You know those guys, traveling disasters and Finals!

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June 19
My wonderful alarm never went off this morning. WONDERFUL. So all my hopes of going to Cinque Terre today are eliminated. Something like this would happen! ARGH
After sitting in disbelief for a while we decide to walk around FLorence. The city we've been living in for a month but have basically yet to roam.
We go to the market. The day is good for us present wise. Get gifts for whoever we needed to get gifts for and just relaxed.
I bought SlumDog Millionaire so we watched it on the computer once we got back. Lounging felt so good for once. Eating food, being lazy. Sounded all perfect to me 😊

June 20
We head to Piazza Indipendenza around 930 to get on our bus to Sorona.
We are going to the spa today!
There are about 15 of us on the trip so the bus isn't cramped. We watch office space on the way there, which I have never seen. HILARIOUS!
We pause for lunch at a rest stop. It was so nice! THe rest stops here are incredible. THere is a buffet style place to get food such as salad, proscuitto, chicken, lasagna, etc. It's amazing! Then there is a little place to get panini's and it's also basically like a grocery store. Why do we not have nice varietal rest stops in the US?? I don't know but we should do a little bit research as to why!
The rest of the journey (1 1/2 hrs) isn't so bad. I read. Sleep a little. We come to the town where Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt got married but none of us had heard of it's actual name so the guide told us "It is where those two guys got married." HMmmm THAT HELPS.
We get to our spa destination and get the rooms. There are so many mix ups with the rooms by the way. They put 3 guys and 1 girl in one room and then the opposite in another room. We eventually sorted it out but it was still a pain. we roomed with Jen and Logan. Super nice girls.
We then get on the bus and go to a town called Sovano. It is beautiful, small and covered in fowers. There are cute shops and restaurants and a beautiful little duomo. I could live in a place like this.
We then treck along the very small roads on the side of the mountain in the bus to a town that is called Little Jerusalem. I can't remember it's real name but that's what it's known for.
This town is also beautifu with flowers, winding streets. It's on a cliff so some houses look right down into the valley below. Scary stuff! The old people that live there and sit outside their shops and houses are the epitome of what I would think a little old Italian person would look like and spend there day. LOL so bad I know. I swear I'm in college.
After we head back to the spa and get ready for dinner. Dinner is in an old chapel in the Spa area and it's completely buffet style. I haven't eaten that much food in a long time. THere was lasagna, keesh (no idea how to spell that), proscuitto, chicken, soup, SO much stuff. and then the desert! Oh my gosh the desert! Incredible. There was a cake like thing, a tart, and something else but I can't remember what it was.
After dinner a couple of the girls come to our room and we pop our bottles of wine that we purchased in Sovano earlier that day and pulled out the cheese. What a great night we had! 😊 We just chatted for hours, had girl talk, laughed at everything and of course played never have I ever. We went to bed around 2-ish. Hahahah

June 21
We get a knock on our door around 7am. WHAT
I guess some lady at the front desk was sent down to our room because we called them? That was deffinitely negative because we were all sleeping like babies. We went to breakfast around 945 and had tea and coronettos. YUM YUM. They reminded me of glazed doughnuts though because it was glazed... but it was a coronetto. Ah I am such a wizz aren't I.
After breakfast we went downstairs to the thermal pools. They weren't THAT warm but it was nice because the air outside was pretty chilly. It was relaxing knowing that we didn't have something we had to do or somewhere to go. And the view was beautiful. The hills all around us with a beautiful creek running through the spa that waterfalled into the pool giving the pool hot water, hence thermal pool. :D
At 1130 we got our scrubs. It was nice. Sort of like an oil with salt crystals. Man I LOVE the spa! 😊
After, we went back into the pool. Lunch was another issue because you couldn't charge it to the room and you couldn't use a credit card AND we didn't have cash. I wish someone had told us to bring cash! Our roomies spotted for us though so we were saved in the end 😊.
At 3 we had our massages. SO relaxing. I forget why I don't get them more often. It was perfect timing as well because we are at the end of our trip. We have been doing a lot of walking and excercise and it was to loosen up all the muscles!
We only had a few minutes after our massages to get our stuff packed up and get on the bus.
The ride home was.... interesting/not so good. At once a few of us started to feel very nauseous because of the insanely windy roads. THEN our tour guide started smoking! IN the bus! WITH the windows up! So between the smoking and the road we were all about done. One girl asked him if he had the sick gum for people that get motion sickness and he told her to sit up front. As he did that we all told him and we felt sick and why. He was surprised when we said the smoking made us sick. There is a reason why there was a big no smoking sign right above him! Like HELLO!
I managed to fall asleep SOMEHOW and was good for alot of the journey back.
I did have a good time at the spa besides the ride back though. Very good investment.

June 22

Today we decided to play hooky and Jen, Lauren and I went to Venice. We were supposed to get on the 830 train but that ended up being full so we got tickets for the next one at 1038. THAT train turned out to be cancelled and the first one got cancelled as well. I guess there was some sort of fire on the tracks along the way that hadn't been cleaned up in time.
SO all the people form the 830 and 10 30 train got put on a different train that stopped in Bologna with ALL the people going to Bologna. Needless to say it was horrible. Standing up in the aisle for an hour and a half. Luckily I sat down in the aisle and a nice lady told me there was an empty seat next to her but for the most part it was cramped hot and just not enjoyable. We get to Bologna and find out the next train is cancelled so we have to take a DIFFERENT train to Venice. But luckily for us the our train have been late so we only had 30 mins until we left. We walked to a cute place across the street and got fruit because we weren't ready to have lunch yet. And we wanted to have lunch in Venice!
We end up getting to Venice at 3pm.... So we didn't have much time. Karma for skipping school I KNOW. We take a river bus to the place with the big tower and the palace. The name escapes me right now, I am SO not a good traveler. I never remember the names of anything. It started raining for a little bit and we almost bought 3Euro Ponchos. We decided to stick it out and in the end the rain stopped shortly after so we saved 3Euro. Booyah!
It was fun for me to be in Venice again because I vaguely remember things from when I was here as a child with my family. I remember my brother catching a pigeon in his hat... I remember the gondolas. The palace... the many bridges. But as an adult everything looks so much different. I think I take it all in alot more then when I was young. It was absolutely beautiful though so I'm glad that we ended up getting there.
We walked all the way back to the train station so we got to see the little streets around the city and all the fancy shops. While Lauren and Jen were looking at paintings this couple came up to us, who had been drinking, and asked how to get back to the bus station. We showed them directions and they wre on there way.
..... Half way there. We run into each other again! They thought it was hilarious! We struck up a little conversation with them and then they were on there way again because they had a bus to catch!
We made it to the train station 20mins before our train left. We did however have to run to the train because the line to get the tickets was so long. You know when you are in the airport and you see people running because they don't want to miss there flight. I secretly kind of make fun of them in my head but I know I shouldn't because there are times in my life I have to do it. Well this time was one of those times and all I could think of was how ridiculous we looked. It was an adventure though.
We got to Bologna and switched trains back to Florence. We could not find our train. The guy that helped us said 3 but we didn't know that there was a 3 east and a 3 west! So we had to run to that train also. It was kind of like a movie because we ran past the stairs that led to our platform and we skidded to a halt but REALLY skidded it was hilarious. Almost knocked Lauren over. Oh the adventures we have together! This train HOWEVER didn't leave for a while and kept stopping at random pitstops. We sat in one place for 45 mins at one point. Something we didn't know was at a certian time at night they only have one railway open so we were waiting for all the trains that were going in the opposite direction to go past and then we would get back on our way. Needless to say we didnt get to Florence until 1230 and we were at a different station then the one we are normally at so we had to pull oudt a map and treck across the city back to our apartments. Poor Jen had to take a taxi to her apartment because she lives far from us 😞 I think she should have stayed the night with us!

June 24

Today is a holiday. I don't know which holiday but I know it is a holiday because we don't have school. When we woke up Lauren and put her blanket in the laundry and then decided she wanted pizze so turned the oven on. As soon as the oven was on ALL the power turned off. I told her she broke it 😊 hee hee. We tried flipping all the switches in the box by the door but nothing was turning back on. We were a little frantic at this point because I had 2 Graphic Design final projects due the next day and all of Lauren's information was online as well. We called the "emergency" number because the rental agency was closed. The "emergency" number is the housing directors personal cell phone. When I told her our problem she immediately sounded annoyed on the phone. But what were we supposed to do!? Fail our finals because no one was able to help us out?! I think not! She told us that there were fuse boxes on the bottom floor so we tromped down there in our pjs and slippers, looking horrific, and stared at the fuse boxes in front of us. We had NO idea which one belonged to our apartment because there was so sticker that said 3rd floor or anything. We hesitantly started flipping switches and calling our other roommate Jerry upstairs to see if anything turned on. Honestly, you had to be there but it was the most hilarious thing in the world. Two silly americans girls trying to figure out which fuse switch was ouurs probably turning on and off the rest of the apartments electricity. While laughing the whole time and worring out loud if one of our neighbors was going to come down and yell at us. We had to call the emergency number again because we couldn't figure out what to do and we finally figured it out. I was flipping the wrong fuses in our apartment so if I had just flipped the right ones! We wouldnt have had this issue. Ai caramba!
Lauren packs and reads/studies. I work on my graphic design homework ALL DAY! Every one is excited because the calcio historical final was that night but we couldn't go. There were fire works after as well but we couldn't go to those either because we had to study. GRR!
The day went by VERY fast and all we did was play with switches and attempt to study for our exams the next day.

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