Never thought I'd say those words considering cheese is my drunk food of choice, but after this weekend it was true.
The only thing we were really told about our trip to Cilento was that we'd be eating a lot which was all I needed to know to get excited for it. I'm still unsure what Cilento is, its bigger than a city but smaller than a region...perhaps its a province? Regardless it was about a 4 hour nap coach bus ride from Roma.
First stop was a farm, naturally. There was also a bunch of little bambini there for some school field trip (we obviously go on very intellectually stimulating trips) and we all ate our lunch outside while some of girls eye flirted with the bambinos. Lunch was pasta, pizza and lots of cheese. Like huge balls of mozarella di bufala ate by themselves. I was loving it at the time, little did I know I wouldn't be able to look at it by the end of the trip without gagging.
After lunch we went to see some vines of like an extinct grape or something? I wasn't really paying attention, I just wanted to see the little bufala cows!!
hi dood
give me your cheeze
After farm time, we went to a port where the fishermen showed us all the sea creatures they caught that morning.
We quickly stopped at our hotel to drop off our bags before going out to one of the strangest dinners of my life. Of course one of the first things they brought us to eat were giant plates of our own personal balls of mozzarella.
soo much cheese
Shortly after a thing of pizza dough landed on the table...that's when I knew this night was going to be interesting. The owner came out and greeted us by throwing another thing of pizza dough at our table which knocked over Amy's coke glass, yet that didn't stop us from playing with it.
maturity
Our waiters kept bringing out the bottles of wine so our glasses were never empty. The owner came out again this time with a micrphone to begin karaoke, naturally. He began singing some of our fave Italian songs like "Cantare Volare". He eventually worked his way up to the Bocelli classic "Time to Say Goodbye", I felt like I was at the Catalina Wine Mixer or something.
In the meantime there's like a bunch of these 12 year old Italian girls there for a birthday party and they start talking to us about America and telling us about their English test the next day. I felt bad because we were increasingly getting more and more intoxicated. At one point our program director told the waiters to stop bringing us wine, but being the cool dudes they were they kept on sneaking them out to us.
two of my favorites at dinner!
After more wine and karaoke it was time to head back and go to bed for our 7am wake up call. The next morning we went to another bufala farm, where we surprise were given more cheese to eat. My digestive system was getting pretty out of whack already.
Then we got a tour of the cows houses and it was like 10x cooler than the first farm. It was like the Beverly Hills of cow farms. They had like automated gates and milking machines, microchips in the the cows, and even a spa! Apparently the Queen of England requested mozzarella from this farm, maybe they'll serve some at the royal wedding?!!?
getting his brush on
Later in the day we went to a tiny little town for our independent lunch of the trip. Some of us wandered into a small little store that made sandwiches. After finally communicating our sandwiches orders the two Italian woman wanted to give us a gift. Take a wild guess as to what is was. If you guessed more mozzarella you were right! They were so excited and told us about how it was famous in that area (really I had no clue). Not wanting to be rude we took a few bites in there and brought the rest outside to the rest of our groups who all looked at it in disgust.
Another activity that day was a trip to the Greek ruins of Paestum. They had a bunch of temples there that date back to 500 BC!!!!!!! Even older than all the old stuff in Roma. During our tour we saw probably one of the best posing with friends opportunities ever of this lady sprawled out like she was dying in front of a temple. Unfortunately we were in the middle of listening to the old man tour guide telling us stories in indecipherable English so we couldn't take the picture but we did reenact it.
That night was dinner at a pizza factory and out for our friend's 21st birthday. We raged in one of the only bars in Eboli and I enjoyed some super cheap tequila shots which I had been missing a lot. It was a really fun night but the 7am wake up call again the next day was not.
Sunday we hit up some gardens, walked around Salerno, went to the beach, got lunch (more pizza of course) and headed back to Rome to meet up with Rojek, Breanne and Pow Pow! And so began Chi O pilgrimage to Rome for Holy Week. More to come on that later!!
So many activities, so little time. I realized I leave to go back to America three weeks from today and started crying, for realz.
But no more dwelling on sad things like that because I have many stories to tell. I've had a slew of visitors, a class weekend trip to the land of cheese, and consumed ungodly amounts of food. I will now break it all down for you, trilogy style.
Part I-The Couples
It had been a while since I'd last seen Dustin so he decided to ditch Champaign for a little bit to visit me. Since him and Trevs are dating I told her she should come too so she could see her boyfriend and cause I kinda missed her. I guess then they figured they might as well see a few other places together since Dustin was already going to be in Europe visiting me. So they arrived to Roma after hitting up Barcelona and Paris.
Also in Rome during this time was my cousin Katie and her boyfriend Steve who were visiting my cousin Kevin in Scotland and then just traveling after for a few weeks. They all lead rough lives...
Sometimes I have this thing called class so unfortunately I couldn't make it to the Vatican with Trevs and Dustin but I sent them off with directions and of course recommendations for the best food and gelato over there. We met up later got more gelato, saw some more churches, standard Roman things.
They bravely agreed to be my guinea pigs that night for dinner when I decided to test out my carbonara skillz. Surprisingly it turned out pretty edible so win. Katie and Steve were going to join us for dinner too but surprise, European cell phones suck and we couldn't text. No worries, they made it over to my apartment in time for the pregame.
A bunch of the Vienna peeps were in Roma too so our usual group of about 30 was almost doubled and crammed into one apartment. We get noise complaints when like 10 of go out so needless to say Boarding House International was not happy with us. After getting yelled at a few times we decided it was time to leave and we hit up Coyote, obviously and dance the night away.
However upon returning home much later that evening we encountered a problem. New security dude decided to actually check to see if the people coming home that night lived there because technically we aren't supposed to have visitors. Luckily we got there a little earlier than some other people so I was able to sneak them in. Apparently the police showed up outside our apt right after we got them in so we hid in our apartment with the lights out? and made a pasta concoction of butter, pepper and various cheezzez found in the fridge.
The next day I decided to be a bad ass and ditch class to do touristy things with Trevs and Dustin. At the forum we ran into Katie and Steve and we decided to take a touristy picture together for grandma rather than our going out pictures from the night before. We also hit up the Colosseum and got many pictures for posing with friends. Pictures not included in this post because Trevs and I suck and are cameraless in Europe, thank God for Dustin.
That night we met up Kelsey, Audrey, and McKenna for pizza at Dar Poeta which was delicious as always. I also think we got McKenna kinda tipsy, win. afterwards we went on a little night walk across Rome.
throwing what we know at the spanish steps
I left for our group trip to Cilento early the next morning and was sad to say goodbye to Trevs and Dustin but excited for our trip.
Hopefully I'll be able to do the next two parts tonight as well. I've been out too many nights in a row and need to rest up for Vatican mass and more visitors tomorrow.
Looks like I'll have to miss out on the Welcome to Da House Jesus Party going on at one of the clubs this year. How will I ever survive??
Almost caught up! I'm gonna keep this post short so I can finish it tonight before Trevs and Dustin get here because they mark the beginning of 2 1/2 weeks straight of visitors and my tour guiding skills will have to replace my blogging skills. So with that being said I will give you a quick recap on my past weekend in Cinqueterre!
Cinque is probably the most beautiful place I've been to Italy. It's five coastal towns linked together by a scenic hiking path which unfortunately for us is closed for 6 months due to landslide damages. No worries though, it just gives me an excuse to go back.
Our days consisted relaxing on rocks, beaches, piers soaking up the sun and drinking margaritas and strawberry daiquiris. Night was for delicious seafood and pesto dishes and drinking wine on our rocks near the water.
our hostel
sooo pretty
take me back
we found a tree with the best smelling lemons in the world so we picked some
Harbor in our town Riomaggiore
Locking up our love on la via del amore which connects Riomaggiore with the next town Manorola.
Manorola
pretending to be mermaids
beach!!
desperately searching for aloe after frying on the beach
It was such a fun relaxing weekend. Although I am still in pain from my sunburns. I need to find out how to say aloe vera in Italian.
I'm so pumped for next few weeks and all of my visitors and I know I'll have some very funny stories by the end of it. The arrival of the Chi-Os may just cause the fall of Rome...again.
Despite my lingering exhaustion from Spring Break, I was so ready to go for my weekend in Amsterdam. However, we couldn't leave until Saturday because Friday we was our field trip to a cheese farm. Yes, that is considered part of my class schedule, like I have said many times I do not live a real life here but I'm going to enjoy every second of it.
That Friday marked the first day of April and the beginning of the BEAUTIFUL weather we've been having in Rome. I basically get sunburnt on a daily basis, but that's besides the point. Anyway so Friday was cheese farm day. Cheese farm was located in a beautiful little valley outside of Rome with a huge volcanic lake in the middle. We learn how cheese is made and even got to make our own. No they do not grow it on cheese plants, they make it from goats. I even got to meet a few of the little guys and feed them. They loved me.
me and all my goat friendzz
After our tour we of course sat down for a cheese tasting and lunch and then got to hang out around the farm and prendere il sole.
roomiez aka "sugar kitties" (ask gina)
i could totally be an italian cheese farmer with these views
sheepss
After a provincial day living the life of an Italian cheese farmer, I was ready to venture off to the big city of Amsterdam Saturday morning. I had a lot of stereotypes in my head about Amsterdam and what I thought it was going to be like. The word adorable was not one of them, but after stepping out of the train station and wandering around the city in search of our hostel, that quickly became the word I used to define everything I saw.
We arrived early Saturday afternoon to a warm sunny day. All the Amsterdamers were out and about riding there bicycles and doing Dutch things.
photos courtesy of Amy Wheeler
After about an hour of being lost leisurely searching for our hostel, we finally found it. Street names in Amsterdam are hard to read, say and distinguish from one another so this weekend we just decided to wander until we found what we were looking for.
Amy and I walked around the area of our hostel, grabbed some beers and waited for Corinne and Gina to arrive. They too had some trouble finding our place so by the time we all left to hit up the Heineken Experience to experience Heineken, they were done giving tours for the day #studyabroadproblems. We decided the next best way to experience Heineken was to drink Heineken so we found a cute little gazebo restaurant in a park area and posted up there before dinner.
Some of our program friends had already done the 'dam and told us about a great Mexican place they found, which I was all for. I literally think I complain about my cravings for Mexican food on a daily basis so sorry to all those who have to deal with me. On our search for said Mexican restaurant we kept stumbling upon many Argentinean grills. There were probably at least 3 on every street no joke. I was very confused because it's not like a saw an abundance of Argentineans walking the streets of Amsterdam. We eventually abandoned our search for the Mexican restaurant and I settled my cravings with a sub par plate of nachos from one of the Argentinean grills.
After dinner we decided to head out in search of the Red Light District. Once again we were hopelessly lost until my friend Amy noticed a street with red light bulbs in the lamps and suggested that could possibly be the street. We doubtingly checked it out and sure enough that was the start to the Red Light District (who would have thought that the lights are actually red there???? not us)
The Red Light District was weird. I will leave it at that.
Sunday morning we did some more sight seeing. We got up early and headed over to the Anne Frank House, which was one of my favorite parts of the trip. After reading her diary and learning so much about the Holocaust throughout school, going to her house just made it all so real.
We took a quick lunch break and then tried again for Heineken Round 2 and got in with no problems. Heineken Experience was like Disney World for adults, with beer. They even had a sweet motion sensor ride ride where you got to pretend you were a beer bottle. And at the end we got two free beers, I think the Guinness Factory might need to step up their game...
Gina and Corinne went home that night and Amy and I stayed for one more. We did a very educational walking tour the next day. The End.
Except I forgot one of the greatest parts of Amsterdam, Chipsy King. They were like the best french fries in the world and they had a bunch of different toppings. They even had the awesome cheese sauce from a bag like the ones they use for nachos at movie theaters. I never realized how much I missed bagged cheese, it was delicious.
Tuesday morning was a bit of a struggle but no amount of sleep deprivation or hangover from Barcelona could dampen our spirits for the next leg of our Spring Break, Ireland, my homeland. March was a great month for this trip what with our Unofficial and St. Patricks Day celebrations and then finally the real deal.
Obviously the song for this trip was a little ditty called Galway Girl which I kinda want to be my new theme song.
P.S. I love that movie. I was kinda hoping my trip to Ireland would be like that movie, minus the part about my adorable Irish husband getting brain cancer and dying, leaving me lonely and depressed, only to continuously rehash my memories of him by sending me letters from the dead. ***SPOILER ALERT***
While I didn't find Gerard Butler in Ireland, I did manage to find myself a man, the only thing is he's a lot older and he's married.............................
He was also our tour bus driver. Yes I am in love with a 70+ year old Cliffs of Moher tour bus driver named Desmond, he was very charming. The morning of our Cliffs of Moher tour he grabbed me and my three roommates to make sure we were on his bus and even gave us front row seats. So we were able to snag some great picks from our tour (and by we I mean my roommates because I have been camera-less for the past two months). So I'll try and recreate our tour for all of you with some pictures and a lovely little video put together by Corinne.
castle
pretty countryside
desmond and his leprechaun friend
Burren
fudge shop
cliffs of moher!
#rebelz
is this why they have the sign???
desmond and his girlfriends near his old courting wall
galway bay
Desmond made our day. He flirted with us, told jokes, sang songs and made me fall even more in love with Ireland.
We also went out do different Irish pubs both of our nights in Galway, which were so fun. They all had live music playing and friendly Irish people to hangout with.
pregaming with tiger beer #charliesheen
more Irish boyfriendzzz???
After a lovely stay in Galway we headed to Dublin Thursday morning for the last leg of our journey. We hit up Guiness Factory, Trinity College, and did a half day trip to the suburb Howth which was beautiful!
Another great part about Dublin is I got to see more friendzz! Tara was visiting from across the pond and Cass and Chad are current residents of my homeland so they took us out and Cass even cooked dinner for me and Amy. She da best.
stunna shadez in dubz
So sorry this was more of a picture book and less of a blog entry but I am tired and don't feel like using words. Plus I want to be caught up with Amsterdam before I leave for Cinqueterre on Friday!! I'm hitting the 5 weeks left marker on Saturday which is sooo weird and sad and I need to stop thinking about it. But I am in Italy for the rest of the time which I am sooo excited about. Italy in the spring is the greatest place on earth.
Anyway Amsterdam updates tomorrow then I am peacing out for the weekend for hiking adventurezzz.
They can take you to the hospital much faster than foot, taxi, and the way today played out even an ambulance. Yes ambulance, but don't worry not for me, for my uber graceful friend and roommate Corinne.
You see we have to walk up a lot of stairs to get to our apartment, and while walking up said stairs Corinne slipped and fell. Normally not a big deal except she was carrying a bottle of wine which shattered when she fell and then sliced up her arm (and they say wine is supposed to be good for you).
Long story short, our apartment workers don't speak English we don't speak Italian, they call her an ambulance (which took a solid 25 min) we can't get a hold of our program director, the ambulance lady is looking at Corinne's arm saying muerte (which means death!?! I'm sure she was being funny but that humor doesn't really translate) and next thing we know she's carted off by herself on an ambulance to the hospital on Tiber Island.
So Amy and I naturally grab our bikes and speed pedal after them to meet her at the hospital. We were kinda excited cause there's supposed to be a really cool turtle fountain in the hospital and this was prob gonna be our one chance to find it. Sadly we did not though. They also sell cigarettes in the hospital and let people hangout in the area where they unload ambulances. Old women yell at you for talking and there was a lady with like wedgey high heeled gym shoes and a thong sticking out that probs went up to her belly button. Italian hosipitals are weird, hopefully I don't have to go back to one.
But when they brought Corinne back to us she was all stitched up and good to go. And her doctor was super attractive, so win. Hot Italian doctor? Maybe I will go back to that hospital after all....
Spring Break was one of those trips we couldn't stop thinking about as soon as we booked it. For us Barcelona, Galway and Dublin was the perfect combo of going to beautiful historic places but still being able to chill and have fun without having to be crazy tourists. We even had a little playlist going for each place to get us pumped. Song #1:
We're from Barcelona by the Band I'm From Barcelona
So begins part one of Spring Break Extravaganza, Barcelona. As some of you may have already noticed, I like lists and countdowns. So obviously I made a top ten list for Barca. Here we go!!
Top 10 Reasons Why I Loved Barcelona
10. Barcelona Magically Cures All of Your Sicknesses
After a week of not sleeping from midterms and raging with Toups, my immune system was not in the best shape for Spring Break. Saturday night I took a nap before we went out and woke up with a fever and chillz, ruh roh. However seeing as it was my only Saturday night in Barcelona for possibly the rest of my life, I decided to pop in some ibuprofen and push through. After returning home around 5:30am I went to bed and miraculously woke up the next day feeling great and was not sick at all during the rest of break. And they say Rome is the Holy City.
9. The Beach
Now that it is getting warm, I am making my travel plans solely based on where I can go sit on a beach (with the exception of Amsterdam this weekend). So naturally I was loving on the beaches in Barca. You see a lot of cool things on the beach, like all the swanky beach clubs, cool sandcastles and naked man. Naked man is a man who literally walks around the beach naked all day everyday. Like completely naked. Katie says she's even seen him out in 50 degree weather. Unfortunately for you guys neither I nor Corinne had the balls (pun intended) to get close enough to take a picture of naked man.
beachez
monkey sand sculpture!!!
8. Tapas
I know you were all wondering when I was gonna start talking about food so here you go! I was a little hesitant about the idea of tapas before I went to Spain mainly because I'm not good at sharing my food (which is the whole point of tapas). But I learned the great thing about sharing is that you get to eat even more food. My favorite tapa was patatas bravas which were these potatoey-french fry thing with like a mayo and hot sauce, sooooooo good.
7. Sangria
It's like wine...but BETER. It even has fruit in it so it has to be good for me.
6. Mexican Food
But wait...I thought you were in Spain, where did you find Mexican food? Well, I would like to thank Alyssa Vorkapic who has been a resident of Barcelona for the past 8 months and took us to a little Mexican restaurant in her neighborhood. A margarita and guacamole have never tasted so good. Hopefully I can get another Mexican kick in the 'dam this weekend and then maybe I will survive till May when I stop at Chipotle on my way home from the airport.
5. Sweet Bars
So two of the coolest bars (aside from Kams of course) I've been to were in Barca. One was some fairy bar Katie took us to. Think Rainforest Cafe for adults and a bar and not a rainforest but like the woods with some magical elements.
After that, we went to Chipitos, the shot bar. They had a wall filled with hundreds of different shots all for only 2 euro. I decided to get the Harry Potter (naturally) as well as the Boy Scout. They really like setting stuff on fire.
Prepping our Harry Potter shots
Then set it on fire
Ready for our Boy Scouts
Toasting our marshmallows which we then used as chasers
4. Crazy People
Of all the places I've been so far in Europe, Barcelona wins for meeting strange people. Where do I even start.
Sunglasses Man- Sunglasses man was a sandcastle artist who was on at least 3 different types of drugs. He was also missing about half of his front teeth. He asked Corinne why she wasn't wearing sunglasses and offered to give her his, insisting they were real gold. When Corinne pointed out that I too was sunglass-less he creepily stared into my eyes, told me they were beautiful and I should never wear sunglasses (thanks for the compliment???).
Sleepy Asian Girl- Sleepy Asian girl was one of our roommates in our hostel. Every time we saw her she was sleeping, whether it was 10am, 5pm, or 3am she was always asleep.
Shirtless Staring Man- Another roommate of ours. We didn't know he existed however until we came into our room one night after dinner to find him sitting up in his bed in jeans and shirtless staring at the wall in front of him. Needless to say we never spoke.
Portuguese Driving School Teacher-Met this one at happy hour in our hostel. He came and sat down with me and Katie and told me his life story. He told me about his amazing career as a driver's ed teacher and how apparently thats like a really important job in Portugal. Yet he wants to give that all up and move to the U.S. to pursue his acting career.
Stagg Party- Sunday night we made friends with some British dudes who were partying it up in Barca for their friend's bachelor party. They were all dressed in soccer costumes and one of them was a ref who blew his whistle and gave our yellow or red cards to anyone in the bar who said or did something he didn't like.
Sketch British Dudes- Unlike our adorable stagg party friends these British dudes were a little sketch. They were more of our hostel roommates who came in super late Sunday night yelling something about hiring prostitutes and getting caught by the police...needless to say I pretended I was still sleeping for that one.
Canadian Man-probably the strangest of the ones I met this trip. Again, pretty sure he was on several different drugs. He sat with me and Katie at our hostel bar and we began conversing. He asked me about my necklace which I said was a gift from my aunt from being in her wedding when I was like 12. His response, "Oh everybody says that, everybody always says they haven't danced since they were 12." (not what I said but ok)Katie being Katie eggs him on by saying you're right, everyone does say that. He then imparted some "big wisdom" on us. He told us to just tell everyone to f*** off and dance. To show us the truth of his words he hopped up on to the table we were sitting at and began dancing like crazy, kicking beers off and rubbing me and Katie's heads. He then hopped off the table kicked a chair and hopped away. Like I said... several drugs.
3. cLuBbIn
Now I don't consider myself a big clubbing person, I normally prefer bars. But if I lived in Barcelona I would probably club every night (until I died from exhaustion at least). The clubs don't get busy till at least 2am and don't even think about leaving before 6. Plus a bunch of the clubs are super sweet beach clubs. It felt like a mix between the hills and Catie Schwan's adventures in Singapore. Plus when you're on the beach you find cool things like bamboo sticks!
2. The Gaudi Shiz
Gaudi was a mad genius architect man who lived in Barca around the turn of the century and designed some really cool and different buildings. The most famous being the Sagrada Familia, a church that has been in construction for over one hundred years.
1. Seeing All Mah Friendzzz!
Obviously the favorite part of all my trips is seeing my friends from home. I got to stay with one of my best friends Katie for a night and she took us out and showed us how much fun Barcelona is! I ran into Cory again at a castle! And I got to go to dinner/go out with Alyssa, who I haven't seen in forever, and Jeri! Study abroad has been such an amazing experience so far and what makes it even better is that I get to share this experience with all of my friends.
So that wraps up part 1 of Spring Break. I don't think I'll be able to do Ireland before I leave for Amsterdam tomorrow morning, but we'll see. But get excited to hear all about my new Irish boyfriend...(cliff hanger!!)
