Ciao Tutti! Sooo my time spent in Taormina was awesome. Phoebe and I were picked up in the airport in Catania by a nice italian guy that gave us lots of recommendations for places to go and eat and things to do. We got to our apartment and were so surprised! It was so nice. Very spacious. Taormina is a beautiful more resorty slash touristy town on the coast of Sicily. It is situated high up on a cliff, so we have beautiful panoramas of the ocean and of mt. etna as well. My apartment also has a great view and [View Full Entry]

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Soo here I am back in Europe again already! Itinerary goes something like this: Paris 4 days Provence 6 days Sicily 18 days Amsterdam 4 days Koln 3 days Frakfurt/Meinz 3 days Baden Baden 2 days Rothenburg 2 days Rome 5 days Not too bad eh? [View Full Entry]

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Florence SO apparently we are all about stairs here in Florence. There is about 8 flights of stairs to get up to my apartment, plus 8 flights of stairs to get up to the school. Sooo thats a lot of stairs. And no one uses elevators here because they are small and sketchy. We had also been going to Forte Belvedere a lot at night because there is a bar up there. That involves lots of walking up hill and lots of stairs! And then on that Sunday, in Lucca, we climbed up the stairs of two towers. And in Pisa [View Full Entry]

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Florence Woooow so I am really behind on this! I've only been in Florence for two weeks but I have done so much already and been so many places! And of course seen lots of art! After finally arriving here, we had two days of orientation. Extremely boring! Luckily I got to get out of some of the most boring parts because I had already done the orientation in Rome. But so many of the people here are from California! Or at least they go to Cal Poly. Definitely a change from Rome, where there was only one other girl from [View Full Entry]

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Athens So I made it to Athens fine, in one piece! I actually met lots of nice people that spoke English on the way there, that were Greek, and so they told me lots of good stuff to do in Athens and when I got to Mykonos. I took a bus from the airport which was simple, but then from the bus station had quite a walk to my apartment...that was fun dragging all my luggage! I made the mistake of buying wine when I was in Verona...haha not too smart now I have to drag it all over Europe! Oh [View Full Entry]

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Catania Continued...And the last of Rome! The next day, Saturday, Jenn and I went to Museo dello Sbarco. This is a museum about the U.S. invasion in Sicily during WW2. This museum was very expansive and detailed. Jenn was a little happy that we were up so early, but she did want to go. Haha. A guide took us around for a bit after they showed us an introductory movie, and he explained a lot of stuff to us. It was in Italian though so I had to translate for Jenn. There was a bombing simulation that we also did. Dad [View Full Entry]

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Catania Sooo thursday morning was crazzzzzzzzzzy!!! I woke up early to catch my flight to Catania from Rome, and I woke up to a text message saying Haley was engaged!!! Crazyness!! Then I got a phone call from my parents and they started explaining everything and I just started balling!! What an emotional morning. Ooh I also forgot to note that Tuesday night we went bowling at a Roman bowling center...how fun! Im still pretty good at it....Then wednesday night we went to the opera!! Me and my roommates got all dressed up and went to go see the opera Carmen. [View Full Entry]

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Rome Sooo after my awesome trip to the Amalfi Coast I had two more weeks left in Rome. I did a tour of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. These were very cool and I liked hearing the stories that the tour guides had to tell. In my opinion they werent the most impressive monuments slash ruins though! The inside of the Colosseum was also not what I expected. It was weird because you didnt see the stage slash floor that all the spectators saw... what you see is what existed underneath it, which was all these stalls slash cubbies where [View Full Entry]

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Naples, Mt. Vesuvius, Pompei, Sorrento, Capri, Positano, Amalfi........An amazing weekend!! So we began this weekend excursion leaving Friday morning and went on a four hour bus ride to Pompei. Of course we made a stop halfway... :) We drove by Naples and Mount Vesuvius. Both were neat to drive by, although I have to admit I'm glad we didn't spend much time in Naples. We got to Pompei around noon, had lunch, and then had a 3 hour guided tour. I didn't realize Pompei was so big! They are also still continuing excavation, so the city is actually growing. We saw [View Full Entry]

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Wooo Italian soccer!!!! gotta be crazy right!?!?!? Their first game of the UEFA that is happening in Austria/Switzerland right now was against Holland....and they lost! Badly. Oh well. Too bad. But so we went to an Irish pub with lots of Americans to watch it......haha classic right? It was really fun though and I've decided I do enjoy watching soccer at this level so I've been following all the other games as well! They definitely have some good players, and they definitely make it more dramatic at this level even though they don't score that much. The following day I found [View Full Entry]

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