Let me start out by saying Spring Break 2015 was a adventurous one. I had left my study abroad home city of Prague and set out to spend 10 days traveling around Italy. Also, let me add that I had never traveled around a whole country before nor did I really do a lot of planning for my trip. I had bought plane tickets to Venice, Italy and back to Prague from Rome, Italy. I also had planned out where I would stay most..MOST..of my nights away. There was one day, however, that I did not book an inn/hostel/hotel. 
    Everyone always talks about traveling via trains in Europe. They (whoever they truly are..I have no idea) say that you need to watch out on night trains. Night trains. Night trains. LIGHT BULB! We (my 2 roommates and myself) can take a night train from Venice to Vernazza! (Note: Vernazza is one of the most picturesque towns in the whole world, it’s part of Cinque Terre, Italy.)
    Imagine three very alabastered skinned American girls going to an Italian translation in Venice asking for night train tickets to Vernazza. Now imagine Italian train clerk staring very unamusidly at three very alabastered skinned American girls. Night trains….do not exist, at least not in Italy. You can in fact take a train at night just like you would in most places. They are quite sketchy (I believe the train clerk said something to effect that it would not be wise if three girls were to ride alone on the trains at night…), can be filled with mischievous people, and run at weird times. Well, we couldn’t go back to our hostel because it was booked for the night so really the only thing we could do was move onward. I guess we could have tried to find another accusation for the night but none of us had working phones, maps, or spoke Italian. 
    Onward we went. Now to get to Vernazza from Venice we would need to get 4 trains tickets. 4. Four. Or as the Italians say quattro. Venice to Florence. Florence to Pisa. Pisa to La Spezia. La Spezia to Vernazza. Might I add that we had a 3ish hour period in Pisa from midnight to 3..on daylight savings. 
    So we get to Pisa. It’s the middle of the night. What do we do? Explore, duh! It’s Italy, no one goes to bed early in Italy on a Friday night. The only real drawback to this exploration is that we have our bags with us. One of my roommates had a wheely bag, one had a ginormous backpack, and I had a normal size backpack. None of these things are really conducive for wandering around the vibrant streets of Italy. 
    The most notable thing in Pisa, is the leaning tower so obviously our goal was to find it. I was able to pull up a map of Pisa on my essentially useless phone and we started walking in the direction that I thought the tower was in. I think we made it just about halfway when we were tired on getting stared at by Italians. We also were super exhausted from walking around Venice all day, trying to figure railway systems, lack of sleep, and now from walking with all of our stuff in Pisa. Eventually, we found a coffee shop with spotty wifi where we could sit for a while before heading to La Spzzia. Nothing is more infuriating then spotty wifi when you only have 2 grumpy people to communicate with. 
    I look at the time and freak out. “Guys, we are going to miss our train!” We frantically pay our bill and run with all of our crept the train station…no train. Where the f$@% is our train??? Oh wait, day light savings. Set clock an hour ahead. We still had ANOTHER hour! Well…we are already in the station, might as well stay here.
    At 3-4 AM in Pisa, Italy the train station is booming….with homeless people. The next hour would be filled with trying to find a bathroom (more or less a car or bush to pee behind) and a lovely homeless man that begged for cigarettes and money with a pee stain on his pants. Him and I had a lovely conversation about his daughter…or niece…in Italian at the Pisa train station at 3 or 4 AM. Though he was homeless, he did have a flip phone filled with pictures and videos of his daughter..or niece. The night ended in Pisa with a kiss from pee stained homeless Pisa man and me hand-sanitizing my face. Onward to La Spezia!
    From La Spezia it is a quick train ride to Vernazza. By the time we arrive in the gorgeous Vernazza it is like 4:30 AM. What is there to do or go in Vernazza at 4:30 in the morning? The answer is nothing and no where. We walk around in the dark Vernazza to try and find our accommodation. We couldn’t get in our accommodation. What to do?     
    My roommates and I head back to the train station. I liked to add that Italy in the AM is freezing. We found a nice bench to set up camp. Eventually, I had to pee. One of my roommates and I went in search for a bathroom. What we found would shock most Americans. We found a bathroom…with a turkish toilet. A turkish toilet is a hole in the ground. Oh, hell no. I am not squatting over a hole in a disgusting bathroom. I just can’t. But I COULD use the hand warmer as a heater. I COULD make this filthy bathroom my home for the next couple of hours. We did just that. I was homeless, sleep deprived, cold…and I made my home a dirty bathroom. A bathroom was my home. And a home it was. 


    So moral of this story is that I was homeless for a day. I don’t want to say that it was amazing…because it sucked at the time. I was able to laugh about it..the sleepy ha-ha’s will do that to you. Regardless, it was such a learning experience. Definitely a humbling experience and one hell of an experience. Was it worth it.....abso-freakin'-lutely.


    Go. Travel. Be homeless.

I randomly decided with my roommate, very last minute, that we should go to Ireland!! I looooooved Ireland. It is believed that Ireland has 40 shades of green…and I didn’t count but I bet you that statement is correct. The rolling green hills were gorgeous. We arrived Thursday and just adventured around with some friends who were also randomly in Dublin. Originally, my roommate and I were going to stay in Doolin which is a small town on the Western side of Ireland. Looking into it though, I would have had to fly to Dublin, take a train to Galway, and a bus to Doolin…at 13 hour journey when it is a 3 hour car ride. I looked into renting a car…but I wasn’t sure I was up to the challenge of driving on the opposite side of the road. I am very glad I didn’t rent a car because the road in Ireland are very narrow and my New Jersey driver would have hated driving (way toooo many bikers clogged up the street). I kind of had a conniption about this. I am very tired of being in cities.  But we finally agreed that we would stay in Dublin and take 2 full day trips. The first day trip was to Doolin to the Cliffs of Moher. Immaculate doesn’t even begin to describe these cliffs. If you don’t know what these cliffs are, I’ll just tell you that if you have seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince you have seen the cliffs. The scene where Dumbledore takes Harry to the cave on a cliff side on the Ocean…Cliffs of Moher. They. Were. Awesome. I did get a little sad when I was there because I realized my home was just a little ways west…I thought about swimming across the Atlantic.

The next day I went on another day trip allllll over Ireland. First, I went horseback riding on the hills of Warwick. It was very scenic but I was having mini aneurisms because the instructor put me on the temperamental horse…who decided that day wanted to do everything in hyperdrive which I was told was extremely unusal behavior for him. The rest of the day was spent touring around to small sites and it ended at Glenadough (meaning the Valley of 2 lakes in Gaelic). Beautiful.

One thing I learned about the people are either super super friendly or belligerent.  There is no in-between. 

                So I spent Thursday traveling to the one and only city of Rome. We got there in the afternoon and checked in to our lovely Bed&Breakfast (note hint of sarcasm), then we went ‘sploring around Rome. Now the part where we were staying in Rome…was the most disgusting place I have ever been to. There was trash everywhere and the homeless population was very high. I saw a homeless gentleman set up a barber shop in the middle of the sidewalk…so hygienic.

Friday, Julie, Katrina, and I went on quite possibly the most interesting tour I will ever go on. We went to the ruins of the Roman Forum, and the Colloseum (we also went to other buildings which were cool but not as cool as the ones just mentioned). I guarantee I will never go to a place more rich in history. The Col. Was so cool. I was eating up everything the tour guide was saying about the gladiators and what went into building everything.

Saturday, went on another tour to Vatican City. It was quite interesting. My inner art geek was dying to see some famous artwork.

Sunday, it got sooooo cold and rainy…so it was obviously time to go home to Prague..and that is what I did.

Originally, we were going to stay in Florence for 3 days but we randomly met up with a friend from our school program in Prague and he invited us to go on a wine tasting trip in Tuscany with a group he was traveling with. I was sold. All he had to say was wine. People in Italy drink wine like it is water. So to Tuscany we went!

Tuscany...what can I say about Tuscany. To sum it up, it is beautiful. It is filled with vineyards and rolling hills. Absolutely amazing. 

In the coarse of the day we went to not only 1 vineyard but 2. I tried so many different wines, it was overwhelming. I learned out to properly taste test wines and learned all about how they are made and stored. Another we learned about was balsamic dressing. For those of you who are not familiar with European customs and balsamic....Europeans use balsamic for absolutely everything. They also age it. I tried the best balsamic ever and it was older than me! One was 30 years old and one was 50 years. They were delicious. 

The vineyards were really cool but the absolute best part of the day trip was going to Dondoli's Gelataria. :) Best gelato I have ever had, and probably will be the best I will ever have. I actually met Mr. Dondoli!! He taught me how gelato should be made. 

The major goal of my Italian Spring Break was to visit quite possibly the most picturesque place in Italy, Vernazza. Most people don't know the name of the town...well, honestly I don't think you can call it a town being that you can't drive cars nor is there a grocery store. Anywho, I searched the internet and found that the name is Vernazza and it part of a collection of towns in Cinque Terre. 

I should have realized that if you have to search for the actual name of the town, it is going to take quite a bit to get there. I didn't realize I would have to SCOUR the Earth to find this place. Scoured. 

From Venice, we would have to take 4...4...trains to get here. We thought we could take a 'night train', the Italian women who was helping us get tickets thought we were the stupidest people ever. She broke us the news that there no night trains, ,just trains that run at night. She then advised us to just go in the morning but there was no room at our hostel that night so we had no choice but to take the 'night train'. From Venice we had to take a train to Florence then transfer to Pisa then La Spezia then Vernazza. So we get our tickets and start our adventure.  It was pretty smooth until our train to Pisa. We are on the train just relaxing when these Italian hoodlums get on. They literally were spray painting the windows, smoking, and throwing stuff at passengers....it was just great. Moving along, we get off at Pisa....at 12:30am. Remember here that I am running off 4 and half hours of sleep and I couldn't sleep on the train because I was generally scared of the hoodlums. Also, what people at the Venice train station neglected to tell us that 1. Traveling at night isn't really safe and 2. Pisa is really the safest place. We were welcomed off our train by numerous homeless Italians. So we decided maybe staying at the train station wasn't the best place to wait for our next train which was at 3:30am. We ventured out into Pisa hoping we could find the tower (we never did find it). Let me paint you a mental image, 3 American girls with their suitcases who haven't sleep in hours venture out into an unknown city at 12:30am. 

In the US, people are rapping up their night at 12:30...in Italy, anyone who is like 12 and up, is just starting to rap up dinner and head out to town. They love congregating all over the streets. The looks we got when they saw us wheeling around our luggage. Oh my gosh. Eventually we gave up on our tower quest and searched for a cafe with wifi. We sit at the cafe and are relaxing before our next train when all of a sudden we looking at our clocks and crap!!! We forgot about day light savings!!! We grab our bags and run to the train station. There was no way we would miss our trains! NO WAY. We get to the station and of coarse our train was delayed. Of coarse. My stubborn butt decided that I was going to sit at the train station on a nice homeless person's bench and wait for the stupid train. I didn't care what anyone else was doing but I was sitting until that train came and I would be the first person on it. 

A few minutes go by and a nice homeless man approaches me. Great. Well him and I had the most riveting conversation. What the conversation was about...I have no idea. He only spoke Italian. She showed a picture of a child/niece/daughter...I have no idea. Meanwhile, I noticed he has a PEE stain on his pants!!!  We communicated for what felt like forever and finally we went to wait by our train and as I was leaving he wanted to say goodbye.....so he gave me 2 kisses. There was lips to check action. (I sanitized my face afterwards). Longest night of my life. 

We get on our next train to La Spezia. Train is fine..so fine we all fell asleep and almost miss our stop. We got off just in time and we quickly board our last train to Vernazza. 
 
VERNAZZA!!! Finally, we arrived...at 5:30. It was pitch black and we had no where to go until our 10am check in. We literally made camp, like homeless people, in the very small train station.

Italian weather is beautiful, sunny, and warm during the day but at night it is freezing!!! So cold. 

Katrina and I leave Julie with our stuff so we could find a bathroom. Well, we found it alright. Most interesting bathroom I have seen in my life. It was literally a hole in the ground. I don't know how the elderly would even be able to use it being that you have to squat over the hole. We finish up and wash our hands and use the hand dryer. The hand dryer. It was warm. Katrina decided we would make the disgusting bathroom our home because we could  make it warm. So resourceful....and so disgusting but we did it anyway.  The picture below is Katrina warming herself.....new all time low for her. Luckily, we were so cold, so tired, so out of it, we could laugh in the situation. At 7, we ventured out into town and found a restaurant and had breakfast and sat and waited for our hotel to open. Thank goodness, all these struggles were worth the trip to Vernazza. 

Day 2: Sleep. We had to sleep. I could barely make it up the stairs to my bed. Julie woke me up at 2 and I very grumpily agreed to venture out into town. First stop into town, gelato. Soooooo good and much needed.  (I didn't feel the need to smile for this picture, gelato made me feel better but not enough to smile.)  We ended our evening very early so we could catch up on our sleep so we could be lively enough to go on our next adventure.

Day 3: Hiking from Vernazza to Monterossa. 

This was definitely my favorite part of the whole trip. I have never seen more amazing views in my entire life. It was truly breath taking...the sights and the actual hiking. I made sure I took frequent breaks to just take in the world. So different then my farm town in New Jersey. I was surrounded by mountains, vineyards, and the Mediterranean.  

Day 1: My roommate embark on our spring break 2015 to Venice Friday afternoon. Before we can get to Venice we had a lay over in Paris. Wasn't too exciting until we arrived in Venice at 12:30am (wayyyyyyy past my bedtime). So the first exciting part of my trip...trying to get to my hostel. Luckily there was a transportation service lady selling tickets so she told us how to get to our hostel, Generator (very cool hostel might I add). Now, in Prague I take the metro, tram, and bus system which is super easy. Well in Venice there are water ways....so their transportation system included boats. Something new and exciting. Long, boring story short, we go to our hostel at like 1:30am  and meet up with my other roommate Julie and went directly to bed.

First stop on our Venice journey...gelato. Everyone always talks about Italian gelato and we all know I love ice cream. I didn't care that it was like 9 in the morning, gelato time all the time. I couldn't tell you what flavors I got...I think I tried almost every flavor in Italy. Whoops. Another weird thing to make note of...I'm traveling in Italy with 2 blondes. So many looks. 

Next stop on the agenda was to walk around and find the Rialto bridge. Overall, Venice was a beautiful city but there are lots of Indian and African men trying to sell you things every where you go. It is very irritating and takes away from the authentic Italian experience. One way to avoid the foreigners and get my Italian rich experience is by taking a notoriously famous gondola ride. 

My gondolier was a 4th generation gondolier. He told me that he loves Venice. It's the best and safest place to live and he would never leave. Katrina and I, mainly Katrina, learned the art of negotiation. Anywhere you go in Venice, a 30 minute gondola ride will cost 80 euro. Katrina got our price down to 60 euro (20 a person) and I negotiated him to add some singing. And of coarse he sang 'Amore'.  

As we head back to where we need to get on a boat to go back to our hostel, I saw someone feeding pigeons in their hands. Soooooo I, the animal lover, HAD to do it!!!! My roommates were disgusted by it but I enjoyed every second of it. 

I also enjoyed every second of wine, pizza, more gelato, cannoli's, and more gelato that I consumed. Because when in Rome...welll when in Venice. 

When in Rome became the motto of the week. If i wanted 4 gelatos in 1 day, all I had to say to myself was "hey, when in Rome!" and it was quickly justified. 

Alright, so now, we all head back to our hostel to gather our things because we wanted to go to our next destination (and my favorite) Vernazza. We get our stuff, get on a boat, and go to the train station. Originally, we had thought we would take a 'night train' and arrive to our destination in the morning. It would be perfect! We would save money on a hostel, sleep on the train, and wake up in Vernazza. Well let me just tell you what I learned about 'night trains'......they do not exist. Not in Italy at least. Dream shattered. 

Next Stop...Vernezza...Stay Tuned.

Soooo...there ware many things I have to stay about my spring break to Italy. It was quite the educational journey. Before you relive this 10 day long journey with me, I will just say that it had its high highs and its low lows. I traveled all over and have many stories. This trip has really taught me what is means to 'travel'. I will never look at traveling the same. It irks me to the core when I hear someone says "I love traveling"....do you even know what traveling is?? Traveling is not getting on a plane and going to an exotic destination where you get picked up and go to a hotel. No, no. That is vacationing...traveling is the most stressful adventure that one can go on. Give me a rail, bus, tram, and new edition..boat map...and I will be able to navigate where I need to be. Traveling....it's just great.


Oh! And I can also safely say that I can tell you if gelato is high quality or not.

Hello Friends and Family, and friends that are family!!

Just wanted to throw another blog together because I won't be writing for awhile being that Midterms are coming up next week, and the following week I will be on Spring Break. I will be migrating down south to...drumroll please...Italy!! I fly down there Friday the 27th to Venice. I will be in Venice for a couple of days than over to the Amalfi Coast to Vernazza (part of Cinque Terre), then Florence, and ending the trip in Rome on Easter Sunday. I am beyond excited...I just got to power through this week. Then the next weekends I will be traveling to London, Amsterdam, Krakow, Mykonos (which I am most excited for) and maybe Munich and/or Vienna. I am kind of tumble weeding my way threw Europe. 

I truly am loving this trip. No one was joking when they said it is a chance in a lifetime to study abroad. I have already started planning future trip after I have returned to the US. But I will say one thing, I have learned this in the last couple of weeks. I am a sitter. When I travel to places, I like to sit and relax which is incredibly hard when you have 2 days in one country. I can't wait to come home and lounge my way around Jersey (especially on some docks, preferably with paper mache hands to peel) . I have also learned (I already knew this before coming into this though), I am not a city person. I cannot express how much I miss my heavily wooded home and seeing lakes and farms. 

Anywho, if you follow me on the FacePlace you might have seen some picture of skulls in a weird looking church. Well, I traveled outside of Prague to another city, Kutna Hora. It is very small in comparison to Prague but just as old. It was a jammed packed day of seeing buildings and walking around. Now, most people learned a bunch from this trip because we had guides and headphones to listen to said guide...but I thought they were tacking and I didn't want to look like a tourist. I can finally fit in as a local and I ain't going back to being a tourist. LOL. Unfortunately, I cannot dazzle you with interesting facts about Kutna Hora...except that it is pretty and that I saw a lot of churches and a building where silver was made into coins.

So...Switzerland...most beautiful place I have ever been, hands down. But getting there was the absolute worst. I went with a company that buses and arranges trips to places all throughout Europe. They advertise that the trip is 9 hours. Well, they lie. It takes about 11+ hours. Oh, and on the way there my bus broke down on the side of some road in Germany for 2 hours. It was just...great.

It was all worth it when I saw the mountains, lakes, and picturesque town. As soon as I got off the bus, I got picked up to go on a snow shoeing adventure. I would have skied but I don't think the Swiss Alps is the best place to relearn. How does Humpty Dumpty go again?

I snow shoed up a mountain called Isenfluh. (Note: it was blizzarding on the mountain during this whole experience) Going up was the hardest part. At some points, I was walking on top of about 5 feet. Going down the mountain was the best part. We went about halfway down the mountain in the snow shoes. You kinda have to run down it which is even more fun. At one point I was going too fast, I ended up falling on my butt so hard but no worries! The 5 feet of snow cushioned me. 

After we trekked halfway down the Mt. Isenfuh, we received traditional Swiss cuisine; cheese fondue with boiled potatoes and bread.  Then, I  found out that traditional Swiss cuisine smells like stinky feet but tastes amazing.

Once we were filled with fondue, we got to sled the rest of the way down the mountain. In the winter, the town of Isenfluh is a simple cattle town but in the winter it becomes a snowwy mountain. No one plows the roads so they become sledding and skiing hills.