TRAVELOGUE.jesswrites.com

The weather has been wonderful this week… like, in the 70s and sunny. I’ve been wearing skirts, tank tops, and flip flops. It’s marvelous.

Yesterday I went to the ancient city Ostia Antica with my Ancient Rome and It’s Monuments class. It was pretty neat… reminded me a lot of Pompei, actually… minus all the volcanic ash. I had to give an oral report on the Forum Baths… which is one of the bath complexes in Ostia Antica that they used back in like 300 BC when no one had baths in their own houses. But the complex was actually pretty cool… it had a sunbathing room, a sauna room, cold baths, hot baths, and a big courtyard for recreation. (Look how good of a student I am!) It was a nice day to go, too… a little overcast in the morning, but warm.

And today, Nikki and I went to the zoo!!!! It was a blast. The zoo is in Villa Borghese so we got to walk through the park on our way there. It was a perfect day, sunny and warm, so we probably got a suntan while walking around. The zoo was very pretty and it had all the animals I wanted to see except penguins. And there were tons of little Italian children there on fieldtrips and they were adorable. I snapped some pictures when their teachers/parents weren’t looking. I couldn’t help myself because you all know about my softspot for little children. But anyway, it was a fabulous day. And tonight I am going to Piazza del Popolo at 10:00 pm with my photography class to take night photos. I hope the sky is clear!

Much love to all,
Jess

Spring break was fabulous!

We were sad to leave behind all of the many things that we became accustomed to during our seven days on the island:

Dancing the Great Zorba (”ya know the boobs? shake the boobs!”)
Turquoise water
A beautiful pool practically all to ourselves
More hot Greek men than we could possibly meet in a week
Bazookis!
Ouzo… well, maybe not so much.
Stretchy toilet paper
Gryros, Kababs, Mussaka, Greek Salad, and other wonderful Greek foods
Georgia, our favorite waitress!
Having a coffee maker
The hot island sun that we got tans from!!
Disco Cabs
Belly Dancing

…Just to name a few.

But anyway, we had a great week. We all got tans because we spent at least four of our afternoons laying by the pool in bikinis. We made friends with a whole bunch of Greek people and we became very popular with all the resort staff.

Gorgos (the cute bartender at the resort) took us out one of the first nights we were there and we went to a really fancy club/bar along with his friend whom I can’t remember then name of. The bar was in Old Town, which is the old part of Rhodes City that is all inside of a huge castle. If you’re inside of the castle walls, you’re in Old Town. That’s where most of the shops, resteraunts, and bars are found. However, we also spent a great deal of time in the New Town (Rhodes City) at Flocafe–the Greek version of Starbucks, and the really delicious gyros place.

One of the other nights that we went out, we didn’t have a Greek boy to show us where to go so instead we just took a cab into the city. But within about 30 seconds of getting out of the cab we met Leo and Roberto and they took us out for a night on the town. Interesting night… too much ouzo.

The next morning we went to the village of Lindos by way of Billy, our waitress’ very attractive 23 year old sun. He agreed to drive us and tour us around. It turned out to be a great day for it too, since it was the first day that wasn’t perfectly sunny and we wouldn’t have been able to lay out by the pool. Lindos was beautiful… exactly what you would picture a Greek Island to look like: White boxy houses, cliffs, turquoise water, etc… plus, at the top of the mountain there was the Acropolis with a lot of ancient ruins, very much like the ones we see in Rome. But nonetheless, it was beautiful AND we got to ride donkeys to the top!!!! So much fun. I know it sounds very stereotypical to ride a donkey up a mountain in Greece… and we loved it!

We went to the resort resteraunt for dinner pretty much every night. We tried a couple other places, but we were friends with so many people at the resteraunt that we had more fun being there anyways… plus the food was marvelous! Our waitress, Georgia, taught us how to Greek dance and would constantly say to us “Ya know the boobs?? Shake the boobs!” Haha. She was also determined to hook one of us up with her son.

So in a nutshell, spring break was great. We got a lot of sun, met really cool Greeks, watched plenty of movies, and ate amazing food.

Oh… Yamas means “Cheers!” in Greek.

Hey everyone! The island that we are staying at is beautiful! It’s not high tourist season right now so there aren’t a ton of people here, but we have made friends with locals all over the island! Yesterday we rode on donkeys up in the mountains of Lindos. We’ve been lying out in the sun almost every day and are getting halfway decent tans. The weather is much nicer here than in Rome, so it feels wonderful to lay in the sun in our bikinis and not get cold.
I don’t have much time to use the internet here, but when I get back in a couple days I will post tons of pictures and tell you more about what we did here.

We’re having a blast and we don’t want to go back to Rome! Imagine that!

Until later,
Jess

I have one more class until I am officially on spring break. I leave on Saturday to go to the Greek Island of Rhodes with three of my friends. I can’t wait to lay out in the warm sun, and go on walks down the beach…

But in the meantime, I finally put up pictures of the park by Monte Verde that I went to with my photography class a few weeks ago. It was beautiful… a smaller version of Villa Borghese. I hope you enjoy them!

But anyway, I’m going to take hundreds of pictures in Greece and I will be sure to post a lot of them as soon as I get back!!

Love from Italy,

Jess

I had a wonderful week!! Troy got here on the 5th and I spent the majority of the day picking him up from the airport. It was great to see him after like 7 weeks or so. He was really jetlagged so we didn’t do much except hang out with my roommates when we got back to my apartment. It was suppose to rain everyday he was in Italy, but it never rained at all! However, we didn’t know that so when it was sunny out on Monday morning I took him to see all the outdoor Roman sites… it was quite the day of sightseeing. I don’t even want to list all the places we went. Tuesday I had midterms all day long so Troy had to fend for himself for the day, but he said that he had a good time wandering around Rome.

That evening we went out to celebrate my midterms being over and Troy being on spring break… it was an interesting night. I’ll leave it at that. haha.

Wednesday we slept in and then spent most of the day at the Vatican going through the museum, the Sastine Chapel, into the basilica, etc. Then I took Troy to trastevere to show him my school and walk around. We met up with Amanda there and went to get gelato and ended up at a really cute photography cafe, and then sat at a fountain for awhile. Then we went back home and I made taco soup for everyone which was a great change from pasta all the time. =)

We took a night train to Milan that was suppose to leave from Rome at 12:47, but was over an hour delayed. We arrived to Milan at 10 am on Thursday. We weren’t able to check into our hotel until around 2:00 so we dropped off our bags, and then went to get some lunch. Our hotel was really nice. A very welcome change from hostels. We actually just relaxed in our rooms until dinner. We found a mexican restaurant that was very close to the concert venue, and we ate there. Yummy! Then we went to the concert which was absolutely and wonderfully amazing. I love Jack Johnson. It was general admission and the venue was pretty small, so I was able to get up to the very front and center and was only 10 or 15 feet from Jack!! I got some great pictures and video footage.

We went back to the hotel after the concert because we all had sore feet. Nikki and I watched a movie before going to sleep in our amazing king size bed. The next morning we got up just in time for the free American buffet breakfast that our hotel offered, and then slowly got ourselves around for a day in Milan. I really wasn’t up for a ton of sightseeing so all we did was go up into the Duomo for a little while, and then spent the rest of the day shopping and wandering around. I LOVE Milan. And the fact that we had sunny warm weather was a big plus too. It was just so relaxing and less chaotic then Rome. We all met up back at the hotel, rested, and then went to get dinner and drinks at Corso Como. It was too expensive for us to stay long, so we were back at the hotel again by about midnight. I didn’t mind though because I seriously loved our hotel.

On Saturday we got up again just in time for a wonderful breakfast, and then took showers and packed up so we could check out by noon. We were sad to leave. But our train didn’t depart until 3:00 so we had a couple of hours to kill. Nikki wanted to return some of her purchases from the day before so we ended up back at the shopping district before making our way to central station. Troy said goodbye to Chrissi, and then we got on the train to go back to Rome. We introduced Troy to our tradition of snacks and cheap wine, which made the trip all the more enjoyable. The 6+ hours flew by and we were back in Rome before I knew it.

The next morning we had to get up at 6:00 am to get Troy to the airport in time for his flight. I only went as far as the train station, because he took an express train to the airport from there. After I got back to my apartment, I really didn’t do anything for the rest of the day besides sleep and watch movies. I watched Pride and Prejudice (Troy bought the dvd for me) four times this weekend and I’m still not sick of it.

But anyway, that was my week in a nutshell… I won’t be able to post all of my pictures today because I have homework to do, but I’ll be putting them up slowly today, tomorrow, and Wednesday.

Nikki, Jaci, and I are getting really excited for our spring break trip to Greece this weekend!! We’re hoping the weather will be nice and warm. So far we’ve lucked out with good weather for all of our trips, so hopefully the good luck continues.

I hope everyone is doing great. I’ll try to update while I’m in Greece, if not before. I love you all!

XOXO,

Jess

Spring has sprung, and with the constantly changing weather, I’ve gotten a horrible cold. It’s really too bad, too, because the weather is gorgeous. I want to be out doing things, but I also want to get better quickly because Troy’s coming this weekend and I don’t want to be sick while he’s here.

Tuesday was Fat Tuesday, and Wednesday was the first day of lent… so the Vatican area (where I live) has been crazy lately… there are people everyone. I can only imagine what Easter Sunday is going to be like.

We’ve had a lot of drama in our apartment this past week… it’s starting to settle down now, but this week hasn’t been one of the best. I’m just glad for a weekend of rest before midterms, Troy being here, and a long weekend in Milan!

Hopefully by the next time I post, I’ll be feeling better and have a lot more fun news to write about.