JohnAndMarleah

DAY 15 - Thursday Another all day tour focusing on Bologna and Modena. A couple of people in the group decided to skip today. Cindy has food poisoning, she went out for dinner and was craving vegetables, ate a bunch of spinach and it made her very sick. She should have eaten that glutenous pizza instead... The other person, Vince, said "his throat is scratchy" but we think he's fine. He's had the hardest time getting along with everyone, he's very bossy, loud and tends to "know everything". He probably was tired of everyone calling him out and getting mad at him. He'll enjoy the break. It's cold and raining pretty hard, adding to the fatigue of the group. Everyone is in pretty good spirits considering, but it's apparent that trip is almost over and niceties ... read more

DAY 10 - Saturday The group has the weekend off from any planned activities or classes and most of the students are going site seeing in other cities. We're going to stick close by and take some time to be by ourselves. Most days we run into someone from our group, on the street or at the hotel. And most days we end up joining someone or multiple someones for dinner, beers at a bar or wine in the lobby. Both of us need some down time in life, to be away from people and in our own private bubble. Saturday morning, sleeping in, there's nothing better! The sun is shining, it's perfectly warm outside and perfectly gorgeous. The air in Parma always smells like green things and vegetation, it's wonderful. Must be because of all ... read more

DAY 4 - Sunday This morning, before the sun was up, we had to catch a train to the airport to meet John's students as they arrived. The trains/train stations are hard to figure out here, not very informative (which we'll come to find out is that way everywhere we are in Italy). We asked an employee where to go and went there. Thankfully, he realized he told us the wrong information and came to tell us the correct platform we needed to be on. It was very kind and very thoughtful of him to do that and made our day much easier. After having some airport coffee we sat at the arrival area to greet the students as they came out. Barilla Academy (our hosts in Parma) met us and provided bus transportation to Parma. ... read more

Lazy Day We stayed in bed almost all day today. Slept in until 11, stayed in bed drinking coffee and watching tv until around 3. It's very dark and cloudy outside today, thunder and lightning, sporadic downpour rainstorms. We were hoping we could spend the day at the beach today but that's probably not going to work out. At 3:30 we got way too hungry to stay in the room so we walked up the street to a burger place called Top Burger. They should have called their place Bottom Burger. Wasn't good at all. Sigh. Also, it started monsoon raining as soon as we walked in the door so we got stuck sitting in there for a while. Back to the room for more bed, tv, naps, etc. At 10:30 we went next door to ... read more

In Between Days It was still raining when we woke up this morning. Is this going to be the outcome of all our vacations? Our hotel offers a pretty good free breakfast buffet, we slept in and made it down there 15 minutes before it ended. Meat, fruit, potatoes, juice and coffee. Not the typical hotel breakfast, it was pretty good. Since it's been raining nonstop it dripped on us most of the time. We entertained ourselves by guessing what country people were from based on weird fashion choices, one of our favorite games. Fake Burberry hat and matching tshirt trim (Russia, obviously) was the winner today. Is that a mean game to play? Spent most of the rest of the morning and early afternoon lounging around the room. When the rain stopped we put on ... read more