TRAVELOGUE.jesswrites.com

Katie, Lauren, Amanda, and I had an amazing weekend in southern Italy. Amanda went with her mom and stayed in a nice hotel, so we didn’t see as much of her. But the other three of us stayed in a little cabin at a camp ground in Sorrento. The campground had a beautiful view of the city. Sorrento is a very cute, charming town on the coast. There is great food, beautiful views, and easy access to other places on the coast of southern Italy. We spent the first day (Friday) walking around the town. Katie and Lauren got their hair cut. We checked into the campground, and then later met up with Amanda and her mom for a delcious dinner at one of the best restaurants I’ve been to in Italy.

On Saturday we got up very early and took a trip to the island of Capri which was sponsored by our campground. The boat picked us up at 8:30 am, gave us a tour from the boat around Capri, and then dropped us off at a small marina to explore the island for 6 hours. The boat ride was really fun because we got to see the island from the water. As soon as we were dropped off we went to this little cabana-like smoothie place and soaked up the sun in lounge chairs. It was fabulous. Then we took a bus into the city centre to explore the shops, grab some lunch, and take pictures at the lookout point. After a few hours of that, we went right back to the marina and ordered cocktails from the smoothie place and layed out for another 2 hours. That was my favorite place on the island. We got back to our campground around 6:00… took a nap… and then went into Sorrento for dinner. We went back to the same restaurant because it was so yummy the night before. They waiters liked us so much that they gave us free dessert!

The morning after that (Sunday) we got up early again to check out and then take a bus to the Amalfi Coast. It took an hour and a half to get there, but it was the most incredible bus ride of my life. The views were absolutely amazing. You will see in my pictures when I post them. The water was so blue. We were literally driving up and down a mountain and very close the the edge of the cliffs. It was a bit nerve-wracking, but so beautiful that I didn’t mind. I gave me digital camera a workout. Once we got to Amalfi, we went straight to the beach and layed ou in the sun for 3 hours. I got really tan… I would have stayed out even longer, but Katie and Lauren were getting burnt. We went to lunch and had wonderful Capri Salad at a restaraunt right on the beach. Afterwards, we went walking around the town and browsed through shops. Of course, since it was so hot, we got gelato and then sat on the stairs at the duomo while we ate it. I was a wonderful day at the beach. We didn’t want to leave at all. But at 4:00, we caught a bus back to Sorrento, got on a train to Naples, and then caught another train back to Rome.

Southern Italy is by far my favorite place that I’ve been to since I’ve been here. The towns were just so quaint and charming, that it was impossible not to love them. Capri and Amalfi reminded me a lot of the Greek Islands… maybe even prettier, actually. But either way, I’m very glad we were able to go down there. That was my last trip in Italy. After I go to Germany this weekend, I will be in Rome for an entire month before I come back home.

Much love to all,

Jess

I’ve had the most amazing week and I think it has a lot to do with the hot sunny weather. I already wrote about the zoo, and the trip to Ostia Antica. Then on Wednesday night Amanda and I were suppose to meet in Piazza del Popolo to do night time photography with our class. But Amanda read that we were suppose to meet there at 20:00 and thought 10:00… and we were two hours too late when we got there. But while we were looking for our class, we did see the President of Arabia strolling through the piazza. Then we were passing by a movie theater and just decided to go see the Constant Gardener since it was starting at 10:30… we didn’t end up getting home until almost 2:00 am because there weren’t any buses running that late and we had to walk home most of the way. But it wasn’t fine because it was a nice night. I had class the next day, and then we all went out that night which was really fun. I like going out in Rome.

On Friday morning Amanda and I slept in late, got up and worked out, and then I randomly decided that I really wanted a haircut. Amanda refused to cut it for me so we walked over to a little salon near our apartment and I got it cut there. The hairstylist didn’t understand any English so when I said I wanted him to cut off about 4 inches, but not to cut my layers because I was trying to grow them out… he didn’t understand and instead cut all of my hair 4 inches, including my layers… so so much for growing them out because now they are shorter than ever. BUT, it looks good so I’m not worried about it. It’s nice to have shorter hair for the warm weather. Later that evening I went to the Pantheon to meet a lady from Grand Valley, Nikki, and Jaci for a dinner that was meant to check up on us. It was nice… I always like a free meal, too. Afterwards I went to Liza’s to meet up with the rest of my roommates for Liza’s 21st birthday celebrations. We were there for a couple hours before we ventured out and walked all over the entire city… like 5 miles. We went to several different bars and clubs and met tons of people from JCU… it was such a fun night. I met a guy from Mt. Pleasant who goes to my school and we talked for a long time about Michigan sports.

Saturday morning I woke everyone up so we could go on a picnic in Villa Borghese!! We bought tons of bread, cheese, and snacks, and went to the park wearing skirts and flip flops. I love Villa Borghese because it’s so pretty and relaxing, and we got a beautiful day for our picnic. We met up with Lauren and Lauren when we got there, and we all ate and layed out for about 4 hours. It was so nice. I took lots of pictures and video. When we got back to our apartment it was starting to get dark, and we all just stayed in and watched movies for the rest of the night.

On Sunday afternoon after sleeping in really late, Amanda and I went to the Trevi Fountain to take pictures, and then went and sat on the Spanish Steps for a couple hours to do homework and read. We met some people there and they told us that it was the one year anniversary of John Paul II’s death and that there was a huge memorial with at least 100,000 people going on at St. Peters in the Vatican. We weren’t actually going to go until we took a run bus home and ended up at the Vatican anyway… and the ceremony was going to be starting in 20 minutes, so we just stayed. It ended up being a great experience. There were thousands of people and everyone was given a colored candle… which were all lit and looked gorgeous because the whole Vatican was filled with colored lights. A choir sang beautiful songs in Italian, there were several speakers (and I understood a lot of what they were saying) and then the Pope came out and spoke and blessed the people. The service was broadcasting on TV all over the world, so maybe some of you saw parts of it? I’m so glad we ended up going.

Now it’s Monday, and I’ve been sitting outside in the sun for the past three hours and I’m fried. Well… more browned to a crisp. Either way, it’s gorgeous out and I’m trying to spend as much time outside as possible.

There’s some new pictures up. Check them out if you want!
Love til later,
Jess

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.

“The Champagne of the Winter Olympics” = That’s how they referred to the 4-man bobsledding… I think because it was the last event of the Olympics.

Going to Torino for the Olympics was a really good experience. And I’m so glad that I can say that considering the mixed feelings I felt before we left for the trip. I was definitely excited about the bobsled tickets that we had bought, but I was nervous about the fact that we didn’t have a hostel booked or return train tickets back to Rome. In fact, we weren’t even sure when we were going to come back to Rome… Saturday night, Sunday morning… we had no idea. But everything ended up working out really well.

Jaci, Nikki, and I took a night train leaving just after midnight on Friday night that was fine. Not the most comfortable sleeping situation, but it worked. We arrived in Torino at 8:20 am and we had about three hours to kill before we met up with the three guys Nikki knew coming down from Luxemburg. Torino was considerably colder than Rome, so we headed straight for a café to sit down at and warm up with cappuccinos. Afterwards, we just wandered around aimlessly and looked at all the directions and venues that were set up for the Olympics. We passed the Sponsor Village, which we planned on going into eventually, but the line was always long and we always had someplace to be. When we went back to the train station to meet the boys, we realized that their train had been delayed so we waited in a little pizza place that served Pepsi! Sounds silly to all of you back in the USA, but trust me when I say it isn’t easy to find any Pepsi products in Italy. The guys finally arrived, and we walked around the city for another hour or so with them before getting our train tickets up into the mountains where our event was.

THE ALPS ARE BREATHTAKING. I can’t even describe how gorgeous it was up there. We felt like we were higher than the clouds… and we probably were. It took around two hours to get up to the bobsledding track from Torino because it was so far up. I was looking at the pictures I took of the mountains, and I was disappointed how little justice they give the Alps. Because honestly… WOW. But anyway, we got up there two hours before the event started, as recommended, and had plenty of time to eat, walk around the track, listen to the live music at the stage that was set up, and talk to other American study abroad students that we ran into. It was a really fun atmosphere. There was always really upbeat music being played and they had nearly everyone at the event dancing.

But the coolest thing was watching the bobsledding. I had expected to be a good distance away from the track, but it wasn’t roped off at all. In fact, we could walk right up to the track and touch the ice. I was close enough to touch the bobsled as it whizzed past if I wanted to, but obviously I didn’t because I would have lost a finger… or my entire hand. They went so fast that taking pictures was a huge challenge. For the entire three hour event, we walked all around the track so that we could see the bobsleds racing past from different angles. We walked all the way to the top where the bobsledders started, but you could only get up to see that area if you had the really expensive tickets… which we didn’t have. The five people I was with gave up too quickly and started walking back down the hill while I talked to one of the Olympic volunteers standing guard of the “expensive section.” I reasoned with her and said that I just wanted to see the starting point up close, so she eventually said… “Alright, you can go up here…” I hollered to the others to come, and we all got to go up into the stands and see the beginning of track and watch the bobsleds take off. In fact, I filmed the prep and the take off of the Brazilian team, and they ended up crashing just seconds after I turned my camera off. It was a big deal because crashing a bobsled is extremely dangerous and it doesn’t happen very often. They ended up being okay though.

After the sun went down, it started to get a lot colder. I was wearing my suede sneakers, which got soaked from standing in the snow, and by the 4th Gold medal round my feet were so cold that they were throbbing and I couldn’t feel my toes. We decided to start heading back down to the entrance area so that as soon as everything was over, we could get right on a bus back down to the train station. We were smart to leave when we did because just behind us was such a long line of people that we would have been waiting up in the mountains for at least an hour or two. We decided to try and catch the 10:35 train back to Rome because the next affordable train didn’t leave til 6:30 am… and we were too tired and cold to try to find something to do all night while we waited for it, but we were cutting it close with time. As soon as the train stopped in Torino, we jumped off and started sprinting to the costumer service desk to buy tickets. We really didn’t think we were going to make it in time. But when we told the guy what train we wanted, it wasn’t leaving until 11:05. It must have been delayed or something, but we were thankful for the little bit of extra time. The only problem was that since the train was leaving soon, they couldn’t give us seat reservations, so we just had to hope that we could find empty seats that hadn’t already been reserved for other people… preferably six of them in close vicinity. It wasn’t likely, but we wanted that train so we decided to risk it. Before getting on the train, we went to a grocery store to buy sandwiches and snacks. When we got on the train, there was hardly anyone on it yet since it wasn’t leaving for another 40 minutes. We found an entire cabin (6 seats) that wasn’t reserved, but there was a lady sitting in there already. Nikki politely asked her if she would mind moving to another cabin so the six of us could sit together, and she did so graciously. If you’ve never used the Italian rail system, then you won’t understand how lucky we were… not only to all get seats, but to get all of our seats together. We usually don’t even get to sit together when we make reservations. It was a miracle. Only about 5 minutes after we had sat down, the entire train was bombarded with people trying to get on and find seats. There were so many people in the isleways that they were getting jammed and people couldn’t move. Eventually, a lot of people ended up getting kicked off the train if they didn’t have seat reservations because there just wasn’t enough space. The people who didn’t get kicked off were sitting on luggage, or standing. We just kept telling each other how lucky we were to be sitting all together, because it was a 7 and a half hour train ride and sitting on luggage for that entire time would have been miserable.

We got back to Rome at 6:30 am and we took the subway straight back to our apartments. Even though I had actually gotten some sleep on the train, I crashed until 2:30 in the afternoon.

I had a great time though, and I was so happy that everything went so smoothly. I’ve really lucked out with having such problem-free trips so far. Especially after my roommates, who went to Venice this weekend, missed their flight, nearly got robbed on the train, lost an ATM card, and one of them had accidentally purchased her return ticket for the wrong day and had to pay 55 euro on the spot in order to not get kicked off the train.

Going to the Olympics in Italy is something that I will surely never forget. Maybe I’ll even try to go see an event in Vancouver in 2010. I’ll be 24 by then!

Hugs and Kisses,
Jess

I can’t even tell you how great my weekend was… but I’ll try.

We decided to have my birthday dinner with the roomies on Thursday night since I was leaving at 4:30 am on Friday for Venice. I was expecting it just to be a low key evening not to different from any other night. However, my roommate Logan spoiled me rotten. She made me a huge dinner, bought me red daisies (my FAVORITE!), a big chocolate cake, and champagne. It was soo sweet of her. My other roommates were all there too, of course… except Diana who had already left to go to Milan for the weekend,

Dinner was great though. Absolutely delicious. Then we got ready to go out. I knew I couldn’t stay out late because of my early flight, but my roommates really wanted to take me out for a night on the town. We went to Campo dei Fiori and had an amazing time. We were there for a couple hours before I HAD to leave because it was 1:00 am. But so much fun.

I almost missed my flight to Venice because I was soo tired from only 2 hours of sleep, but luckily Nikki called me and woke me up just in time. Our flight was nothing special… and we got to Venice around 9:00 am. Before evening going into the city, we went straight to our hotel to wash up, eat, and take a nap. But after washing up and eating, we were so excited that we skipped the nap and took a bus into Venice right away. Almost immediately after getting off the bus, I saw a gondalo going doing the river and I literally skipped and ran up the stairs of the bridge to take pictures.

We didn’t have the absolute best weather, but for February I have no complaints. It was overcast and in the 50s… and it never rained. But seriously, Venice is beautiful. It looks just like all the pictures I have ever seen of it, but it is so much cooler to actually be there standing on a bridge over a canel. It was kind of surreal, actually, since I had been wanting to go there since I was 10.

Most of the day was pretty low key. We walked around for several hours taking pictures, spending time at San Marcos, grabbing some lunch, etc. San Marcos was awesome. And, just like every picture or movie you’ve ever seen of it, there are literally thousands of pigeons. I was pretending to kick one in a picture, and an old lady came up to me yelling in Italian, and then kicked me in the back! I couldn’t believe it! But it was kind of hilarious, so I just walked away laughing. By 2:00, our lack of sleep started to catch up with us so we went back to our hotel to take a nap and put on another layer of clothes.

After our much needed naps, we took a bus back into the city for my birthday dinner! We found this cute little place and ordered 3 meals to share, and a bottle of wine. Just a few minutes after ordering, this American guy came to ask us if we knew of any good bars or clubs in the area. We started talking to him and found out he was from Traverse City, MI! Since we knew we were going to be going out right after dinner, we invited him to join us since he was by himself. His name was Greg and he ended up being a really cool guy. In fact, he ordered two more bottles of wine on top of the one we already had, and then payed for our entire bill. We tried to stop him but he was determined… he kept saying, “It’s your birthday! I’ve got it!” It was very nice of him. After dinner, we went to a nearby pub to meet up with some other kinds from MSU, but all that wine started kicking in after about half an hour and we ended up calling it an early night. Well… early as in 1:00 am.

The next day we slept in til around 9:30, took showers, ate our wonderful continental breakfast, and headed back out to Venice. Greg called us and we met up with him at the bus station and he spent the whole day with us.

We went to Murano first, which is the island that is famous for glass blowing. We walked around a lot of glass shops which had beautiful jewelry, vases, figurines… everything you can imagine. We even got to go into a factory to see the process of glass blowing. It was pretty interesting.

Next was lunch, and then we walked around some more. I know all that walking doesn’t some like very much fun, but in Venice I just couldn’t get enough of it. Right after lunch it started to get sunny, too, which made everything look even more beautiful.

Since Saturday was the beginning of huge festival for Carnivale (same idea as our Marti Gras), there were tons of things going on around Venice. There were dancing acts, live music, people getting masks painted on their faces, and everyone was walking around in costume. Jaci, Nikki, and I all bought carnivale masks to wear around for the day, and to also have as souvineers. We saw a few more cathedrals, and then headed back to San Marcos where there was a huge stage set up for the opening ceremony/show. About 30 people dressed up from head to toe came out on stage and did masquerade dancing… waltzes and such. There were probably 4 or 5 thousand people in San Marcos Square watching the show. After about 30 minutes of dancing, the people from the stage came and grabbed people from the audience to dance with. I was so close to the front that when I put my hand up to go out there, they saw me and pulled me out to the stage. They spend about 20 seconds teaching us one of the waltzes, and then the music started and we had to start dancing. It was SOO much fun. I couldn’t even believe I was there in Venice, dancing at the stage for the opening ceremony of Carnivale! I learned the dance pretty quickly, but since there were about 20 volunteers, and 20 of the “professionals,” things got chaotic and everyone was running into eachother. The dance probably went on for about 20 minutes… and I was smiling and laughing the entire time. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Seriously. =)

As soon as I went back into the crowd, we had to leave to catch our train. We said our goodbye to Greg and then started speed walking to the train station. Halfway there, it started to rain. I guess we have pretty good timing, because it would have been miserable to be outside in Venice all night with it raining like that. We got to the train station with about 20 minutes to spare, grabbed some dinner, and then got onto the train. It only took two hours because we were just going to Bologna where we had a two hour layover and then got on another train to Rome. We met this Italian guy named Claudio who was going to Florence that night to see his girlfriend. He spoke to us the whole time in English, and every word that came out of that boy’s mouth was hilarious. It made that 2 hour ride fly by.

The night train from Bologna to Rome sucked, but it was cheap… we got back to Rome around 5:00 am and I couldn’t have been happier to climb into my bed and sleep.

Last night, eight of us went out to dinner at my favorite resteraunt in Rome to celebrate Amanda and my birthdays. (Amanda’s brithday is Tuesday, so Sunday was halfway between the two.) It was delicious, and our waiter brought each of our desserts out with candles, dimmed the lights, and everyone sang happy birthday. After, half of the resteraunt clapped. It was pretty fun.

So that was pretty much my weekend. I have no complaints, because I had a ball. And now I’m 20 years old.

Lots of love,

Jess