hours, we decided to climb the stairs. It was a lot of stairs, but definitely worth it. The view was amazing! And now I can say that I've climbed the Eiffel Tower!

After our Eiffel Tower adventures, we decided to take a river cruise on the Seine. The cruise took us past all of the hotspots in Paris - the Louvre, the Notre Dame, and Alexander III's bridge, among other things. Once we finished our cruise, we were a bit hungry, so we got some crepes from a street vendor and ate our crepes while gazing at the Eiffel Tower before heading back to our bus tour. It was pretty exciting (and also extremely touristy, but whatever).

The next stop on our bus tour was the Musee Rodin, which was really cool. We noticed that many of the sculptures in the museum were donated by Rodin himself. It was there that I decided that I, too, will one day become a famous sculptor and donate my sculptures to a museum that is dedicated to me. It's going to be great. You just wait and see. We also wandered through the gardens at the Rodin, which were really beautiful, and apparently the location of two of my cousin's weddings. I'm definitely looking forward to that!!

After the Musee Rodin, we headed off to the Musee d'Orsay! The Musee d'Orsay was originally a train station before it was turned into a museum. It definitely looked like a train station. I took a picture of the main hallway and then got yelled at by a security guard because apparently you were not supposed to take pictures inside. Oops? After the Orsay, we headed back to the hotel for dinner and went to bed.

Monday morning we took a taxi back to the Eiffel Tower in hopes that the line for the elevator would be shorter. It wasn't. In fact, I think it was longer than the first time we went. We ended up catching the first bus at the Eiffel Tower and took it to the Louvre! The Louvre was crazy cool. There's just so much history in it! I loved it! First things first, we went straight to the Mona Lisa. It was actually packed with people trying to get pictures. The Mona Lisa itself was surrounded by what I presume to be bullet proof glass, which was surrounded by not one, but two wooden barriers separating it from the massive crowds. It was still pretty neat to see, though.

Once we got our pictures, we headed down to what was probably my favorite part of the Louvre - the Ancient Egypt exhibit!! While at the Louvre, I learned that I love almost all things Ancient Egypt. There were two floors dedicated to the Ancient Egypt wing, and you can bet I wandered through the whole thing. Something about Egypt just fascinates me. I have no idea what it was. But I loved every second of it, especially seeing the Great Sphinx!

After leaving the Louvre, we headed to what was probably one of the most interesting places we went to this entire trip - the Chocolate museum. This little museum in Monmartre was chock full of information about chocolate. We also got to see how they make their chocolates, which included free samples, AND some hot chocolate! Their hot chocolate was really interesting. You would get a cup of hot milk and then a cube of whatever type of chocolate you wanted (I chose dark) and you dunked the cube of chocolate into the milk and it melted into a cup of deliciousness. It was pretty awesome.

We then took the bus tour all around Monmartre which led us to see things such as the Moulin Rouge and the Paris Opera House. After we passed the Paris Opera House the first time (which occurred the first day we got there) I could not get Phantom of the Opera out of my head. Every five minutes I would just go "the PHAAAAAAAAANTOM of the Opera is theeeeeere.... inside my mind." So yeah. That happened. We went out to a nice French restaurant called Gallopin for dinner and then headed back to the hotel to Skype people. At least, we tried to Skype people. Sometimes they ignored us, or they had to go mow the lawn...

That pretty much sums up Paris! I just realized I forgot to write about Bari. Oops. Maybe I'll do that one later. For now, you can read about my exciting adventures in Paris, which is far more thrilling than what I was going to write about Bari anyway... after all, who wants to read about being stopped by the police and eating the most delicious gelato I've ever had in my life?

That's all for now! I'm off to Cannes and Prague next week, so there will be plenty more blogs to come :)

Love you all!!
Mel

Gondolas are SCARY (but I rode one through Venice anyway)

I finished my exam for Sociology of Media, so now it's time for more blogs (and also more ear drops and naps and food)! I'm almost caught up now, just have Venice, Bari, and Paris left! How exciting!!

As I said before, Saturday was spent in Venice! We had booked our excursion in advance - it was the Murano and Gondola Tour excursion - because we wanted to make sure we got in everything we wanted to do. We took a tender from the boat to a dock in Venice where we quickly turned around and took a different boat to Murano. Once on Murano, we walked into one of the shops and sat down for our glass-blowing demonstration! It was crazy cool. At first, we just watched the guy make a vase. But then he made a horse in less than two minutes (because the glass dries in two minutes and apparently it can't be reheated without screwing up the horse) which was actually one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. Like, first it was just this blob, and then all the sudden there was a HORSE. It was crazy!!!

After the demonstration, they took us to their store so we could buy a bunch of glass-blown things. I wanted to buy everything in the store. I resisted, although I did pick up a few gifts for some of my favorite people :) After Murano, we took the boat back to Venice where our tour group embarked on a 15-20 minute walk to the gondolas... however, Melissa, Steph and I wanted to take pictures, so every so often we would stop and take photos and then have to run through massive crowds of people to try and catch up with our tour group. It was pretty exciting and highly entertaining. And definitely worth it, because we got some great pictures that we otherwise wouldn't have gotten!

The gondola's held six people, and somehow our tour group managed to divide evenly between the lot of families we were. We ended up sharing our gondola with a nice family of three which included a kid who couldn't have been more than 9 or 10 and his name was Pedro. He was hysterical. This family said they were from Venezuela, except they were currently living in Egypt and had just moved from Russia and were probably going to relocate soon. We didn't ask about why they moved around so drastically because we were too awestruck by all of the amazing places they had been! Basically, they were really cool.

that is the look of sheer terror, my friends

The gondola ride itself was straight up TERRIFYING. I don't really like boats, at least, small boats. For some reason I'm just really worried that they are going to capsize and I am going to end up in the water and some sea creature is going to eat me or something. I don't know. But I don't like them. However, we were in Venice, and who goes to Venice and doesn't ride a gondola? So aside from the fact that I was 100% certain we were not going to make it out of this gondola alive, it was a pretty cool thing to do. At one point we rode past the "Royal Gondola" and another gondola full of people singing and playing instruments. It was really exciting, and I actually felt like I was in Venice, even though I was doing really touristy things. If that makes sense.

After our gondola ride, we once again had to run through the streets of Venice in order to make the (free) boat ride back to the ship. We could have stayed longer and taken a water taxi back, but we all felt safer sticking with the group and not paying for a boat ride. Venice was really beautiful and I wish  we had more time there, but I am happy with the way we occupied ourselves while in the land of gondolas and glass-blowing crazies.

Once we got back on the boat, we occupied ourselves with naps until dinner, where we were once again the only people at our table. Dinner was yummy for our last night, I had tomato and mozzarella "salad," basil and oregano risotto, and baked turkey with cheese. For dessert, Sang made us each gelato sundaes with a scoop of banana and a scoop chocolate gelato with whipped cream and chocolate sauce on top :) Everyone seated around us was jealous because they only got like, one scoop of gelato. Hah! Anyway, after dinner we headed back up to our room to start packing. Our last night on the ship was spent packing, watching strange music videos, and dancing around strangely. Good times!

Next up: Bari! and then Paris! Yeahhhh!!!

Pirates, Parrots, and a whole lot of Pictures

Alright! I am now back in my room for a few days before leaving again, so hopefully I'll have time to catch up on my blogs! I just got back from Paris the other day and I'm leaving again to go to Nice/Cannes/Prague on May 1 (which has come a lot sooner than anticipated). So now, let's continue with the blogs.

I believe I ended with being on the boat on Thursday. It wasn't very exciting. We also had dinner by ourselves because our table-mates failed to show up! It was sad. There was baked alaska for dessert, so the waiters did that whole shabang. Since it was Gala night, we felt it necessary to take pictures with our waiter, Sang, and our cabin steward, Victor. They both seemed honored that we wanted pictures with them. It was cute. After dinner we went exploring and we even found some new places we hadn't been before! Somehow we got suckered into being models for one of the photographers on board, and after that we decided to go find all of the photographers and take pictures with them. Good times at sea.

Friday was spent in Dubrovnik, Croatia! We didn't dock until 1ish so we were still moving when we woke up. We bought tickets for the shuttle to the old city because we didn't want to take the 45-minute walk from port. Once we got there, we kind of just wandered around. There was a man dressed as a pirate (maybe he actually was a pirate?) who had a lot of parrots with him. We walked up to him and he started putting the parrots all over me!! I was only expecting one or two, but I somehow ended up with around 6 or 7 parrots on me. It was crazy! Melissa had her turn and then we continued along our journey through the streets of Dubrovnik.

It started raining so we went into this little cafe and had some hot chocolate. It was advertised as "Vienna Hot Chocolate" meaning it had whipped cream on it. What it didn't say was that it was possibly the most delicious hot chocolate I've ever had in my entire life. Like it was actually SO GOOD. It was incredibly thick and chocolately and delicious. Who would have thought Croatia would have the best hot chocolate in the world? Anyway, we headed back to the ship and just napped until dinner. I ate something called arancino, salad, and TURKEY AND GRAVY for dinner. It was actually delicious. Good eats in Croatia! After dinner we headed up to the gallery to look at allllll of our photos from yesterday, where we ran into Bob and Tomoko and our British couple friends!! They admired our pictures and then wished us luck on our exams because they were all leaving the boat the next day in Venice. We headed back to our room and soon after Victor came knocking with our daily schedules and a bottle of champagne for us! He said he was so happy that we took time out of our day to talk to him and we were always so polite, he wanted to do something nice in return. It was very, very nice of him (and also it was good champagne). Then we headed off to bed to get a good night's sleep before VENICE!!!

That's all for now! I have to go take this cotton ball out of my ear and study for my exam tomorrow.. I'll update again later!

Mel

Asia? I thought this boat was staying in Europe!

Did you know the country of Turkey spans two continents? I didn't, until we got off the boat in Izmir and our tour guide informed us that we were in Asia today, and tomorrow we would be waking up in Europe! Crazy! Anyway, these are my stories from my two days in Turkey.

Our next port (after Katakolon) was Izmir, Turkey. There isn't a whole lot to do in Izmir unless you did one of the city tour excursions, so we decided to do an excursion that took us an hour away from Izmir to Ephesus, another ancient city. It was very similar to Olympia although it was the ruins of a city rather than an Olympic stadium. We were on a bilingual tour this time (the one yesterday was strictly English) and our tour guide laughed at her jokes in both languages. It was kind of awkward. Anyway, Ephesus was really cool. They're a lot more relaxed in Turkey so you could literally run around and jump on top of everything, where as if you even did so much as touch a piece of rock in Olympia the guards would whistle at you. This resulted in some excellent pictures of us posing with ruins and such. We also met up with Bob and Tomoko in Ephesus. They were on the same excursion we were so we exchanged cameras and let them take pictures of the three of us. Good times in Ephesus. We also ran into our first dose of Turkish markets in Ephesus. There was a decent sized market set up right where the tour buses are parked, and obviously the store owners go crazy when cruise ships come in. There were large signs that read "GENUINE FAKE WATCHES" and a man selling Turkish delight who, I kid you not, said things like "You are looking for me! Here I am! I am the Turkish Delight man! My name is Delicious!"

We quickly boarded the bus and waited for the rest of our group to get on before heading back to the boat. Unfortunately, Bob got lost in the ruins of Ephesus.. Tomoko told the tour guide that she felt bad holding everybody else up, so our bus left and we hoped another bus would have found Bob and brought him back. Note to everyone: Do not get lost in Turkey. Your bus driver will leave you there. Bob found his way back somehow because he was at dinner that night! For dinner I had rocket salad, tortellini with bologna, and Paris-styled grilled chicken (aka grilled chicken with french fries). Vanilla gelato for dessert. I should also mention that this was the day my bad luck started. When we were getting dressed, I ripped my favorite pair of pants, and then as I was trying to find my sunglasses for the five minutes of sun we encountered in Ephesus, I pulled them out only to find that they were broken. It was a sad day. On to Istanbul!

Our excursion in Istanbul was called "Istanbul on Two Continents," so at this point we were aware that Turkey was a part of both Asia and Europe. Our tour guide was hysterical. He was basically the Turkish version of Britne doing the Jungle Cruise, except it was more like "Istanbul for Dummies" and it was amazing. We found a few familiar faces as we entered the bus for our tour (the Swedish lady from the show and the old British couple) and we were the last ones on because I may have forgotten my cruise card in our room... oops. Did you know that there were no last names in Turkey until 1934? That was our first fun fact. We took a boat tour around Istanbul on the river that divides the two continents and then headed to the Asian side. Our first stop was at Beylerbei Palace, which was the summer home of the Sultan, and so we took a tour of that. It was straight up gorgeous. There are no other words for it, except maybe exquisite. After the palace we crossed the bridge connecting Asia and Europe and got certificates that say we've been in two continents in one day. Talk about something to hang on the fridge! 

After that excitement, it was time for lunch! We went to this large building that was basically a mall with a restaurant on top of it. For lunch I had salad, chicken kebabs, and some kind of cheese pastry thing. A few of us finished eating early and wandered out the open window onto the roof to take pictures. Continuing with my streak of bad luck, I, of course, dropped my camera while standing on the roof. It still takes pictures, but sometimes the zoom gets stuck and if that happens nothing on the camera works until I un-stick the zoom. So that was cool. Once everyone was done eating, we headed down to a carpet demonstration. The man basically showed us all of his shmancy carpets and explained that they were all hand-stitched. It was really cool to see the designs. They were beautiful. We shopped around for a bit (don't worry mom, I didn't buy any carpets) and then headed off to the Grand Bazaar! 

The Grand Bazaar is exactly what it sounds like - a Grand Bazaar. It has over 2000 shops and it's not laid out very well. They literally sold everything you could ever want in there. We didn't buy much, although Melissa did take a stab at haggling and I bought some Turkish chocolate and one of those eye keychains for good luck. Fortunately, most places tend to take Euros even though their currency is the Lira. Unfortunately, a lot of places don't have change for Euros. So while I paid for my chocolate in Euros, I got change in Turkish Lira. It was very confusing. After the Grand Bazaar, we met up with our tour guide again and headed off to the Basilica Cistern. A cistern is kind of like an underground tunnel, and Istanbul is loaded with them. We went to the most famous one (and probably the safest?) and it was SO COOL. The only complaint I have is that there was stuff dripping on us the whole time and our tour guide said that we were right below restaurant restrooms. I don't entirely believe him, but it was still unsettling. ANYWAY. After leaving the Cistern, we stopped by the Blue Mosque and St Sophia's for ten minutes to take pictures. It had finally gotten nice out and I became the official photographer for our British couple friends and their friends. I didn't take a lot of pictures because, like I said, my camera was busted since I dropped it on the roof... 

in front of the Blue Mosque

Once our short picture-stop ended, we headed back onto the bus and raced back to the ship. We almost missed it, but our tour guide promised that if we did miss it, he would house all 30 or so of us until the boat came back. Once on the boat, we just relaxed and snacked on our newly-purchased Turkish chocolate until dinner! For dinner I had and Italian cold cut platter, stracciatella soup, and grilled chicken with french fries and ketchup. Dessert was my favorite type of gelato, stracciatella! Then we went to the show, which was supposedly a magic show, although there was no magic in it. It was just the same performers as we saw previously doing their tricks again. It was still cool to watch, but somewhat disappointing. Or maybe I was just upset because I had been on a streak of breaking things. 

We spent all day Thursday at sea, which wasn't very exciting. We mostly just relaxed and I sipped on a chocolate milkshake while watching an ice sculpting demonstration. We ran into a lot of our new friends again and talked about how much we loved Istanbul. I think everyone on the ship wished we had more time there. Istanbul was seriously amazing and I definitely want to get back there at some point!

That's all for now.. I'm sure I'll update again later today!! Thanks for reading!

I am not an Olympian

Once we got on board the ship, we decided the safest and most effective way of seeing everything there was to see would be to book excursions. I was mostly worried that we would somehow manage to miss the boat if we were out wandering on our own, and I guess Melissa and Steph were as well because we decided to do excursions in Katakolon/Olympia, Izmir, Istanbul, and Venice! Our first stop was in Katakolon, Greece.

The excursion we booked was called "Olympia and Shopping." Perfect, right? Guided tour of the ruins/historical site and then they drop us off at a shopping mall basically built for cruise ship customers (they also had deals because we came with the excursion rather than by ourselves, although everything was still greatly overpriced). Olympia was BEAUTIFUL. The weather had said it was going to be in the 70s, so the three of us decided to wear shorts! Bad idea. It may have been warm, but it was pouring rain outside! We had hoped it would stop on our half hour long bus ride to Olympia, but of course it didn't so if we look soaking wet in the pictures it's because we were.

Olympia is the site of the first Olympic Games. It was pretty crazy just being there, but everyone was even more excited because it was an Olympic year. We made friends with a nice British couple from Manchester who were also in our excursion group and also unfortunately forgot their rain coats and umbrellas. Being drenched was a bonding experience, I suppose. As we walked through the ruins, the rain let up a bit, but we were still wet so I suppose it didn't really matter. We saw a lot of things, including where they lit the first Olympic torch and Zeus' Temple. It was pretty awesome. I have learned that I have a deep appreciation for history and ancient things, at least, more so than other people. I just wanted to run around in the ruins all day long! We basically left our tour group (our guide was excruciatingly boring and talked for far too long) and just explored the ruins ourselves. This worked out nicely until one of the guards with a whistle whistled at me to get off the rocks in front of Zeus' Temple. SORRY, SIR. Anyway, right outside the "Main Section" of the ruins, I suppose you would call it, was the Olympic track!! Like, the track that the first Olympians actually ran on. Of course, bazillions of tourists have also now ran on said track, but still. Even though I despise running, even I took my stance and ran the track. The tour guide was very convincing ("How many people do you know have run an Olympic track? Let alone the FIRST Olympic track? Not many! Now you can brag! You will not forget! Don't fall in the mud!") and so I went for it. I was mostly afraid of slipping and falling in the mud, a la the five year old that ran it at the same time I did. "It happens" - wise words from our tour guide.

yes, people loved THIS beauty

We left Olympia and took the bus back to Katakolon for some shopping. At this point, it had stopped raining for the most part. Unfortunately, this was just the calm before the storm. As we stepped off the bus it started thunder storming. The store owners lowered their awnings to try and shield us from the rain, but at that point it was basically worthless. I wandered through the stores because there was nothing else to do, and I even got suckered into buying a few things. The Greek shopkeepers are mostly old men who like to compliment you into buying things. Obviously, when someone tells me I have the most beautiful eyes they've seen all day and another that they've been waiting their whole life for something as beautiful as me to walk into their shop, I am going to buy something from them. Especially when they give me a nice discount on their already-overpriced things. One of them (the beautiful eyes man) even tied a bracelet on me and practically demanded I buy it because it just "goes so perfectly with your skintone." I bought it. And then the bus came and we headed back to the boat!

It was around 2 or 3 when we got back on board, and we were starving for lunch. Of course, so was half the ship. The buffet was crazy crowded, and I ended up staring down an old couple as they finished their drinks and I had to fight off two other families to get a table. But we ended up with the table, so whatever works, right? After lunch, we went back to the room and watched the excursion channel to get a preview of Izmir, our next port. It was also the Captain's Gala, which meant formal dinner! Melissa decided to take a whack at curling my hair, which worked, and then we headed down to dinner. I had carrot and broccoli flan (NOT good), Greek salad (because apparently I prefer salad to pasta now), and filet mignon!! It was probably one of my favorite meals, aside from the flan. For dessert I had some chocolate gelato. After dinner, we had our pictures taken with the Captain and then watched the show which consisted of some circus freaks, basically. There were three guys who all stood on top of each other and a contortionist girl who could balance by biting on some stick thing. It was cool to watch, but I was also frightened for everyone's safety. There was also an unfortunate singer who butchered When You Believe which was sad because I love that song. We also met a nice Swedish lady who was sitting next to us (she will come into play later, I promise). After that, we checked out our photos from the Photo Gallery and then headed off to bed!

Next up: Turkey! Izmir/Ephesus and Istanbul!

All Roads Lead to Rome (but all planes get delayed)

After Portugal, I spent a quick 14 hours in Glasgow unpacking and repacking and then it was off to Rome. We had more than our share of problems trying to get from Rome to a hotel, but eventually, we made it. Once we were done dealing with struggles that consisted of our reservation being cancelled and language barriers and we had made it safely to a B&B, we decided to head out and explore Roma! Melissa and Steph had both been there before, but I had not so I'm pretty sure I was most excited. I LOVE ROME. Seriously. I think it's so cool how there are just these massive old things dropped in the middle of a city. Or the city was built around them, I suppose. Whatever. The mix of modern and ancient is so cool! And there's so much history! I love it. It was amazing. I want to go back.

Okay, so, onto exciting things. We had lunch at a pizzeria (duh) and then got some gelato (duh) and then wandered over to the Colosseum! The line was too long, and it was closing in like, an hour, so we decided to hold off and go there the next day. However, we noticed a lot of empty horse-drawn carriages.. naturally we went up to the guy and asked for more information, and yes, we did end up taking a horse-drawn carriage ride through Rome. Who can say they've done that? Us. And I'm relatively certain we are some of the only people that have, because the horse-drawn carriages didn't look too popular. Anyway, after our carriage ride we wandered back to some monuments we passed earlier, namely this huge marble tomb for someone who's name I can't remember, but it was actually incredible and looked more like a mansion than a tomb. I expect one of similar caliber. Then we found some dinner where I had some delicious pasta and we attempted to find our way back to our B&B. We did. And then we tried for half an hour to open the door to our room, only to realize it was the wrong door... oops. We eventually got back to our room and then had a nice night of sleeping.

Tossing a coin into the Trevi!

Friday morning we decided to tackle Rome's metro system! We took it to the Colosseum (so we could go inside!) where we were greeted with a line longer than the one for Space Mountain. I decided that Rome needs a "Wait Times" app, like Disneyland, so we can know which places to hit up at what time. We waited in the line and it ended up only taking 15 minutes.. it was really exciting if you had seen the length of the line. We explored the inside of the Colosseum, which was also incredible, and took a lot of pictures and videos of literally everything. At least, I did. You can see some of them here. We then took the metro to the Trevi Fountain, where we had lunch, and also tossed coins in and then had some gelato!

After shopping around for a bit, we made our way to Vatican City, where we were also greeted with an ENORMOUS line. I don't even have a Disneyland analogy for this one because it was actually insane. Then a nice lady trying to sell us tickets explained that the Pope was giving a liturgy.. yes, we are those people that go to the Vatican and forget it's Good Friday and expect to get in. Oops. It was really nice out, and we were really tired, so we kind of crashed on the ground for a while until we decided what to do next. A little while later, the police came and kicked us out. It was really unfortunate because that was one of the most comfortable naps I'd ever taken.. seriously though. I don't know what the ground of Vatican City was made out of, but that, combined with the heat, was wonderful to rest on. Too bad you're not allowed to take naps at the Vatican... So after we left the Vatican, we made our way over to the Spanish Steps where I had to resist the very strong urge to buy a calendar entitled "Cats of Rome." Then we took the metro to two other places that looked exciting but really they were just piazzas with fountains (wait, am I talking about Rome or Chapman?). Then we stumbled upon this nice little restaurant/pizzeria for dinner and successfully made it back to our B&B where we opened the correct door and went to bed!

Saturday was thoroughly unexciting. We woke up, went to the airport, flew to Bari where we landed during the siesta so everything was closed, wandered around until we found the only open restaurant and had some lunch, and then went back to the hotel to take our own siesta. That night we went out and found some more gelato and then went to bed, because Sunday we left to get on our cruise!

Sunday morning we checked out of the hotel and headed for the port. Checking in involved a lot of waiting and very impatient Italians, but we eventually made it onto the ship. We ran around and explored for a bit and had lunch at the buffet. We headed back down to our room to watch the boat take off (because we had a BALCONY. aww yeah!) and then started getting ready for dinner! Our party of three was sat at a table for eight, which remained empty for around 10 minutes until the rest of the people assigned to 603 in Quattro Venti started arriving! We met Tomoko and Bob, who's real name isn't Bob but we didn't know his name and he looked like a Bob, so that's what we named him, who are a nice couple from Seattle and they travel a LOT and go on cruises every five years without their kids for their anniversary (it was their 25th) and another family with a three year old who were wary about telling us where they were from, so I decided they were in the Witness Protection Program. Turns out they're a military family, but I still referred to them as the WPP family.

Dinners on cruise ships are extravagant. They're like, 12 courses long and usually made with fancy food. I prefer my grilled chicken and mac and cheese, but I was on a cruise ship and I was not going to be "that person" that demands to order off the kids menu when the three year old sitting next to me was scarfing down all of these exotic dishes. So I expanded my palate considerably on this trip! For dinner on Sunday, I had salad, pasta with some type of meat that I don't remember (but it wasn't chicken or turkey, so that's a step in the right direction), rooster, and chocolate Easter cake. After dinner, we ran around the boat looking for the Photo Gallery to find the pictures they took of us during the safety drill and while we were getting on board, and then we headed back to our cabin to find Victor, our cabin steward, delivering our daily schedules for the next day in Greece!

I'll write about Olympia later. Now I must go finish unpacking and repacking... the traveling never ends!