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.