Now in France, trying to catch up on journaling

October 22
Our tests were due at noon, so after breakfast I finished mine up. It was for our International business class. I finally did my German test with Tom today and it went really well. We did a tour of the Guinness brewery and I bought a Guinness Rugby shirt for myself. We went to a pub that night and there were some people doing Irish dances.

October 23
We left our hotel by 5 in the morning because our flight left at 7. Our cab driver was very lively and he gave us some advice about what to do the next time we come to Ireland. For the next 9 days I’ll be with Jesse, Spencer, and Jake. We ran into Erik at the airport because his flight left at about the same time.
The flight didn’t feel long at all because I was sleeping the whole time. We arrived in Milan around 10 in the morning. We had to get bus tickets from the airport to the center of Milan because the airport is a long ways from the city center.
We couldn’t find the street that led to our hotel but a man walked up to us and asked us where we were going and gave us directions. We didn’t even have to ask him, he just knew that we were lost. The hotel wasn’t very far from the train station. It was on the fourth floor of the building and the elevator was so small that only two of us at a time could fit with our bags.
The manager was really nice and spoke English. He gave us a map and pointed out all of the places that we could go. One thing that is strange about Italy is that the people at the hotel hold onto your key for you. It’s nice that you don’t have to worry about carrying it around.
I realize that I’m writing a lot more now that we’re in Italy than I was at other places. I think that’s because I don’t have any homework to drag me down.
Once we had gotten settled I took a little nap and then we went out to eat. We ate at a little street café. We didn’t know that there’s almost always a flat service fee whenever you eat at a restaurant, but we had heard that eating in Italy is expensive. We visited a few stores and then went to the Duomo. I think it is the third biggest cathedral in the world.
We ate at the embassy for dinner. We’ve started to call McDonalds the embassy because it’s American and you are never more than 5 blocks away from one at any time. In fact there are two almost facing each other in front of the main train station.
We watched a little IT Crowd before going to bed a little early. It was really nice to get a full night’s sleep after such an early morning.

October 24
Our second day in Milan we slept in and got up to get our train reservations for the next day. We went to the train station but the system was more complicated than we thought and the lines were really long. We didn’t have our Eurail passes with us at the time so we didn’t want to risk waiting in line forever and maybe needing them.
The all day subway pass was only 3 Euro so we bought one of those each. We could have easily figured the ticket machine by ourselves but some gypsy followed us around and insisted on pushing all of the buttons herself. Then one of the people that worked at the subway came over and helped us. We had the machine set to English so we were having no problems. I guess we just looked helpless and the gypsy wanted our money.
We took the subway to the castle of Milan. It was huge, and was much more fortress-like than most of the other ones we visited. There we also about 20 cats playing in the moats inside and outside the castle. When we left the castle through another exit we found a little Celtic renaissance festival. There were people dressed up and they had little tents and they were selling things.
After the castle we walked around and found some authentic Italian brick oven pizza. It was very good and it was in a big oval shape.
Fortunately that night when we got back to the hotel the manager reminded us that it was daylight savings time. If he hadn’t told us we would have gotten to the train station an hour early and we would have been very confused.

October 25
Today we got up and paid for our hotel. It was a little less than 35 Euro a night each. The train ride to Bologna was 2 hours long and I just read my book the whole way there. When we got to Bologna we got lost because the streets are not labeled very well and the directions we had were a little confusing. Jake asked some policemen and they gave us directions to our hotel. Jake had to ask another person once we got closer to the hotel but eventually we got there.
Our room wasn’t quite ready so we had to wait in the lobby for a while. Me and Spencer made a run to McDonalds and bought some food for everybody. We wandered around the city for a while but there really isn’t much to see here. We found a big park with a fountain but the fountain was all dried up and sad looking. Once we had rested up at the park and visited the basilica (5th largest church in the world, it was originally going to be bigger than the others but it was scaled down so as not to be greater than those in the Vatican) and then napped at the hotel until dinner time.
Dinner was at a little restaurant not far from the hotel. The waiter and waitress both spoke English and the waiter probably was actually the manager or owner of the place. He joked with us and complained about us not knowing what anything on the menu was.
There was nothing to do after dinner so we went to the main town plaza and sat by the fountain. There were some fire jugglers who actually weren’t very good. They kept on dropping things but it was fun anyway.

October 26
We didn’t really know what to do today so we started working on a consumer behavior assignment where we had to watch people in stores. We had to do it sometime during free travel and we didn’t want to do it in Florence or Rome.
Once we finished the observation part of the assignment we walked around the city some more. Today was a very relaxed day. That night we went out to eat at a bar. They have a deal where you buy a drink and then you get to eat all the food you want. The food isn’t fantastic, but it was only 6 Euro so it was only a little more expensive than McDonalds would have been.

October 27
Our trip to Florence was probably our shortest trip during our free travel. When we got to Florence we were walking to our hotel and ran into Tom and Cheryl at an internet café. Jesse spotted Cheryl as he walked by.
Our hotel rooms are small but they’ll be ok. We explored the side of the river that our hotel was on and sat by the river for a while. We saw where the statue of David originally was, and there were some more sculptures there too.
We went to dinner with Erik and Tyler, who were staying at the youth hostel not far from our hotel. We went to the hostel and used their steam room, sauna, and pool.

October 28
We met up with Erik and Tyler and took the train to Cique Terra, which is by Pisa on the coast. We met up with Laura Christine and Stefanie at Cique Terra. Unfortunately they had to carry all of their luggage with them. A lot of train stations have lockers where you can stash stuff but not this one.
I forgot my swimsuit so I ran into one of the nearby stores and bought a Speedo. Don’t worry; nobody got a picture of me in it. We went from town to town on the train and went cliff jumping at one of them. Stefanie said that my legs were so white that they looked like flashlights in the water. 
By the time we went to all 5 of the cities on the coast it was getting late and it was dark. Tyler was the only one who went to see the tower of Pisa. I didn’t think it would be worth it at night. I guess I’ll have to come back to Italy later in life.

October 29
This was our last full day in Florence. We went and saw the real David early in the morning. It wasn’t really worth the ten Euro to get in. The museum didn’t have much besides David. We went to the markets where they sell tourist junk and ran into Jen, Betsy, and Christy. I didn’t even know they were in Italy. We made plans to meet up for dinner that night. We wandered around the city some more and went to the far side of the river. There is a big garden there and we walked through it for a couple hours. We ran into those three girls again by accident. We talked to them a little and went our separate ways
After walking through the garden we went to the river and then went to find some lunch. We were wandering towards an overlook of the city when we saw Jen Betsy and Christy eating at a café. So that was the third time we saw them that day without planning it.
The overlook was nice and we met up with all the people that were in Florence that night. There were 11 of us out of 26 on the trip. We tried to watch the sunset but it was cloudy and there was an awful violin player whose violin was way out of tune. He kept playing the first 12 notes of ode to joy and then playing some random notes. A random guy walking by came and tuned his violin for him but he still couldn’t play anything.
The group of us took a long walk to what Erik said was the best Gelato in Florence. It was good but probably not worth the long walk. The 11 of us ate dinner together at a place Tom recommended. I had veal for the first time. It wasn’t all that unusual.

October 30
We left for Rome in the morning. Rome was my city to book a hotel for so I had to guide us once we got there. I would say that I got us to our hotel with less trouble than the other guys had. The directions were really easy though. We stayed at the fountain terrace hostel which was the cheapest place we stayed for free travel at 15 euro a night each. It was also the most run down place we stayed. There was only one outlet in the room and the wiring wasn’t run through the wall, it was just a cable running out of the wall and onto the floor. The bathrooms were down the hall and none of them had soap or any way to dry your hands.
We met up with Anna, Kay, and Kelsey at the Trevi fountain and ate lunch with them there. We picked up some pizza and went to the Pantheon. The pantheon was smaller than I thought it would be. I didn’t know that it was just one big room.
We wanted to save some sights for the next day so we went to the Spanish steps for a while and then wandered over towards the Vatican. We sat in front of St Peter’s Basilica as the sun set. After a while we walked around and found some dinner.

October 31
We slept in a bit more than we planned but still got to the Coliseum and Roman Forum by noon or so. The Coliseum was huge and a fun site to see. I wish there had been better displays about the history of the place though. We bought our tickets at the forum because the lines there are about one quarter as long as they are at the Coliseum. The forum wasn’t really very interesting. There wasn’t any information about what was where or what happened there. Maybe we should have taken a tour.
Jesse wasn’t feeling so good so he went back to the hotel to rest. Spencer, Jake, and I took the subway to the Vatican. The subway system in Rome is really weird because it only has two lines. The Vatican museum was huge. It’s a big maze that takes hours to walk through. I could see people taking the whole day to get through the museum. Guess who we ran into randomly here, those three girls we saw three times in Florence.
The final room of the museum is the Sistine Chapel. We couldn’t take pictures in Chapel but I snuck a few anyway. They’re all blurry or zoomed out too far. Jake got caught trying to take a picture and the guard tried to make him leave. Jake was able to get back in though.
We went inside St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s huge. It is a lot bigger than any of the other churches we went to. There was a mass going on, so we listened in for twenty minutes or so while we walked through the basilica.

November 1
We didn’t have to wake up too early for our flight. We left around 8 and took a taxi to the airport. Only Ryanair and Ezjet fly out of this airport that we went to. They are the two cheapest airlines in Europe. The airport looked like some temporary buildings stuck together and all the departure gates were in the same room.
The flight went fine. Flying Ezjet is much better than Ryanair. It’s just much less stressful because they don’t worry about weight and size limits for luggage. When we got to Paris it was drizzling. We had to take a bus to the subway. The subways in Paris are awful for hauling your luggage through. There are several flights of steps to go up and down every time you transfer trains and you have to go through those one way gates which are fine for people but incredibly hard when bringing a suitcase through.
When we got out of the subway we went the wrong way and had to ask for directions. We asked at a little bakery and everybody in the bakery tried to help us out. It turns out that the subway station we left was within sight of our hotel.
It was still raining so we ate lunch at a diner right next to the hotel. We started seeing the rest of the group come up from the subway as we ate. They give you bread with every meal here but I ordered a hamburger and it came without a bun. I tried to use the French bread on the table to make a bun but it didn’t work well. The good news is that ketchup is free again and you don’t have to pay 10 or 50 cents for a packet like you have to in Italy.