Venice

So we took the last trip for the semester last weekend, and it might have been my favorite. We went to Venice, and it is just an amazing city, words can't even describe!! I had a wonderful time and the weather was amazing all weekend. On Friday we got there nice and early and spent the day in Murano (shoping for glass...) and Burano (shoping for lace... and looking at the pretty houses). Burano is best known for it's brightly colored houses. It is said that is what all of venice looked like originally. These are both two little islands off of venice, but overall part of it. The second day we walked all throughout Venice, we went to piazza san marco, fed the birds, wasn't such a fan of that, but the girls i was with loved it! :) we basically spent the day wondering through the city. Giannina, one of my roomates, father grew up in Venice so we went and found his house and hung out in that area. We found streets with her last name, just by chance, we discovered the city wasn't made for tall people, and we (meaning I) may have developed a slight obsession with gondeliers. So overall the trip was an amazing, and just a great way to end the semester! :)

Rome from a hill, right before a hail storm, with a pretty rainbow! :)
Lucca

PISA!!!

Pompeii

Capri

Spring break!

So spring break was awesome!! i went to france to visit my friend stef. FYI my pictures loaded backwards so i don't feel like redoing them cause it takes forever so i'll just talk about it backwards. When i was in Marseille i got to see Chateau D'If, but from far away cause they said it was too windy for the boat to go there!! sad i know! but yup.
Ok So for the last day i was with Stef we were in Paris. It was awesome, and we saw everything in under 24 hours!! speed tourists that's what we are! :)
I went to Monaco... twice! it was awesome the first time... the second time it was exactly the same... you can see how small it is so there wasn't much to do that was different, but fun all the same! I also got to see Grace Kelly's Tomb!!
St. Tropez was awesome as well. i basically saw the eniter coast from Marseille to Monaco and all the little towns were just so pretty!!!

And that's stef and I in her town the night i got there with an awesome sunset on the water!! what more could you want!?!?

Anzio

So I went to Anzio yesterday. It is where my Grandpa fought in WWII. They had a little museum dedicated to the landing of the Allies, and the battle that occurred there. There were tons of pictures that families had sent in of people who fought in this battle. Some were accompanied with stories of their lives afterwards, how the war affected them, or i even saw a story a man wrote about what he experienced while he was there. They were also able to recover some of the weapons and materials used there from the ocean, and they are still doing archaeological digs on the beach.

Ok so the admission to the museum was free so i didn't have to talk to the man at the desk going in, he just handed me a ticket. On the way out there were postcards of actual pictures of the battle that i wanted to buy. They turned out to be 1 euro... nice and cheap, but i only had a 5 and he didn't have change... so he just gave them to me :) Then as i was leaving i hear oh signorina and he starts speaking to me in Italian. Now by this point I've figured out how to do money and paying for things and casual conversation anything else... yeah I'm lost. So he's talking to me i tell him i really don't speak Italian but he seems determined to tell me what he wanted to. I finally understood that he was asking me if i knew someone who fought here, and i was like Si mi nonno. And he takes out this map... now when i say map i mean a sheet of paper with like 2 streets drawn on it, not taking into account all the other roads in Anzio. Anyway he didn't tell me what it was too, (actually i am sure he did i just didn't catch it) but was very adamant about the fact that i needed to get there. Sooo i start on my trek with a sketch map and no idea where I'm headed aside from the fact that this nice old Italian man said i NEEDED to go there. Soo i start on my journey.... get lost, ask for directions... in which i can't understand what they say, but i watch their hands. So i keep walking and ask again, and repeat this a couple times. Finally i see what looks like a church and it's the ONLY thing by where people have been pointing me. SO i walk up the little driveway and I'm sure this is what the guy wanted me to go to. It was the Anzio War Cemetery. It was really breathtaking, it was on top of the hill and there was an amazing view of the ocean, plus it was REALLY well kept.


It was really interesting because the graves were of soldiers from all different countries. There were British, South African, American, and some others...



So then i went down to the beach, where they are still doing digs on some of the hills through the ruins. but there are also like all these little cave sorta things you can climb through, well i don't know if you are meant to, cause they look like area for the water to go through during high tide, but i did (quickly).. it was really pretty, then right off the shore of the beach where tons of like rock things... i don't know what you call them, but it was really cool watching the waves hit them.
So anyway, if you continued down the beach you got to the docks. Anzio is still very much a large fishing town. People from Rome go there to get good seafood (and go to the beach), but it was neat cause right as i was getting there all the fishing boats where docking and unloading. That was really interesting to see. It was weird though, nothing, like no shops or "snack bars" -- which is basically where you can get a sandwich-- or restaurants were open. I guess cause it was during the week during the off season, but still it was odd. Anyway i had a great day in Anzio! It was really nice to see, and I hope that this was enough to explain what I did for you Aunt Linda ;)

Copenhagen

Ok, so i went to visit my friend Christy in Copenhagen where she just took a job this past weekend. Let's just say Rome has MUCH better weather. I was so cold and wet the entire weekend. There were points where it was sleeting so hard it was painful, but we toughed it out and did the touristy things!!! Anyway Hans Christian Anderson was from there so they have a statue of the little mermaid which was pretty cool. The castle/fort thing is the oldest operating fort in Europe. There was this cute little street with boats and like resaurants and bars and stuff where people gather (when it's warm of course). It was really fun, and had tons of awesome sights! :)

Flying!!

Ok, so i went to Copenhagen this weekend to visit a friend and the sights from the window of the plane were awesome!! The swiss alps and a sunset! :)

Amazing Sunset

I was in the Villa Borghese yesterday and i caught this amazing sunset with the Vatican in the background! :)

Coliseum

Florence

David, the view from the duomo, and the ponte vechio. :)

Tuscany

I went to tuscany yesterday. It was so amazingly beautiful. At the end of the day when i was walking down what i'm pretty sure was someone's driveway to get a better look at the sun on the countryside i heard someone chopping wood and out from behind the wall walks this little old lady, probably about 75 80 years old wearing a skirt chopping away better than i'd ever seen anyone before! it was cute (and impressive)!!