Operation: Spaghetti

A little over a week ago I (along with four roommates and one boyfriend) got up at about 5 am and caught a plane to Venice to kick-off our mid-semester break. After arriving in Venice we had a bit of a journey to our B&B, which must have been difficult from the realization that almost no one speaks english in Italy. But we did learn how to use public transportation (in which paying seemed to be optional) very quickly. After getting to

the B&B, which was a short bus ride away from Venice yet in the middle of the Italy country side, we walked to our first, as well as a very important, Italian experience. Food. Basically, in Italy, every ristorante is like an overly decorated Italian themed restaurant in the US, but there is nothing wrong with the pizza-pasta-gilatto diet we went on for the week. We spent a day in Venice which included a water taxi to Murano - an island known for glass blowing - and Lido which is known for its topless beach, although being late almost March there were few people on the beach - most with jackets on. The next morning we took a train to Florence and almost immediately went to see The David, which was more amazing in person to see then I thought. The next day we decided to take a day trip to Pisa (we had heard something about a tower there that might lean or something) and walked around the college town. We were thinking you could no longer climb the tower but quickly realized this was not true and paid the €15 to do the once-in-a-liftetime Leaning Tower of Pisa climb. Later in the day, back in Florence, we hiked around MichaelAngelo square and back to our hostel - in which we were lucky to meet the owner, Giuseppe, who connected us to a very centrally located hostel in Rome. After arriving in Rome we walked about 10 minutes from our hostel to the Colosseum, where we learned that Romans are constantly trying to make money in anyway possible. Some men dressed as accent Romans started putting helmets on our heads and fake swords in our hands and, being the stereotypical oblivious Americans that we are, just started taking pictures with them. Turned out to be €5 each. The next morning we woke up really early to catch our tour bus to Naples and Pompeii. Naples, as we had been warned by a CAPA teacher and quickly found out on our own, is not really a hot tourist spot. Nor is it the type of place anyone would really want to vacation in. Unless you like dirty port cities run by the mafia. Luckily we did not stay there long and spent a few hours in Pompeii, which was really amazing to see. The next day, our last day, we spent walking around Rome, including a morning at Vatican City. We walked up 512 stairs to the top of the tallest dome in St. Peter's Cathedral and saw an amazing view of Rome. Overall, between the last day in Rome and our day in Pisa/Florence, we had worked off all of the spaghetti, pizza, and gilatto we had been eating all week. Almost. On the day we left it was pouring rain in Rome and when we arrived in London, up until right now, it has been blue skies.