On Top of Spaghetti...

Hey All! This is the first post in a while, but for good reason. I took a week-long trip to Italy, and I got to see tons of stuff. So lets start from Friday the 25th...

Madison, Morgan, and I hopped on an 18-hour-long train that took us from Luxembourg to Munich to Rome! On the last leg of the train (9pm-9am), we ran into some guys from our program who were in the cart next to us. They were about to watch "Big Fish" on a laptop. I ducked into their 6-person cart because I'm a big fan of that movie. If you've never seen it, I highly recommend you do. While watching, I couldn't help but relate Ed Bloom's variety of adventures to my own, and to the idea of this Blog. In the movie, Ed finds out how he dies when he is a child, so for the remainder of his days, he is able to do crazy things because he knows they aren't how he will die. While I don't know how I will die, the purpose of my bucket list and this blog is to fight aging and death by experiencing as much as I can while I'm alive.

The train ride was incredibly long and uncomfortable, spanning the entire night. We arrived in Rome Saturday morning, and after a good bit of searching for it, we checked into our hostel. I was deemed navigator for this trip, and if you know me at all, you know that was a bad idea. We soon went to explore, heading first to the Colosseum. On the way, we ran into a large protest complemented by some police with riot shields. Still not sure what the cause was, but the flare smoke and the large crowds made the trip to the Colosseum dreadful.

The Colosseum itself was really cool. We learned that the Romans were completely brutal, and entertained with savage killings. 700,000 people, at the very least, were killed purely for entertainment within that structure. I took the opportunity to channel my inner Russell Crowe and shout "Are you not entertained?!" Cross that off the bucket list!

Next, we headed to see the Church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the Pantheon, and the Trevi Fountain. Saint Ignatius was beautiful, and had an amazing ceiling mural. The Pantheon had the most architecturally awe-inspiring dome I've ever seen. I can't fathom how it was created, especially without modern technology. It was also cool to see it,  being a structure common to many text books that I've read for school, in person. The Trevi Fountain is drained for construction, so it wasn't very cool. After exploring, we were starved and tired. The pasta I had that night was legitimately the best pasta I've ever had in my life: Italy really does do pasta right.

The next day, we headed to the Vatican in an attempt to see the Pope say mass. We stood in a giant line which looked like it was to get in to St. Peter's Basilica, and moved our way toward the entrance. While we were about to get in, we heard a voice over speakers. There was a GIANT crowd in St. Peter's Square (which is more of a circle in my opinion) that was listening to this speech. Without a good angle anymore, we were not able to see from where the voice was coming. So after like 20 minutes, we walked into the the Basilica. We participated in a mass said in the Vatican, but it was not said by the Pope, unfortunately. That night, after seeing our peers' Instagrams, we found out that the speech that we were confused by was actually given by the Pope! So although we didn't get to see him, we heard him! Later that day, we headed to the Spanish Steps, but they were basically just a staircase, so that was more of a resting spot than an actual excursion.

Monday morning, we headed to Florence to meet up with our friend Maggie Lane, who is studying in Florence. WARNING: IF YOU ARE ALLERGIC TO LEATHER, DON'T EVEN CONTINUE READING. FLORENCE IS SO FULL OF LEATHER THAT YOU WOULD PROBABLY HAVE A REACTION FROM JUST READING. No joke, there are like a bizillion street vendors of leather purses, wallets, and belts in addition to the billions of actual shops. In Florence, we did a lot of sitting around and looking around shops. Ryan finally met up with us on Tuesday, and we kept looking at shops. But on Wednesday, we headed to a soccer game to watch the Florence team! it was awesome, and so was the stadium hotdog. Brought me back to home. And Florence won! Florence was the typical Italian city, and I really enjoyed it.

On Thursday, we headed to Venice. I was stoked. We got there at like 3pm, and I was amazed immediately. We walked through some streets, crossing over beautiful canals and seeing gondolas. It's just like the pictures. The water is so much nicer than you'd think. We had an awesome and cheap dinner by water, and the pasta was amazing again. We went back to the hostel very early though because it was dark by 5:30, and Venice gets very creepy when the sun sets because it's full of dark alleyways.

The next day, we walked around some more, and took some public boats to different places including a cool island where we got to climb a clocktower that overlooked the Adriatic Sea and Venice. Taking it all in was amazing. It was Halloween, and that just added to the creepiness of Venice at night. I had another great pasta, and we headed back to the hostel.

The last thing we did in Venice was on Saturday morning. We headed to the island of Murano to watch some glassblowing, which is what Murano is known for, dating back to the Middle Ages. It was cool to see such intricate detail being made out of glass in such a short period of time.

We ended our break by training to Milan, staying in the Milan train station and airport for more than 10 hours, flying to Brussels, and then training home to Lux. I can't say it's how I wished to spend my birthday, but I realize I shouldn't be complaining. But I was definitely ready to get back to Lux. 74/117.