Norway!!!!

Alright. So tonight Tessa and I leave for fall break. Dublin, London, and Paris. BUT before I do this, I figure I reeally should blog about this past weekend in Norway, or else it will not get done. However as with everything, Alfred is not cooperating with my pictures, so this will be boring for a few weeks most likely until I can figure this out. So here's Norway in a nutshell :)

First of all, I thought I remembered that Norway was a gorgeous country, but really, it had diminished in my mind. It's amazing! Like I said last post, Italy doesn't really get a fall, and I had been missing that. I thought Marradi had fulfilled my need. Norway just went above and beyond. According to the woman at our campground we ended up talking to for a while, this was the best fall Norway's had in about 20 years. She also kept mentioning that they were just waiting for the snow. Not winter, but The Snow. Different mindset in Norway. It was also great because it was so clean, and fresh, and welcoming. Norwegians love to talk to Americans! And there was no garbage on the street, and it always smelled fresh and clean, and it was pretty!! And the trees! Well, as soon as pictures get up, you'll see.

----------EDIT------- this did not get published before my break. I'm sorry. But I'll finish it now, then start a new post for my break. Also, I've gone through and deleted a lot of pictures from past posts because my free memory space for this blog was running out, so in order to publish new pictures, I had to get rid of the old. So, sorry. If you want to see more pictures, just leave me a comment or something and I'll email you or give you the link :)

But back to Norway. Actually there's not much of a story here. Norway's kind of expensive, so we did a lot of walking around. Walking around and looking at things. And playing in the leaves :) We could have been an add for Norway tourism by how much fun we had in those leaves.

Yunha, Kelsey, Diana, Jane, Laura, Me, above Oslo - you can see the fjords in the background!

View from the plane

Studying our Art History flashcards while waiting for the plane

Our cozy little cabin in Norway!

Roomies in the leaves

Jane and I rolling down hills

Cartwheels in the Statue Garden

We watched Law and Order SVU - in Norwegian!!!

More Ashley cartwheels

Sculpture garden

Tell the truth - you didn't even see me the first time you looked at this!

Cooking in our cabin :)

Early morning sunrise

Breakfast of Champions

Norwegian cabins!!

We weren't sure exactly what Roosevelt was doing in Norway, but we had to take a picture with him

The Norway gang - Me, Jane, Laura, Diana, Yunha, Ashley, Kelsey

The castle we stumbled upon

I forgot to put in that the Wednesday before we left for Oslo, we went to the Opera - La Traviotta. It was great! Well to be honest, I may not see another opera for some time, but the experience was great. And the Soprano was fabulous. And it was definitely neat to go to an Italian Opera. In Italy. This is a roomie picture at the opera.

True Italians

So I've just figured out that I am taking a really long and roundabout way to put pictures on this blog. Because Alfred and the internet are both not so dependable (for those of you who don't know, Alfred is my computer) I've been uploading pictures in 2s and 3s, and for some reason it loads them backwards, so I've been uploading them backwards (chronologically that is). Today I found out that Picasa (my picture software) AND Blogger are part of Google. So basically I can select the pictures I want on Picasa, say BlogThis, and they magically appear in a new entry. In under 15 seconds. I'm in shock. But that's not what I set out to blog about.

This weekend we stayed around Florence again after a great weekend last week. I probably didn't get done as much as I thought I would for just hanging around the villa, but what can you do? Not work harder, that's for sure ;) Hanging out with Laura and her friends (my new authentic Italians) was super fun! I grabbed 4 of my friends, and Laura and her friend picked us up and took us out to Florence. We got to see the actual Florence that Italians see. It was neat to be almost 'behind the scenes' I guess. I felt more legitimate. We sat in a bar, and after her friend Mauro joined us, had a big communal chat. Mixed English and Italian, with everyone speaking a little of everything. It was great! We managed to communicate pretty darn efficiently. Great. But, of course the night gets even better :) They took us up to the Piazza di Michelangelo to see the city at night - they said this a must. It was during this car ride that Laura told me that she'd never been to the Uffizi nor the Academia. I mean geez! I guess it's not as special when you grow up with Michelangelo's David in your backyard. Whatever. I told her we'd go before I leave. Alright, now the city was gorgeous all lit up. But I'm still not at the good part. Mauro had given Laura a ride up to the Piazza on his motorini. And of course riding a motorini in Italy is definitely on my To-Do list while I'm here. So when he turns and asks me if I not only want a ride, but would I like to drive it, I nearly screamed. Of COURSE I want to try driving it!! I was sooooo excited!! So he goes over the basics, I put on his super cool helmet, and zoom off! I was weaving around cars in no time. As Diana reminded me later, not only was I driving a motorini around Florence, but I was driving around a copy of the David. Sooo cool!! She's got pictures of it that I'll definitely be getting from her soon. Don't worry, you know I'll share them as soon as I get them. Possibly blow them up and put them on my wall :) Kidding about that, really I promise.

So that was Thursday. Sunday we did end up going to the Chestnut Festival in Marradi. Yet another great decision in Italy. It's been pretty warm here in Florence still, like 80s. I don't mean to rub this in your face, really truly. It's just that Fall is my favorite season, and they don't really have one here in the valley of Florence. But Marradi is about an hour and a half away in the mountains, and it finally felt like Fall. The air was crisp, the sun was out, the sky was clear, and it was gorgeous! We ate chestnut... everything! The pastries, cakes, nuts themselves, both roasted and not, wine, beer, salsa, everything. Most of it was great (the wine was waaaaaay too sweet for me). The best part of the festival, was that we were the only Americans there. We heard a British couple and a group of Spaniards, but other than that, we were the only foreigners. Yet another truly Italian experience. GREAT!!!!

Magical!!

Wow. What a week! After a low-key weekend being semi-sick, I went on a full-throttle trip to the Amalfi coast this weekend. And it was great!! Mind you I was still sick, so while most of my travel-mates went out and had (a little bit too much of) a good time at night, I zonked out at the hostel. But it was reeeeally ok, because this was possibly the nicest hostel ever, more like a nice hotel. The showers were great! So much better than the trickle we get in the villa :) But let me start at the top. We took an overnight train from Florence to Sorento on Thursday night.

After a not-so-comfortable but not-truly-horrendous ride there, we were stuck in the rain, at 5am, looking for a bus to take us from Sorento to Amalfi. Easier done than said. Well, kinda. We found the bus, but the station was closed so we couldn't buy tickets. However that's the nice thing about Italians. The bus driver told us that he didn't care whether we had tickets or not - he still got paid the same amount. So we hopped on and he took us about an hour away to Amalfi! This was to be our first of many free/discounted bus trips. We arrived in Amalfi around 7. Do you want to know what's open at 7 on a Friday in Italy? Not a whole heck of a lot. But we wandered around for a bit (reminder: in the rain, although it had slowed down to a thick drizzle) and found a cafe that would serve us.

We wandered out to the pier (in the rain), and decided to have a second breakfast (our first had only been cafe and cappuccinos), consisting of peanut butter, jelly, bread, crackers, cookies, nutella, Italian cake-type-things, and basically whatever else we had in our packs. It was marvelous!! We then had a mini-siesta out there.

I broke in my new shoes on this trip (this story goes with a deleted picture here, sorry). The tennies I brought with have fallen apart between calcio (soccer) and Cinque Terre, so I had to get some new ones. That's another thing I've discovered - I have abnormally large feet in Europe. I'm only like a 9.5, but in Euro sizes that's 41ish, and those just don't exist. This can be a good and a bad thing. Bad, because they don't have my size in a lot of shoes. When I was searching Coop for some shoes (Coop is like the Italian version of Walmart) I was about crying because I was going to end up paying over €70 for shoes, which is like $100, which I wasn't excited to budget for. However then I found the sale rack. Bingo! They had 41s all over the place! So I ended up getting a pair of nice Puma's over half off, at a mere €20, or about $30. Sweet! I quite like them :) I've also had to get a pair of flip-flops, because I overwear the pair I brought, and broke them. However the ones I bought are kinda weird and I'm not altogether used to walking in them - they've got a wooden type bottom and I think the strap/thong thing is too big. But there were €1 so it's all good :)

But back to this weekend. After a while we decided to get to our hostel, check in, clean up, and go from there. So we hopped on a bus for €1.40 that was supposed to be €15 for another 1.5hrs, and ended up in Salerno. Good choice. After a quick group nap, (yes I napped!) we went out for a reeeeally good, and reeeeally cheap dinner, and then hung out on the roof for a while playing cards.

Roof of our hostel during the day. Like I said, it was nice!

Saturday came one of the most amazing days ever. I was a little sketch at first. We were paying for a boat tour of Capri. It was a little pricey, but I started to get excited. The hostel gave us rides down to the marina, where we get on a little raft/boat (with a 250 horse power motor - I guess that's impressive? Or I have the specs wrong or something?Anyway it was FAST). It was the 12 of us, plus two Aussies, who turned out to be so much fun, and who we hung out with for the rest of our trip. We started off with a nice ride heading out to Capri. Luckily I sat in the front of the boat, because we went over some fun waves :)

Our first dip into the ocean, under a freshwater waterfall!! Once again I took my underwater camera, so as soon as I find a place to develop the film (ancient, right?) I'll get all those picture up.

This is an UNedited picture. The water really was that blue!! It was amazing!!!

Then came the fun part: CLIFF DIVING!!!! Of course I was the first one to scamper up the rock, and the first one to jump off - twice!!

My first jump off, I managed to pull off a 1.5 front tuck somersault. I don't really know how, but it was so great! Diana got a great picture of it too.

My second jump Amanda was supposed to jump with me... obviously she didn't. Still fun though

The famous Dolce & Gabbana ad picture

Very aggressive seagull. It freaked me out when I attempted to feed it. Not the smartest idea, I know.

Ok so here's a good story. In this set of pictures you can see the Champagne Grotto. The water spewing out above was super intense, and kept knocking us away. Andrea, our guide, took a few brave enough to go climb in through the hole to see it. First he demonstrated, because you have to time it right to not get torn up on the rocks if you got caught in the spray. It was super intense. Then he let the two guys try. Then Ryan got blown by the spray as he was trying to leave. And then Andrea wouldn't let Amanda or I go in. I'm not sure if he thought that it was too dangerous, or he thought girls couldn't handle it, or he regretted taking us over in the first place, but I was a little upset. I wanted to see the grotto! Oh well. It was still neat being tossed by the waves and the massive swells.

We get to the famous Blue Grotto. One of the natural wonders of the world. And the guide starts telling us the strategy of how to swim in. As you can see above, it's quite a small entrance. And less dangerously similar to the Champagne Grotto, the waves would crash against it, making it more dangerous. So we get all excited, jump off the boat, and enter the Grotto. A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. I've never seen anything like it. It almost looked like we were either swimming in windex, they had a neon blue light on the bottom of the floor, or something like that. Purely unvelievable.

So after a few minutes, well, more than a few of swimming around, we convinced Julian, who can't really swim, to come in on his floaty. That was comical. After safely getting everyone back to the boat, someone points out the sign on the wall of the blue grotto. If you can't read it, it says "IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO SWIM IN THE BLUE GROTTO". Oops. I swear none of us had any idea. And Andrea didn't care. Typical Italian mentality, he just sent us on in! And I definitely can't say I regret it. AMAZING!!!!! And a good story :) We finished up the boat tour, and were taken back to the hostel by Andrea's Uncle. Yet another typical Italian move.

That night we went out to dinner with the Aussies, then had some more fun up on the roof. They were having a music festival/concert at our hostel, but the music wasn't exactly excellent. Oh well. The next morning we woke up early and took yet another free train ride (I forgot to mention the other two free train rides previous - the ticket office was never open!) to Pompeii. Pompeii was so cool! Laura Amanda and I decided to get the cheesy touristy audioguides to try and truly appreciate everything we were seeing, and it was worth it. We weren't always sure what we should listen to where, but we learned random facts and tidbits. Also, I guess I knew that Pompeii was an entire city, but it didn't hit me until we were there how actually big it is!

Old houses, with Mt Vesuvius in the background

The real fountain was missing, so I filled in

What our carcasses would look like if the lava buried us 2,000 years ago :)

One of the best-preserved amphitheaters or Roman Colosseum

Gladiator!!!

Real bodies (not us this time)

After a nice morning in Pompeii, we caught the local train to Napoli (Naples) and bought the cheapest ticket we could, a 5.5 hr trip back to Florence. Just like the night bus, it was Harry-Potter style with our own private compartments!!

And after waiting for half an hour for all of our cabs to arrive at the train station to take us home (we forgot that the Florence regional trains don't run on Sundays... oops) we arrived home. Julian called Hellen (our house mom type thing) and she saved dinner for us! We felt so lucky. This week's been pretty low-key so far. Monday classes, Tuesday we went in for RenArt and saw Michelangelo's David at the Academia. I had already been in to see it earlier (as students we get in free and often to the museums here - score!) but it amazes me every time. That, and it was fun to learn that Marriotti herself helped with the restoration, translated for the English restorers, and wrote all the placards in the museum herself. Seriously this woman is amazing. She's been in the news lately because she's publishing a book about the Mona Lisa and how she was Giovanni Medici's muse or something. It's got her all flustered :). I've got an Italian test today, then am bringing a few friends to meet up with my conversation partner and her friends tomorrow. I'm excited for that. Then this weekend should be pretty low key. I might take a day trip on Saturday, but Sunday I'm hoping to go to this open-air market Chestnut Festival. It's somewhere up in the mountains, and you get there by an old fashioned steam train! I don't much like chestnuts, but this just sounds fun. We'll see. Then next weekend is our fateful trip to Norway. We got the tickets, roundtrip for €15. Buuuut yesterday we realized that we still hadn't booked a place to stay. So we got to looking, and kinda freaked out. Scandinavia is expensive. Not only that, but there must be something going on in Oslo next weekend, because everywhere was full! Crazy! However I'm pretty excited about our solution. We found a cabin. Yes, a cabin. At a campground. I'm not sure what to expect, but I'm pretty sure we'll have lots of stories. I almost hope it snows :) Well, almost.