Another Reason Why Bikes Rule...

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....

Get Buck In Barca

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!!)

Toup Comes to Town

I'm back!

It's been a crazy past two weeks with midterms, Toup's visit and Spring Break and I don't think things are gonna slow down as I enter the last month and a half of my trip (a fact a try to avoid thinking about). But I will try to stay updated as much as I can! Before I recap my $pRiNg BrIzAk Adventurezzz, I feel it is necessary to share the story of Gwen & Toup's Excellent Adventure.

So Wednesday night my friend Catherine aka Toups (we're like in the same sorority and obvi you have nicknames for everyone duhhh) came to visit. It was probably the coolest night for her to get here because it was Italy's 150th birthday party!!!! The streets were packed with people waving flags and singing and a bunch of the buildings were lit up red, white and green to resemble the Italian flag. Pretty solid first impression.


The next day I had class and was supposed to meet up with Toup after, but as always a carrier pigeon would've been a more effective way of communication than my stupid Italian phone. Luckily she found her way back to my apartment and it was all good. As we were outlining our night we realized that it would be more efficient for us to go out for the night straight from dinner, so we had a lovely little pre-dinner vino happy hour and headed over to Dar Poeta (it was the fourth time I'd been there in a week).  


Since it was St. Patrick's Day and all we decided to celebrate by doing an irish pub crawl throughout Rome. Success. We hit up some pubs, drank some pints, told people it was her birthday and got lots of free drinks. As we walked home to the birds chirping I wondered if Toup was gonna make it to her 6:30 train to Florence the next morning.....

 As fate (or alcohol and a lack of sleep) would have it. She did not make her train, but it was totally fine because we had the BEST DAY EVER!! But seriously, my favorite day in Rome. It was a beautiful warm sunny day, we walked around got gelato and headed up to the Borghese Gardens to rent some bikes.

Now some of you (sorry mom!) might not like what happens next, but it is part of what made our day so great. As we were riding our bikes around the gardens we were having so much fun exploring and were getting farther and farther from the bike renting place. We also realized how sweet it would be to take these bikes and be able to see all of Rome. So we did kind of a bad thing. We borrowed the bikes. I use the term borrow, not steal because I fully intend to return the bikes before I leave the country.

Anyway we had bikes and we had the whole day ahead of us so we did a 5 hour biking tour of Rome. We saw pretty much every major site in Rome and explored some areas I hadn't even seen yet. We biked in circles around the Colosseum ringing our bike bells and being assholes. Basically we felt like our lives were a Mary-Kate and Ashley movie.

We even biked around St. Peter's Square until the Vatican police drove up in his golfcart and yelled at us. I don't understand why bikes aren't allowed there but golfcarts are??

 Anyway we ended the day getting some panini(s?) from my favorite place near the Vatican and ran into her friend from high school who happened to be eating gelato in the same piazza who I happened to randomly meet at a bar earlier that week. The world is too small.

We got home right as it started to rain, so perfect timing. Chilled for a bit then got ready and went out for another delicious dinner. We were exhausted and both had to be up early the next day so decided to meet up with some friends out then leave around 12. Obviously that never works end we ended up going home at 3:30. I then had to wake up around 7:30 to pack and leave for my week long spring break trip.

Probably not some of the best decisions but I had so much fun and still managed to make it out every night of spring break, although I did take a nap at the bar one night in Galway. But stories from then to come.

Da Gurs do Rome

Time is not my friend this week. With 3 midterms, finalizing travel itineraries for the rest of the semester, and Toups coming to visit, I'm gonna have to speed recap the past week before I jet off on my honeymoon with Corinne/Barca ragefest/Irish music filled extravaganza known as Spring Break 2011.

As I alluded to last week, this post will be about the binge-eating, church-filled week I spent when my mom and my sister visited me in Roma.

They brought to Rome a much needed week of sun after two weeks of solid rain. I forced them to push through their jet lag and took them biking down the Appian Way (no cameras were lost this time). It was a beautiful day, many of the wildflowers were blooming which means spring is springing here in Roma. Afterwards we went to the catacombs, which was a first for me.

The next day I ditched class (my mom even encouraged it!) and we went to the St. Peter's Basilica and climbed to the top for a panoramic view of the city. After finding a delicious sandwich place and grabbing some gelato we headed to the Vatican Museum (the inspiration for statues inspired by statues). Tuesday I met them up after class to visit the Roman forum and Wednesday they did a day trip to Pompeii. Thursday and Friday (when I ditch class...AGAIN) were spent walking around Rome (visiting the Trevi, Pantheon Spanish Steps, etc), shopping, visiting the gardens and of course eating more gelato. 


I'm fairly certain I packed on an extra 10lbs during their stay but it was so worth it. We hit up Dar Poeta (my favorite pizza place) twice and I showed them first hand how much Italy has increased my already impressive eating capacity. The second time we went there we ordered a dessert that is BETTER than banana nutella crepes. It is called a nutella and ricotta cheese calzone (might sound a tad strange but trust me). For those who have not heard however, I am giving up Nutella for Lent which had obviously proved to be difficult considering I ordered the calzone on Thursday. But hey, even my mom said it was ok so I'm sure God won't mind. 


Another major theme of their visit was churches. My mom seemed to make it her mission to try and visit every church we passed while walking around the city. Which, for any of you who know the city, means one out of every three buildings, no joke. I went into more churches in that week span than I have for the past two months I've been here. 


Their last night here we went out to Trattoria da Pallora for a massive authentic Roman meal. There is no menu and they just bring you 5 courses of what they want to and it's all delicious.  The only catch is don't question what the food is, you may not want to know. For over three hours talked, laughed and caught up while Pallora in her little turban brought out more and more food.

It was the perfect end to the week, although I wish they could've stayed longer. Rome may be my home for now, but having them visit made me remember that my real home is wherever those you love are. So thank you both for giving me a week of truly being at home!


I wish I could've elaborated more on their week but I have so much to do!!

Things to Look Forward To:
1. Sunday Funday
2. Statues Inspired By Statues
3. Toup Comes to Town
4. Spring Break

Unofficial Part 2

I don't know if I am proud or ashamed of the coherency of my Unofficial blog post. Part of me thinks that one should never be able to write anything intelligible after celebrating such a holiday yet as I have been coming to find, tipsy blog posts are becoming my thing.

But since I actually didn't talk about details from our Unofficial celebrations I'll do a quick little timeline of our night afternoon.

2:21pm-Return home from TV station field trip...time to go green
3:00pm- Begin "power hour"
4:25pm-Maggie shows of her dancing skillz before we leave the apartment

4:30?-Hittin up da streets

4:40pm-Waiting for the tram

4:42pm-Play many rounds of 5 during the tram ride. Created by our very own Ellen, 5 is a very intricate game where everyone chugs for 5 seconds while one person counts to 5 with their hand. After the five seconds are up, everyone high fives. Repeat. Italians thought we were a little cray cray.
4:53pm-Begin our slew of Illini cheers as we head toward the pantheon
5:00pm-Picture & beer in front of the pantheon
5:25pm-Arrive at highlanders for all you can drink beer for 10 euro--->death
6:17pm???-Maggie busts out her dance skillz again at the bar

6:32????-Bridget hired as the new bartender??????

The timeline really starts to blur after that but we chilled at Highlanders for quite some time, ventured over the the Trevi, got gelato, and hit up Scholars. My night ended when I got an entire pizza from the Asian pizza place and ate the whole thing.

Saturday night we dressed to impress to celebrate CARNIVAL!! Our lovely club promoter manfriend got us on the list for Babel, which was super swanky and fancy and awesome! Plus there were actually cool people there and way less creepers so our butts were safe from the ass grabs we are normally subjected to when we go clubbing. Which meant I was free to let loose and get my dance on. Those of you familiar with my dancing skills might cringe at that thought, but the Italians seem to love my dance moves.

Sunday morning my mom and sister arrived!! I'm so excited to have them here this whole week and will have a lot to write about their visit. Look forward to a guest post from Becca when we team up for a segment we like to call "statues, inspired by statues".

UnOFicIaL 2011 **********

Home from Roma Unofficial at 10pm. Win or fail. Not sure yet. Despite my early check in time, I'm going to have to chalk up tonight as a win, simply based on all the fun I had. After many a weeks trying to blend in to the Roma scene (which will obviously never be possible, i mean just look at me, Italian is just not in my genetics) we finally let our American (slash Irish) colors fly free.

After arriving home early from our TV station field trip we quickly began our power hour (and a 1/2). Several beers later we headed out on the the tram toward the Pantheon. Seeing at it was only 4:30 we were by far the loudest most obnoxious human beings on that tram, but I didn't mind. We wore our drunkenness as a badge of honor as we chanted our Illini cheers throughout the streets of Rome.

Never have I been more proud of my U of I/Irish Heritage. Yes, we made fools of ourselves all night, but it was in the name of all things good, all things fun, all things Irish. Any holiday that incorporates day drinking and Irish music is a good day in my book and today was one of the best of those.

To my bitties in Chambana and Dublin I miss you all, but thank you to my Rome bitties for making this day one to remember.

But the greatest love--the love above all loves,
Even greater than that of a mother...
Is the tender, passionate, undying love,
Of one beer drunken slob for another.
--Irish love ballad

Oui Oui Oui Welcome to Pari(s)

This past weekend the gang ventured over to Paris for our second long weekend. I was excited for Paris, it has some classic must-sees: Louvre, Eifel Tower, Notre Dame etc, but I wasn't like Maggie who had dreams about going to Paris since she was 5 and started crying when she saw the Eiffel Tower. Other than the big sights I didn't think that Paris would wow me that much. I was the asshole who thought Paris was overrated, mainly due to some preconceived notions about the city...


Three Major Stereotypes I Had About Paris
1. Parisians are rude, hate Americans, wear berets and have those little pencil mustaches (ok I realize that's like four but it only counts as one).
2. French dudes are ugly.
3. The food is gross aka escargot (snails) and foie gras (goose liver)


Like any Disney movie moral to the story, what I previously thought was changed by my encounter with the city and its people and I learned the valuable lesson of not judging a book by its cover, blah blah blah, etc. So...

What I learned After Paris...
1. FALSE- The French were actually some of the nicest people I've met abroad. Everyone went out of their way to help us and make sure we got where we were going whether it was the people at Holiday Inn who printed us out a map, the metro dude who wrote directions on our ticket, or the nice man who whipped out his iPhone to help me and Cory find the metro home. I also saw no berets, lots of other cute hats, but no berets. Although one man near the Eiffel had the largest mustache I've ever seen. Like off his face and then curled in handle bar style. Kinda like this man. But curlier.

2. Also FALSE- French men are actually beautiful (besides mustache man), definitely better than the Italians I've met in Rome. I saw one of the most attractive men I've ever seen (in person) on the train in Paris. Maybe I picked the wrong country to study abroad in...

3. EXTREMELY FALSE- Apologies for the large letters but since I lack vocal expression via blogging I have to rely on capitalizations and bold lettering to convey emphasis. Anyway why was I so wrong about the food? Three words: Banana. Nutella. Crepe. 

I mean I've been pretty obsessed with Nutella since I became all Euro and bananas have always been a solid fruit on the food pyramid, but something about combining the two in a thin warm pancakey thing is just magic, simply magical. I ate six over the course of the weekend. Excessive? Maybe.

one of many crepes consumed this weekend

The few other things I ate other than crepes were also nom-alcious. Baguette sandwiches, creme brulee, fondue, french fries, french onion soup, and duck with honey sauce, also rounded out my fatty weekend in Paris.

For those of you wondering, yes I did participate in other activities in Paris other than eating. But I wanted to do a top five favorite things about Paris list and if I didn't get the food out of the way that might have made up a majority of my list.

So here we go...Top Five Favorite Paris Moments, countdown style


#5-Notre Dame

Arguably the most famous Catholic Church in the world, Notre Dame was a must-see on my list and I'm so  glad I did. It was breath-taking, so beautiful and haunting. The gothic architecture was also a nice change from what I'm used to seeing in Rome. There was an international mass going on as we were walking through, which made the experience even more authentic. My only disappointment was that I didn't get to see this guy.

He was probs too busy ringing da bellzz

#4-Louvre
Being the #artsy girl that I am/DaVinci Code nerd, I was super pumped for the Louvre, especially because it was free for studentesse like me! It was great. I got to see some of the world's most famous paintings and sculptures. Mona Lisa, Madonna of the Rocks, Venus de Milo, Victory of Samothrace, and Code of Hammurabi just to name a few. Plus I got to pretend I was Tom Hanks and run around the Louvre looking for clues to unlock the DaVinci code.

What's under the pyramid?!?

You can only seriously appreciate art in the Lourve for so many hours though before you start to get loopy from how much stuff is actually there. So when we got lost in a hall of statues after several hours we decided to have a little fun with them.

maturity at its finest

soo intellectual

#3-Dinner at Fondue Restaurant

I know I promised I was done with food, but this isn't really even about the food, more the restaurant and the atmosphere. It was a tiny one roomed restaurant in the heart of the eclectic Monmartre neighborhood.  Eleven of us went out and had one of the funniest dinners. The owners were hysterical, we were served wine in baby bottles and the cheese in the fondue was spiked with some sort of alcohol that kept our wine buzz going strong despite the copious amount of bread shoved in our mouths accompanying the fondue. 

#2-Versailles

No wonder the French had a revolution. Seriously, if I was a starving peasant and saw that palace I would totez grab my torch and pitchfork and demand some answers (or just execute the king, whatevs).  Beautiful would not fittingly describe it though neither would gaudy, it's a mix of several feelings to see that place. Another great perk of the trip we got in there fo free and got free audioguides!!! Double win, I love France. I stole many pictures from the palace and the grounds so check them out on the Facebook, but here are a few. 

Da gurs in front of the palace

Mirror pic in the Hall of Mirror...doesn't get more myspace than that

Surprise! It's me and mags

#1-Seeing Some of My Chi-O Loves

Small world stories go. So a week before we left I found out Cory was going to Paris the same weekend and then two days before we realized we booked the SAME hotel!! Out of all the hotels and hostels in Paris what are the odds? She ended up being next door to one of the rooms in our group too! Then to make things even weirder, our hotel was a 5 second walk to Christine's apartment. Literally across the street. Spooooky. 

It was so wonderful seeing the both of them. Cory and I had an adventure club night together on Saturday and Christine spent the whole day with me and Mags Sunday. She showed us the city, took us to ice cream, climbed the Eiffel with us, and went out to dinner. 

Overall it was an AMAZING weekend. To cap it off on Sunday night me, Mags, Kelsey, Melissa, John and Thomas went to the Eiffel Tower at night to watch the lights that sparkle for 5 minutes at the top of every hour. I timed it perfectly and bought my final crepe 5 minutes before the light show. So as I sat with my friends on the ledge overlooking the river, eating the most delicious thing ever created, admiring the sparkling lights of one of the most famous structures in the world, I soaked in the moment and thought about how lucky I was to be able to be there. Study abroad has been by far the most spectacular experience of my life and I am so thankful I get to be able to do this.

***sidenote: sorry to kill the mood from that ending sentence but just a heads up. the f key on my keyboard has been janky lately (pretty sure I got nutella in it) so if you read a word that doesn't make sense try adding an f somewhere and hopefully it will!