Carnivale in Venezia!

This weekend was incredible, definitely one I will never forget.  On Thursday Meg and I went out with Jamie, Jenna and Shania to celebrate our Italian midterms being over.  Lupi had a magic show at Shamrock so we just chilled there.  Yes, if I haven’t mentioned this before, my friend Lupi is a magician by profession.

 

Friday I just laid low because I was getting up early Saturday.  So I did laundry, went for a run (I know, it’s shocking), cleaned the apartment, and did some studying for midterms.  Nothing exciting, I just went bed early.  I know, I'm boring.  Haha.

 

So Saturday is where the real weekend started.  We (Megan, Lupi,

John and myself) all decided to go to Venice for Carnivale.  Carnivale is essentially a much classier Mardi Gras.  We arrived in Venice around 11:30.  As soon as we got off the train it was clear this was going to be a weekend to remember.  EVERYONE was in costume.  At the very least everyone was wearing a mask, had their face painted, or was wearing a hat.  However a lot of people were all out, top to bottom, over the top, in extremely elaborate costumes.  I saw Smirf’s, men dressed as ballerina’s (more on them later) and dominatrix’s.  The majority of people, however, were dressed in full out ball gowns with themes from the 1800’s.  For example there was my favorite costume, the “rose couple.”  Both wearing really elaborate dresses and suits from the 1800’s covered in roses, complete with gloves, wigs, masks, etc.  Masks are a huge part of Carnivale, everyone wears them.  I bought a really beautiful black and silver one with feathers.  Megan, Jamie and Jenna got their faces painted.  And Lupi got a cape and a wizard’s hat (because he’s a magician of course).

 

So after arriving at the train station we had to take a waterbus to get to our bed and breakfast.  It was SO COOL!!  I knew that the city was all water, but actually seeing it is pretty incredible.  Apparently gondolas are crazy expensive (like 30 euro a person) so we just took a bus.  They have water taxis too.  It was a really unique experience.  (FYI to anyone visiting Venice, they don’t check for your tickets on the waterbus ever.  And the tickets are really expensive.  So if you catch my drift…)

 

We stayed at a really cute bed and breakfast that was owned by an adorable woman.  She told us all about the best places to go and helped us figure out the city.  Now Carnivale is pretty much city wide, but the place to be is in Saint Marco’s Square.  So we of course made our way down to there, walking along the pier of the main waterfront.  The experience was unbelievable.  Every trip I’ve taken so far on weekends have been cool, but super busy.  Packed with wanting to see a hundred things, we end up constantly running around.  This was the first time we just wandered around and people watched, taking in the city and the craziness.

 

So there were some really funny stories from this weekend.  Back to the ballerina’s I mentioned.  It was like 5 or 6 guys dressed in tutus, tights, leotards, and bright pink lipstick.  We of course had to take a picture with them.  So they come over to us and right before they take the picture, one of them kisses Jenna!!!  It’s so funny, she was just like “Ahhhh?!” but cracking up.  I don’t think it would have been possible to stop him if she wanted too.  Check out my pictures on shutterfly if you want to see them!   Later in the night we saw them again, and I went to give them a high five.  Instead of just high fiving me back, he picked me up fireman style (over the shoulder) and ran away!  My friends just kind of stopped and stared, not exactly sure what to do.  Hahahahaha.  He only ran like 10 feet or so but it was so funny.  Apparently that’s what they do: kiss people, dance, and kidnap/run away with people.

 

That night we all went out to dinner then headed back to Saint Marco’s Square to keep celebrating.  It was a really fun night of dancing in the streets, drinking wine, and looking at all the crazy costumes.  It was essentially a big competition where everyone wanted to get his or her picture taken.  I got my picture taken once also, it was pretty flattering.  I didn’t know why at first, because it was just wearing a mask.  But he showed me the picture and the way the light was hitting my hair, the silver in my mask, and my eyes it looked like I was glowing.  My hair looked like it was on fire and my eyes were crazy bright.  I wish I could get a copy of the picture, but oh well.

 

The next day we just slept in, walked around a bit more, got food and headed back.  Venice is kind of far from Perugia and we had to transfer trains so we wanted to head out early.  Especially because all the girls had to study and Lupi and was throwing himself a birthday party.

 

This week I’m just studying for midterms and getting ready for Nora and Mischa’s arrival!  YAY!  So I doubt I’ll have any more interesting updates until after spring break.

Perugian Adventures with Brian

Now that I blogged about mine (and Brian’s) weekend in Rome, I decided to do a separate blog for the rest of our week together.  We spent Saturday night with my friends at our local favorite bars, Demphsey’s and Shamrock.  It was a lot of fun, and I particularly enjoyed just being able to spend time with Brian and showing him what a typical night in Perugia is like.  The next day we walked all over the city for a couple of hours.  We walked to all my favorite view points in the city and had a great time showing off my small, but beautiful Italian home.

 

Unfortunately during the week I had class, but we made the most of the time when I wasn’t in class.  Everyday we met for lunch and ate on the Duomo (cathedral) steps in the main Piazza.  Brian fell in love with the kabobs here, which are similar to gyros.  But I still made sure he tried lots of different Italian foods as well.  We had prosciutto and mozzarella piadini’s (sandwich) a lot during the day as a snack, and went out almost every night for dinner.

 

On Monday we went to my favorite pizza place, Mediterranean and after to Rock Castle for Monday night karaoke with all my friends.  Tuesday a big group of us got a meter long pizza for my friend’s birthday.  Wednesday myself, Brian, Megan, Jamie and Jenna went to Luna Bar for aperitivo.  Aperitivo is a very common, popular thing for bars to do in Italy.  You go around 7:00 and buy a drink, and they bring you lot’s of free, delicious, appetizer-type foods.  We had different bruschettas, cheese, meats, pizza, risotto, olives, and lots of other yummy snacks.  After aperitivo we went to John and Lupi’s apartment for a house party.  Another night of dancing and drinking (typical nightlife of Italy) that I got to share with Brian.  On Thursday a large group of my friends: Megan, Jamie, Jenna, Brittany, John, Lupi and Andreas joined Brian and myself for dinner at Dal Mi Cocco which I have blogged about before.  It’s the restaurant that does 5 courses for 13 euro, but the catch is that whatever they are making that day is what you are having.  It was delicious again, all traditional Umbrian and Perugian foods.

 

On Friday, since I didn’t have class, Brian and I decided to make a day trip to Assisi, a small town about 20 minutes from Perugia.  It was so incredible.  We had a walking guidebook (RICK STEVES’!!) given to Megan and myself by Claire (thanks Claire!) that proved to be extremely helpful.  It led us all over Assisi, showing us the Roman Amphitheater, the Basicilica of San Francesco, Basilica of Santa Chiara, etc, and giving us really interesting explanations at each.  My favorite parts of Assisi were the incredible views and the tombs of St. Francesco.  He is one of the Saints of Assisi and was born there.  His story is fascinating; he gave up all his material possessions to live a life dedicated to God.  St Claire (who’s tomb we also saw, very cool) was one of his followers and started the “Poor Claire’s.”  Assisi is a very popular pilgrimage place for Catholics and it was really interesting to see all the history.  Brian’s favorite part was the Temple of Minerva.  It’s a fairly small and basic cathedral, but what he liked about it was it’s original use.  It was a temple used for animal sacrifices, and the drains for the blood were still intact on the floor.  Creepy, yes.  But still a pretty unique thing to see.

 

That night, upon arriving back in Perugia, I took him to the secret restaurant that I previously blogged about.  We had an incredible meal, antipasto plate, primi’s, secondi’s, side dishes, and wine.  Basically enough food to feed a large family, well not a Klose family, but still a lot.  The weirdest part of the night however, occurred at the end.  This very drunk/insane woman come up to our table and asked us about our preference of flowers in Italian.  I pretended I couldn’t understand her so she would go away, and then she revealed she was English.  Well then she asked for some of our wine while she “waited for her cocktail and her potatoes.”  Yea, seriously.  So I, of course, lied and told her we just poured the rest of the bottle into our glasses.  A few minutes later she was back, WITH A GLASS, and this time addressed Brian!  He just ignored her, which she took as, “please help yourself!”  Which she did.  We pretty much finished our glasses, paid, and got the heck out of the ASAP.  It was entertaining, but highly bizarre at the same time.

 

Saturday was Valentine’s Day, which was really nice to be able to spend in Italy together.  In the morning we went to a giant outdoor market, which sold everything from clothes to produce to pets to kitchen equipment.  The rest of the day we shopped around Perugia, got gelato, took a nap, did more shopping and went to dinner.  Big day for Brian though, he bought a gorgeous leather jacket!!  I know I already bought one, but I was still jealous.  He did buy me a beautiful dress though, so I was quite the happy camper as well.

 

Sunday we didn’t do much, just enjoyed our last day in Italy together.  Walked around, ate some delicious food, tried to go to a soccer game but failed (don’t ask), and then went to Rome that night since his plane was the next morning.  It was really sad saying goodbye to him Monday morning since he is being stationed in Okinawa, Japan.  But it was absolutely incredible to have him here and be able to show him Italy.

 

In a week or so Mischa and Nora are coming to visit us!  I can’t wait to have more visitors and show them Italy also.  We are planning on doing Capri, Pompeii, and Sorento with them over spring break.  And after that my parents are coming!  Yay for visitors!  Scarily enough, after that it will be April and I’ll only have a month left.  This weekend I’m going to Venice with Megan, Lupi, and John for Carnival, which should be incredible.  I’ll make sure I blog all about it when I come back from that too.  And I promise I won’t wait so long in between blogs this time!  

1 more thing

I totally forgot to mention one pretty entertaining story about Rome.  While we were at the Coliseum I couldn't help myself from shouting, over and over, "Are you not entertained??!!"  (A la "Gladiator")  While Brian laughed maybe the first three times I did this, but the 10th he was annoyed.  And by the 25th he was embarrassed.  And by the 50th he was walking away from me pretending not to know me.  So yea, I made quite the spectacle of myself and I didn't care.

"ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED??!!"

Roma con Brian!

Hi all, I know I have been slacking on the blogs.  Sorry!  I do have a good excuse though.  Brian came to visit me!!  We had such an incredible time together.  I’ll start with our first weekend…

 

This one was spent in Rome with Brian!  He flew in Thursday morning where we met in Rome.  And from there was started our weekend immediately.  After dropping off our stuff we walked to the Coliseum.  Seeing it in person was absolutely amazing.  Brian summed it up perfectly when he said, “it’s something I always wanted to see, but never thought I would in person.”  Upon arriving there we found out about a tour that was only 20 euro a person (the tickets alone are 8 euro).  It was so worth it because we got to learn all about the Coliseum, jump all the lines, and also got entrance plus a tour around Palatine.  It was a fantastic way to start our day but we decided to keep going after.

 

We walked all around Roma and saw some incredible (albeit “touristy”) things.  We stopped at the Trevi fountain to throw coins backwards over our shoulders for good luck.  That was easily my favorite part of the day.  It was so beautiful and much larger than I imagined.  I loved it so much that we actually went back the next night after dinner to sit and enjoy it again.  (FYI it’s absolutely worth visiting twice so you can see it once during the day and once at night, it’s breath taking both ways but totally different.)  The first day we also walked to the Pantheon, which was very impressive as well.  It’s apparently the largest self-sustaining dome in the world, and architects now still don’t know how it was made.  After the first day being long and full of walking we were ready to call it a night.

 

Of course we had to get a few delicious Italian meals along the way since it was Brian’s first time in Italy.  We went pretty basic with pizza, calzione (calzone), crossaints (cornetta’s) with ham and cheese, and gelato throughout the day.  We actually ended up skipping dinner and going to be early if you can believe it!  Just shows how tired we were.  Brian literally just got off a plane from New York, I don’t know what my excuse was.

 

The next day we headed over to Vatican City to participate in another tour we were told about the previous day.  Vatican City was absolutely incredible.  Our tour guide was fantastic and told us so many interesting facts about the history of Vatican City.  We were lead through rooms upon rooms with everything from statues and sculptures, to paintings and frescos, to maps and tapestry’s the size of a normal wall!  Everything was so beautiful and fascinating.  We got to see works by Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Botticelli, and many more.

 

But of course the piece di resistance was the Cappella Sistina (Sistine Chapel).  Fortunately they allowed us to take pictures (no flash of course) but my pictures can’t even come close to capturing the colors, details and awe-inspiring frescos that covered the walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  It would have been easy to spend all day in there, just staring at the wall piece by piece.  Of course the piece “Creation of Adam” (the one where God is reaching out to Adam and their fingers are almost touching) was beautiful.  All of it together was overwhelming though.

 

After the Sistine Chapel we walked through St. Peter’s Basilica.  Walking through there and see the tombs of all the past Popes, and the burial site of St. Peter, was a very unique experience.  You weren’t allowed to speak in there, because it was a spiritual space.  I enjoyed it a lot, but my favorite part of the Vatican City was still the Sistine Chapel.

 

That night we went out to a restaurant that our tour guide recommended to us, but we of course couldn’t find it.  After walking around for about 30 minutes we decided just to go into one that looked good to us.  While checking out the menu for a “Trattoria” (a traditional restaurant) the server came outside and asked us where we were from.  When we told him we were Americans he said, “No ones perfect!”  That sold it to us.  We ended up eating way too much delicious food, getting primi’s that our server recommended and saltimbocca, a traditional Roman veal dish.  When we thought we couldn’t get eat more, they brought over free dessert!  Definitely a fantastic way to end a great day.

 

We decided to go back to Perugia the next day, but first to go to the Spanish Steps.  It was quite a hike up them, particularly in the rain, but they were so lovely.  It was the one “touristy” thing we hadn’t gotten to do while in Rome, so it was great to see them before heading back to Perugia.  Even our train ride back was interesting.  It’s about 2 hours from Rome to Perugia and Brian and I rocked out to The Beatles the entire time!  All of the Italians may have hated us, but we enjoyed ourselves.

Ciao Italy, hola Spain...Ole! My weekend in Barcelona!

Right now I am exhausted, but it’s completely worth it because I got to spend the weekend in Barcelona, Spain!  I went to Barcelona with my family when I was 13 and had incredible memories of it.  So when Megan suggested it for this past weekend I was totally on board.  Fortunately, my experiences this weekend not only lived up to, but also surpassed my memories and expectations.  I remembered the city as full of life, and culture, and essentially similar to a large piece of artwork and my memories did not disappoint.  It was amazing.

We started by leaving at 6 am Friday morning to begin our 7 “legs” of the trip (taxi, train, bus, shuttle, plane, bus, metro).  It was a lot of traveling but absolutely worth it.  The only bad part of the trip was when we saw a flasher on the Metro!!  EWWW.  I guess there are perverts in Spain just like there are in the United States.

The first night we were there we mad our way over to La Rambla.  La Rambla is the most famous (and largest) street in Barcelona and all down it is vendors selling everything imaginable, artists, and street performers.  Our favorite performer was a Edward Scissorhands look alike!  (check out the pictures, Megan was terrified)  The street performers are fantastic, they are all “statues” that move when you give them some euro.  It’s really amusing but you have to be careful.  Because La Rambla attracts so many tourists, and everyone is so distracted by the very talent performers, pick pocketing is extremely common.  Fortunately none of us got pick pocketed, but Jamie almost did!  Thank goodness she noticed and tracked him down before he would make away with her stuff.  We had a lovely dinner of tapas, paella, and sangria while sitting outside people watching and enjoying tradition Spanish foods and the fact that we were actually there.

The next day we got up early to make the most of our day.  Our first stop was Starbucks!  While many of you may think we are ridiculous for getting a Starbucks fix, you have to understand.  It was GLORIOUS to have a coffee (or in my case caramel macchiato) like we have at home.  It just gave us a nice kick and put us in great moods to start the day.  Also we don’t have one in Perugia, so it’s not like it’s readily available to us.

From there we went to a bar our hostel told us about that gives FREE walking tours!  It was definitely one of the best parts of our trip.  Because the tour guide was working solely for tips, she was fantastic.  We walked all over the city for about 2 and a half hours, seeing lot’s of hidden gems.  The focus of the tour was the history of Barcelona as opposed to seeing the main “touristy” spots.  We saw Gaudi’s first public piece or artwork, Picasso’s dad’s art school (and where Picasso lost his virginity!), Plaza George Orwell (which is nicknamed Plaza Trippy because that’s where a lot of drug addicts hang out).  We also the church that Gaudi frequented, Isabella and Ferdinand’s castle/cathedral, and saw the first synagogue (I don’t remember if it was in Spain or Europe, but still cool either way).  A few other interesting things we saw were a plaza that was blown up during WWII, destroying a daycare center (they left the walls that had chips blown out of them the same as a reminder), the first piece of wood Christopher Columbus brought over the from the United States, and where San Eulalia was tortured and eventually killed (one of the Saints of Barcelona).

Aside from the walking tour we also went to Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s gothic cathedral.  It was under construction but still incredible to see.  We attempted going to Gaudi’s park but it was unfortunately closed because of really bad storms the week before that knocked down a lot of trees.  I was pretty disappointed we didn’t get to see it, I remember it being my favorite part of my last Barcelona trip.  But we still saw so many amazing things; I have no right to complain!  That night we also went to the very first “ice bar.”  An ice bar, for those of you who don’t know (*cough*Mom*cough*) is a bar literally made entirely of ice.  The bar itself, the chairs, the cups, everything!  It’s a very cool (Haha, get it?!  Cool?!  Haha, good one Ash) thing to do and see, but we only stayed for 1 drink.  They keep the bar at -5 degrees so they have to give you special thermal jackets, hats and gloves to wear.

The next day we made sure to get up early again and this time headed down to see the beach.  It was so beautiful, and a really wonderful way to start the day.  We wanted to see the Picasso museum, but unfortunately the lines were way to long and we didn’t have a ton of time left before we had to get to the airport.  It was fate that we didn’t get to go though.  The entire weekend we looked for churros and couldn’t find them!  (Weird, right?) But then after deciding to leave the Picasso museum, turning the corner to go to the metro, what do we see?  A churro place!!  It was definitely destiny.

Then we began out 7 “legs” to go back.  Myself, Megan, Jamie and Jenna had an amazing time.  They were a fantastic group to travel with.  We plan on traveling to Amsterdam and Greece together and I can’t wait for those adventures.  That night we went to a bar and watched the Superbowl.  Not a bad way to end the weekend, huh?  Now I’m planning this weekend because Brian is flying in!  I’ll be picking him up in Rome, spending a few days there, then bringing him back to Perugia to show him around here.  I’m sure Rome will be an interesting weekend, since it will be both of our first times there.  I’ll be sure to blog all about our adventures next week!