After our 4:15 am goodbye to Britt :(, we went to the room for a couple hours, then got back up at 6:30 to get ready to head to Madrid! We were a little nervous about this bus ride, since the last one was so bad, but this one actually turned out to be really nice! We shook things up a bit and sat at the front of the bus with the girls that we've made friends with on the trip. I got my own seat bc Jac and Eeps are SO nice. I'm sure you will all see the lovely sleeping picture that Jackie took of me later. After a couple hours on the bus, we stopped in Zaragosa, a cute little town, for lunch. We kind of got pushed towards an outside restaraunt. It turned out to be okay. We paid our check, then ditched that crowd to get some gelatto!! What's new? After that, it was back on the bus. Surprisingly, we only had ONE pee pee stop the rest of the trip to Madrid! When we got here, we were pleasantly surprised to find a nice hotel smack dab in the center of the town. We checked into our room, then walked around the hotel area. We found some Paella to satisfy our new craving. Erin enjoyed hers, but my rice was a little undercooked and crispy. Oh well, I was fed. Being the party animals that we are, we headed upstairs to watch a tv show online, then go to bed early. 10 am the next day, and we were back on the bus for the sight seeing tour of Madrid! Our tour guide was a cute little lady who reminded me some of Sue Sue! We listened as she talked to us about things we were passing. We took a quick picture stop in Plaza del Espana, then headed to our tour of Palacio Real. This is an old Palace in Madrid where the royal family used to live. They havent lived there since the Spanish civil war in the 1930's. After the palace, we hopped back on the bus, FOR THE LAST TIME!!! They dropped us near the hotel, right across the street from Mickey D's.. so naturally, we had tat for lunch. Then, we voluntarily went to an art museum.. weird. We went to the Reina Sofia to see Picasso's Guernica, thanks to Catherine's recommendation. It was a really great piece of anti-war propaganda that Picasso did in 1937 to speak out against the civil war in Spain. So after this busy morning of sight-seeing, I'm sure you can guess what we did next.. SIESTA!! Obvi. After the snooze, we went out to explore a little more. We walked to an area a little ways away from the hotel called Plaza Mayor. This is a fun local place with shops all around. We found the Adidas store, Desigual (one of the main Spanish designers, so I had to get a dress and a shirt!), and some souvenir shops! Our tummys were talking to us after the intense shopping, so we stopped at a little cafe. It wasn't great, but Erin had a good tortilla con ensalada! Haagen Daas was right next door to this cafe, so dessert came next! Jackie ended up paying more for her waffle/ice cream sundae than she did for dinner! After all this walking and eating, we came back to the hotel, rejected the invitation for one euro beers with some of our friends, watched a little online tv, then went to sleep for the night!
This morning was when the homesickness really set in! We didnt have any scheduled activities with the group, so we slept in. When we woke up, we spent the morning packing, after a yum breakfast of DUUUUUUUNKIN' DONUTS! (that was for you, Kyle!)We somehow managed to fit all of our things into the suitcases, with little cruisin' and losin'! (that was for you, Dad!) Since we were already ready to get home after packing, Jackie and I decided to go wander around and kill time. Eeps decided to wake her parents up extremely early to skype! Jac and I ended up on a street called Grand Via, which is another one of the great shopping areas in Spain. We somehow end up in all these areas when I set the plans for the day.. whoopsies! We found a great little spot for lunch, Cafe VIPS, that served CHIPS AND QUESO!! Yuumm.. After lunch, we just walked around, and of course, found a great store called Springfield. We decided to keep the purchases minimal, each buying one dress only! After that, we were back to the hotel to sit and wait for the day to move faster. Tonight was fun! We got dressed up cute and went to the farewell dinner with the group to "shed a few laughs and a few tears" according to the tour program. The food was good! After the metro ride back to our hotel area, we hung out with a few of our tour besties. I am now sitting back in the room, waiting for my wild friends to come back from club Kapital! Whitney suggested it, so I posed for a pic, then headed upstairs to pack and take it easy. Jackie and Erin decided to check it out and see what all the fuss was about!
Can't tell yall how EXCITED we are to be back home tomorrow! Pray that we dont encounter any delays or problems! can't wait to show and tell everything!!!
We survived,
Kaci and mis amigas!!
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Barcelona and a Bummer
After a way-too-long ride on a not-so-good bus, we made it to Provence, France, a place known for…wait for it….RATATOUILLE! We’re not sure if Provence is really famous for ratatouille, that’s just what we heard, and we all like the movie…so we just went with it. We made about 3 stops in some small towns with some sort of Roman ruins (note: almost every place we’ve been has some sort of Roman ruins, the Romans ruled most of Europe for Pete’s Sake, of course there’s gonna be ruins from them!!!), but we were pretty tired of seeing roman ruins at this point in the trip, especially when it turns an hour long bus ride into a 6 hour long bus ride! But, after some frustrating stops…we made it to Provence and our lovely BEST WESTERN HOTEL. We cannot even express the joy felt throughout our whole group when we realized that not only were we staying at a common American hotel chain, but that our hotel also has a pool! Since we’ve all had a couple too many French pastries and gelatos, we decided against going to the pool, but we were glad to have the option nonetheless! We ate at the hotel because apparently Provence is not a nice area of France…our tour leader told us to go into town with guys on our group and stay in at least groups of 4. (We were told the same thing when we went to Bryan middle schools like Jane Long for volleyball games so it brought back memories.) We had an “index finger meal” at the hotel. If you don’t know what an “index finger meal” is, let me explain. When you are in a foreign country, you cannot read most of the menu, your waiter doesn’t speak English, and you don’t want to completely butcher the language by trying to say what you want, you simply point with your index finger at the item you can recognize the most words in…and that’s what you’re having for dinner! Even though we only pointed at one item each, we got a salad, entrée, and dessert that we didn’t order, but had to pay for…perfect! After a comfy and relaxing night in our Best Western, we hit the road again, this time in route to ESPANA!!
For the trip to Barcelona, we had the same crappy bus (smelled like smoke, gum all over the place, little space, and a bus driver who never ceased to have a cigarette in his mouth) so that made the trip all the more pleasant…sarcasm. We only stopped once in a town to have lunch, a stop we could all be pleased about. Our hotel in Barcelona only had 3 person rooms, so again we had to pull a bed from another room into ours and squeeze like sardines. It’s a good thing we still love each other. We couldn’t complain too much about this hotel though because it had air conditioning…and air conditioning makes us happy people. The next day we set out on a sightseeing tour of the huge and beautiful city of Barcelona! We went on our crappy bus, but had a different driver so that made it a little better. Unfortunately, the bus ride, mixed with someone’s feet poking through the seats and making her queasy, was all a little too much activity for Kaci, so she decided to opt out of the rest of the sightseeing and took a taxi back to the hotel. The rest of us went through Parque Guell, which is an interestingly designed park that has amazing views of the city. There we saw the walkway that was used as the runway for one of the finals of America’s Next Top Model (for fans of the show, it was the final between Caridee and Melrose where they were in wedding dresses), so naturally, we all took turns strutting our stuff and posing for the cameras! If only Tyra or Miss J would have seen us...ha! After the park we saw Sagrada Familia, which was absolutely amazing! I can’t believe how intricate and massive it is! When the sightseeing tour was over, we decided to end the afternoon in traditional Spanish fashion…SIESTA time! A short four hour nap was all we needed to get up and get going for dinner time. We went out with a big group of people down to the harbor where all the really good food is supposed to be. It was indeed there. We had the BEST paella! We got a mixed meat and veggie paella and they were both incredible, we stuffed ourselves full, had some Sangria, and finished off our meal with free shots of “schnapps” (which our waiter said everyone does after meals)…whatever, they were free and they were good! After our dinner, which ended at 11:30 PM, we decided we needed to rest more, so we went back to the hotel and went to bed. The next day, we got up and went souvenir shopping with some other girls in our group. After walking through a super sketchy ‘flea market’, which looked more like a junk sale, we headed back to Sagrada Familia in search of good soccer gear and souvenirs galore! Boy did we find it…found some great soccer shirts (at good prices thanks to Kaci’s bartering), tons of good souvenirs, and even a good smoothie place! By this time it’s early afternoon, it’s getting extremely hot (Spain’s temperatures have been in the 120’s!), and Brittney isn’t feeling too good. The four of us go back to the hotel room, where the “bummer” part of this title begins. After being in so much pain for so many days, Britt is tired and thinks something more is going on, other than kidney stones. So phone calls begin, our tour guide comes in to help with the situation, and after weighing the pros and cons, Britt decides to get a flight, and go home. Although we are all sad about her leaving, we know she’ll be more comfortable at home. We can’t imagine the pain she went through, but we tried to make it better for her! We’re proud of our little trooper; she made it to all the countries, and carried her kidney stone to 3 countries in Europe! We know Europe loved her and we loved getting to share this experience with her (the good experience, not the bad one…we wish she wouldn’t have had that)! We’re jealous that she’s back in the U.S., with air conditioning, plentiful amounts of free drinking water, ice, her own hair straightener (maybe the thing she’s most excited about), and in her own bed. We miss you already Britt!! You’ll be hearing from Kaci about the “Final 3’s” days in Madrid, our last city in Europe…stay tuned!
-Erin and the other 3 chicas (while only 3 chicas are present when writing this, the 4th is with us in spirit!)
For the trip to Barcelona, we had the same crappy bus (smelled like smoke, gum all over the place, little space, and a bus driver who never ceased to have a cigarette in his mouth) so that made the trip all the more pleasant…sarcasm. We only stopped once in a town to have lunch, a stop we could all be pleased about. Our hotel in Barcelona only had 3 person rooms, so again we had to pull a bed from another room into ours and squeeze like sardines. It’s a good thing we still love each other. We couldn’t complain too much about this hotel though because it had air conditioning…and air conditioning makes us happy people. The next day we set out on a sightseeing tour of the huge and beautiful city of Barcelona! We went on our crappy bus, but had a different driver so that made it a little better. Unfortunately, the bus ride, mixed with someone’s feet poking through the seats and making her queasy, was all a little too much activity for Kaci, so she decided to opt out of the rest of the sightseeing and took a taxi back to the hotel. The rest of us went through Parque Guell, which is an interestingly designed park that has amazing views of the city. There we saw the walkway that was used as the runway for one of the finals of America’s Next Top Model (for fans of the show, it was the final between Caridee and Melrose where they were in wedding dresses), so naturally, we all took turns strutting our stuff and posing for the cameras! If only Tyra or Miss J would have seen us...ha! After the park we saw Sagrada Familia, which was absolutely amazing! I can’t believe how intricate and massive it is! When the sightseeing tour was over, we decided to end the afternoon in traditional Spanish fashion…SIESTA time! A short four hour nap was all we needed to get up and get going for dinner time. We went out with a big group of people down to the harbor where all the really good food is supposed to be. It was indeed there. We had the BEST paella! We got a mixed meat and veggie paella and they were both incredible, we stuffed ourselves full, had some Sangria, and finished off our meal with free shots of “schnapps” (which our waiter said everyone does after meals)…whatever, they were free and they were good! After our dinner, which ended at 11:30 PM, we decided we needed to rest more, so we went back to the hotel and went to bed. The next day, we got up and went souvenir shopping with some other girls in our group. After walking through a super sketchy ‘flea market’, which looked more like a junk sale, we headed back to Sagrada Familia in search of good soccer gear and souvenirs galore! Boy did we find it…found some great soccer shirts (at good prices thanks to Kaci’s bartering), tons of good souvenirs, and even a good smoothie place! By this time it’s early afternoon, it’s getting extremely hot (Spain’s temperatures have been in the 120’s!), and Brittney isn’t feeling too good. The four of us go back to the hotel room, where the “bummer” part of this title begins. After being in so much pain for so many days, Britt is tired and thinks something more is going on, other than kidney stones. So phone calls begin, our tour guide comes in to help with the situation, and after weighing the pros and cons, Britt decides to get a flight, and go home. Although we are all sad about her leaving, we know she’ll be more comfortable at home. We can’t imagine the pain she went through, but we tried to make it better for her! We’re proud of our little trooper; she made it to all the countries, and carried her kidney stone to 3 countries in Europe! We know Europe loved her and we loved getting to share this experience with her (the good experience, not the bad one…we wish she wouldn’t have had that)! We’re jealous that she’s back in the U.S., with air conditioning, plentiful amounts of free drinking water, ice, her own hair straightener (maybe the thing she’s most excited about), and in her own bed. We miss you already Britt!! You’ll be hearing from Kaci about the “Final 3’s” days in Madrid, our last city in Europe…stay tuned!
-Erin and the other 3 chicas (while only 3 chicas are present when writing this, the 4th is with us in spirit!)
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Nice is Nice!
So after our escapades with kidney stones and cruise and loose panties, we jumped back in the bus to head to Nice (pronounced Nee-s) on the French Riviera! Our sight-seeing stop for this trip would be Pisa! We got a great photo shoot of us each holding up the famous leaning tower before we finally made it to the hotel. We relaxed a bit and finally decided to be social. Surprisingly, we have been keeping to ourselves and mainly hanging out with only each other, so the other people in our group were excited to finally get us to do something with them! We went to a Cuban restaurant with salsa dancing and it was nice to finally eat something other than pizza, pasta or sandwiches! Erin and I continued to be social for the rest of the night, while Kaci and Britt headed back to the hotel.
Sadly, after that, this will be a quite boring blog, because we used our Nice days to lounge in our air conditioned room (WHOOP!) Summary: We slept… only leaving our room for food! Explains why our parents will be rolling us to the cars when we get home!
Being the beach lover that I am, I did end up leaving for an hour with another girl from our group to lie at the beach for a little while. It was weird though…instead of having sand, this beach had stones! Not the kind of beach you go bare-foot to, but nonetheless, very beautiful! In the meantime Kaci blogged, while Erin and Britt continued to sleep.
Once I was back, Kaci went on a jog, Erin and I did a “hallway workout”, and Britt showered and primped! Next, time to leave again for food! The 3 sweaty ones, and the one pretty one headed out and again found something other than pizza, pasta or sandwiches… yay! What delicious French food did we find?! McDonalds!! To the rescue! We were craving a taste of home and it sure did hit the spot! While walking we also saw a double rainbow climbing over the beach (Chris L! - for the bachelorette fans!). Speaking of the bachelorette, that was next on our agenda: Climb back in our beds and watch the finale of the bachelorette online! We grabbed tissues in case Britt got emotional and finished the night singing “can you feel the love” from Lion King! Although it doesn’t make for the best blog, these couple of days were much needed and wonderful for us!
Soon we will be saying au revoir to France, and Hola to Espana!
Love,
Jackie & the 3 bums!
PS- make sure to check out the uploaded pics below!!!
ZEE END
Sadly, after that, this will be a quite boring blog, because we used our Nice days to lounge in our air conditioned room (WHOOP!) Summary: We slept… only leaving our room for food! Explains why our parents will be rolling us to the cars when we get home!
Being the beach lover that I am, I did end up leaving for an hour with another girl from our group to lie at the beach for a little while. It was weird though…instead of having sand, this beach had stones! Not the kind of beach you go bare-foot to, but nonetheless, very beautiful! In the meantime Kaci blogged, while Erin and Britt continued to sleep.
Once I was back, Kaci went on a jog, Erin and I did a “hallway workout”, and Britt showered and primped! Next, time to leave again for food! The 3 sweaty ones, and the one pretty one headed out and again found something other than pizza, pasta or sandwiches… yay! What delicious French food did we find?! McDonalds!! To the rescue! We were craving a taste of home and it sure did hit the spot! While walking we also saw a double rainbow climbing over the beach (Chris L! - for the bachelorette fans!). Speaking of the bachelorette, that was next on our agenda: Climb back in our beds and watch the finale of the bachelorette online! We grabbed tissues in case Britt got emotional and finished the night singing “can you feel the love” from Lion King! Although it doesn’t make for the best blog, these couple of days were much needed and wonderful for us!
Soon we will be saying au revoir to France, and Hola to Espana!
Love,
Jackie & the 3 bums!
PS- make sure to check out the uploaded pics below!!!
ZEE END
A few pics...
So I finally updated all one million of my pictures on Jacs computer, and here are a few! Hope you enjoy! Jackie should be blogging about Nice soon, and Erin is going to write about Barcelona soon after that! Love y'all and hope home is wonderful! God Bless!
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Grey's Anatomy has got nothing on us!!
Soooo.. To say the least, Florence was definitely an interesting experience. While the city is famous for art, we saw very little. Upon getting off the bus after a day of traveling, we climbed the six flights of very steep stairs up to our hostile. Did I say hostile? I meant "hotel." This place was run by an Italian family. Our room consisted of four cement walls, four creeky beds, no air conditioning, and a shower that was hazardous to our health. Brittney quickly broke in the lovely blue bathroom with an upset stomach, and that's where the story begins...
Right when we walked into our new lovely room, Britt went immediately into the bathroom and was very sick. We weren't sure what was wrong, but it was not normal. Erin, Jac, and I went to a little restaraunt around the corner from the hotel and had some yummy Rissoto, Gnocchi, and Ravioli. When we brought the food back to Britt, she wouldn't eat any, that's when we new something was really wrong! The European Brittney enjoys pasta way too much to reject it! We decided to sleep it off and see what the city could offer us in the morning. When we woke up, Britt got ready in her usual cute outfit, and we all put on the Nike shorts and t-shirts. After Britt got cute, we figured everything was back to normal. We met with the group to start the walking tour. Our tour guide had a little bit too much to drink the night before, so we had to wake him up in order to get to the church to meet the man who would take us on our walking tour. We saw a church in the middle of the town, lots of interesting statues, a bridge, and some sort of river. I'm sure these things were all great and full of historical facts, but our guide was a tad long winded, so I lost interest and got distracted by all the pretty street art and the rumble of my tummy telling me it was time to eat. When we went into the leather factory, things started to make a turn for the worse. After the demonstration, Erin and I got hooked on the Italian version of Pandora bracelets, Amore&Beci. We decided to start our bracelets together there, and of course we bought something for Belle and Barb to add to their bracelets too :). While all of this was going on, Britt went to the bathroom, and Jackie found her crying and feeling awful. They took a taxi back to the hotel, and E and I decided to walk back. Back at the hotel, we decided it was time to do something for Britt. We talked to Vitor, our tour guide, to see where we should go to get medical attention. He casually explained where a "clinic" was down the street that had doctors and medicine, assuring us that anywhere we went, someone would speak english. We waited for two hours for this clinic to open. In the mean time, Jackie and I went down the street to do laundry and use the internet cafe. Our laundry took longer than expected, so Erin and Britt went ahead to the clinic at 4:00. After laundry and facebook, Jac and I headed back to the hotel to pack and rest. We figured it wouldnt be long until E and Britt got back, so we waited. When 5:00 rolled around, we got a little concerned, so we started putting on our shoes to walk to the clinic. As I was tying up the easy tones, I got a text from Erin that read: "We are at the hospital. The clinic does not exist." At that, Jackie and I jumped in a cab and got to the hospital. When we finally found our way around to the Emergency Room, we walked back through the hall ways to find Britt laying on a bed in the hall, connected to a creepy Italian man's bed. This was possibly the scariest place any of us have ever been. Before talking to Britt, Erin caught us up on the events that had gone on. After walking for about 30 minutes, they arrived at the hospital, where no one spoke much English. The doctor or nurse, then proceeded to take Brittney's blood. While Brittney was obviously freaking out, Erin was freaking out on the inside, but kept herself cool, calm, and collected. She got Britt through that experience. What a great future nurse! We all three stood with Britt for a few minutes, gave her the book she was reading, then got chewed out in Italian by some old nurse man, that apparently told us we werent allowed to be back there with her. I went to the hallway to call my dad to make sure these people were doing everything right, and Jackie stayed with Britt. She got kicked out of the hall pretty wuickly after that, so we were left to sit and wait, while Britt had to go through this alone. During her time in the ER, two Italian men talked about her and stared at her, an old lady was shocked and brought back to life in the same room as Brittney, and the nurse tried to tell Britt that she had to stay over night at the hospital. I will let her elaborate on these events later. Somewhere around 9:00, we finally saw our little trooper walk through the doors of the ER. She had prescriptions, x-rays, and unclear instructions on what to eat and drink. I am not lying when I tell you that we got out of that hospital as fast as our feet would carry us. We stopped by a pharmacy to get the medicine, got Britt some waffles on the street (she hadn't eaten anything in 24 hours), and headed back to the hotel. I don't know how, but we somehow survived the experience of the Italian hospital. We considered using our usual motto of "don't tell Glen," because we didn't want him to be too upset that we begged for Brittney to come on the trip, but we decided it might not be a good idea for him to be kept in the dark about this, so we made sure to call with any updates as they came! When we got home that night, Jackie and I went back to the internet cafe. Mid-session, I had to go to the bathroom very badly. I went into the less than average bathroom in the dark back corner of this cafe, and realized that there was no toilet paper. It was already to late, so I used my underwear, left them on the floor, because there was no trash can, and got out of that place before anyone realized what I had done. I think I gave the term "cruise and lose" a whole new meaning. When I got back to the hotel, that provided us with a little comic relief before we all fell asleep. I think it is safe to say that we discovered Florence in the way that the locals do. We were bored with all of the tourist non-sense, so we decided to make a new kidn of adventure. Thank youuu to Brittney's kidney stone! The next morning, it was time to travel to Nice, France. While we though our bus was going to be around the corner where it dropped us off, it turns out to be a good half a mile walk away that felt like three miles carrying all of our luggage. Our bus driver picked a place to park and refused to pull the bus closer to the hotel, even though the town was quiet, and there were plenty of avaliable streets for him to park on. Needless to say, his tip amount went wayyyy down when the envelope was passed around later that day! On the way to Nice, we stopped to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. That was a fun little area, with a church and the tower. We took the typical tourist pictures, got back on the bus, and rode 4 more hours to Nice. Our hotel has AC, internet, and pretty comfortable beds! We are definitely pleased. More to come on the rest of our time here when Jackie decides to blog next.
Keep praying that the stone passes before Spain, so Britt can feel better and enjoy the last week of the trip! I know all of y'all can't wait to see our chubby cheeks back in the states soon!
Lots of love,
Kaci the other three
Right when we walked into our new lovely room, Britt went immediately into the bathroom and was very sick. We weren't sure what was wrong, but it was not normal. Erin, Jac, and I went to a little restaraunt around the corner from the hotel and had some yummy Rissoto, Gnocchi, and Ravioli. When we brought the food back to Britt, she wouldn't eat any, that's when we new something was really wrong! The European Brittney enjoys pasta way too much to reject it! We decided to sleep it off and see what the city could offer us in the morning. When we woke up, Britt got ready in her usual cute outfit, and we all put on the Nike shorts and t-shirts. After Britt got cute, we figured everything was back to normal. We met with the group to start the walking tour. Our tour guide had a little bit too much to drink the night before, so we had to wake him up in order to get to the church to meet the man who would take us on our walking tour. We saw a church in the middle of the town, lots of interesting statues, a bridge, and some sort of river. I'm sure these things were all great and full of historical facts, but our guide was a tad long winded, so I lost interest and got distracted by all the pretty street art and the rumble of my tummy telling me it was time to eat. When we went into the leather factory, things started to make a turn for the worse. After the demonstration, Erin and I got hooked on the Italian version of Pandora bracelets, Amore&Beci. We decided to start our bracelets together there, and of course we bought something for Belle and Barb to add to their bracelets too :). While all of this was going on, Britt went to the bathroom, and Jackie found her crying and feeling awful. They took a taxi back to the hotel, and E and I decided to walk back. Back at the hotel, we decided it was time to do something for Britt. We talked to Vitor, our tour guide, to see where we should go to get medical attention. He casually explained where a "clinic" was down the street that had doctors and medicine, assuring us that anywhere we went, someone would speak english. We waited for two hours for this clinic to open. In the mean time, Jackie and I went down the street to do laundry and use the internet cafe. Our laundry took longer than expected, so Erin and Britt went ahead to the clinic at 4:00. After laundry and facebook, Jac and I headed back to the hotel to pack and rest. We figured it wouldnt be long until E and Britt got back, so we waited. When 5:00 rolled around, we got a little concerned, so we started putting on our shoes to walk to the clinic. As I was tying up the easy tones, I got a text from Erin that read: "We are at the hospital. The clinic does not exist." At that, Jackie and I jumped in a cab and got to the hospital. When we finally found our way around to the Emergency Room, we walked back through the hall ways to find Britt laying on a bed in the hall, connected to a creepy Italian man's bed. This was possibly the scariest place any of us have ever been. Before talking to Britt, Erin caught us up on the events that had gone on. After walking for about 30 minutes, they arrived at the hospital, where no one spoke much English. The doctor or nurse, then proceeded to take Brittney's blood. While Brittney was obviously freaking out, Erin was freaking out on the inside, but kept herself cool, calm, and collected. She got Britt through that experience. What a great future nurse! We all three stood with Britt for a few minutes, gave her the book she was reading, then got chewed out in Italian by some old nurse man, that apparently told us we werent allowed to be back there with her. I went to the hallway to call my dad to make sure these people were doing everything right, and Jackie stayed with Britt. She got kicked out of the hall pretty wuickly after that, so we were left to sit and wait, while Britt had to go through this alone. During her time in the ER, two Italian men talked about her and stared at her, an old lady was shocked and brought back to life in the same room as Brittney, and the nurse tried to tell Britt that she had to stay over night at the hospital. I will let her elaborate on these events later. Somewhere around 9:00, we finally saw our little trooper walk through the doors of the ER. She had prescriptions, x-rays, and unclear instructions on what to eat and drink. I am not lying when I tell you that we got out of that hospital as fast as our feet would carry us. We stopped by a pharmacy to get the medicine, got Britt some waffles on the street (she hadn't eaten anything in 24 hours), and headed back to the hotel. I don't know how, but we somehow survived the experience of the Italian hospital. We considered using our usual motto of "don't tell Glen," because we didn't want him to be too upset that we begged for Brittney to come on the trip, but we decided it might not be a good idea for him to be kept in the dark about this, so we made sure to call with any updates as they came! When we got home that night, Jackie and I went back to the internet cafe. Mid-session, I had to go to the bathroom very badly. I went into the less than average bathroom in the dark back corner of this cafe, and realized that there was no toilet paper. It was already to late, so I used my underwear, left them on the floor, because there was no trash can, and got out of that place before anyone realized what I had done. I think I gave the term "cruise and lose" a whole new meaning. When I got back to the hotel, that provided us with a little comic relief before we all fell asleep. I think it is safe to say that we discovered Florence in the way that the locals do. We were bored with all of the tourist non-sense, so we decided to make a new kidn of adventure. Thank youuu to Brittney's kidney stone! The next morning, it was time to travel to Nice, France. While we though our bus was going to be around the corner where it dropped us off, it turns out to be a good half a mile walk away that felt like three miles carrying all of our luggage. Our bus driver picked a place to park and refused to pull the bus closer to the hotel, even though the town was quiet, and there were plenty of avaliable streets for him to park on. Needless to say, his tip amount went wayyyy down when the envelope was passed around later that day! On the way to Nice, we stopped to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. That was a fun little area, with a church and the tower. We took the typical tourist pictures, got back on the bus, and rode 4 more hours to Nice. Our hotel has AC, internet, and pretty comfortable beds! We are definitely pleased. More to come on the rest of our time here when Jackie decides to blog next.
Keep praying that the stone passes before Spain, so Britt can feel better and enjoy the last week of the trip! I know all of y'all can't wait to see our chubby cheeks back in the states soon!
Lots of love,
Kaci the other three
When in Rome..
Bonjourno from Rome! :) Today was my favorite day thus far! It was thirteen hour day, it was a long one, but definitely filled with spectacular sites! We started off the morning with a wonderful free breakfast downstairs in our hotel, which is not always a luxury of ours (it’s always free just not wonderful ;) We then hopped on our bus and headed to the Roman Colosseum, which is much cooler in person than it is in pictures! We got a really nice tour guide who told us all we ever needed to know about the Colosseum, which I LOVED because I’m a huge history nerd. We took lots of pictures and then headed to Foro Romano with the same sweet tour guide. The Foro Romano is basically the center of the old Roman Empire. There were so many facts and historical sites in that area. The one that stuck out most to me was that Julius Caesar was burned in the middle of the square and his son (actually his adopted nephew) built a temple over where his body was burned. We also saw two Arc de Triumphs which symbolized victories of the Emperor. Next, we were off to a quick lunch (at a train station, I might add—Kaci was super pumped about it ;) and then we headed to the Vatican City! Fun fact: The Vatican City is the smallest country in the world and only has 900 citizens! Even though I’m not Catholic, it was still REALLY cool to me. We went into the Vatican Museum and had to wait awhile for our tour guide. However, that was no problem for me because there was a shop upstairs that was calling my name. (shops always seem to have that effect on me) I was debating whether or not to get rosaries (souvenirs for people) then, or just wait—I just didn’t want them to run out. Erin thought this was SO funny and told me that the Vatican would not run out of rosaries. However, I didn’t want to chance it and got them anyways! :) Finally, our tour guide got there and we started our tour of the Vatican. We went through multiple courtyards and saw many famous paintings, statues, tapestries, and religious sites. After a mini lesson of the Sistine Chapel in one of the courtyards, which was actually really neat, we got to go in! It was all painted by Michael Angelo and was absolutely beautiful. It was really entertaining to see all his sarcastic, often looked over, details in the paintings. We were supposed to be quiet and not taking pictures but, everyone there was doing both so it wasn’t as tranquil as I thought it would be, but it was cool nonetheless. Next, we were off to St. Peter’s Basilica, which is the largest church in the world. It was BEAUTIFUL! We see a lot of churches here, but that one was one of my favorites. We saw a lot of art and statues in there, and Peter’s tomb. After the Basilica, we went outside and saw the chimney where the white or black smoke comes out when they elect the pope, we saw where the Pope comes out to bless people every Sunday and Wednesday, and we saw many Angels and Demon reference points :) (which Kace and Erin loved.) After that we stopped by a gift shop before leaving Vatican City. Oh baby, that gift shop was not good for me, or my budget :) But it had some really cool stuff in there and we all splurged a little, me more than others ;) Then we were off on the walking tour of a life time. On the walking the main things we saw were the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish steps, the Pantheon, and Piazza Navano, lots of shopping, gelato places-which we came back to, and multiple other fountains and statues. Then we went back to the hotel, exhausted. We literally were going from 7:30am to 8:30pm. We stopped by a pizza place right by our hotel for dinner and then headed up, showered and were out!
The next day, we literally roamed Rome. We went down to breakfast, a little later than usual. Over breakfast we caught up with some of our fellow travelers on their night. It included one of the girls breaking her shoe on a rude Italian waitress’ face, police, and supposedly quite a scene. I nearly choked on my croissant. They then asked us what we did last night. We had a whole on new realization of how lame we were and decided we needed to start making up epic stories such as theirs. After breakfast we were off. We went into tons of shops and markets, ate a delicious, authentic Italian lunch, and then did some more shops and markets. We were all pretty tired, so Kace and two of the girls we were with took a taxi back to the hotel, and Erin and Jackie and I decided to walk back-but got some yummy gelato on the way so that made it worth it. After that, we took a quick nap in the hotel, showered, and Jackie and I went out to dinner with a couple of girls in our group. (Kace and Erin were still pretty tired, so they hung out in the hotel and grabbed some dinner there.) We went to Piazza Navano square and ate outside, which is more common here, and watched the people playing music and painting in the square. It was a really cool atmosphere. After that we were on a mission to find this famous gelato place, San Crispino. We finally made it, and I got my second gelato, yes that’s embarrassing, of the day, and it was SO good :) (Gelato is the newest love of my life). We then just walked around, soaking our surroundings in and then headed back to the hotel to pack up and go to bed early the next morning was Florence! Hope all is well at home, love and miss you all!
Britt and the other three :)
The next day, we literally roamed Rome. We went down to breakfast, a little later than usual. Over breakfast we caught up with some of our fellow travelers on their night. It included one of the girls breaking her shoe on a rude Italian waitress’ face, police, and supposedly quite a scene. I nearly choked on my croissant. They then asked us what we did last night. We had a whole on new realization of how lame we were and decided we needed to start making up epic stories such as theirs. After breakfast we were off. We went into tons of shops and markets, ate a delicious, authentic Italian lunch, and then did some more shops and markets. We were all pretty tired, so Kace and two of the girls we were with took a taxi back to the hotel, and Erin and Jackie and I decided to walk back-but got some yummy gelato on the way so that made it worth it. After that, we took a quick nap in the hotel, showered, and Jackie and I went out to dinner with a couple of girls in our group. (Kace and Erin were still pretty tired, so they hung out in the hotel and grabbed some dinner there.) We went to Piazza Navano square and ate outside, which is more common here, and watched the people playing music and painting in the square. It was a really cool atmosphere. After that we were on a mission to find this famous gelato place, San Crispino. We finally made it, and I got my second gelato, yes that’s embarrassing, of the day, and it was SO good :) (Gelato is the newest love of my life). We then just walked around, soaking our surroundings in and then headed back to the hotel to pack up and go to bed early the next morning was Florence! Hope all is well at home, love and miss you all!
Britt and the other three :)
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Venice!
Our day in Venice started out peacefully…but it most definitely did not end that way! We got up, noticed that it was a little cloudy out, so we brought in our clothes that we were trying to dry and decided to close our windows, just in case. Boy, were we smart (although I’m sure y’all already knew that). After a pretty bad breakfast, we took a boat to the main island of Venice. The boat, which was called “Invidia” had a very handsome Italian crew member named Lorenzo, so that made the boat ride a little better! We met our local tour guide Marta on the island and she takes us around various “campos” which is what they call the islands (thankfully we didn’t have to walk around all 118 islands). She gave us a lot of information about life in Venice…basically how expensive it is, how hard it is to walk around the islands because of the cobblestone roads and bridges, how their buildings are set up, how their canal systems work, and how their water systems work. After our guided tour, we went to a glass factory to see how they blow glass and make real Venetian glass. I really enjoyed the glass demonstration; the “maestro” (what they call a glass blowing expert) worked extremely fast and even after just 5 minutes had created a beautiful vase. We also got a little background on Venetian glass, which was interesting. We learned that it’s almost indestructible if it has gold leaf on the outside of it, and how to tell if a product is real Venetian glass or not.
After the glass factory, we grabbed lunch, and then went to see Doges Palace. We waited in line for about 15 minutes, and then we realized that we could go straight into the palace since we already had tickets. It was ok, we enjoyed talking to people in line…made it worth the useless wait…not. We walked around Doges Palace for about an hour, we went down to the prison via the “bridge of sighs” (which is where condemned prisoners sighed as they looked at Venice for the last time), and then tried to find our way out…which was harder than we thought. After Doges Palace, we really wanted to find an internet café because we’re young and need our technology fix or we wilt away. By this time, it had started raining a bit. Now, Venice is a slippery city, all stone walkways, stairs, and bridges, and it’s hard to get around in normally, add rain…and we have a situation. So after asking about 3 people for directions to this internet café, we find it. Is it open? No, of course not. The little man who owns this place apparently takes lunch from 10:30-2:30, and we arrived promptly at 1:40 (in retrospect, we know why he can take that long for lunch…he over-charges BIG TIME). Now the dilemma…what do we do to pass the time. Oh I know: go back to that pastry store we saw a ways back and eat the most delectable thing you see! The pastries are sub-par…but the coffee is good, and it takes up about an hour since our waiter apparently didn’t know how to bring the check to our table. We head back to the internet café, pay 2,50 Euro for 30 minutes online, and go our merry way. I will say, the internet was fast and made us all happy again (maybe happiness is worth a couple of Euro). At this time it is about 3:15 and our boat back to the mainland doesn’t leave until 5:10. So we wander aimlessly around Europe for about an hour and a half, do some shopping, and then head back to the boat dock.
When we arrive at the boat dock, we spot some of our fellow group members who have been wandering Venice as well. We chit chat and then decide to go sit on the steps of a bridge by our dock while we wait for the lovely “Invidia” to arrive. As we’re sitting there, we hear thunder, possibly saw some lightning, and then we definitely observe a massive thundercloud of doom heading our way. It was seriously something out of a movie: we saw the cloud, saw the rain, saw the people scatter, and ran to shelter. Our “shelter” was the overhang of a hotel sign that went out about 3 feet. Three feet would typically be enough shelter space, except when you put 60 people in a small area, take into account the 40 mph winds whipping the rain into you, and all the food we’ve eaten has made us a little wider…the space is not sufficient! Luckily, many people had bought umbrellas throughout the day, so we made an “umbrella wall” to block some of the rain. (I rocked my poncho from Aggieland Outfitters all day since I didn’t bring my umbrella, so I stayed pretty dry! I got some comments on how funny I looked walking through Venice with a maroon poncho, but I got the last laugh. Thanks mom for buying me the poncho, it came in handy) The monsoon started around 4:40, so we have at least 30 minutes until we can get on our boat, and it’s cold. Venice was supposed to be about 100 degrees Fahrenheit and I’d say it’s about 70 degrees. Five ten rolls around, no boat, no tour director…five fifteen comes, no boat, no tour director. One of the girls in our group, whose name is Rachel, decides to run out into the torrential downpour without an umbrella and without shoes I think to scream at the top of her lungs for our tour director Vitor. It was probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, here’s this soaking wet girl in a dress with no shoes, running out in the middle of a thunderstorm screaming “Vitor” over and over again. Around 5:20, a beacon of hope comes pulling into the dock…our lovely boat! It pulls into the dock and all of us run out to greet it! Well, I guess it had pulled into the wrong dock because then the boat pulls in and out of multiple docks, just toying with our emotions. So here we are, a group of about 50, in the POURING RAIN, running from dock to dock to try to get onto our boat so we can finally be safe from water! (Yes, we notice the irony in getting on a boat to get away from water.) Finally, “Invidia” picks a spot and lets us onboard. We get back to the hotel, have some dinner, and then decide that we’d had a hard day, so we go out to the beach and onto the pier with some other people in our group to hang out and watch the lightning storms going on out in the ocean (far away from us of course, I wouldn’t be caught anywhere near lightning). So that was our eventful day in Venice! Stay tuned for ROMA!!
-Erin and the other three ducks!
After the glass factory, we grabbed lunch, and then went to see Doges Palace. We waited in line for about 15 minutes, and then we realized that we could go straight into the palace since we already had tickets. It was ok, we enjoyed talking to people in line…made it worth the useless wait…not. We walked around Doges Palace for about an hour, we went down to the prison via the “bridge of sighs” (which is where condemned prisoners sighed as they looked at Venice for the last time), and then tried to find our way out…which was harder than we thought. After Doges Palace, we really wanted to find an internet café because we’re young and need our technology fix or we wilt away. By this time, it had started raining a bit. Now, Venice is a slippery city, all stone walkways, stairs, and bridges, and it’s hard to get around in normally, add rain…and we have a situation. So after asking about 3 people for directions to this internet café, we find it. Is it open? No, of course not. The little man who owns this place apparently takes lunch from 10:30-2:30, and we arrived promptly at 1:40 (in retrospect, we know why he can take that long for lunch…he over-charges BIG TIME). Now the dilemma…what do we do to pass the time. Oh I know: go back to that pastry store we saw a ways back and eat the most delectable thing you see! The pastries are sub-par…but the coffee is good, and it takes up about an hour since our waiter apparently didn’t know how to bring the check to our table. We head back to the internet café, pay 2,50 Euro for 30 minutes online, and go our merry way. I will say, the internet was fast and made us all happy again (maybe happiness is worth a couple of Euro). At this time it is about 3:15 and our boat back to the mainland doesn’t leave until 5:10. So we wander aimlessly around Europe for about an hour and a half, do some shopping, and then head back to the boat dock.
When we arrive at the boat dock, we spot some of our fellow group members who have been wandering Venice as well. We chit chat and then decide to go sit on the steps of a bridge by our dock while we wait for the lovely “Invidia” to arrive. As we’re sitting there, we hear thunder, possibly saw some lightning, and then we definitely observe a massive thundercloud of doom heading our way. It was seriously something out of a movie: we saw the cloud, saw the rain, saw the people scatter, and ran to shelter. Our “shelter” was the overhang of a hotel sign that went out about 3 feet. Three feet would typically be enough shelter space, except when you put 60 people in a small area, take into account the 40 mph winds whipping the rain into you, and all the food we’ve eaten has made us a little wider…the space is not sufficient! Luckily, many people had bought umbrellas throughout the day, so we made an “umbrella wall” to block some of the rain. (I rocked my poncho from Aggieland Outfitters all day since I didn’t bring my umbrella, so I stayed pretty dry! I got some comments on how funny I looked walking through Venice with a maroon poncho, but I got the last laugh. Thanks mom for buying me the poncho, it came in handy) The monsoon started around 4:40, so we have at least 30 minutes until we can get on our boat, and it’s cold. Venice was supposed to be about 100 degrees Fahrenheit and I’d say it’s about 70 degrees. Five ten rolls around, no boat, no tour director…five fifteen comes, no boat, no tour director. One of the girls in our group, whose name is Rachel, decides to run out into the torrential downpour without an umbrella and without shoes I think to scream at the top of her lungs for our tour director Vitor. It was probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, here’s this soaking wet girl in a dress with no shoes, running out in the middle of a thunderstorm screaming “Vitor” over and over again. Around 5:20, a beacon of hope comes pulling into the dock…our lovely boat! It pulls into the dock and all of us run out to greet it! Well, I guess it had pulled into the wrong dock because then the boat pulls in and out of multiple docks, just toying with our emotions. So here we are, a group of about 50, in the POURING RAIN, running from dock to dock to try to get onto our boat so we can finally be safe from water! (Yes, we notice the irony in getting on a boat to get away from water.) Finally, “Invidia” picks a spot and lets us onboard. We get back to the hotel, have some dinner, and then decide that we’d had a hard day, so we go out to the beach and onto the pier with some other people in our group to hang out and watch the lightning storms going on out in the ocean (far away from us of course, I wouldn’t be caught anywhere near lightning). So that was our eventful day in Venice! Stay tuned for ROMA!!
-Erin and the other three ducks!
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