I think my favorite part of this leg of the journey was Orvieto given that I had already been to Rome. Orvieto is a small village on a hilltop in Umbria. You have to take a tram up to get there and then you still have to walk up a hill in order to get to the top. From the top you can see a great view of the countryside and further down, you can stand along an old fortress to get another view. We walked up to the top to see the view and get a little information about the village from Dan (our tour guide's name) before we dispersed and wandered around. We walked downhill which was lined with shops and restaurants and cute alleyways with plants dangling from the balconies. We windowshopped and ... read more

We left Paris early the next day to head to the Swiss Alps. As you can imagine, it was a pretty scenic ride which made the length of it more bareable. We arrived at our campsite in the evening. I say campsite but we had cabins with electricity and heating and so forth. The only inconvenience was that we had to walk to the communal bathrooms. We were staying in a tiny town called Lauterbrunnen, a town that made Geneseo look like a city. It was a pretty adorable place though with mountains all around it and waterfalls that you could spot from main street. We had a traditional Swiss dinner, with cheese fondu as our appetizer and sausage (which was surprisingly good given that I don't usually like it) as our main course. Given that ... read more

I guess now is a good a time as any to start blogging about my epic trip. For those of you who do not have facebook, you will have to wait until the next time you see me to see the pics (or ask for a cd or something). There are just too many (2000 to be exact) and this website is not exactly user-friendly when it comes to pictures. So London... As you may or may not know, I did London in two parts-before and after the trip. I'm going to go a little out of order here and write about both parts in one entry. I took the overnight bus from Edinburgh on the night of March 24th and actually managed to sleep a good amount considering. After dropping my luggage (which consisted of ... read more

This weekend I accomplished my dream of going to Italy...Well, I won't consider the goal fully accomplished until I see Florence and Venice etc. over spring break. Friday, I landed in Rome around 9:00 Italy time and took a bus to the Freedom Traveller's hostel. If anyone is planning on going to Italy and doesn't want to pay a fortune for a hotel room, I highly recommend going there. The next day, I met up with Marissa and her friend Liz at breakfast. We found Jill, who was staying at another hostel close by. She was chilling on our hostel's computer, apparently sneaking the free wi-fi. For anyone who is confused at how I know these people and how we ended up in Europe at the same time, Marissa and Jill went on the Mississippi trip ... read more

I went underground Wednesday to see what people lived like in the 17th century. Now before y'all start jumping to conclusions, let me just clarify. No, they did not live underground. Yeah, I was disappointed too. They lived in narrow closings with really tall buildings to fit the overcrowding population. Eventually, the city built over the ground floor of the closes and they were forgotten for years until they were uncovered again in the 20th century and one was eventually made into a tourist attraction called the Mary King's close (she lived in the close). Although the closes were open to the skies way back when, the really tall buildings prevented the majority of sunlight from reaching the ground floor, so the dim lighting inside the current underground close is a pretty accurate representation of what ... read more