Fireworks at the opening ceremony of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival

The Old Bridge in Mostar

The Old City of Dubrovnik

CROATIA!!

I know this blog is really late, but here's the story of my time back in Croatia.  Greece blog is forthcoming as well, as soon as I find the time to write it!

Thursday:
Thursday morning, after the boat cleared all the customs checks in Croatia, a couple of my friends and I took the bus into the old walled city of Dubrovnik.  The city bus is only 8 kuna per ride, which is around $1.50 or so.  (Kuna is the currency of Croatia - it runs about 5.50 - 6.00 kuna on the US dollar.)  We got pizza at a place right outside the city walls (margherita) and then walked around inside the walls for a little bit.  Then I took the bus back to the ship and got on a 1:00PM tour of the city walls themselves.  We took a panoramic drive up the mountain a little and stopped for various photo ops along the way.  The tons of islands in the distance and the walled city with all red roofs was really cool to see from above.  Then we went into old town and walked up onto the city walls.  Then, in the 100+ degree heat, we proceeded to walk around the ENTIRE thing.  The views were awesome, but about 3/4 of the way it got to be a little hot for my taste.  A group of us decided to come down off the walls and walk around until we had to meet up on the bus again.  But on the way down, I actually found my friends, who coincidentally happened to be lost in the random alleyway I came off the wall into!  It was such a random coincidence, but we were excited!  Instead of going back to the boat with the SAS trip, I stayed in the city with them, and we to a restaurant on the outside of the city walls called Cafe Bujo.  We went cliff jumping.  Don't hold your breath - I'm a wimp.  I jumped off the lowest possible point into the darkest blue water possible.  It was around a 15-20 foot fall, I'd say, but I was terrified.  I didn't realize I would be so scared until I got up there on the rock, and I felt like my feet were glued to the rocks.  I'm pretty sure I had a mini panic attack, actually.  Meanwhile, the local children are running up onto my little rock and yelling at me to move so they could jump.  I'm pretty sure they were calling me a scaredy cat in their language.  Eventually I got enough nerve to jump, and it was admittedly fun; not fun enough to make multiple jumps like my friends, though.  I stayed in the water.  The waves were pretty strong that day too!  When getting out, you had to climb up onto the rocks again, which is really hard.  You had to stay about 4 feet away, wait for a wave to push you into the rocks a little bit, hold on for dear life so the receding wave doesn't suck you away from the rocks, and then miraculously spiderman yourself out before another wave comes again.  I cut my knee a little :-/  After this, we walked around the old city more and got dinner at a restaurant off the main street of the old city.  I got lamb kebabs!  Oh heyyy, mediterranean food.  After dinner we went to an irish pub, which was so fun!  (i'm sensing a trend in my bar choices)  The bartender's name was Blajenka (no idea how to spell it, but Brett is friends with her on facebook now) and she was so fun.  We also tasted this yummy, really mild liqueur she called "Pear."  To me, it tasted like maple syrup, and it was delicious.  I'm determined to find it again somewhere; i looked it up online and i think it was actually a dessert brandy (?).  After hanging out there for a while, we went back to the boat to get some sleep before the next big day.

Friday:
I got up and got on the bus at 8AM to go to Mostar, in Bosnia & Herzegovina.  Along the way, we stopped at a little town called Pocitelj.  I got dried apricots from a little lady selling fruit out of a basket, and they were a yummy snack :) Coming into Mostar, we saw an enormous cemetery for all the people of the town - mostly all brand new graves from the recent war.  Mostar, during the Yugoslavian implosion, was pretty badly hit.  A lot of buildings have tons of bullet holes in them still, and the famous bridge was completely destroyed.  They used it to separate the muslims and christians on different sides of the river.  The people were really optimistic about rebuilding the city though; they said that even though they didn't have enough money to rebuild it all now, they would do it when they can.  The bridge was completely restored after the war, and it's one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture i've ever seen; it looks like something that would fit in Rivendell in LOTR.  We also visited a traditional Turkish house that was somehow not destroyed during the recent war.  That was pretty cool - everything was super intricate.  After that, we also went into a Mosque.  That was also really neat - i've never been in a mosque before.  It was very small and simple - nothing extravagant or over-the-top.  Next: probably one of the best meals i've had yet on the trip.  As an appetizer we had what i think was a Bosnian form of spanakopita.  It was shaped like an egg roll.  There was one regular one with spinach and cheese and one with just cheese too.  It came with really really thick greek yogurt - it was like a cube of it - kind of the consistency of a jello cube but more delicious and fit to put on a spanakopita roll.  Next we got a cabbage and carrot shredded salad thing.  Our best description of it was cole slaw, without the cole.  I don't know if that makes sense at all.  Next, they told us we were going to get a meat dish, which was a gross understatement.  It came out, and there was so much food.  A huge slab of chicken, a circular meat patty thing, a couple smaller meat things shaped like lil smokies but called "dumplings", a huge sausage running around the edge of the play, and an enormous pile of roasted potatoes.  Ah. I forgot to mention the bread.  It was like super thick pita bread, and we had to stop ourselves from eating our weight's equivalent of the stuff.  After the piles of meat, we had dessert, which was a soggy, spongey cookie soaked in really thin honey.  Don't let the word soggy throw you off - it was soggy with honey, and anything soggy with honey is automatically delicious.  After that, we had free time to walk around and shop at all the little venders' stands in the town.  I got a pair of pretty little earrings for my port pal (on our hallway on the boat, we have anonymous "port pals" for whom we're supposed to leave little presents and happy notes).  After that, we drove the 3 hour drive back to Dubrovnik and I went out to dinner with my friends in the old city.  I got a yummy chicken risotto dish.  The sunset that night was so pretty over the water!

Saturday:
Saturday I borderhopped into another country - Montenegro.  The drive was also about 3 hours, and our first stop was at the port town of Kotor.  Out in the water, there were these two teeny tiny islands - one natural and one man-made.  Apparently back in the olden days there were these two fisherman that found a rock with the face of the virgin mary on it in the water near the natural island.  They dove down, got it, and took it to a church.  The next day, the same thing happened, and it kept happening for about a week I think.  Eventually they realized that Mary wanted to stay out there, at which point the townspeople built an island, upon which they erected a church honoring the virgin mother.  There's some Montenegro history for you.  We had around an hour to walk around Kotor, which was neat.  They had a cool gothic church that looked a lot like the churches we had seen in Italy, just built with completely different materials.  We also got gelato; you can guess what flavor I chose.  After that, it was time to get on the bus again and drive to Budvah, another port city in Montenegro.  We went to lunch there, which was most definitely not as good as the meal in Mostar the day before.  There was this weird pork wrap thing that was as hard as a rock, some watery soup with chopped chives in it, and some pretty disgusting looking peas.  I tried everything but the peas; like father like daughter with that one. After lunch we walked around a little bit, then got back on the bus to go back to the ship.  I think it would have been a much more fun trip, had we not tried to go to two different cities within Montenegro; everyone agreed it seemed really rushed.  That night, when we got back to the boat, we showered really quickly and went into the old city of dubrovnik to see all the festivities for the opening of the summer festival - sooooooo fun!  We got great seats and sat on the end of the pier to watch the fireworks over the water.  Then we went back to our favorite irish pub Katie O'Conners and our favorite bartender Blajenka, hung out for a while, and went back to the boat - I had a realllllly early trip the next day.

Sunday:
Sunday morning I got up really early and got on a bus to Medugorje, a place in Bosnia to which Christians make pilgrimages.  There, the virgin mary appeared to six children playing on the mountain - they call them the "seers."  We climbed up the rocky mountain to the site of the apparition - the tops of most of the jagged rocks were worn down and polished from the masses of people making pilgrimages there.  After climbing the mountain, we went back down into the town and walked around.  We missed mass at the church (our tour guide said they had them every hour, but they didn't), but I sat inside to escape the heat and pray for a little.  It was nice to be in a silent place for a little bit.  We got lunch at a restaurant that was really nice and really cheap.  I got a pita that was wrapped around a ton of the little sausage things they called "dumplings."  It was enormous and came with fries and it was only 5 euros!  After that, we got back on the bus and drove back to the ship just on time for on ship time.

Europe knows what's up when it comes to ice cream bars

The lowdown:

center : pistachio ice cream with fudge ripples
next layer : crunchy hazelnut layer
next layer : milk chocolate hazelnut gooey layer
outer layer : crunchy chocolate with nuts

amen, my life is complete

The Vatican

Here's a photo of St. Peter's basilica in the Vatican in Rome.

The sunlight was coming in through the windows on the dome, and it must be really dusty or foggy (I don't know why it would be foggy in a cathedral...) or something in there, but it was so pretty!


If you can't tell already, I've figured out how to post pictures to my blog without using up my precious internet time.  I'm pretty excited about it.  More pictures to come.

Pizza in Naples!

Here's a picture of my friend Pam and I with our pizzas in Naples.  I know said this earlier, but they were DELICIOUS!

I also have a picture of my empty plate an hour later  :)   I am going to come home obese; I've resigned myself to that fact already

Pisa!

Here's a picture of me holding up the leaning tower of Pisa! :)

ITALIA!

WEDNESDAY
Call time at the bus was 08:00, and I was actually on time!  We met our guide, Stefania, and our bus driver, Angelo, who were with us the whole trip.  The bus ride was gorgeous - the Tuscan countryside is beautiful!  We stopped at a convenience store named Autogrill along the way for a potty and snack break; I got a Twix and a pack of dried sausages (basically fancy european Slim Jims).  When we got to Pisa, we all (obviously) took pictures "holding up" or "kicking over" the tower :)  It is actually really cool to see in person, though.  The marble isn't perfectly uniform like it is in the washed out pictures; it's much more varied - textured in some places and perfectly smooth in others.  It's really neat.  After, we tried to find the least touristy place we could (which is scarce in Pisa) and got lunch.  I got Gnocchi al pesto and pistacchio gelato.  After walking around for a little, we got back on the bus and drove to Florence.  Along the way, we saw gorgeous mountain hillsides dotted with ENORMOUS villas.  It actually also rained on that leg of the trip - we were surprised to see rain in Italy in the summertime!  When we got to Florence, we stopped by the hotel (Hotel Adriatico) to drop off our suitcases (in my case, only a backpack, not even filled - go me!)  It was around 5:30 or so by this time, and we didn't have much time before dinner, so we walked over to this huge outdoor market in the Piazza del Mercato and browsed all the stands.  One man gave me a free rainbow friendship bracelet and told me I was his new friend, which was kind of creepy, but I like the bracelet :)  I also resisted buying every single piece of italian leather around me.  Dad, I really wanted to get you an italian leather wallet, but I know your specifications, and apparently europeans don't have those same specifications - i'm sorry!  I searched in so many leather stands and couldn't find one :-/   After this, we had a group dinner at the hotel - a risotto dish with chicken and spinach, then beef with a burgundy sauce, carrots, and mashed potatoes (we were all a little confused by the supposed italian-ness of the second course, but the waiters assured us it was a staple dish).  Either way, so yummy!  Then we had this apple tart with cream on it.  Not whipped cream, just cream.  Liquid love handles, i'm sure, and it was delicious.  After dinner, I went upstairs to take a shower (which only had a half door - confusion about this as well) and watched about 20 minutes of Dodgeball dubbed in italian.  We tried to mute it and read the actors' lips, but that failed miserably.  I fell asleep really quickly anyway.
THURSDAY
On Thursday we went on a walking tour through Florence.  Some of the highlights were the Duoma (, the Palazzo Vecchio ("old palace"), the Ponte Vecchio ("old bridge"), the Museo del Bargello (where we saw a lot of work by Donatello), and the Basilica di Santa Croce ("holy cross" church; it had Michelangelo and Galileo's tombs!).  Then we had lunch at a restaurant called Baldovino, where they proceeded to serve us bruschetta (it was covered in raw tomatoes and I ate it. it was delicious. i had two pieces), SIX pizzas, and a delicious blob of tiramisu smothered in more cream.  After lunch we went to the Galleria Dell'Accademia, where Michelangelo's David is housed.  It is incredible.  The detail and the feeling and the human-ness is pretty spectacular.  At the giftstore of the Accademia, I bought my one souvenir  from Florence - a 1 euro postcard showing the city - it looks pretty on my wall in my itsy bitsy bedroom on the ship :)  After that, we were released for free time.  My friends and I went back to the famous Ponte Vecchio to actually go on the bridge and look in all the WAY OVERPRICED shops selling fine jewelry.  We took a lot of pictures of the view from the bridge.  After that, we went on a mad search for what our tour guide deemed the best Gelato shop in Florence (and she lives there!), called Grom.  It took a while to find, and we ended up asking one of the carriage drivers, and we finally got there.  I had a coni medio (medium cone) of stracciatella and pistachio.  Stracciatella is basically their version of chocolate chip.  After getting our cones, we made our way back to the market that we went to on Wednesday and walked around a little.  Then we went back to the hotel, and I took a cold shower - it was unbearably hot our entire time in Italy and I got used to taking cold showers when possible.  Then my friends and I went out to dinner at a place called Sasso di Dante.  I had a tomato and ricotta cheese risotto and it was sooooooooo good.  We also got free shots of this wine-like liquor from the owner of the restaurant.  I think he liked us :)  After that we went across the river to St. Marks church to see a small little production of Le Nozze di Figaro.  I really had a lot of fun that night; it was cool to finally see the opera after having sung a couple of its songs in voice lessons over the past couple years.
FRIDAY
We woke up pretty early and got breakfast at the hotel, where I discovered that Italian hotels always put out small little to-go packets of Nutella.  I'm moving here after graduation.  Armed with enough Nutella packets to last me a lifetime (get ready, Ivy, I got a different brand of one at every hotel for you!), I boarded the bus and we drove to Assisi.  We saw the Basilica di S. Chiara (St. Clare) and the Basilica Papale di San Francesco (St. Francis).  Both were beautiful.  St. Francis basilica was enormous and actually had two churches, one called the lower church and one called the upper church.  Since Assisi is on the side of the mountain, lower church was halfway in the basement of upper church and halfway exposed on the other side of the hill.  It was pretty cool.  After our tour, we got our bags from the bus and put them in our hotel rooms at Hotel Giotto.  The view was beautiful from our room, which had a cute little balcony :)  We could see the top of the Basilica di Santa Chiara and the pretty umbrian valley with its little farms and vineyards.  Then we just wandered around the town for the whole afternoon.  We got lunch - vegetable pizza, and gelato - chocolate and raspberry.  Then we walked around and popped into a lot of the little shops.  I had been wanting to get a pair of italian leather sandals really bad, and I finally found a pair that I liked and was pretty inexpensive.  They are super cute and super comfy and smell so good.  I've been wearing them around the boat to break them in.  After wandering, we found ourselves dying of heat, so we went back to the hotel.  I took a cold shower, of course, and then read for my Religion class a little bit.  Then we had dinner at the hotel - cheese lasagna (it had some sort of creamy cheese in it that I'm pretty sure was made by God) and a beef and potatoes dish like the one we had at dinner in the hotel in Florence the first day.  Dessert was tiramisu, and it was, yet again, delicious.  I'm starting to doubt that I will ever again be okay eating in America. I'm spoiled.  Then we walked around the city more - took tons of pictures of the sunset.  After that we got gelato again (I'm starting to see a trend).  This time I got Crema and Pistacchio.  I don't know what "crema" was, but it was delicious, and pistacchio was delicious as always.  I'm in pistachio ice cream heaven here.  I'm either going to have a heart attack or become morbidly obese; either way, I'm probably going to need to be wheeled off the ship at the end.
SATURDAY
Again, we woke up pretty early and got breakfast at the hotel.  Hotels here, in addition to having Nutella-to-go, always have hard boiled eggs, croissants filled with some sort of creamy substance, and sliced peaches.  Needless to say, I got breakfast everyday.  On our way out of Assisi, we stopped at the Basilia di Santa Maria Degli Angeli.  This church is weird because inside it, where an altar should be at the center of the big dome part at the front, there is a really old, small little chapel that they built the basilica around.  It's called the Porziuncola, and its the church were St. Francis actually died.  We had about 20 minutes to walk around and see the church, so I actually dropped in on the 2nd half of mass in the teeny tiny Porziuncola.  I love how mass is always the same, no matter what language it's in.  After that, we got back on the bus and drove to Rome.  Along the way, we passed so many sunflower fields, which are just incredibly gorgeous.  Sunflowers, in italian, are called Girasoli - gira means "turn" and soil means "sun."  Effectively they are called flowers that turn towards the sun, which I thought was a cool little tidbit of information.  After we got to Rome, we were set loose for a really quick lunch.  The restaurant we went to had a pasta + drink + gelato = 10 Euros, and I got a basic pasta with meat sauce, a white wine, and (again) pistacchio gelato.  Then we went into the Vatican, the highlights of which for me were the map hallway, the sistine chapel, and the Basilica.  Then we walked around and shopped for a little bit.  Dinner was another group dinner at a restaurant called Da Meo Patacca.  We sat outside, the walls were covered in ivy, and it was really fun.  They, for some reason, decided to give the college kids endless refills of wine, so there were many many people who got pretty drunk.  There were also men walking around singing italian songs to all the tables.  All in all, it was a fun time.  After dinner, we went on a walking night tour of the Trevi fountain, the pantheon, and travona square.  All three were awesome.  After that, I went back to the hotel and crashed.
SUNDAY
Fourth of July! And Italians don't really seem to care…  This morning we went on a tour of the ancient side of Rome - the Colosseum, the Constantine arch, and the Forum (which was so cool!).  Then we saw a huge, modern marble building that the italians apparently call "the wedding cake" as a derogatory term.  They think it doesn't fit in well with the roman style of architecture.  Then we had free time for lunch, and I got pasta bolognese.  Then we walked around a little and got gelato before getting back on the bus to go to Pompeii.  This time I gave up my pistacchio obsession to get a new flavor I had never seen before - NUTELLA GELATO.  When I ate it, I'm pretty sure I heard choirs of angels.  Then we got on the bus to head over to Pompeii, and I passed out the entire way.  I was so sleepy!  When we got to Pompeii, our tour guide was Marcello and he was a very hot italian man.  All the girls giggled at everything he said, and he showed us around the ruins for a couple hours.  My favorite part of the ruins was a mosaic of an angry dog that was at the doorstep of a house.  Under it, it said "cavi canum," which roughly translated, means "beware of dog."  Even back in the 1st century, people were kind enough to put out doormats to warn their neighbors of their mean dogs.  Back then, they were just fancy mosaics.  We also saw a couple of the preserved bodies, which were horribly sad.  There was a pregnant woman lying facedown and covering her mouth and eyes, and other man curled up in the fetal position covering his face too.  It was just horrible.  But the preservation of all these places was pretty incredible.  There was even this one place called the "thermopolium," which was basically a hot, take-out food shop.  There were empty basins that held the hot soups, ready made for a meal on the go.  It was really cool to see how the people lived.  After this, the trip finally had to come to an end, and we came back to the ship, now docked in Naples.  My friends and I decided to take quick showers and go back out for true Neapolitan pizza (pizza was invented in naples!)  We went to a place called Ciro a Medina, a shop that our tour guide Stefania had recommended.  I got a traditional neapolitan pizza called "Regina Madre."  It had fresh tomatoes, basil, olive oil, and buffalo mozzarella on it.  I literally ate the entire thing.  Seriously, I need liposuction after this little jaunt through Italy.
MONDAY
On Monday, I went over to the island Capri with my friend Keri from the trip.  We took the 7:30 ferry over and got there around 9, ready to quickie see everything that people had told us to see before having to go back to the Ship.  We immediately hopped on a little boat to go see the Blue Grotto, which was incredible!  It was glowed a beautiful blue that reminded me of my favorite crayon, Cerulean.  Don't even lie - that was your favorite crayon too.  Then we took a taxi up to Anacapri, a town at the top of a mountain.  The ride up reminded me of the winding roads on St. John - I miss you guys!  We went on a chair lift that takes you up into the clouds (literally); on the ride up there were incredible views of the whole island.  When we got down, we got lunch quickly and took the shuttle bus down to the city of Capri.  We walked around the shops a little bit, and then took the cable car back down to the port.  We had about an hour to kill, so we swam in the ocean a little bit and laid out on the rocky beach.  Somehow, the only part of me that god burned was my right knee.  I don't know how.  Then we got back on the ferry back to Naples and got back on the boat on time!  On to Dubrovnik!
TUESDAY
Taco day at lunch!! The meat was good, but they gave us parmesan cheese to put on them.  No one else seemed phased by this, and happily covered their tacos in parmesan, but I was not fooled by their lack of cultural authenticity.  I ambivalently ate my cheese-less tacos.  Then I proceeded to take a 4 hour nap, which was awesome.  Also, the global studies midterm was quite hard; this is probably because I didn't study until about 30 minutes beforehand, because of my nap.  Everyone agreed and thought it was really hard, though.  They asked the most obscure questions they possibly could, and even people who studied a lot said that it wasn't worth the time because the questions were so random.  We got an e-mail afterward saying that they are curving the grades way upward because everyone did pretty badly.