When In Rome

I was lucky to venture to the beautiful Roma with Maddie and Layla last weekend. I went to Rome with my family eight years ago and surprisingly remembered a lot of it. (Just appreciated it a bit more this time around.) Maddie and Layla flew to Rome on Thursday, but I unfortunately had two classes and an Italian exam so I had to fly out Friday. (Weird, I know, but I DO in fact have to go to class. Sometimes. ;) I also learned this weekend that the best time to use the phrase "When in Rome" is when you are actually in Rome. Fun things can happen! Mostly because the answer to even the most ridiculous ideas has to be yes. Because you're IN Rome.

Let me begin with Friday, our awesome day in Vatican City. After walking for almost an hour and a half through Rome we made it to the Vatican and went to the Vatican Museum. I honestly cannot describe how incredibly lucky I feel to have been able to see this museum in addition to seeing the Ufitizi gallery in Florence and the Louve in France. Seeing some of the most famous paintings, artworks and sculptures in the world has been completely unreal.

Vatican City!

The square

Inside the Vatican Museum

After a few hours of roaming around the massive museum, we made it to the Sitine Chapel and it was fantastic!! I remembered seeing it with my family when I was younger, but this time was so much more enriching. And it also helped that Maddie was narrating Rick Steves' guide to Rome so having a almost-real tour guide made it even better. :)

We left the Vatican and headed to St. Peter's Basilica. And it was such a joy to again pass a million Bangladesh men who think that by shoving scarves, trinkets, bouncy balls or umbrellas in your face is their best biz strategy. IT IS NOT. I think after hearing "Ah, you girls beautiful! Like this scarf? Made for you! It is waiting for YOU! 6 euro! No, where you go? 4 euro! Wait, I make good price! I make deal! We are friends!" I literally once just yelled NO a little too loud and surprised myself. I'm SO grateful we don't have crazies like this in America because in every single country we've been to they are around selling everything you can imagine on the street. (My favorite time was probably in Paris when these Moroccan guys came up to us and kept calling us Lady Gaga as they pushed tiny metal effle tower trinkets in our faces. Thanks?)

Sorry for that random tangent. (I'm in operations management and have been hearing too much about aggregate planning so I might be going a bit crazy. Don't worry I'm 100% paying attention though..)

Back to Friday.. the Basilica was VERY beautiful and spiritual and magnificent and everything you could imagine. I mean the Pope does attend church there so I guess it has to be pretty rad. I kept trying to casually sneak behind tour groups to hear some fun facts but unfortunately I didn't come across many English tours and my Japanese was a bit rusty.

Inside St. Peter's Basilica!

After wandering around the Vatican and loving it all, Maddie and Layla then went shopping while I went back to the hostel to take a power-nap (I had only gotten about three hours of sleep the night before since I was up super late registering for classes.) And also who knows how much sleep you get in Rome, so I needed to prepare. (Another random tangent: I was the last rotation for registering and the only classes that were left were bizarre classes like "Computers for Poets" and "Nuclear Weapons in the post-9/11 World" and "German Literature in English Translation." Luckily I was able to get into some business classes but who knows, I may end up having to take Islam or something, lets all hope I'm able to crash some classes.)

Back on track here.. Later on, we headed out for a night walk across Rome (coordinated by our bff Rick Steves) which began at the Spanish steps. We got off the metro right after the downpour had subsided and were lucky enough to see the gorgeous area with very minimal tourists around! After admiring the ritsy shopping streets around, we walked to our next stop, the Trevi Fountain. I'm SO glad we were able to see the Trevi at night because it was a lot more magical, (and the rain had kept most of the tourists away. Yay.) We also walked to the Pantheon and it was so impressively preserved for being built in 126 AD. Fun fact.. the Dome is the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. Genius.

Trevi Fountain

The Pantheon!

After, we meandered to Piazza Navona and saw great markets, and then on to Campo di Fiori (a huge beautiful piazza) for dinner. I had dinner with my family in Campo di Fiori when we were there and still randomly recognized the restaurant where had eaten dinner! We chose the place next door and sat outside looking onto the huge piazza complete with couples frolicking, tourists roaming around, and Italian guy mobs just mobbing (oh have I never mentioned that Italian guys like to travel in packs? Yeah. Like mobs of six guys just roam around together.)

The night turned out to be very entertaining when two Italian guys having drinks at the table next to us kept winking and eventually told our young waiter to tell us that they would like to by us drinks. Luckily, Maddie and I were sitting with our backs to them, but Layla was facing them so she had to bear the winks and remarks. We politely told our waiter we declined (since they were closer to the late 30's range) but couldn't stop laughing because they were being sooo forward and schnazzy in their Italian ways. We felt so bad for our waiter because he somehow turned into their messenger, but he was loving it and our total embarrassment. Our waiter then came over and insisted that the guys wanted us to go to a club with them and would drive us in their car, to which we realized this was getting way out of hand so we just kept diverting eye contact. Unfortunately, a rose-carrying Bangladesh guy walked into our restaurant at the wrong time and before we knew it we were being handed roses and the guys were winking and saying all sorts of things in Italian I'm glad I didn't understand. We nervously laughed and said grazie before we luckily paid and slipped out pretty fast. Ohh man, Roman men. You've been warned!

Campo di Fiori

On Saturday, we woke up to rain but thankfully it only lasted for a bit and by the time we made it to the Colosseum it was clearing up. It was pretty amazing to be standing in the presence of such an immense building that was built in 72 AD. (I still cannot fathom how things like this were built without cranes or machinery. It's just insane.) Even crazier is how men and animals, like tigers and leopards, would fight to the death and thousands of people came out to watch the bloodshed go down. Did they bring popcorn or something?!

Rainy day & the Colosseum

Amazing!

Dear Rome, you're GREAT.

We headed to the Roman Forum afterward and spent awhile seeing the rubble of what were once incredible structures. Even though it was hard to picture, I loved walking on the cobble streets and thinking about all of the people who have walked on the EXACT same stones and thinking Caesar totally stepped right here. (We also met a very photogenic cat and may or may not have spent 10 minutes staging the cat by random Roman Forum buildings..)

Adorbs!!

Roman Forum

Since the sun was about to set, we set off to see a view of the beautiful Roma before it was dark! (And it now gets dark at 4:30pm.. what is it, winter time or something?) This was one of my favorite things we did and the view was so unreal. We then headed to dinner, and chose Indian food, of course. When In Rome? I am really missing non-Italian food and may never eat pizza or pasta again. (Ha! That was a joke.)

Probably have never seen such a gorgeous city in my life!

View of Colosseum!

Sunday involved a lot of doing whatever we felt like and ending up wherever that led. Which is the best way to find the most random and neat things. We wound up at the Trevi fountain again and did our obligatory coin tosses for good luck. According to google three tosses are the best.. one for love, marriage, and to return to Rome. :)

Throwing the coin!

Happy kid!

The gelateria that Julia Roberts goes to in the movie Eat, Pray, Love!

We did some window shopping, people watching, and lots and lots of walking around the entirety of Rome. At least 432 miles. After dinner at a hole-in-wall Chinese place down the street from our hostel, we decided to head back to see the Colosseum one last time to see it at night before our flight home. It was gorgeous and the perfect scene to end our trip!

View from the top of the Spanish Steps!

Now back to reality.. apparently we're learning about facility utilization. Our final for this class is next Monday so I should get back to real note-taking instead of just typing all of this while looking up and nodding every few minutes. Only 46 more minutes to go. At least I'm heading to Prague in three days with my best friend for our last European trip! And weather.com is predicting SNOW. What the whhhhat! I'm going to be rocking six pairs of leggings.

A Chocolate Lovers Paradise

If you even slightly like chocolates or fancy cheeses, you will die of happiness in Switzerland. I know the Swiss are famous for these things, but we really learned just how famous until we saw the PLETHORA of chocolatiers are cheese shops in downtown Geneva, filled with the most delicious goodies you can imagine!

On Friday morning, I headed to Geneva, Switzerland to meet up with Alexandra (friend from college who is also studying abroad in London.) Oddly enough, I had to fly to Rome first, and then up to Geneva (if you think about this geographically, it was totally ridiculous. But the cheapest flight, so I guess I can't complain.) As soon as we landed in Switzerland, we took a train to Geneva and then set off to find our hostel. Since the reception desk was closed for their lunch break when we arrived, we decided to grab lunch at a small place around the corner. We were in a not-so-glamourous part of town so we were floored when the prices for crepes and paninis in the shop were around 13 Franks (and the US Dollar to Franks exchange rate is about the same, so this was totally loco.) We didn't see one restaurant that served a main dish for less than 25ish Franks.. even a small salad was around 17. Luckily, we were able to discover many inexpensive chocolatier shops. THANK GOODNESS. Our favorite chocolatier shops were ones that had homemade huge blocks of different types of chocolates. You could choose the type you wanted - dark, white, milk, with raspberry, nuts, orange, pistachios, pepper (that was a weird one), fruit, etc. They would then break off a piece in whatever size you would like (since it was paid by weight). This turned out to be totally fantastic because we would ask for itsy bitsy pieces of every since type of chocolate to try them all, which probably drove the woman helping us totally nuts.

HOW DO YOU CHOOSE?!?!

So back on track.. After checking into our hostel, we set off to explore Geneva and our first stop was across the river to the famous French Quarter. Geneva is in the french region of Switzerland so everyone spoke French, and the creperies and fondue restaurants were in abundance. We loved the bustling area and peeked into many small shops and artsy stores. We meandered to the famous Saint-Pierre Cathedral in Geneva and first went to the museum below the Cathedral to explore the archaeological remains of several preceding churches dating back to the 4th century! Walking through the underground ruins beneath the current Cathedral was actually cooler than I expected, and we even walked past half-revealed graves displaying skeletons and alongside wells that were 30 feet deep. Creepy.

Geneva! 

Underneath the Cathedral in the ruins of what was there before!

We then ventured back in the direction of our hostel and stopped at a famous French macaroon shop where Alexandra convinced me to try my first ever macaroon. Totally see what all the hype is about now that I've tried the real deal! Later that night, we headed out for dinner and it didn't take long before we figured out we were staying in a very ethic area of town.. we couldn't find a restaurant that wasn't thai, chinese, iranian, indian, japanese, lebanese, you name it. I was actually thrilled because I hadn't eaten any foods of these sorts since being abroad. We settled on an awesome Indian restaurant where I proceeded to ask our waiter for the spiciest curry they had and even though my whole body was on fire for about an hour, it was awesome. (I also tried, and fell in love with, naan. What else have I been missing out on?!)

We kicked off Saturday by heading to the small town of Carouge, which had small-town charm, colorful shutters, quaint coffeeshops, and dozens of eclectic shops featuring handmade crafty things. After spending a few hours roaming around Carouge, we headed back to Geneva and went on a free boat cruise around the river. Okay, so it was actually free because we were given an all-inclusive travel pass by our hostel, and this in fact was a small water taxi, but we enjoyed staying on the little boat for awhile and not actually getting off at any of the taxi stops. A classy boat cruise for people on a budget, if you ask me.

We finally decided to get off our river cruise when we reached the stop for the Botanical gardens. We jumped off the taxi and walked up to the gorgeous gardens where we saw beautiful flowers and many, many random animals. Including a peacock that roamed the sidewalks with us, some pretty birds, and rams! I did not know what a ram was until Alexandra informed me it's like a mountain goat. But the rams were friendly and even posed for a few pics.

New friends! They were polite enough to assemble themselves and pose for the picture, too.

We then headed to the United Nations Headquarters! It was a great place to see, especially after spending an entire year participating in the Model United Nations club in 8th grade. There were also almost about a hundred people gathered across the street, holding flags and signs supporting Gaza since there is so much turmoil happening there at the moment.

Saturday night we had made reservations at a famous fondue French restaurant downtown. We walked in and immediately all the waiters smiled and greeted us, and the the host rushed up to greet us warmly. We told him we had reservations at 8, and he looked up our name and quickly was like, "Oh yes, yes, one moment!" We then watched him go up to a couple sitting at the table in front of the huge front window and ask them to MOVE to another table in the back. He then ushered us over to those seats and we were totally confused what had happened - we couldn't figure out why he wanted us to sit in the window? Were we celebs or something?!? They were obviously great seats with a view of the hoppin' street scene outside, and we felt bad the hostess had actually asked that couple to move. (We literally talked about this for awhile and were thinking that by them placing young women in the window it gave the impression to all the people checking out their menu outside the impression that it was a cool place? We still don't know.) Anyway, the cheese fondue was great! They however did NOT have chocolate fondue for dessert.. what kind of fondue restaurant doesn't have chocolate fondue?! So funny.

Fondue, yum!!

On Sunday, our first destination was Le Telepherique, a gorgeous view-point at the top of the mountains. We took a bus until we hit the Swiss alps, which were actually very close, and then took a tram up to the top! We passed through the clouds and everyone in our tram/cable-car-contraption cheered because we could finally see the blue sky and the sun! The view at the top was INCREDIBLE and it was almost heavenly. As in, I felt as if I ran fast enough I would be able to jump onto the beautiful clouds and actually be IN Heaven. (That's how it works right?)

On the tram going up to the top!

I wish I could ice skate over there!

Downwards bound.

We headed down the mountain and back to Geneva to make our way to the airport and back to our respective countries. I again had to fly to Rome first, and then back up to Torino. To bad I couldn't just have skydived down to my apartment as we passed it on the way to Rome. Would've saved like five hours. When I got off the plane in Rome, I was VERY engrossed in the hilarious novel I'm reading, so I only partially paid attention to the departures board for my my next flight. I saw the word Torino and headed to that gate. I then sat down and continued reading, even (awkwardly) laughing out loud at times, until I heard over the airport loudspeaker, "Trott, LAUREN TROTT." I had about five seconds to realize I couldn't nonchalantly walk over to the counter, since this lady was YELLING. So I flew up and ran over the desk where the lady looked VERY angry and out of breath as she half-yelled, "The plane is WAITING FOR YOU. Gate 13! Go! RUN." All I can say is WHOOPS, my bad. Turns out I was waiting at a different gate going to Torino half an hour later. I ended up sprinting to my correct gate and running onto the place just as they shut the plane door and began taxing off. I apologized a zillion times to the flight attendants, hopefully loud enough so that the entire plane of Italians starring at me would hear too and feel bad for the girl saying "MI DISPIACE!" in an American accent. I blame my book. Or the fact that I've been on way too many flights by now, so I just expect my body to gravitate to the correct gate.

Overall a lovely trip to the beautiful Switzerland!

Never too old for field trips

After I got back from London, I had less than 48 hours to cram for an Italian exam, reorganize travel docs and boarding passes, and do a scrambled load of laundry before I was off again. I knew these few weeks would be super crazy travel weeks, but I had no idea how exhausting it would be, and that I would constantly want to take a three-week nap. (Within the first 18 days of November I'll only be home for a total of 5 days.. AH!)

Friday came before I knew it, and Natalie, Kelsey and I soon found ourselves sitting on train speeding across Europe to Paris! Our "Political & Economic Institutions of the European Union" class took a field trip to Brussels, Belgium, from Monday-Wednesday of this week, so we decided a pre-trip to Paris the weekend before was a must. We arrived in Paris late Friday night and were picked up from the train station by Bart, a family friend of Kelsey's family. We stayed with Bart, Christine, and their three teenage daughters all weekend and really loved and appreciated their hospitality! They lived about 20 minutes outside of Paris in an adorable small neighborhood. Their house was so cozy and they even had two Australian Sheppards so we were all totally at home. On Saturday, we woke up early to make the most out of our one day in Paris and headed off to the Louvre. We slipped right in and spent a few hours exploring the massive museum (that would take months to see in its entirety.) We were able to see the Mona Lisa (a LOT smaller than we imagined!), the Venus de Milo, two amazing Michelangelo's, Cupids Kiss, and many more incredible pieces.

The Louvre

Miss Mona Lisa

The Louve is SO huge!

We then walked to the Arc de Triomphe. It was a long walk, but totally worth it because of the lovely fall scenery! After seeing the Arc de Triomphe, we kept walking until we made it to the Eiffel Tower, which was stunning to finally see in person. I kept feeling like I was in the movie Midnight in Paris as we walked across the famous bridges and strolled along the cobblestone.. the only thing missing was Owen Wilson.

Majestic!

"Le voyage, pas l'arrivée, c'est ce qui compte." - T.S. Eliot

(The journey, not the arrival, is what matters.)

It started pouring towards the late afternoon so we decided to catch a train back to Bart's. We loved throwing on cozy clothes and having the chance to just relax in a real-life house (hostels just don't have the same charm.) Christine made us all an amazing dinner and taught us about different dishes and famous french cheeses! We also got the chance to get to know their three daughters, who were so sweet and even invited us to join them at a local bar down the street later on. After dinner, we all went to the bar to watch the rugby game and the place was packed! Apparently rugby is a big deal!

On Sunday morning, Bart and Christine drove us into Paris, helped us get our train tickets to Brussels, and then dropped us off in front of Notre Dame (they were SO generous!) Before heading to Notre Dame, we walked to the lock of love bridge on the river, which is a famous place for couples to leave a lock. (This is a cute NY Times article about the locks.) After admiring (and being super jealous) of the thousands of cute professions of love, we headed back to the Notre Dame. Fortunately, we walked into the Notre Dame in the middle of a Sunday morning service, so were able to see the service and hear the traditional music. After walking through the Notre Dame, we walked across the street and saw the famous bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, where people like James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway hung out.. so cool!

Lock of Love Bridge

Notre Dame

Church service inside Notre Dame

We then headed to the train station to catch our train to Brussels and before we knew it, the Belgium countryside was out our window. We managed to track down our hostel (in the apparent Turkish region of Belgium + where everyone only spoke Flemish or French) since navigating public transport systems in different countries is our new speciality. We had found a great deal online and ended up staying in a 2-star hotel! Yes, TWO STARS.. we felt so classy since the rest of our class all happened to be staying at a hostel down the road. We then took much anticipated naps all afternoon and met up with Molly and Virginia for dinner and a movie! We saw Bachelorette, our first movie in Europe and the perfect rom-com to top off our lazy day.

On Monday we met up with our entire European Union class for a meeting at the European Commission. We spent a few hours learning (more) about the legislative process of the EU and being in the building where such big decisions are made. That night we explored more of Brussels and tried our first very delish Belgium waffle (highlight of the day, obviously.)

European Commission

Some of our class off to explore

Yay!

Tuesday was a busy day of meetings, starting off with a meeting at the European Parliament and walking around the high-security clearance buildings that look right out of a Jason-Bourne movie. After our first meeting, we headed to the Parlamentarium museum across the street. The museum was super cool and interactive, and after touring around that for a bit we had a break for lunch before meeting up again at the Committee of the Regions (the assembly of local representatives from the EU member states.) The last visit was my favorite. We were lucky enough to meet a great rep who kept us interested (and awake) while he explained the intricacies of the Committee of the Regions. Even though I've spent the last semester learning about the EU, being at the EU Headquarters made me feel so much more in the loop about foreign affairs.

European Parliament

Committee of the Regions

A bunch of us went to the Hard Rock for dinner later and it was fun to spend the night hanging out with people in our class. We had a rough wake-up call the next morning and were all barely alive heading to our early flight back to Torino. We weren't excused from our classes that afternoon, so we had to drag ourselves straight to class. It was a whirl-wind weekend & week, and I have a new respect for all those business people out there who travel every week - it's hard core! (Not to mention that constantly switching between languages takes a LOT of brainpower.. I said 'scusi' an awkward amount of times in London & balancing words like merci, scusi, pardon, salut, grazie & au revoir in one week takes too much concentration. Fun fact: people speak Finnish AND French in Belgium so everything - even street signs - are in both languages! Way to make things confusing, Belgium.)

It's hard to believe mid-November is here! How did that happen?! Without a Thanksgiving holiday in Europe, the holiday season is already in full force around here!