Europe - Part I: Italy

Okey! I've got to stop fricking postponing this, so here it goes!
- I must warn you, that since this are the 1st 15 days of the trip, and I have a huge disabilty to make things short, this post is probably going top be freakishly long-

Ok,so this trip started on January 1st, we met whith the whole travel group at the airport, where we did the check in, and we each got our trip t-shirt (nothing to showy, just a white t-shirt that read "ITALIA"  on the front, and "GENERACION 2010" on the back...). When the time to leave came, most people had a very emotive goodbye whith their families, (I just had a slightly-more-emotive-than-usual goodbye.. 'cause, sure it was going to be 40 days appart, but that ment that I knew that in 40 days I was going to be seeing them again)..

So we left our families, and after not too much time on the free shop, we had to board the plane, we had arround  3 hours of fligh (I think) to Sao Paolo, where we had to wait 6 hours if I remeber correclty, and then a very long flight to Milano..

We got to Milano on January 2nd sometime arround 12, and everyone immediatly started getting their jackets/coat/whatever on 'cause apparently it was too cold (to be honest, I would have been perfectly fine whith just a sweater) So we got on our bus, and we headed to Torino, we spent qute a few hours ina place called "la reggia di Venaria" which is basically like a palace/museum (note: every time you read reggia, in some place's name, that means that that place is a palace -or something like that-).. And since we had arrived that very same day, and we had had a long trip from Milano to Torino after the reggia we headed straight to the hotel.. Where we had dinner and after some time hanging out in some friends' room we headed of to sleep (to save some time, this was generaly the routine once we got back to the hotel)
I'll remind you that ina previous post I wrote about how my friends had ditched me in the whole room-matter, so even though the people I was shareing rooms whith ARE my friends, they are not the friends I wanted to share rooms whith

The next day we did some more time on Torino.. We visteded the (blue one, you'll love this, I know I did) "Museo Egizio" (which obviously means egyptian museum) and a lot of other stuff, like an Immitation of a medieval casttle and  a cinema museum (where there were a lot of unnimportant things, and some very interesting ones), on the top of the museum there was a gazer where you could see the whole town which was simply beautifull.. And then we had some shopping time in the area and then back to the hotel, where after the usual hanging out in some friends' room, we moved the "hang-out" to the room that "belonged" to my 2 best friends: Maca and Sofi and who I guess could be called my runner up best friend: Fifo.. By 12 o'clock, in the room there where just the room "owners", me, Fede (a friend) and on of  my "room-mates": Mati. AT 12:15 they sent us to sleep, and Fede and I obeyed (Mati hid under a bed), but a few minutes later I came back.. Now since the paranoid chaperone (who happens to be the one that guides the whole trip so she travels almost every year) spent the rest of the night wandering in the corridors, we couldn't leave the room, so we ended up putting the three beds together and sleeping all five of us there. -It was in this night that Maca broke the 1st of the two beds that my group of friends would brake during the trip (I don't know how many beds the other one's broke, but I bet there were more than ours), we didn't manage to fix this beds, but we did manage to hide the damage pretty well, so noone ever found out- The next day Mati and I had to wake up pretty early to be back in our room before the chaperones saw us.  (I promise the other days won't be as long as this one...:/)

On the 4th we went to Milano (yeah I know, given that we landed in Milano, it would have been much smarter to visit Milano first, instead of leaving and then coming back.. but I don't plan the trip). On the way to Milano we stopped on the football stadium "San Siro".. In Milano, we walked throw the gallery "Vittorio Emanuele II", we went to the "piazza del duomo" (piazza=square, duomo=cathedral) and we entered the "duomo di Milano" (One of my favorite cathedralls).. We also went to the "cenacolo vinciniano" which is where Leonardo da Vinci's last supper is, and I gotta say, that watching something you've heard about for so many years in the "flesh" is very shocking

5th.. We went to Verona (Romeo and Julliet's city) which is a gorgeous city which is filled whith romantic traditions, for example: in what supposedly is Julliet's house, couples write their names in the walls (it's kinda cute, but it ruins the walls a bit..) and on bridges and wells, couples put a padlock whith their names and throw the key (into the river or the well). On Julliet's house, there's a statue of Julliete, that involves a certain tradition.. I don't know if it's to come back to the city, or to have luck in love, but when tourists visit verona, they go up to this statue and grab/tocuh Julliet's right boob, you can actually see that the boob is worn out.. Needless to say we all did it.. (and just so you get an idea of how long it took, we were 52 people, and that's just counting the students..I think we were about 60 whith the chaperones) on our free time (we got free time in almost every city) I went off whith the group of friends I actually wanted to share rooms whith.. we came across a so called love well, where you had to throw a coin to have luck in love.. we all did it, but mostly out of tradition, and then we just wandered arround the city.. we also climbed a hill, that had a casttle on top.. sure there were steps, but they were a lot and it was tireing.. Then we went back at the hotel.. where after dinner almost everyone went out dancing, I stayed just like my "room-mates", my life-long best friend: Tone (she's kinda like my childhood best friend) and a whole bunch of other people I hardly ever get together whith, but since we where the only ones left in the hotel, we joined them, we had a surprisingly good time, we "mumifyed" Tone whith toilet paper, and we walked her all the way to the room where the only chaperone that stayed behind (to take care of us) was, and when he went to oppen the door he appeared wearing just a towell, so it ended up being funnier than we expected. (ok, it's probably childish fun but I don't care, I got to have a good laugh whith my childhood best friend, whith whom I hardly ever hang out that way anymore)

Venezia! beautifull city (I don't get why half the people hated it) I gotta say, we had the worst weather that day, so that may have influenced.. We visited "il palzio ducale" (you guessed it, another palace!), the "piazza san Marco" (wich is the typical Italian square full of pigeons) we  had the first and only snowfall we would see in Italy, and I gotta say, it was a small one, but still everyone was very exited.. We also saw the rialto bridge (the typical ventian bridge), and the Harry's Bar. And yes of course we got on a gondola, and we had a half an hour tour, which again, half the people hated.. Just a clarification, not all the gondoliers sing.. some of them do, if you ask them, but some of our friends who asked, got this answer "the gondolier doesn't sing, he works." ours didn't sing either..

7th, we went to a city called Ravenna, which has nothing of special other than Dante's grave, which is very small (it still is qute pretty) there are some  other stuf there, like a church whith a pretty mosaic, but nothing worth mentioning.. I gotta say, that night at the hotel I had one the most fun nights I had in the whole trip, it was the first time that we got together whith almost my whole group of friends and we had a "water party" it was just a bunch of people hanging out whith a lot of botteled water.. Again we had some childish fun, like for example the girls (Maca, Fifo and Sofi) tryed on weird hair-dos (Fifo got a "Leia-do", it acctually wasn't even remotly alike, and she knew it.. but she at leas tryed) and they straightened Franco's hair (another friend, a male friend...), and Matteo's fringe.. The point, is that it was a fun, lame, childish hung out..

On the 8th and the morning of the 9th, we went to Firenze (Florence) Another wonderfull city.. We saw Michelangelo's David, (another shocking moment) we saw the Santa Maria del Fiore (another cathedral, and anotherone of my favorite cathedrals, even though in the inside it's just a regular cathedral, I somehow love it's outside and I always have.. after all, it's the outside that counts ;P), and we got to the top of it's bell tower, where u get an awesome view of the city (it was arround 300 steps..) .. We saw the "palazzo Pitti", the "Santa Croce" (another church, where Galileo and Michelangelo are burryed, and where Dante has it's own grave.. even though his body is in Ravenna) and The "palazzo degli Uffizzi"

After leaving Firenze, on the 9th, we went to a little city called Siena, there aren't much famous things there..  But they have this neighborhoods they call contrade (they're usually named after animals), and they kinda work like sports teams, being the contrada where you were born your team, and they have this competitions arround the year, being the most important one a horse race on the main square.. it's all kind of insane, and they are like extremelly fanatic, it's very fun, and you see all this little stores, where you can buy pens, flags, magnets, etc whith the diferent contrade.. The reason why  we like this city so much (besides the fact that is quite pretty) is that dor a few years in our school, they held a competition (that had nothing to do whith horse races but still) they took the three oldest generations, and divided them into  arround 8-10 groups, and each group was assigned a contrada, and each group had to make flags, make a costume for a mascot, etc.. My contrada was Tartuca, which is kind of like a mix up of the words turttle in spanish and italian, because the dialect from siena has spanish influences.. so GO TARTUCA.. (my contrada was too far away, so I didn't have enough time to get all the way there and back ¬¬, I still got a pretty flag thoug..)

Assisi, was the city we visited on the 10th, it's a wonderfull city.. we visited Santa Chiara's church (outside Assisi), "Basilica di San Francesco" and  "Tampio di Minerva" both churches, and I'm sure we saw one or two other churhces there (a lot of churches for such a little city)

From the afternoon of the 10th, to the 12th we stayed in Roma.. The first night we stayed there we had some free time before dinner, so a bunch of us just took the subway to see the "Fontana di Trevi" and the "piazza Spagna" at night (we were going to get to see them whith the school during day time, but since we couldn't think of anything we werent doing whith the school that we could do at night, we decided to get a good look at this things during night, and it was totally worth it (I somehow ended up throwing 3 coins into the fountain..)
In the following days, we saw the coloseum, th "fontana di trevi" again (but this time, we sat down in front of it to eat ice cream) the "Castel Sant' Angelo", the Vatican and it's museums, the sixteenth chappel (another moment of shock), San Pietro's Basilica (unnessesaryly big) and we went all the way to it's dome (and after 300 steps by elevator, we still had to walk 250 more, which was worth it just to get that view.. We walked through "via del corso" (a famous street whith lots of stores) and we had a hearing whith the Pope..
During our time in Rome I had a fight whith this group of friend (Matteo, Franco, Fede & Lupi)I wanted to share rooms whith, it was about some very stupid things, but it acctually helped, 'cause it brought up old stuff that always bothered me, and I never got arround to say to them.. it was healthy to finally get that stuff out of the way.. And while I was still mad whith them, I had a deep hones talk whith Mati (because being angry at them, the whole room issue came up) ad bothe him and I addmited that even though we were happy and comfortable sharing the rooms whith each other, neither of us was in the room we wanted to..

Napoli, is just like any other city, just that it has a lot of garbage on the streets.. sure, maybe if you took the garbage out it would be a bit prettyer than other cittyes, but it still has nothing speciall, all it has (or at least all we saw) was an extremelly borring museum (and I like museums).. After Napoli's Museum we went to Pompei, which was very interesting, and I really liked it..

On the 14th, we visited a bunch of cityes on the "Costiera Amalfitana", it's just a beautifull place, and even though it's scarry, it's a beautifull view you get while riding on the bus, on the side off the mountain next to the see.. After the bus ride, we took a little boat (not because the bus couldn't reach the place we where going, just for fun) and got a different but still beautifull view (seriously that place is gorgeous), And on the beach that we took the boeat, some of us, took our shoes of and got our feet in the water, since we were having such a nice weather..

On our last day in Italy, I was sharing room whith just one of my previous "room-mates" (the one that wasn't mati, his name is Roni btw), and one of 2 things happened that morning, either our chaperones didn't give our room the wake-up call, or they did, but they didn't care that noone answered, cause neither of us heard the phone ring.. Thank god, my friend Ruggiu, was looking for me at breakfast to give me back a sweater I had lef in her room, so she realised I wasn't there, so after everyone finished eating, an extremely loud door knocking woke me up, and it was Ruggiu coming to wake us up.. In the hurry I had (because I had like, 10 minutes to dress up, brush my teeth and finish making the bags, and have no brakfast at all ¬¬) I started changing whthouth realising she hadn't left the room, not that I cared at the time.. On that day, we visited the reggia di casserta (very pretty, kinda lik I pictured Versailles), and a small pretty city called orvieto, whith nothing but a small churhc, and some shops..

On that night, after dinner, where Franco, Tone and each of the chaperones gave  a speech (it WAS the last night),.. The guys that were following the trip whith me (which happen to be the ones I wanted to share rooms whith plus 3 others) and I had to leave, to start our own idividual trip.. The school's trip  acctually finished the next day, after visiting Pisa (which I didn't get to see) but we screwed up whith the times and everything, so we had to take on our own a train all the way to Milano (because that's were we though we would be by then.. we missed by one night) where our Plain to Prague was leaving.. So we went down to the hotel's lobby,  to wait, where most of the people was waiting for us.. So we all sat and waited for the taxis together, until they finally arrived one by one (it took us three cabs, cause we were 8 plus luggage.. plus a chaperone that came whith us to the train station) and we had our very emotive Goodbye (I still was totally unable to cry.. damn me..)  I left on the last cab, whith two other of my travel-mates, and three girls from the school's travel group, among who were Tone and Silvi (who happens to be the girlfriend of one of my travel-mates) it was nice to have Tone there at the train station to say goodbye.. And Silvi is also a childhood  friend so..
When we got to the station, The girls stayed for like 5 minutes, and then sayed goodbye to everyone.. AGAIN.. and then left whith the chapperone... And that was it.. According to the way I see it, that was when our trip whith the school ended.. we were all alone..