when in rome...

...do not do as the Waagners do. Because if you do it the way the Waagners do, you will end up realizing that someone stole your wallet on a crowded Roman metro.

True story.

Anyway, sorry for the unoriginal title, but there is a helicopter-sized mosquito (or five) buzzing around my head, and my computer is about to die because it literally took an hour to upload these ten photos, so quick and dirty is all you get.

Theme for the week: Cats. There will be many, many more of these lovely feline photos to come in the Sorrento installment of The Week with My Parents, but for now, just one.

This photo is dedicated to my brother Travis, who apparently became obsessed with cats sometime between the time our cat died two years ago and now.

We took a walk to the Vatican...

Then to the Colosseum, where my dad had to, of course, touch everything. And know everything about every kind of rock ever used to build the Colosseum. Apparently, along with learning basic Italian, I am expected to know about the building techniques of the ancient Romans. Whoops.

Mom throwing her coin into the Trevi Fountain...

Then we went into the Piazza Navona, where there was some sort of mini-festival set up, and they were sending up these shapes made out of BUBBLES up into the air!

See the star?

And the "EU"?

Playing with bubbles.

We also saw some Roman catacombs...

Sunglasses + scarves = family resemblance?

Anyway, I apologize again for the lack of substance in this blog but I will say it again: it is not my fault! I'm looking at you, Blogger.

Tomorrow, the parents and I are off to do Lucca for the day, then my flight departs for Alicante at 8:55 PM from Pisa. Hopefully, my hostel will have internet so that I can catch up on the other happenings of this past week, and show you pictures of what are assured to be the most blissful three beach days of my life.

still kicking in sorrento.

Well, hello! I am sure that you have all forgotten by now that I even HAVE a blog, but my absence has not been my fault, not even one tiny bit. Most of the hotels we have been staying in have lacked internet service, so when I do get on at internet cafes and such, I get to stay on for about 10 minutes before it is time to move on.

Just to quickly recap, my parents and I left Florence around 11 AM on Saturday morning to head to Rome, where the weather was uncooperative, pickpockets were plenty, and our lovely hotel was located in the ghetto, to put it nicely. We still managed to have a great time exploring the Colosseum, the Palatine, the Roman catacombs, and the Pantheon. Pictures and details to follow, as soon as I can get onto my own laptop.

After a disastrous last day in Rome, in which my father got his wallet stolen (after failing to heed advice from both my mother and myself), we took a train to Naples, where we caught ANOTHER train to Sorrento, where we have been for the last two days. Sorrento is such a nice little town...very quiet, laid back, relaxed, and SUNNY, which is a weather condition I forgot existed. What, you mean it is possible to have a day sans rain and clouds? It is located just under an hour south of Naples by train, near the famed Amalfi Coast, favorite vacation spot of the rich and the famous. Sorrento is a little less hyped than that, but beautiful, nonetheless.

We arrived Monday night, but pretty much just ate dinner before collapsing into bed at our little B&B. Yesterday, we took a boat out to the island of Capri where we took a boat tour around the island and rode a chair lift (yes, an actual chair lift) up a mountain to a view overlooking the entire city of Capri. My nose got a little singed, but other than that, it was a perfect day, capped off by the most incredible dinner experience I have had here in Italy.

The owner of our B&B had recommended this restaurant that was supposedly located "up the hill" (read: mountain) from us, so when we decided to go, they sent a car to personally pick us up. From there, we drove and drove and drove up some very winding streets up to the most beautiful vineyard slash farm you have ever seen. There were lemon trees, chickens, dogs, but above all, an insane view of Capri and the coast. The waiter told us up front that we would not be ordering from a menu, but that everything would just come to us. From there, we were served a traditional Italian meal, all four courses, that even my father proclaimed the best he had eaten in Italy (and for those of you that know him, you know what a big deal this is). The meal was capped by my parents' first experience with limoncello. Afterwards, we were again personally driven down the hill to our B&B, where we were unable to do anything except sleep.

Today, we are going to visit the historical site of Pompeii before spending one more night here in Sorrento. Tomorrow, we are taking a train back to Florence, where my parents will stay until they depart from Pisa on Saturday. I will be taking a train to Pisa Friday afternoon to catch my flight to Alicante, Spain where I will spend three days laying out (and trying to catch my tan up to my friends'...I am looking at you, Kaley Goodfellow!) and relaxing.

I hope to provide pictures from everything that I just described above at some point over the next couple of days, but I make no promises. Internet here is even rarer than back at The Palace.

barcelona!

Well, hello! Long time no....write? My internet is finally cooperating, so I can update you on the latest adventures of the ladies of The Palace!

I actually went to Barcelona 3 years ago when I did my mini-study abroad program the summer I graduated. We only got to spend about 36 hours in the city total, so it was a definite must for me to return.

We departed Thursday night at 8:20 PM from Pisa, headed for the Girona Airport. After landing, we took a bus into the city of Barcelona, where we had relatively little trouble finding our enormous hostel. It as a decent place to stay; definitely what I think of as a typical hostel, meaning less customer service, tiny rooms, and crappy food. Either way, we didn't see any bugs or mold or creepsters, so we were satisfied.

Entirely exhausted upon arrivel on Thursday night, we pretty much showered (with no hot water!) and collapsed into bed. We took advantage of a full night's rest by getting up fairly early on Friday morning to cover all of the basic touristy sights of Barcelona. Gillian's roommate from home, Monica, is studying there this semester, and graciously agreed to play tour guide for us.

We met her in the Plaza Catalunya before walking to...

La Rambla, a street famous for its street performers and beautiful shade-providing trees. We meandered down this way, where I encountered Starbucks, which I hadn't seen since London. Of course, we were obligated to stop quickly for an iced coffee.

There were also a lot of stands selling birds and other random pets on La Rambla...in this case, turtles! From Florida! I'm not going to lie, spending a weekend in Spain did a number on my Italian. I kept speaking a mixture of the two languages that my roommate dubbed "Spatalian" and since we have been back, I keep saying "Gracias!" instead of "Grazie!" *facepalm* I was surprised, though, how much Spanish I have retained after not speaking it for almost 2 years.

Me and the roommates on La Rambla.
Also on La Rambla is Barcelona's funnest food market, La Boqueria!

While I will always have a special place in my heart for il mercato centrale, I was definitely impresssed with the variety and COLOR in La Boqueria.

I didn't get many good shots, though. The lighting in there was pretty bad, and no matter how much I adjusted the settings on my camera, the pictures kept coming out too yellow or too light or blurry. Baahhh.

The tour continued through Plaza Real...

Tell me that does not remind you of Florida.

The letters spelled out "Barcelona" but there was construction blocking us from getting a really good angle on them :/ I made them try, though.

Barcelona is full of buildings and art made by Antoni Gaudi, including this church, La Sagrada Familia. Gaudi was a Catalan artist known for his unique designs and modern flair as well as his intense religious devotion. This church is STILL undergoing construction, and has remained unfinished since 1882. Nuts.

We found a little place by the harbor to eat lunch and enjoy our first pitcher of sangria...

Later in the afternoon, we headed to another Gaudi landmark, Park Guell. Gillian's roommate was telling us that originally, Gaudi had planned to make it a large neighborhood full of large and luxurious modern homes, but after the completion of his own, he decided to make it into a park, instead.

The view of the city was obscured a bit by fog, but it was still pretty awesome.

The whole thing is a giant mosiac made out of recycled materials, like coffee cups and scrap metal. A pretty awesome concept, in my opinion.

This building actually served as the guardhouse when Gaudi lived in his house in the Park. Now it's a shop.

I bought some earrings (!!) at the park, but LOST THEM that same night when we went out :[ Very sad day. Good thing they were only like 4 euro.

We went back to the hostel to rest for a bit before meeting up with Monica again at the Plaza Espanya to see a fountain show. They normally play classical music and the fountain's water spurts change shape and color to kind of match the music; when we went, however, it was an 80's theme, which we all thoroughly enjoyed singing along to (as did the rest of the crowd!)

[I also took a video of this which I will upload later; right now, YouTube is not being helpful.]

We at dinner that night at a restaurant close to the water, which someone on Monica's program had recommended as being cheap, but having decent paella. Four of us ordered the fisherman's paella, while Marissa (vegetarian) abstained. I thought the paella was good; not mind blowing, but good.

We didn't finish dinner until past 11 PM; the Spaniards eat even later than the Italians, which I didn't actually think was possible. After dinner, we went out to a large bar, which I don't know the name of. It was HUGE, reminding me of a warehouse with long cafeteria tables inside. The pitchers of sangria were only 5 euro, so we had...a few.

After the bar, we hit up Razzmatazz, which is Barcelona's largest club. It has five large rooms, which are often separated so that they are almost like five separate clubs, each with its own theme. On it's busiest nights, there can be over 5,000 people in there. Whoa.

We had a good time dancing and drinking and didn't end up going home until after 5 AM, so sleeping in the next morning was definitely necessary. We mostly spent the day lounging around, before going to lunch, where we spent more than two hours. Waiters in Europe are WAY different than in America. You practically have to tackle them to flag them down and get them to bring you a check. Repeat process to get change for your payment.

Us in the Plaza Catalunya on Saturday night.

We wanted to try another traditional Spanish dinner that night: tapas! To do a tapas style dinner, usually a group of people will each order between two and four small plates of food, and then the table generally shares, eating off each other's plates. It's kind of the Spanish version of aperitivo: a lighter dinner in which you sample multiple dishes. The place that Monica wanted to take us ended up being closed because Saturday was some sort of holiday, so we went to a place down the street. I enjoyed the tapas experience, but the food there was definitely not high quality.

Again, dinner wasn't over until around 10:30 PM, so we headed back to Monica's to touch up our makeup before heading out to the clubs again.

Our first stop was Ryan's Pub, which is one of Monica's favorite little hole-in-the-wall bars. We had a drink there, and just sat talking and watching rugby for awhile before we went to Chupito.

Chupito is a shot bar, known for it's crazy drinks. That is a list of all of the shots that they have, each with it's own crazy name like "vaca loca" ("mad cow"). Many of them were named after people, other foods, movies, characters, etc. and each one was only 2 euro! We had an amazing time here.

That's a picture of our "boy scout" shots. We each got a marshmallow on a stick, then the lit the bar on fire so that we could roast them. After roasting, we ate the marshmallow and washed it down with the shot. So fun!

Next up was the "Harry Potter" shot. They topped each shot with an orange which was covered in sugar and a bit of alcohol, so that they would light up. Then, once they were aflame, the bartender peppered them with cinnamon to make sparkles. Like magic! Ooooh.

Then we ordered this giant drink to share...

It was as big as my head!

We also did a "Florencia" shot in honor of Florence, a "Finding Nemo" shot in which you have to dig through whipped cream to find an M&M before you can take it, and Sam and I each did a "Willy Wonka" which was just chocolate alcohol with whipped cream. Yummmm.

After Chupito, we went to Apolo, another one of Barcelona's big clubs. It was pretty empty when we arrived, but we waited around and by 3 AM it had filled up. I was pretty bored by 4:30 AM or so, so when I couldn't find my friends, I just took the metro back to the hostel and passed out. Apparently the others didn't get back until past 6 AM! Nuts.

We had to get up early to check out on Sunday morning, so we headed to Starbucks on La Rambla to caffeinate and grab some breakfast.

La Torre Agbar. An...interesting building.

We had been talking about going to the beach all weekend, so when Sunday dawned sunny and warm, we decided to take advantage.

Me and Gillian on the bus on the way to the beach...

It was a little windy down by the water, but it warmed up a lot after about an hour.

In the meantime, Gillian taught us some yoga poses...

And we searched for sea glass and little ceramic tiles...

Me standing in the Mediterranean! Whoopsie, missed a button there.

After a couple of hours, we decided to get a late lunch. We searched for awhile but had a difficult time finding a restaurant, so we eventually just settled for the first one that looked decent. Again, the food wasn't the best quality, but when you're eating on the beach in Barcelona, it's hard to feel sad about that.

I'll spare you the long and painful story of our return home and just say that we finally rolled into Florence around 2:30 AM on Monday morning, our pockets lighter, our skin tanner, and our experience here in Europe richer. I personally think that this was my favorite weekend trip so far. There is just something about Barcelona that gets me every time; I felt it even three years ago when I was only there for a day and a half, knowing that I absolutely had to return. If you're ever in Spain, I definitely recommend it.