Barcelona!!!

Sorry it's taken so long to get this post up, I had a busy week at school with a midterm in my Honors class.  Also, sorry there are no pictures, my camera is basically broken and only stays on for about a minute at a time now, so Elizabeth took all our Barcelona pictures.  When I get them from her, I will put some up.  

Well, as expected, Elizabeth and I had an amazing weekend in Barcelona!  It got off to a rough start at the airport though because we both flew in late Thursday night and planned to meet in the arrivals area.  Little did we know that the Barcelona airport is huge and has two terminals that are a 15 minute bus ride away from each other, and of course we each arrived at a different terminal.  So at 12:30 in the morning I finally found Elizabeth after freaking out for a bit, then figuring out there were two terminals and then getting myself to the one she was at.  Then we went to the guest house we were staying at, wandered around for a while trying to find someplace with food that was still open, then got some much needed sleep.

Friday we started the day by walking down probably the most famous street in Barcelona, Las Ramblas.  It's a huge pedestrian walkway with roads for the cars on either side.  There are restaurants, souvenir stands, stands selling pets (such as fish, turtles, bunnies) and most famously "living statues" all the way down Las Ramblas.  The "living statues" are people dressed in costumes or painted to look like characters, similar to the ones that are in big cities in America.  There were a huge variety of "living statues" here, ranging from funny to borderline scary to unbelievable.  The unbelievable one I'm thinking of was a "levitating" man.  I don't know how it worked, but I swear it looked like he was floating in the air.  We got a picture with him, so I'll be sure to put it up later.  There's also a huge food market called the Boqueria Market off of Las Ramblas, which we walked through.  I couldn't believe the variety of seafood and produce.  If you buy seafood there you get the whole animal, or you could buy a pig head or other gross-looking meat if that's your preference.  I'm going to try to find some good food markets like this back in Chicago, because it is really cool to see all the food, and it's fresher than most of the food you can buy at the grocery stores.  At the end of Las Ramblas we started walking along the harbor and saw the Mediterranean.  We really lucked out with the weather, it was gorgeous while we were there!  Next we went to the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia, also known as Barcelona Cathedral.  We were able to take an elevator to this walkway on the roof of the church, which was so cool.  From the roof we saw awesome views of Barcelona and the Mediterranean Sea.  Then we walked back to our guest house for the "siesta" that is so popular in Spain, which I could definitely get used to.  That night after dinner we walked along the beach to this area with a lot of nightlife, where the clubs and bars have patios that open up onto the beach.  It was a fun night!

Saturday we started the day by walking to the north side of the city and going to Park Guell, which was one of the projects of the famous architect Antoni Gaudi.  It's a very nice park, with great views of the city/sea.  There is a lot of mosaic work on the terraces and there is a mosaic "dragon" at the entrance, which you may have seen pictures of before.  Next we went to Sagrada Familia, which is a huge basilica also designed by Gaudi.  At the time of Gaudi's death in 1926, less than a quarter of the church was completed, and they're still working on it today.  It is scheduled to be finished in 2026.  The exterior is very unique, but the interior even more so.  It's almost all white on the inside, and it looks surprisingly modern, with angular designs on the ceiling that kind of look like flowers.  For a late lunch, we walked back to the Boqueria Market and bought bread, brie, and fruit juice, and sat on a bench on Las Ramblas, eating and people-watching.  It was a perfect simple meal!  After a siesta, we had a traditional Spanish dinner, eating at a restaurant that had an outdoor patio on Las Ramblas.  We had paella and sangria, and it was delicious!  That night we did a pub crawl, which took us to a few bars and a club.  Once again, another fun night!  We were sad to leave Barcelona and each other on Sunday, but it was such a great weekend and I would love to go back to Barcelona some day!


I keep forgetting to tell you guys about my tutoring job!  I tutor two little Italian girls in English once a week.  There names are Benedetta and Diletta and they're seven and eight-years-old.  Unfortunately, there's quite a language barrier because they are only in their first year of English in school and I don't know very much Italian, but it's working out.  I had no idea how much English they would know, so after meeting them the first week I now find worksheets and materials online for them that work on vocabulary and reading.  It's a lot harder than I thought it would be since we really don't have a common language and it's hard to tell how much they are actually comprehending.  It's great experience though, and a good way to interact with Italians while earning some spending money, so I'm definitely glad I'm doing it!

Today we were going to take a day trip somewhere, but decided against it since for 12 out of the next 36 hours we'll be on trains to/from Venice.  But I didn't want to waste this beautiful day, so while my friends slept I decided to go out and explore Rome, by myself and without a map (I'm feeling adventurous today I guess!).  I went to the Capuchin Crypt, which is a collection of rooms/chapels beneath a church.  The crypt is "decorated" with the bones of over 4,000 monks.  The bones are stacked in piles, attached to the walls in patterns, and are even put together to make the light fixtures.  Cameras aren't allowed, so I don't have pictures, but you should Google it just to get an idea, because it's one of the strangest things I've ever seen.  I thought it was really creepy being surrounded by the skulls and bones of dead people.  Then I walked around looking for food and got a panino (side note: "panino" is the singular form, I don't know why everyone in America calls it a "panini" when they're only talking about one sandwich, because that's incorrect!).  I was just wandering around with my panino when I stumbled upon the Spanish Steps, so I sat on them and ate/people-watched.  Then I walked around for a while, exploring and shopping, then got gelato and took the bus home.  I'm proud of myself for not getting lost or anything, and I had a great time in the beautiful weather that we're having lately.  Tonight my friends and I leave for Venice, because Carnevale, the celebration that is basically like Mardi Gras, starts tomorrow.  We're taking an overnight train to Venice tonight, staying for the day tomorrow, then taking an overnight train back home tomorrow night.  It should be really fun, and I'm excited to see all the costumes and masks that Carnevale is known for.  I'll update you all about it next week (hopefully with pictures).  Thanks for reading!

Ciao,
Allison

Weekend in Rome and Pisa!

I had a really great time this past weekend in and around Rome!  Friday my friends and I just stayed around campus for the day, catching up on school stuff (I did my student teaching application!) and just relaxing since everyone is still kind of sick.  On Saturday my friend Laura and I decided to take a day trip to Pisa.  It was a pretty spontaneous decision, we just went to the train station and bought our tickets that morning, I guess we were feeling adventurous!  I'm proud of us just for gettting there and back on the correct trains given the language barrier and everything.  It was a three hour train ride from Rome, and I loved traveling by train, since flying tends to give me anxiety.  I'll be very familiar with the trains by the end of the semester, since I have several future trips by train planned (one being to Salzburg, which is 11 hours each way!).  The train went along the Tyrrhenian Sea for a while, which was beautiful.  It was an overcast day and rained for part of the time we were in Pisa, but it was still a great trip.  The Leaning Tower of Pisa is really cool, it leans a lot!  On one side of it though, there is a cable that is definitely helping it stay up, which is kind of cheating, but it's still amazing it can stay up while leaning so much.  We paid to walk to the top of the tower, which meant walking up a few sections of very narrow steps.  At the top, we had great views of the city of Pisa, which is actually pretty small.  Then we went in the Duomo (church) that is right by the tower.  It's a huge church and the ceiling of half of the interior is made of incredibly detailed gold, it's beautiful.  Then we walked around Pisa a little more before getting back on a train headed home to Rome.  I'm so glad we decided to go because I don't know when else I would have had the chance to take a day trip to Pisa since just about all of my weekends in the future are booked with traveling.

Pisa

Laura and I on top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa

On Sunday my friends and I went to this giant outside flea market in Rome, Porta Portese, that's only open on Sundays.  There was a huge variety of products sold at the booths of this market.  They sold a ton of clothes and shoes, jewelry, makeup, perfume, random electronics such as alarm clocks, batteries, CDs, and even kitchen stuff such as pots and pans.  You could really buy just about anything there.  I couldn't help but think that half of the stuff being sold was somehow obtained illegally, because where would these people get large quantities of name brand things to sell at a flea market?  It seemed a little bit shady, but it was a very interesting place to go, that's for sure.  When we left the market, we walked around Rome for a while.  We climbed the stairs of this building that's called the "wedding cake building" since it looks like a multi-tiered white wedding cake from far away.  It's actually called the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument, built in honor of Victor Emmanuel, the first king of the unified Italy.  From the top of the building there are great views of the city.  We also saw these ruins called Torre Argentina, which is where Julius Caesar was supposedly killed.  Interestingly, there is a cat sanctuary located among the ruins now.  I don't think I've mentioned it in my previous posts, but there are a ton of homeless cats just wandering around Rome.  We actually have three or four that wander around campus all the time.  So in Torre Argentina volunteers come and take care of the cats that show up, it's like a no-kill shelter for the homeless cats of Rome, which I thought was very interesting.

Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II

View of the Colosseum from top of the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II

The cat sanctuary among the ruins (there are 4 cats in this picture)

The ruins of Torre Argentina

So that was my adventurous weekend in Pisa and Rome.  This weekend I'm meeting one of my best friends, Elizabeth, in Barcelona, which will be so much fun!  I can't wait!  I'll update you all on Spain once I get back next week.  Thanks for reading!

Ciao,
Allison

Papal Audience and Weekend in Rome

On Wednesday classes were cancelled for the day in order for us to attend a papal audience!  I was very excited and expected it to be outside in St. Peter's Square with thousands of people.  It was actually in an indoor auditorium and there were probably only 500 people there, so I was pleasantly surprised by how small the setting was.  I had no idea what to expect from the actual audience.  Pope Benedict walked out and sat in a chair in the center of the stage.  Then priests read a reading from the Bible in about seven different languages.  Then the Pope read something that sounded like a very long speech.  I have no idea what he said because it was all in Italian.  Then a priest introduced the people of each different language and recognized the people that are associated with groups.  So in the English-speaking group, Loyola University was recognized and then we all stood up and the Pope raised his hand to bless us.  After all the people and groups of a language are introduced, the Pope blesses the people and their families/friends back home and any religious items they brought to bless.  I took a couple rosaries to be blessed.  The Pope does the blessings in the language of that group, but even though he was speaking English, it was very hard to understand with his accent.  I'm so glad I went though, I think I would describe it as a humbling experience.

An interesting thing happened at the papal audience that day.  I don't think it happens often because I told my Mom about it and she told me she saw it on the nightly news back home!  A little boy, maybe 5 years old, ran up to the Pope while he was sitting in his chair on stage.  Obviously there are numerous security guards and Swiss guards everywhere to ensure this doesn't happen, but the little boy just ran past them and I guess they figured he was harmless.  When he got up to the Pope, the little boy knelt in front of him and the Pope just put his hands on the boy's head and blessed him.  I think everyone was just shocked that the boy even made it all the way up there.  But he was so respectful, and when the Pope was finished blessing him, he was escorted off the stage and handed over to his father.  He had the cutest little grin on his face though, like he knew that he had just gotten away with something big.  I'm really glad I got to see that little encounter though, because I just feel like it shows that even though the Pope has a lot of very important things to do, he still takes the time to serve and interact with God's people, down to a random little boy.

   
This past weekend was my first weekend in Rome other than the first weekend over here, which was filled with orientation stuff.  So I was excited to have time to explore a little with my friends.  Unfortunately I got sick, because there's definitely something going around on campus, so I caught up on sleep more than explored, but that's ok.  My friend Laura and I went to an Irish pub to watch a rugby game being played in Rome.  Surprisingly, there are a lot of Irish pubs in Rome, I've already been to several.  It was a lot of fun though, people were all dressed up, some in very random costumes, to cheer for their teams.  Rugby isn't as big as calcio (soccer) in Italy, but it's still a lot more popular than in the US.  My friends and I also spent quite a bit of time wandering around looking for places to go at night.  After that failed, we finally started getting explicit directions to places, because a lot of time is already wasted just by using the buses here that we didn't want to waste any time being lost.  The buses seem to have the most erratic schedules and the normal routes close at midnight, so there are only a few night routes that will get us back to campus after midnight.  We have literally waited for a bus for 45 minutes before giving up and just taking a cab to get where we wanted to be.  There's also a metro system here, which is much more time efficient, but unfortunately it closes at 9pm almost every night for maintenance.  So we're slowly learning the ways of the public transportation system here, which has been an interesting but time consuming experience.

Here are some trips I've planned since the last time I filled you all in:
February 17-20  Barcelona: I'm meeting up with one of my best friends, Elizabeth, since she's studying in Spain this semester
April 8-10   Salzburg, Austria: this is where the Sound of Music was filmed, and everyone who's been there has told me it's a gorgeous place to visit
From March 17-26 my parents and Michael will be here!  We're going to go to Venice and Florence together and then I'll show them around Rome during my free time that week.  I'm so excited!

I'll be in Rome for most of this weekend.  My friends and I are going to try to plan a day trip somewhere, so hopefully I'll feel better and be able to explore more of Italy and Rome!  With all of my trips planned, I won't have another free weekend in Rome until April 15th, and I still have a lot I want to see in Rome so I better get busy this weekend!  I'll let you know what I find.  Thanks for reading!

Ciao,
Allison

Pictures!

Herculaneum

One of the temples in Paestum

Lexi, Laura, me, Megan, and Ashlee

Duomo in Milan

Milan

Market in Milan

Milan, McDonald's, and Mini Calzones

This past weekend I went to Milan with three of my friends (who are also my sorority sisters) Megan, Lexi, and Laura.  We left Rome on Friday and got back Monday morning.  Since our flight left at 6:30am Monday morning, we decided to camp out overnight in the airport to save money since we'd have to be there so early anyway.  That was an interesting experience in itself, and I think we're all glad we did it once, but I don't think we'll do it again if we can avoid it.  Surprisingly, there were a lot of other people who stayed there overnight too, so it was completely safe, we just didn't get any sleep and one of my friends was sick, which didn't help.  Anyway, Milan was great.  It's a lot different than Rome, but not exactly what I had expected.  I expected it to be very modern (it is one of the fashion capitals of the world after all) but it was more a balance of antiquity and modernity.  There's a cathedral (Duomo) there that is made mostly of white marble and has a lot of Gothic architecture.  It's actually the second largest cathedral in the world, which makes sense even at a glance because it's just huge.  On Saturday morning we took the metro to the southside of the city to go to the markets that are there in the mornings.  There were booths selling a variety of things from purses, coats, and clothes, to fruits/vegetables, cheeses, breads, and whole raw fish!  We ended up buying these little "mini calzones" as we called them, because we didn't know exactly what they were, but they were delicious and served as our breakfast/lunch for the day.  Of course we also went shopping, though most of it was window shopping, since all the huge (and expensive) fashion labels have stores in the center of Milan.  We didn't plan any tours in Milan so we basically just wandered around with maps, stumbling upon things to see.  That was also a learning experience, because if we would've planned more what we wanted to do in Milan we probably would've realized we didn't need three whole days there.  But all in all it was a great first trip, and I look forward to our weekend trips to come! 

McDonald's is also included in this post title because we spent a surprising amount of time in several McDonald's while in Milan.  There are a couple reasons for this.  One is that after eating pasta twice a day everyday for the past few weeks we just really wanted a cheeseburger!  Also, it was cold/rainy/snowy and one of my friends was sick and we were all tired, so sometimes we just took a break in a nice, warm McDonald's.  I would also say that we gave ourselves a little bit too much time in Milan, which is just one of those things that you learn along the way when you're planning trips.  The McDonald's in different countries have different menu items though, so there were plenty of unique things to try, like kiwi on a popsicle stick, which was interesting.  So I would say that in our three days in Milan I ate more McDonald's then in the last six months in America, which is ironic!       

I know a lot of the women who read my blog have read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and I randomly learned that one of my professors, Elizabeth Geoghegan, met Liz Gilbert while in Italy and is in her book.  I don't remember a character Elizabeth in the book, but she's in there, so I'll have to reread it when I get back to the States. 

Tomorrow we have a papal audience, which I'm excited for!  This weekend I'll be in Rome, and I plan to explore the city by myself a little bit, which I'm looking forward to.

I got my laptop back but now the internet isn't working on it, so hopefully I'll be able to add pictures later this week.  Thanks for reading!

Ciao,
Allison