Fall Break

After what was quite the long, exhausting week traveling around, I am finally back in Florence! The week was so incredible...I don't know where to begin, so I'll go from the beginning...but this is gonna be a long one.

Day One: The clock screams 4:15 AM, and I am out of bed. We caught a 5 AM bus to Pisa, where we flew out to Paris. So far, smooth travels...remember that. After the quick hour flight, we caught a train to the metro station and then took the metro to out hotel in Paris. Unfortunately...we caught the wrong metro. 4 hours later...and finally we found the hotel. I suppose the fact that I spoke the best French out of our group didn't help, considering I only know bonjour, si vous ples, and merci. Maybe we should have brought a French guide? Well, it probably wouldn't have been so entertaining to take the easy way out! So after quite the log haul to find our hotel, we ventured back onto the subway and headed downtown. We saw all the usual sights...Eiffel Tower, the Lourve, Champs de Elysse, Arc di Triumph, Notre Dame, the Opera House, and a bunch of amazing churches. They were all so incredible. The Eiffle Tower is soooo tall...it's hard to imagine how man actually built that monstronsity. But then again, the same goes for the Notre Dame, and pretty much everything giant and amazing in Europe. WOW. My favorite place? I bet you can guess...The Opera House. O MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS I have never been inside a place that was so inspirational. I suddenly felt like I should just bust out an aria...but I'm pretty sure the people rehearsing wouldn't have appreciated that. This is the opera house that inspired The Phantom of the Opera...there actually is a lake underneath it...sooo coool, but you can't actually see the lake (it was put there when construction started for some sort of architectural purpose). Oh it was so beautiful...decorated all in gold and ruby red...just like you would imagine from hundreds of years ago. We saw the Mona Lisa at the Louvre...she is quite small...and you can't even get very close to see her, so that was kind of a bummer. But the rest of Leonardo's collection was there...and those were awesome! And then of course we saw a bunch of other stuff that is famous...but not in comparison.

In my hope to write a shorter novel than this entry will already be, I'm just gonna let you fill in the details about the rest of Paris...except I must mention the FOOD. One day we decided to have a little French picnic, so I found a market, and we all got French baguettes and rotisserie chicken and fruit and cheese...and had a Parisian picnic under the Eiffel Tower! That was by far the best meal I ate...so cheap and so yummy. I also had some amazing apple crepes one day...and obviously we found a Mexican restaurant for dinner one night. Haha. It figures that I would find the one Mexican restaurant in Paris and decide to eat there. Oh, and I can't forget Angelina's and hot chocolate. We waited in line for an hour just to get seated at this cafe that had the most delicious hot chocolate I've ever tasted...it was milk chocolate and white chocolate mixed together...so creamy. yummm

Ok moving on...We got to the train station on Day Four of our European adventure...only to find out that our train tickets that were advertised online for 80 euro had decided to jump up to 150 euro. Ouch...my wallet took a hit after that. But it all turned out well, and thankfully we left just in time to avoid the giant snowstorm that hit Zurich one day later...we never would have made it to Lucerne. So after a four hour train ride, we took the bus to Erin's aunt's friend's house, and we stayed with her family. It was very nice to have a real bed to sleep in, a home cooked meal, and real people to spend time with! Annie (that's the friend) made us fondue the night we got in...it was so scrumptous. Oh, and we had carmel apples and some more hot cocoa...swiss style...for dessert. On Wednesday we bundled up to face the SNOW that had fallen overnight, and we ventured into Lucerne to explore the old town. Too bad we couldn't really see the mountains--the fog was thick, but Lucerne is right at the base of the Swiss Alps. I really would have wanted to go skiing, but there wasn't enough snow on the ground (or enough money in my wallet...) But we wandered the streets...the buildings are so pretty...painted and decorated in Medieval style. We saw the famous dying lion statue there...It's this sculpture of a giant lion, like 3 times life size, that is carved into the side of a mountain. It seems pretty random, but it was really cool. And then we went to a glacier museum and a mirror maze, which was quite entertaining, and very disorienting! After a quick stop at STARBUCKS (yes, starbucks...I have never been so happy to find one) we headed back to the bus and back to the house and back to the train station.

Night: Zurich Train Station: Dark, Cold, Scary. The adventures of the night train begin! Okay, so yes it was dark and cold, but scary? Not at all! That's probably because we got a 4 person cabin, so no strangers! And the conductor was super nice and became our best friend. He woke us up in the morning to make sure we didn't miss out stop in Slazburg. Not that we were actually sleeping in the first place...worst "mattress" I've ever slept on. So we got into Salzburg at 4:30 AM, ready to go...but apparently the town wasn't ready for us! It was dead...so we wandered over to our hotel (which turned out to be extrememly nice...4 stars...a great find by Olivia!). We hung out in the lobby for a couple hours, and then the manager was nice enough to let us check into our rooms at 7 AM...that's 6 hours earlier than we expected, and it was very nice to sleep for a few hours before facing the cold again. All day Thursday we just explored Salzburg. It was my second time there (since my choir trip senior year of high school)...so I split off from some off the other girls, and Kristen and I took an adventure of our own. First we explored the cemetery..yes I know that sounds like a creepo thing to do, but it is so beautiful and peaceful there...and we ventured up throught the catacombs in the side of the mountain. That was neat. Then we took a finicular up to the top of the mountain and explored the ancient castle walls. The view was gorgeous...it ended up clearing up by the time we got to the top, so you could see all the Alps and the hills and pastures, and the entire city spread out below. We couldn't stop taking pictures. We also wandered around a marionette museum while we were up there...that was silly. Kristen and I attempted to work our own little show. It's much harder than you would think to move those suckers around! After a few hours and some more hot chocolate, we went back down he mountain and found a great restaurant. We had soup and crisp apple strudel! We felt quite Austrian. Then we walked around the town, eventually ending at our hotel across the river. Early to bed, and early to rise for the Sound of Music tour! My halloween consisted of a bus full of random people singing along to all the sound of music songs and seeing all the places where the movie was shot. That was fun...even though I had seen most of the sights before, our tour guide was hilarious. He asked a little boy on our bus why cows wear bells...and the little boy answered, "Well, it's because their horns don't work!" Haha...he was pretty clever. Oh, and then between sites, our tour guide decided it would be a great idea to teach the entire bus a new rendition of the "Do, Re, Mi" song (some German guys taught it to him on the last tour). It goes a little something like this:

Do, a beer, a German beer.
Ray, the guy who serves the drinks.
Me, the one I buy beer for.
Far, a long way to the bar.
So, I think I'll have a beer.
La, la la la la la la.
Tea, no thanks, I'll have a beer.
Do!

So then we all sang along...hilarious. Anyways...after that tour we headed off to see the saltmines. We actually crossed the border to Germany, and on the way we saw Hitler's house, and all the areas he developed during WWII. That was kinda creepy, but man, he did pick quite a beautiful location. I'd live there. So when we got to the saltmines we had to wear jumpsuits and take a little mini choo choo train (like the ones in the mall for little kids) into the mine, and then we got SLIDE down the shafts! We linked into groups of four and then held on tight and slid down the mine! It was sooo much fun...like being 6 years old again! And then we got see how salt was extracted from the earth, and learn about how salt used to be so valuable that it was used as money, and cool stuff like that. And then...we saw the salt lake. It looked like a mirror...I couldn't even tell it was water at first. It's this lake in the middle of the mine that is soooo salty (we got to taste it...yuck) but so incredibly crisp and clear. We took a boat across the lake, and they play a super sweet, but very corny, light show while we went across. And then after seeing some salt deposits, we took a finicular back up the mine, and the little choo choo train out. It felt like an educational DisneyLand experience. The jumpsuits totally sealed the deal. Plus, now I can say I really did dress up for Halloween!

So that was the end of our eurotrip...all that was left to do was to get back to florence. Seems easy enough, right?

Wrong. Although our flights were already booked, the train already settled, everything in order, there was obviously no way to avoide all glitches. The flying went smootly. We arrived in Milan at 8, and then had to take an hour bus ride from the airport to the train station. Duhn Duhn Duhn...disaster. When we got to the train station, the 10 train we planned on taking wasn't running. There's Italy for you...completely unreliable transportation system. So, in a frantic occurance of events the folloing took place:
We ran over to an internet cafe to look up our options.
1. Get comfy in the sketchy Milan train station, try to sleep (but not really, since we would have to watch our stuff, praying it wouldn't get stolen), and then catch an early train out. um...NO
2. Find a hotel within our budget (not likely) and then take the train at 5:30 the next morning.
or 3. Go back to the airport, one hour away, in a speeding taxi to get there by midnight in time to rent a car before they closed, proceed to drive 4 hours across Italy in the dead of the night, through fog and rain, and get back to florence at 4.
We went with option 3. Obviously! It was quite the adventure...but luckily it all worked out, and there were limited crazy Italian drivers on the road. We were perfectly safe, just very exhausted. I have never been so glad to get back to my crummy, mini twin size bed in Florence.

Woah...what a week. Quite a few stories, and so many great memories! I'm sure I've left out so many things, but there is no way to fit in everything. Now that I have been typing for the past hour, I am assuming this is wayyyy to long. So, enjoy...and I will post some pictures when I get a chance!