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.

An Irish Thanksgiving

Happy belated Thanksgiving! I have so much to be thankful for, especially for being able to spend Thanksgiving weekend with my roommies and best friend from home in Ireland! Maddie, Molly, Virginia and I flew to Dublin on Thursday afternoon and Emily met us a few hours later (she flew in from Madrid). Dublin was one of my favorite cities I've visited, probably because we met the world's most friendly people. Seriously, I've never met so many people who were so warm and helpful - we would ask bartenders for help with directions and they would actually walk outside with us to show us exactly where to go! So many people stopped what they were doing to help us out or just stop and chat! It was so so awesome and fun. Anyway, after we landed, we were determined to find some sort of Thanksgiving dinner and we ended up finding the perfect place right on the river. We later walked around the city and were loving the beautiful holiday lights!

Molly & Virginia

Thanksgiving dinner!

We woke up early Friday morning for a tour of the countryside (Wicklow and Glendalough) with a small tour company and spent the entire day seeing the beautiful country. Our tour driver, Dennis, kept our group entertained by telling us funny stories about the history of Ireland. Before long, we were in the middle of nowhere and couldn't see anything except rolling hills and occasional sheep herds. Dennis made a few stops to let us jump out and take pictures of the view from the top of the mountains. After driving for awhile, we stopped in a small town and Dennis poured us all hot coffee as taught us how to play hurling, the most popular sport in Ireland. (It was FREEZING the entire weekend.. literally 30°.. but not a shocker anymore.) We then continued to drive through the Wicklow countryside until we made it to an amazing lake and had to hike out to it in order to capture some amazing pictures. It was pretty incredible.. no one was around and it was just nature for miles and miles. We also drove up to the top of the mountain and were treated to a view of the lake below. Up next was a stop at the bridge where Holly and Gerry meet in the movie P.S. I Love You (this one.) It was a beautiful spot! If only Gerard Butler was there. The rest of the afternoon involved many stops (including cemeteries and monasteries), and walks in the countryside between lakes and overlooking some incredible views!

It was also SO WINDY the entire time as you can see from this vid!

Our awesome tour group.

So much happiness!

That night, we headed out to see some famous pubs in the area and stopped at the pub where they filmed the karaoke scene in P.S. I Love You (this scene!) and had a really fun time meeting people!

Virginia, Emily, me, Molly & Maddie

On Saturday morning, we started the day with a walking-tour of Dublin (the same company I did the free walking tour with in London!) Our tour started off great and we were able to see the castle, gardens and Christ church, but we decided to leave early and explore things a bit faster on our own. (Not to mention we were freezing and starving so we ducked into a nearby pub for soup!) After lunch, we walked to Trinity College and were awed by its impressive architecture. We even happened to see a bride walk down the isle to her wedding in a chapel nearby! So cute.

Trinity college

Emily, Maddie and I then stopped at a little pie shop for an afternoon snack before heading to the Guinness Brewery for a tour. The Irish are really proud of their Guinness, so I was excited to try some and see how it's made! Less than half a sip into it, I decided it was NOT GOOD. Guinness is a really dark beer and tasted somewhere between tar and tree bark and wilderness. No offense if you like it! (But are you crazy?) Anyway, touring the brewery was actually really cool and it was interesting to see how complicated the process of making beer really is. The brewery was five stories and on the top floor was an elevator to the "gravity bar" which had a 360° view of the city! It was really impressive and a great view. After dinner later on, we meandered around and enjoyed the great atmosphere! Our flight the next morning was at 6am and we had to catch a bus at 3am, meaning we would have to wake up around 2:30. We concluded that getting only one or two hours of sleep would actually be worse, so we decided to just stay out all night and it turned out to be a good call (until we were sitting in the airport at 5am wanting to die.) Getting home was quite the struggle as it literally took a bus, a plane, another bus, a two-hour train, and a metro before we were home. Totally worth it though - such great weekend in Dublin with some amazing people! :)

Live music!

'Tis the season!

Our new bartender friends.

Wishing my family and friends a Happy Thanksgiving too!
xoxoxo

La Vita è Bella

Happy almost Thanksgiving and weekend!

In my Italian class recently, we watched "La Vita e Bella" (life is beautiful). It's a very famous Italian film starring Roberto Benigni. It takes place during the Holocaust and is about a man and his son during their time in a concentration camp. To keep his young son naive about the horrors about what was happening, the dad (Benigni) convinces his son that the war is actually a game and they have to behave in order to win points in the "game." It's both tragic and funny at different times, and I really enjoyed it! It was sometimes hard to watch because the majority of the movie takes place in the concentration camp and after being in Europe for so long, and seeing a concentration camp in Germany a few months ago, I have a totally different perspective. (This is the trailer.) I would definitely recommend it!

Random happy things lately..

The Christmas tree in the Milan central station!

Starbucks and trains.. a few of my favorite things.

Un capuccinno con cacao.. mmm.

Meter long pizza.. always a good time.

Before & after of drinking lemoncello.. aka drink at your own risk.

Went to a Aleniaspace with my Operations class, and saw where parts of the 

International Space Station and Mars Rover were built.. Yay Astronomy.

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!