TEDx Blog:
Oh my goodness! I almost forgot to write about my TEDx experience! Well let me explain. So on August 2nd, I was given the opportunity to speak in the union (quite a big deal… let me tell you) as a TEDx speaker. For those of you that don’t know what TED is, it is basically a youtube like website for motivational videos. The whole point of TED is spreading ideas and sparking new thoughts and inspiring discussions. So before you continue reading, go to www.TED.com and check it out. I guarantee that you will find one video that might have the possibility to change your life.
So Lara, the licensing director for TEDx boarded the good ol’ MV Explorer on the last day in Greece to help orchestrate/ attend our TEDx event. A TEDx event is an independently organized TED event that is not organized directly by TED, but is based on the same values and ideas that TED is based on, but just created for smaller and more intimate audiences. So, Jami (the Communication Coordinator of SAS) decided to create a TEDx event for Semester at Sea! It was based on the idea of living with purpose, traveling with purpose, and something else with purpose. There were four speakers, one other student, a professor, and Lara’s husband. It was a pretty special evening, and truly showed me how much I loved speaking.
All of the speakers spoke about different things, but all somehow intertwined into making yourself a better person, and the world a better place. I chose to speak about how to live a fuller life, and shared my life theories to the Union. I don’t really want to go into toooo many details, but when I have the video of my talk, I will post the link to this blog so you can all watch it :D.
So this blog has been quite rambling, sorry about that, but the purpose of this is to explain that Semester at Sea has shown me one of my talents! I never belived that speaking and motivating people was a talent, but TEDx showed me that it definitely was. After my talk, I had random people coming up to me telling me how much of a difference I made in their lives/ how motivating I was, and the feeling I got from that was unexplainable! It was a very special evening and showed me how rewarding public speaking can truly be ☺.
Moroccan Blog:
So here it is, my last blog entry written about a country! I might write a super emotional blog post about leaving Semester at Sea later in life, but as of now this is the last one about a country. Of all the countries, Morocco was the biggest culture shock for me and the least European country I have ever visited, but I absolutely loved it! It was such a great experience that I will explain… now!
(Side note: I hope you have all enjoyed the increased corniness that my blogs have become…. I guess I just get Nostalgic as my wittiness kind of fades away ☺)
August 7th:
The first day in Morocco arrives! I am a little bit worried because we were warned that Morocco is much stricter than Turkey, and the fact that we were visiting during Ramadan only added to the anxiety. However, I was ready to take everything with open arms! Sooo I head off the ship to embark on our own personal Moroccan adventure with Olivia, Hannah, and Stephen. Olivia met a Moroccan named Anas through other SASers, who was essentially a Moroccan tour guide that would be our personal tour guide through Morocco. While I was excited to see what that entailed, I really had no idea how incredible our time with Anas would be.
The ship docked in Cassablanca, but Anas lived in Marrakech, which is a much more happening town than Cassablanca anyways (and not to mention that pretty much the whole ship was also heading to Marrakech). So we take a cab (which is truly a roller-coaster type ride that is somewhat life threatening at times) to the train station to catch a train, and we learn that there are no more trains running to Marrakech. So, we take another cab (really just driving in Morocco at all times was quite the adventure) to the bus station and buy our tickets. We have three hours to spare, so we head out to the old Medina (city) of Cassablanca to walk around and do some shopping.
Stephen and I end up just sitting on a park bench for most of the time, while Olivia and Hannah explored the town. After a while, we head back to the bus station to catch our bus. I end up sitting next to this awesome guy named Zachariah and we ended up talking for about an hour! He was originally from Morocco (specifically a Berber village) and has pretty much traveled and lived in a ton of different countries. He was probably my favorite conversation that I had with anyone on public transportation!
We arrive in Marrakech after a 4 hour bus ride, and Anas is waiting for us at the station. We take an open truck type of taxi to the main square area, which is right around where Anas lives! We walk to his apartment, which was SO cool to see. It’s hard to explain in words, but I will post the video that I took that shows his apartment, because it is nothing like any house or apartment in America. We arrive at his apartment just in time for sundown, which means it is time to BREAK FAST for Ramadan! Hannah decided to fast for Ramadan to have a true cultural experience, so it was very exciting for all of us to break the fast.
Ramadan was very interesting for me to witness, because I assumed that as soon as the sun set, the people would have a HUGE feast and eat until sundown. However I was very wrong, so it was exciting to actually be able to participate in Ramadan (minus the fasting part) first hand. So as soon as the call to prayer was announced, Anas immediately opened the delicious Mango juice and water bottles and poured us all a glass. We then sat there drinking water, mango juice, and the tea and coffee that Anas kept making for us. After a few hours of louging on his outside “lounge area,” we all head to main square of Marrakech and witness the craziness that sundown brings during Ramadan. The square is absolutely crazy! It is alive with people and vendors and everything. It was so cool to see all of the shops and little restaurant stands opening up especially for the feast of Ramadan. While walking through, Anas explains that these restaurants are for tourists, so we stay far away.
We then head up to this restaurant café thing and drink some sodas and coffee and relax. By this time it is about 11:00 pm, and there is still no food being eaten. So, we head back to buy supplies for dinner, and pick up some pita bread and this Ramadan cake to eat as an appetizer. We then head back to Anas’s apartment to eat our bread and what I thought, was to eat dinner asap. However, we then go back to his place where we leisurely eat the pita bread and Ramadan cake, and before I know it, I have completely fallen asleep! I guess I was super tired from traveling all day. But anyways, I get woken up at about 4 am by Anas explaining that it is time for the Break fast (which I though we already had with the bread and the cake), and I groggly head over to his apartment (because we are sleeping outside on his porch essentially) to see this massive feast of chicken and potatoes with yogurt drinks and pita bread and all sorts of food. While I didn’t really eat the chicken, the potatoes and the pita bread were absolutely delicious! After somehow stuffing my face at 4 am, I go pass out into a deep sleep once again.
August 8th:
We all wake up at a leisurely pace because most Moroccans sleep in very late on Ramadan to help make fasting easier. So we wake up and get ready at our own pace, and get ready to head to the mountains! I’m not exactly sure what we are embarking to do, but I know that we are driving to some waterfalls and probably camping somewhere. So we get in our little Moroccan rental car and drive about an hour through the countryside, which was SO cool, until we get to the place to start hiking.
Okay, so we start hiking, and while it is a little bit difficult, It is nothing harder than a Pearlstein water hike or a good old day at Devil’s punchbowl (hahah). Until, we have to climb this rickety ladder on the side of the mountain to continue hiking, which kind of freaked me out. But then we continue hiking and reach some more waterfalls, and then Anas takes up literally straight up a mountain where we need to walk on all fours to get up. It was kind of very scary especially because I am not the most coordinated person. Anyways, I am wishing that we weren’t literally climbing up a mountain, but we are, and then we reach the highest waterfall (#7 of 9 I believe… because #8 and #9 are inaccessible pretty much) and relax on this large rock underneath this huuuuuge tree. Anas takes a nap while Stephen climbs a tree and Olivia and Hannah have fun in the waterfall.
It starts thundering and raining a little bit while we are there, which is surprisingly cooling, so we decide to start heading back. Anas says that there is an alternate route to get down, but I soon realize that this alternate route is absolutely unnecessary, and we are ACTUALLY scaling a mountain. Climbing up the mountain on all fours with loose rocks falling all around us and then having to climb down the mountain which is much more difficult then climbing up. Everyone else seems to figure it out, while I am like having 100 panic attacks and Anas has to actually hold my hand down the entire mountain. But, low and behold I did it! It was a fun experience, but after getting down I realized the route we took was absolutely unnecessary and was just pretty much the wrong way. But, whatever, because I definitely learned from it/ almost had 12 heart attacks and 100 panic attacks.
Okay so I somehow make it down the mountain, while seeing some REAL MONKEYS along the way which was SUPER cool because I haven’t ever seen a monkey in its actual habitat. So I make it down the whole mountain (yay!) and then we go to the store to stock up on drinks and snacks for breakfast, and head to this little outdoor dining area right by the river. We sit there and drink and eat and relax and it is SO nice because we are so tired from hiking. We then drive all around the area around Marrakech because Anas is trying to find a place for to sleep and eat our official break fast. This drive includes lots of Kid Cudi and great music which really sets the mood for an incredible night drive.
We arrive at this little restaurant with a REAL TOILET and running water so we literally go crazy!! They also have delicious coffee where we relax and drink and enjoy the night. We finally arrive at this lake “guest house”/ restaurant where we sleep on these little chair/ bed things that rock on the ground underneath this ramada type covering. We eat our first Tanjin dish for breakfast which is SO GOOD, and we all happily go to sleep full of delicious Moroccan food.
August 9th:
After about 3-4 hours of sleep, we all wake up because we are being attacked by buzzing flies and the sun is already so warm and rising rapidly, and these little rocking things that we are sleeping on are not very comfortable. So we all relax and basically just lay there until Anas wakes up. We get our things together and head to another part of the lake that we are sleeping next to, to swim and such! So we stop by this bakery where Anas picks up literally like 8 loaves of freshly baked bread and throws them on me in the car and they are still warm and smell SO delicious. So as Olivia, Stephen, and I are all munching on delicious bread and drinking amazing juice we head to the lake. We arrive and set up our little blanket (aka Hannah’s sleep sheet) and jump into the warm water! It was so relaxing and nice.
We continued to lay and enjoy the day while Anas went to buy food for us for lunch (even though he was fasting… what a kind soul ☺). He then comes back and prepares a full Moroccan salad with tomatoes, onions, and cucumbers, and olive oil and spices and so much fresh bread and it is SO DELICIOUS. He also brought lots of yogurt milk drink which is a Moroccan specialty and it is deeeeeeeeeeeelllliiiicccciiiouuus :D.
After eating as much of the salad we can (which isn’t much :/) we all head back to the car and head to this town in the mountains to prepare to break fast. We sit down in this little restaurant while Anas and I head in to town to buy ingredients for our dinner. It is really cool to be in such a local town and to see how everything works and how everyone does business. We head back to the restaurant where Anas gives the restaurant the ingredients for our Tanjin, and they cook it for us! Imagine if that were to happen in the US…. It never would. Moroccan culture is very cool. The call finally sounds and we all dig in to all of the delicious food and drink and enjoy the warm evening. After we sit in the restaurant for actually 5 hours, we head back to Marrakech (before stopping at that great coffee place) to sleep at Anas’s house.
We are all exhausted so we fall asleep on his outside porch couches before he gets back, but apparently he came back and prepared another full break fast meal for us! He wakes us all up for the traditional 3-4 am meal, and I am way to full to function, but groggily manage to eat some pita bread. After eating (from the 3 am meal and the meal at the restaurant), we are all too full to function and fall into a deep sleep.
August 10th:
We all wake up at a leisurely pace (per usual) and decide to go shop around Marrakech. Unfortunately Anas has to leave (sad face) to go to the mountains with his friend, so his two neighbors lead us around instead. We had met these two men during the early morning feasts, but were normally in too much of a sleepy haze to properly acknowledge them. We head into Marrakech and do our standard shopping, get some henna (which was supposed to last three weeks but rubbed off after 4 days <ARG>) and go to a tourist trap to eat some lunch. Ironically, this was the first meal we ate at a restaurant that was not prepared by Anas, and it was the worst meal!
After saying a sad goodbye to our home for the past 4 days, we head to the bus station to catch a bus home. We soon find out that the next bus does not leave Marrakech for 6 hours, so we walk to the train station that has much more frequent trains. The train station also has a MCDONALDS with Air Conditioning, free wi-fi, and bathrooms with flushing toilets and running water in the sinks! While I know it does not sound like a big deal, I had never been so happy to be in a McDonalds before in my life.
We arrive back in Casablanca and while I THINK we are so close to a shower, we get hassled by like 12 taxi drivers who try to get us to pay 50 euros (freaking JOKE) to get back to the ship, but we finally get a normal taxi driver who gives us a price in dirham. After a small altercation with my taxi cab driver and the port gate, I finally find myself back on the ship taking the best shower I pretty much have ever taken.
August 11th:
This is the FINAL day in port of the summer!! So sad ☹. So, Erica and I head out to see the few sites that Casablanca has to offer. We head to the King Hassan II Mosque which has the second highest minaret in the world, and is absolutely beautiful. While it was only built in 1994 (I think), it is still just as breathtaking as the mosques built hundreds of years ago. We then make friends with a taxi driver who agrees to be our personal tour guide for the day (even though we never asked him to do that), and drives us to the Bazaar. We shop around for a while until we get too hungry to function, so our taxi driver takes us to his favorite restaurant (that is open during Ramadan).
We divulge in a delicious lunch full of freshly squeezed juice, cous cous, delicious coffee, and finish with a nutella crepe. Needless to say, the 320 dirham lunch (about 20 bucks a person) was 100 percent worth it. After lunch, we head back to the ship and say goodbye to our final port of the voyage.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Turkish Delight
Who would’ve thought that Turkey would actually arrive? It’s crazy how fast this summer has gone, and while I’m writing this, we are two days away from arriving in Morocco, which is our final country of the voyage. While this summer has literally passed in the blink of an eye, I definitely feel like I have enough memories to last a lifetime.
Okay moving away from this sappy stuff… let me just tell you how much I LOVED Turkey. The skyline was dotted with gorgeous mosques and palaces, and turning around to see Asia in the distance was always a plus. Istanbul is a city like no other, and I really recommend that everyone find time in their lives to visit this breathtaking city. Except make sure to purchase some linen pants, because anything with more fabric is pretty much unbearable.
July 28th:
So I spend my first day in Istanbul with Jew Jordan and Olivia. We start off our day by heading to the Galata tower which had the most breathtaking views I have ever seen. On our way to the tower, we try to find some exchange places, and let me just tell you that finding an exchange place that exchanges Travelers’ Check’s is nearly impossible. So after stumbling into a pharmacy (that is something like “exchange” in Turkish) being fooled by the big lit up “E,” we realize that there are not very many exchange places in the area. With travelers’ checks still in store, we head up this massive hill to the Galata tower. We buy our ticket to the top and take in the absolutely breathtaking 360 degree views of Istanbul. The city was breathtaking on foot, so seeing a birds eye view was unbelievable.
After befriending some Canadians who snapped some pictures for us, we went to this little café at the base of the tower where I first experienced apple tea and fresh baked bread. Olivia had this fabulous little Turkish breakfast while Jordan and I chowed down on a basket of bread… per usual. After having a nice break of taking in the city, we decide to cross the bridge to the old city!
After crossing the hectic bridge of lots of fishermen and salespeople selling nike shoes and stolen watches, we arrive at our first place, the New Mosque. Unfortunately (or fortunately) it was a time of prayer when we got there so we weren’t allowed to actually go inside, but we were allowed to go into the entry area and experience all of the men washing their feet to prepare for prayer. We were notonly some of the only women in the area, but one of very few tourists, so it was really cool to see how everyone acts in time of prayer.
We leave the New Mosque and head over to the Hagia Sofia (pronounced Aya Sofia) and the Blue Mosque. On our journey, we realize that Turkish men are QUITE open with their feelings. If you ever want a boost of self confidence, I would definitely recommend heading over to Istanbul because being called Spice Girls, Lady Gaga, Shakira, J-Lo, or Barbie, is more common then one would think. The first experience we had with this was a man yelling after Olivia that she dropped something, and then continued to explain that she dropped his heart. While apparently this pick up line was also used in Croatia, it was the first time I had ever heard it and got quite the kick out of it.
We go into the Hagia Sofia and it was just so amazing because it was a church turned into a mosque. So there were Arabic disks that apparently had the name of all of the Islamic prophets covering the ancient paintings of Jesus and different crosses. It was really cool to see, and is definitely something that cannot be captured adequately by photographs. After the Hagia Sofia we stroll through this really beautiful park that has a name that I can’t remember, and make our way to the Blue Mosque. The Blue mosque was definitely busier than the Hagia Sofia, so we had to wait in line for a little bit to get into the tourist entrance. The Blue Mosque has six minarets, which is quite the site to see from the distance. The only mosque that has more is Mecca, (who has 7) because the architect wanted Mecca to have the most minarets in the world…. Or something like that. This tidbit of info is in my guidebook so I will need to check back on that and let you know. Anyways we wait in line to get in the mosque and it is quite the site. The dome is so intricately decorated and it is absolutely breathtaking.
After visiting these mosques, I have realized that there is something about Mosques that is so amazing. When you walk in, you obviously are not wearing shoes, and there are no chairs. So basically, everyone is hanging out on the floor in their socks (or not) and lounging. It kind of gives this impression of being a kid again, because you are just hanging out with your socks on the floor with your friends. I know that that seems kind of weird, but there was something about Mosques that I was absolutely captivated by.
We then realize that we are famished and use Olivia’s guidebook to find this PRECIOUS little café kind of tucked away next to the Hagia Sofia. It was super quaint and looked like it was right out of a fairy tale and just amazing. The workers were so nice and it was just the perfect lunch for such a great day. After lunch, we head to this little art gallery that we saw on the way to eat, and it was SO GREAT. The artists name is Josh (I believe) and he does this technique called marbling, where he puts all this paint and oil into this thing of water, and through various strokes of his hand, he creates this masterpiece of art in the water, and puts the paper on top of it and WALAH, he has a beautiful piece of art. We spent some serious quality time in his studio watching him make art, and by the end of it, he ended up writing each of our names on one of his pieces of art and gives it to us for free. It was super special and a souvenir that I will fondly remember forever.
Jordan and Olivia both have FDP’s (SAS trips) at 6 pm, so we kind of start heading back towards the ship. But first we stop at this shop for Olivia to pick up some Turkish delight, but later I realize that it is much better to purchase Turkish Delight in the Bazaar because the first shop was a RIP OFF, but the second one was much better and even gave us samples. Jordan heads back to the ship, while Olivia and I try to find the Suleymane (sp?) mosque. We stumble upon this cool art piece that is basically all about how Istanbul is constantly changing and modernizing. It was really cool. Olivia and I then end up trekking like 12 mountainous streets (SF style) to try to find this mosque, and then when we realize we are almost there, Olivia realizes that she needs to head back to the ship for her FDP, so we head back to the ship without seeing the mosque. I never ended up making it there but that’s okay because it just means I need to come back!
So we head back to the ship and then head out on a dinner adventure with Katie, Erica, and Jessica to find this square that we never end up finding. But we eat at this delicious Tapas place (obvs we miss Spain already hahah) and eat on a terrace! It was just so romantic. Afterwards, we head across the bridge to try to find a good hookah place, but we finally find a good one underneath the bridge full of SASers! It was really fun to hang out under the bridge and smoke some good Turkish Hookah. It was a great end to a great day :D
July 29th:
Today, has quite the interesting beginning to the day. Sooooo me, Jew Jordan, and Robyn (Jordan’s roommate) all head out early in the morning in hopes of meeting up with Jordan’s teacher at the Topkapi (pronounced Tope-kapa) palace for a tour. So, we get on the tram and take the tram to the Topkapi spot. We are on the tram for about an hour, and get out at what we think is the right spot. We realize that we are not only not at the right stop, but took the tram about 15 stops too far. We try to ask some Turks directions, but some of them just shake their heads and laugh at us when we ask about the palace. However in our defense, why in the world would you have a tram stop that is called Topkapi that doesn’t even have the freaking PALACE at it?!?!?! We were very frustrated but eventually swallowed our pride and headed back to the tram.
Soooo we completely miss Jordan’s teacher by about 2 hours, so we decide to head to the palace and do it on our own. We wait in a very long line to get tickets, and realize that it is quite a warm day. We get our tickets and start the long task of walking around the Topkapi palace. The palace is HUGE and has four different areas which are divided by four different gates. The palace was absolutely beautiful, but it was definitely draining to do the whole thing. After a while we head to the Harem which is where the Sultan and his concubines live. The Harem was absolutely breathtaking and was so ornate!! Basically It was just a huge house for the Sultan and his women who were forced to have sex with him and only him. It was definitely cool to see what it was like.
After the very long morning at the Topkapi palace, we head to get some MUCH needed lunch. After stumbling through what seemed was the “tourist trap expensive restaurant street” we find this little Doner stand on the side of the street and eat some delicious and cheap Doners. Mmmm I wish I could have one right nowww. ANYWAYSSSSS after that Robyn heads back to the ship while Jordan and I head to the GRAND BAZAAR to experience our first look at this amazing place. We head through the spice Bazaar where we meet our friend Emray. He gets our attention by calling Jordan, Jennifer. Jordan is confused because while Jessica is close to her name, she doesn’t understand why he is calling her that! We then realize that he is calling her Jennifer, as in Jennifer Lopez because of her butt. It was SO FUNNY and quite a great realization. HE then starts calling me Shakira, so it was definitely great entertainment. We leave to go to the Grand Bazaar, but not before receiving free samples of CHOCOLATE (so delicious, and I’m bringing some home) Turkish Delight and Apple Tea (which I am also bringing home).
We go into the Grand Bazaar and shop around for a while and realize that we are way too tired and hot (or at least I was) to stay in there longer then a few hours. So Jordan does her necessary shopping, and then we head out. We come to the conclusion that while the Grand Bazaar is famous, perhaps the Spice Bazaar has better prices and deals. We start heading home from the Grand Bazaar and stumble upon this great little hair accessory store. So I have a ball with bows and headbands and 80’s scrunchies (get ready for this to come out in my 80’s wear!!) and am just LOVING this little Turkish version of Claires. We make friends with the owner who gives us a few great things, and we have some great laughs with him. We then go back to the Bazaar to visit our friend and get some more Turkish Delight and Tea for the way home.
Jordan and I had an absolutely fabulous and successful day of being Royal (at the Topkapi palace duh) and shopping!! So much fun!!!!!! On our way home we went inside the New Mosque and just sat there for a while. It was really an amazing experience just sitting in a mosque and observing Muslims during their prayer. We sat there for quite a while and just took it all in. It truly showed me how cool the religion of Islam is. Then that night I head out for a night on the town in Turkey, which proves to only be fun if you can become your own bartender ☺. Also considering Ramadan begins within the next few days, the night life was not as poppin as we would think. BUT! We still had a great time!
July 30th:
Jordan (my roommate), Jew Jordan, Kristin, Erica, Jessica, Robyn, and I all head out to find the Basilica Cistern. Basically, it was this HUGE ancient aqueduct that was used to hold lots of water, and used to be totally full of water. There is something like 300 pillars located in the Cistern, and because they were all taken from other buildings, none of them are the same. The main site of the Cistern was the two pillars with Medusa’s head on the bottom, so that was really cool to see and learn about Medusa’s story. After looking at the weird Japanese Koi (how do you even spell koi? I have no idea) fish, we all head out in search of some lunch.
We find this PRECIOUS little restaurant that has lots of couches and hookahs and cute little booths so naturally the inner tourist in all of us loves this restaurant. We order some pretty good doners (basically all that I ate in Turkey) and Kristin smoked her first Turkish Hookah, so that was exciting! We all relax and drink apple tea (another Turkish delicacy) and take in the wonders that Istanbul has to offer. Afterwards, we part ways to do our Turkish baths!!!! Jordan and Kristin head to a more well known Hamam (Turkish Bath), while Jessica, Erica, Jordan, Robyn, and I head to a more local one that Jessica learned about from a local that she met.
It takes us kind of a long time to find this local Hamam, and I have to admit I start loosing hope that we will find it. Except we finally do! It is definitely out of the tourist section of Istanbul (or Sultanahmet, which is the area where we primarily spent most of our time) and in some residential neighborhood. So we go into this authentic Turkish bath and while it was not as “fancy” as some of the other ones, it was super nice! While I will spare the details, basically it was a SERIOUS bonding moment for all of us in the Turkish Baths ☺. By the way, the Hamam was called the Kadriga Hamami! After the bath we head to the neighborhood mosque and I have the opportunity to just take in the beauty that this mosque has to offer. While I am obviously not Muslim, I have truly gained an appreciation and curiosity for the Islam religion, and see immense amounts of beauty in mosques and the Islam type of worship.
We head back from the bath to shop around a little bit on the way back to the ship, and of course buy a magnum bar (YUM). For dinner, we decide to go to ASIA! I don’t know if you know this, but Istanbul is the only city to be located on two continents, Europe and Asia! While a majority of Turkey is located on the Asia side, most of Istanbul/ the touristy nice areas of Istanbul are located in Europe. So we decide to be adventurous and head over to Asia for dinner. With the large group of us, it ends up being kind of difficult to get over there, and ends up being kind of a bust. Basically we were VERY hungry and just wanted to find some nice restaurant to eat and smoke hookah. Apparently, we missed the really nice square for tourists, and ended up on some street full of bars.
Basically, we are shooed into a restaurant and the restaurant owner claims that they have both food and hookah. However, we come to realize that not only does he not have hookah, but we are sitting at a bar that has no food. The man hands a cell phone to Ben, and all of us are very confused as to why Ben needed to be on the phone. We then realize that the Turkish man is calling a restaurant across the street for us to order takeout. Considering none of us want to drink and they don’t have food OR hookah, we all leave the bar, creating kind of quite the scene. However, it did make for quite the funny story!
In attempt to find a restaurant, we don’t find one, and settle for some delicious Doners off the side of the street. While Asia was kind of a bust, we weren’t going to let that ruin our night so after taking the Ferry back to Europe, we go out in search of a Hookah Bar! We run into Rob by the port who tells us about this great hookah place called Alli Babah, which is just great. They have delicious hookah and all of the fresh fruit you could want. It was SO FUN!!! Alli Babah himself came to our table numerous times, apparently because Rob made friends with him the night before. It was a great night of smoking Hookah after our attempt at smoking hookah in Asia.
July 31st:
Today we head to the Prince Islands! Jordan, Kristin, Rob, Lea, Blaire, and her two friends, and I all head out to the Prince Islands! While we think we are getting an early start to our day, that ends up not being the case. We end up heading to the wrong ferry station in six different locations, and are continuously told conflicting information. While walking around in the heat was not exactly an easy morning, it also was just one of those things that made for a good story. We finally realize that we need to take a ferry to Asia, and then take a ferry from Asia to the islands. While I had already been to Asia, many people in our group had not, so it was VERY exciting for us all to be in Asia!
We arrive in Asia and immediately take the most culturally insensitive picture possible (get excited for that on facebook) and share a few laughs with this crazy old man. I am hungry (of course) so me and a few others head to a doner stand and get some delicious doner sandwiches! Our ferry arrives and Jordan and I decide to sit on the outside of the ferry because sitting inside was too stuffy. We end up meeting this Turkish man who works for the US government and writes for a Turkish journal, so it was really cool to hear what we had to say. He was super nice and I’m hopefully looking forward to getting in touch with him the next time I’m in DC!
After Jordan and I almost got left on the ferry, we all get off at the first Prince Island (I’ll get the name for you later) which is the smallest of the three. We decide to sit by the beach and eat some lunch, and play some rum jimmy (I think). We soon realize that the food was not that good and that the game was not free. So it was a nice place to relax, but definitely kind of a rip off. We then go rent some bikes and ride around the Island, which was so fun! We took some great pictures and stumbled upon an outdoor gym, which was definitely entertaining. After bike riding, we realize that there is not much to do on the Island, so we head over to the ferry station and eat some terrible ice cream (boo) while waiting for our ferry.
After we get back from the Islands, Jordan, Kristin, Abby, and I all head over to this strip of restaurants that all have free wifi because I need to register for classes. We end up going to this restaurant where no one really orders much, but I decide to order this omelet from this restaurant next door. Unfortunately the omelet I order is ACTUALLY smothered in chunks of butter, so this healthy dinner I was planning on having was not so healthy.
After this failure of a dinner (but at least we got wifi!) a bunch of us get ready to go out to this club called Reina that is apparently free because it is the first night of Ramadan! We go back to our favorite Gyro place with our favorite waiter from the night before, order some food, and have a great night on the town!
August 1st:
While I am currently writing this as we are crossing the Atlantic, I need to stress that I was SO SAD to leave Turkey!! I absolutely fell in love with Istanbul and definitely need to go back. I know that it seems that I have fallen in love with every city that I have visited, I especially enjoyed Istanbul and all of the culture that it has to offer. Okay sorry about the random emotional tangents. Butttt basically on the last day my roommate, Kristin, Jessica, Erica, and I all went out to the Bazaars to continue shopping. I did some pretty serious damage today on some awesome Turkish goods, so It was a great day. Also as an impromptu action, we all got our ears pierced! Don’t freak out parentals, it was just my third hole, so no worries ☺.
Stay tuned for the blog of the last country of the voyage: Morocco! Coming soon to a computer screen near you. haha
Okay moving away from this sappy stuff… let me just tell you how much I LOVED Turkey. The skyline was dotted with gorgeous mosques and palaces, and turning around to see Asia in the distance was always a plus. Istanbul is a city like no other, and I really recommend that everyone find time in their lives to visit this breathtaking city. Except make sure to purchase some linen pants, because anything with more fabric is pretty much unbearable.
July 28th:
So I spend my first day in Istanbul with Jew Jordan and Olivia. We start off our day by heading to the Galata tower which had the most breathtaking views I have ever seen. On our way to the tower, we try to find some exchange places, and let me just tell you that finding an exchange place that exchanges Travelers’ Check’s is nearly impossible. So after stumbling into a pharmacy (that is something like “exchange” in Turkish) being fooled by the big lit up “E,” we realize that there are not very many exchange places in the area. With travelers’ checks still in store, we head up this massive hill to the Galata tower. We buy our ticket to the top and take in the absolutely breathtaking 360 degree views of Istanbul. The city was breathtaking on foot, so seeing a birds eye view was unbelievable.
After befriending some Canadians who snapped some pictures for us, we went to this little café at the base of the tower where I first experienced apple tea and fresh baked bread. Olivia had this fabulous little Turkish breakfast while Jordan and I chowed down on a basket of bread… per usual. After having a nice break of taking in the city, we decide to cross the bridge to the old city!
After crossing the hectic bridge of lots of fishermen and salespeople selling nike shoes and stolen watches, we arrive at our first place, the New Mosque. Unfortunately (or fortunately) it was a time of prayer when we got there so we weren’t allowed to actually go inside, but we were allowed to go into the entry area and experience all of the men washing their feet to prepare for prayer. We were notonly some of the only women in the area, but one of very few tourists, so it was really cool to see how everyone acts in time of prayer.
We leave the New Mosque and head over to the Hagia Sofia (pronounced Aya Sofia) and the Blue Mosque. On our journey, we realize that Turkish men are QUITE open with their feelings. If you ever want a boost of self confidence, I would definitely recommend heading over to Istanbul because being called Spice Girls, Lady Gaga, Shakira, J-Lo, or Barbie, is more common then one would think. The first experience we had with this was a man yelling after Olivia that she dropped something, and then continued to explain that she dropped his heart. While apparently this pick up line was also used in Croatia, it was the first time I had ever heard it and got quite the kick out of it.
We go into the Hagia Sofia and it was just so amazing because it was a church turned into a mosque. So there were Arabic disks that apparently had the name of all of the Islamic prophets covering the ancient paintings of Jesus and different crosses. It was really cool to see, and is definitely something that cannot be captured adequately by photographs. After the Hagia Sofia we stroll through this really beautiful park that has a name that I can’t remember, and make our way to the Blue Mosque. The Blue mosque was definitely busier than the Hagia Sofia, so we had to wait in line for a little bit to get into the tourist entrance. The Blue Mosque has six minarets, which is quite the site to see from the distance. The only mosque that has more is Mecca, (who has 7) because the architect wanted Mecca to have the most minarets in the world…. Or something like that. This tidbit of info is in my guidebook so I will need to check back on that and let you know. Anyways we wait in line to get in the mosque and it is quite the site. The dome is so intricately decorated and it is absolutely breathtaking.
After visiting these mosques, I have realized that there is something about Mosques that is so amazing. When you walk in, you obviously are not wearing shoes, and there are no chairs. So basically, everyone is hanging out on the floor in their socks (or not) and lounging. It kind of gives this impression of being a kid again, because you are just hanging out with your socks on the floor with your friends. I know that that seems kind of weird, but there was something about Mosques that I was absolutely captivated by.
We then realize that we are famished and use Olivia’s guidebook to find this PRECIOUS little café kind of tucked away next to the Hagia Sofia. It was super quaint and looked like it was right out of a fairy tale and just amazing. The workers were so nice and it was just the perfect lunch for such a great day. After lunch, we head to this little art gallery that we saw on the way to eat, and it was SO GREAT. The artists name is Josh (I believe) and he does this technique called marbling, where he puts all this paint and oil into this thing of water, and through various strokes of his hand, he creates this masterpiece of art in the water, and puts the paper on top of it and WALAH, he has a beautiful piece of art. We spent some serious quality time in his studio watching him make art, and by the end of it, he ended up writing each of our names on one of his pieces of art and gives it to us for free. It was super special and a souvenir that I will fondly remember forever.
Jordan and Olivia both have FDP’s (SAS trips) at 6 pm, so we kind of start heading back towards the ship. But first we stop at this shop for Olivia to pick up some Turkish delight, but later I realize that it is much better to purchase Turkish Delight in the Bazaar because the first shop was a RIP OFF, but the second one was much better and even gave us samples. Jordan heads back to the ship, while Olivia and I try to find the Suleymane (sp?) mosque. We stumble upon this cool art piece that is basically all about how Istanbul is constantly changing and modernizing. It was really cool. Olivia and I then end up trekking like 12 mountainous streets (SF style) to try to find this mosque, and then when we realize we are almost there, Olivia realizes that she needs to head back to the ship for her FDP, so we head back to the ship without seeing the mosque. I never ended up making it there but that’s okay because it just means I need to come back!
So we head back to the ship and then head out on a dinner adventure with Katie, Erica, and Jessica to find this square that we never end up finding. But we eat at this delicious Tapas place (obvs we miss Spain already hahah) and eat on a terrace! It was just so romantic. Afterwards, we head across the bridge to try to find a good hookah place, but we finally find a good one underneath the bridge full of SASers! It was really fun to hang out under the bridge and smoke some good Turkish Hookah. It was a great end to a great day :D
July 29th:
Today, has quite the interesting beginning to the day. Sooooo me, Jew Jordan, and Robyn (Jordan’s roommate) all head out early in the morning in hopes of meeting up with Jordan’s teacher at the Topkapi (pronounced Tope-kapa) palace for a tour. So, we get on the tram and take the tram to the Topkapi spot. We are on the tram for about an hour, and get out at what we think is the right spot. We realize that we are not only not at the right stop, but took the tram about 15 stops too far. We try to ask some Turks directions, but some of them just shake their heads and laugh at us when we ask about the palace. However in our defense, why in the world would you have a tram stop that is called Topkapi that doesn’t even have the freaking PALACE at it?!?!?! We were very frustrated but eventually swallowed our pride and headed back to the tram.
Soooo we completely miss Jordan’s teacher by about 2 hours, so we decide to head to the palace and do it on our own. We wait in a very long line to get tickets, and realize that it is quite a warm day. We get our tickets and start the long task of walking around the Topkapi palace. The palace is HUGE and has four different areas which are divided by four different gates. The palace was absolutely beautiful, but it was definitely draining to do the whole thing. After a while we head to the Harem which is where the Sultan and his concubines live. The Harem was absolutely breathtaking and was so ornate!! Basically It was just a huge house for the Sultan and his women who were forced to have sex with him and only him. It was definitely cool to see what it was like.
After the very long morning at the Topkapi palace, we head to get some MUCH needed lunch. After stumbling through what seemed was the “tourist trap expensive restaurant street” we find this little Doner stand on the side of the street and eat some delicious and cheap Doners. Mmmm I wish I could have one right nowww. ANYWAYSSSSS after that Robyn heads back to the ship while Jordan and I head to the GRAND BAZAAR to experience our first look at this amazing place. We head through the spice Bazaar where we meet our friend Emray. He gets our attention by calling Jordan, Jennifer. Jordan is confused because while Jessica is close to her name, she doesn’t understand why he is calling her that! We then realize that he is calling her Jennifer, as in Jennifer Lopez because of her butt. It was SO FUNNY and quite a great realization. HE then starts calling me Shakira, so it was definitely great entertainment. We leave to go to the Grand Bazaar, but not before receiving free samples of CHOCOLATE (so delicious, and I’m bringing some home) Turkish Delight and Apple Tea (which I am also bringing home).
We go into the Grand Bazaar and shop around for a while and realize that we are way too tired and hot (or at least I was) to stay in there longer then a few hours. So Jordan does her necessary shopping, and then we head out. We come to the conclusion that while the Grand Bazaar is famous, perhaps the Spice Bazaar has better prices and deals. We start heading home from the Grand Bazaar and stumble upon this great little hair accessory store. So I have a ball with bows and headbands and 80’s scrunchies (get ready for this to come out in my 80’s wear!!) and am just LOVING this little Turkish version of Claires. We make friends with the owner who gives us a few great things, and we have some great laughs with him. We then go back to the Bazaar to visit our friend and get some more Turkish Delight and Tea for the way home.
Jordan and I had an absolutely fabulous and successful day of being Royal (at the Topkapi palace duh) and shopping!! So much fun!!!!!! On our way home we went inside the New Mosque and just sat there for a while. It was really an amazing experience just sitting in a mosque and observing Muslims during their prayer. We sat there for quite a while and just took it all in. It truly showed me how cool the religion of Islam is. Then that night I head out for a night on the town in Turkey, which proves to only be fun if you can become your own bartender ☺. Also considering Ramadan begins within the next few days, the night life was not as poppin as we would think. BUT! We still had a great time!
July 30th:
Jordan (my roommate), Jew Jordan, Kristin, Erica, Jessica, Robyn, and I all head out to find the Basilica Cistern. Basically, it was this HUGE ancient aqueduct that was used to hold lots of water, and used to be totally full of water. There is something like 300 pillars located in the Cistern, and because they were all taken from other buildings, none of them are the same. The main site of the Cistern was the two pillars with Medusa’s head on the bottom, so that was really cool to see and learn about Medusa’s story. After looking at the weird Japanese Koi (how do you even spell koi? I have no idea) fish, we all head out in search of some lunch.
We find this PRECIOUS little restaurant that has lots of couches and hookahs and cute little booths so naturally the inner tourist in all of us loves this restaurant. We order some pretty good doners (basically all that I ate in Turkey) and Kristin smoked her first Turkish Hookah, so that was exciting! We all relax and drink apple tea (another Turkish delicacy) and take in the wonders that Istanbul has to offer. Afterwards, we part ways to do our Turkish baths!!!! Jordan and Kristin head to a more well known Hamam (Turkish Bath), while Jessica, Erica, Jordan, Robyn, and I head to a more local one that Jessica learned about from a local that she met.
It takes us kind of a long time to find this local Hamam, and I have to admit I start loosing hope that we will find it. Except we finally do! It is definitely out of the tourist section of Istanbul (or Sultanahmet, which is the area where we primarily spent most of our time) and in some residential neighborhood. So we go into this authentic Turkish bath and while it was not as “fancy” as some of the other ones, it was super nice! While I will spare the details, basically it was a SERIOUS bonding moment for all of us in the Turkish Baths ☺. By the way, the Hamam was called the Kadriga Hamami! After the bath we head to the neighborhood mosque and I have the opportunity to just take in the beauty that this mosque has to offer. While I am obviously not Muslim, I have truly gained an appreciation and curiosity for the Islam religion, and see immense amounts of beauty in mosques and the Islam type of worship.
We head back from the bath to shop around a little bit on the way back to the ship, and of course buy a magnum bar (YUM). For dinner, we decide to go to ASIA! I don’t know if you know this, but Istanbul is the only city to be located on two continents, Europe and Asia! While a majority of Turkey is located on the Asia side, most of Istanbul/ the touristy nice areas of Istanbul are located in Europe. So we decide to be adventurous and head over to Asia for dinner. With the large group of us, it ends up being kind of difficult to get over there, and ends up being kind of a bust. Basically we were VERY hungry and just wanted to find some nice restaurant to eat and smoke hookah. Apparently, we missed the really nice square for tourists, and ended up on some street full of bars.
Basically, we are shooed into a restaurant and the restaurant owner claims that they have both food and hookah. However, we come to realize that not only does he not have hookah, but we are sitting at a bar that has no food. The man hands a cell phone to Ben, and all of us are very confused as to why Ben needed to be on the phone. We then realize that the Turkish man is calling a restaurant across the street for us to order takeout. Considering none of us want to drink and they don’t have food OR hookah, we all leave the bar, creating kind of quite the scene. However, it did make for quite the funny story!
In attempt to find a restaurant, we don’t find one, and settle for some delicious Doners off the side of the street. While Asia was kind of a bust, we weren’t going to let that ruin our night so after taking the Ferry back to Europe, we go out in search of a Hookah Bar! We run into Rob by the port who tells us about this great hookah place called Alli Babah, which is just great. They have delicious hookah and all of the fresh fruit you could want. It was SO FUN!!! Alli Babah himself came to our table numerous times, apparently because Rob made friends with him the night before. It was a great night of smoking Hookah after our attempt at smoking hookah in Asia.
July 31st:
Today we head to the Prince Islands! Jordan, Kristin, Rob, Lea, Blaire, and her two friends, and I all head out to the Prince Islands! While we think we are getting an early start to our day, that ends up not being the case. We end up heading to the wrong ferry station in six different locations, and are continuously told conflicting information. While walking around in the heat was not exactly an easy morning, it also was just one of those things that made for a good story. We finally realize that we need to take a ferry to Asia, and then take a ferry from Asia to the islands. While I had already been to Asia, many people in our group had not, so it was VERY exciting for us all to be in Asia!
We arrive in Asia and immediately take the most culturally insensitive picture possible (get excited for that on facebook) and share a few laughs with this crazy old man. I am hungry (of course) so me and a few others head to a doner stand and get some delicious doner sandwiches! Our ferry arrives and Jordan and I decide to sit on the outside of the ferry because sitting inside was too stuffy. We end up meeting this Turkish man who works for the US government and writes for a Turkish journal, so it was really cool to hear what we had to say. He was super nice and I’m hopefully looking forward to getting in touch with him the next time I’m in DC!
After Jordan and I almost got left on the ferry, we all get off at the first Prince Island (I’ll get the name for you later) which is the smallest of the three. We decide to sit by the beach and eat some lunch, and play some rum jimmy (I think). We soon realize that the food was not that good and that the game was not free. So it was a nice place to relax, but definitely kind of a rip off. We then go rent some bikes and ride around the Island, which was so fun! We took some great pictures and stumbled upon an outdoor gym, which was definitely entertaining. After bike riding, we realize that there is not much to do on the Island, so we head over to the ferry station and eat some terrible ice cream (boo) while waiting for our ferry.
After we get back from the Islands, Jordan, Kristin, Abby, and I all head over to this strip of restaurants that all have free wifi because I need to register for classes. We end up going to this restaurant where no one really orders much, but I decide to order this omelet from this restaurant next door. Unfortunately the omelet I order is ACTUALLY smothered in chunks of butter, so this healthy dinner I was planning on having was not so healthy.
After this failure of a dinner (but at least we got wifi!) a bunch of us get ready to go out to this club called Reina that is apparently free because it is the first night of Ramadan! We go back to our favorite Gyro place with our favorite waiter from the night before, order some food, and have a great night on the town!
August 1st:
While I am currently writing this as we are crossing the Atlantic, I need to stress that I was SO SAD to leave Turkey!! I absolutely fell in love with Istanbul and definitely need to go back. I know that it seems that I have fallen in love with every city that I have visited, I especially enjoyed Istanbul and all of the culture that it has to offer. Okay sorry about the random emotional tangents. Butttt basically on the last day my roommate, Kristin, Jessica, Erica, and I all went out to the Bazaars to continue shopping. I did some pretty serious damage today on some awesome Turkish goods, so It was a great day. Also as an impromptu action, we all got our ears pierced! Don’t freak out parentals, it was just my third hole, so no worries ☺.
Stay tuned for the blog of the last country of the voyage: Morocco! Coming soon to a computer screen near you. haha
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Bulgaria- The land where copious amounts of cheese meets the mob
Alrighttttttt now onto Bulgaria! So a disclaimer to all older people (aka parents, grandparents/ anyone that remembers me as a small child) that there wasn’t much else to do in Bulgaria except engage in various nighttime activities. I even looked for meaningful things to do! Except I had no such luck… so read on with caution!
July 23rd:
We arrive in Bulgaria! We start off by having the usual diplomatic briefing which was pretty cool. Unlike most other ports that we go to, we realize that Bulgaria is not a very hot cruise ship port. The US ambassador explained that they just had a cruise ship a week and a half ago. In all of the other ports there were cruise ships coming in and out every day. We also learn that due to Bulgaria’s eastern European ties and their communist past, they might hate Americans. However, we all learn later that Bulgarians don’t hate Americans, but in fact are shocked by our prescence in Bulgaria. Apparently, there was a newspaper written about the MV Explorer the day we got there!
Okay so moving on, we get off the ship and take a taxi for 10 euro (which we realized was a MASSIVE rip off) to the center of town and walk around. Because it’s a Sunday there isn’t much going on, but we go looking in and out of shops, go into Mango and this place New York and buy some clothes which is always exciting. Our tiresome day of shopping leads us to pretty much a Bulgarian Chilli’s, so that was exciting. We look at the menu and realize that not only is the Bulgarian Leva really good for the dollar, but that food is extremely cheap. It’s great! Oh and there are also ten million kinds of cheese on the menu, including fried and such. SO for all you cheese lovers GET EXCITED.
We somehow find our way to the ship after refusing to pay another expensive taxi ride. We stop at a gas station on the way home for some snacks and free wifi, so that was an exciting stop. We get back to the ship to relax and get ready for the evening’s festivities. We head out with a pretty big group of us to hang out on the beach and then go to this club called Extravaganza. Our ship is docked right by this huge stretch of bars and clubs and such, so it was only a short walk. It is a SAS fest per usual, and we all have a great night.
Before I move on to the next day, I feel as if I should explain the title of my blog. So Bulgaria has a huge problem with the Mob because they pretty much run all of the clubs/ everything that is anything. So we were warned at pre-port to stay away from clubs with nice cars parked in front of it, and if guys in nice suits are coming to your direction, definitely get out of their way.
July 24th:
Today starts out a bit late, so Jessica, Melissa, and I all make our way to the beach at the early hour of 1 pm. We pretty much lay out on the beach all day and just relax for the day. Bulgaria was pretty much a vacation for us, so I had to continue reminding myself that it was okay to do nothing except lay on the beach. So we make our way to go buy a snack, and then head back to the ship after a few hours.
Somehow the decision was made to go to a bar crawl in Golden Sands, which is a beach that is about 30 minutes away by cab. I wasn’t prepared to go that far, but I knew that it was going to be fun! So we get into a cab and make our way to golden sands. I get out of the cab in golden sands and realize that it is pretty much beach town meets Vegas. There are so many carnival games and beachy type shops, and sex shops on every corner. It was definitely a site to see. So while I am taking everything in as we are walking to the bar crawl, I see a massive group of people wearing lime green shots carrying various different international plans. And little did I know, that that was the bar crawl I was about to embark on! So we happily grab our lime green shirts and ask the guide for the American flag. However, there was no American flag! That should have been shocking but considering we are the first Americans that this woman we came across had ever met, it shouldn’t have been.
So we embark on our bar crawl journey and get a pretty good look around Golden Sands. Lots of casinos and a baby Eiffel tower and Ferris wheel to complete the Vegas Façade. We realize that Bulgaria is pretty much a vacation spot for Eastern Europeans, and no one else really came to visit. Considering that there were almost 100 Germans rallying around the German flag, we realized that Germans truly loved to vacation in Bulgaria.
July 25th:
Jess, Lisa and I decide to head back to Golden Sands so that we can do some serious shopping and beaching! We walk around for a while and shop around, go eat some pretty delicious food with free wifi (and A/C) and I buy a headband. We head to the beach for a bit but I realize that there are lots of bugs in the sand and I couldn’t bare to have another Mykonos incident, so we quickly left the sand. We say goodbye to golden sands, but not before taking a picture with the baby Eiffel Tower, of course.
That night we go to a club called Coco Cabanna which ended up being a very fun night! I also potentially came across some American secret service people/ members of the mafia. Always a sign of a good night.
July 26th:
You know what the last day in port means!! SHOPPPPPPING! So we set out on an adventure to buy a lot of great things, and we go to this cute little open market thing and buy typical Bulgarian goods.
So as you can tell Bulgaria was not as eventful as some of the ports, but it was definitely a nice vacation! We only had one day in between Bulgaria and Turkey so we had what we call “Turkey Day” which is where we have global studies (gag me) for two hours and don’t have normal class to just learn about the country that we are going to. Sooooo on to TURKEY!!!
July 23rd:
We arrive in Bulgaria! We start off by having the usual diplomatic briefing which was pretty cool. Unlike most other ports that we go to, we realize that Bulgaria is not a very hot cruise ship port. The US ambassador explained that they just had a cruise ship a week and a half ago. In all of the other ports there were cruise ships coming in and out every day. We also learn that due to Bulgaria’s eastern European ties and their communist past, they might hate Americans. However, we all learn later that Bulgarians don’t hate Americans, but in fact are shocked by our prescence in Bulgaria. Apparently, there was a newspaper written about the MV Explorer the day we got there!
Okay so moving on, we get off the ship and take a taxi for 10 euro (which we realized was a MASSIVE rip off) to the center of town and walk around. Because it’s a Sunday there isn’t much going on, but we go looking in and out of shops, go into Mango and this place New York and buy some clothes which is always exciting. Our tiresome day of shopping leads us to pretty much a Bulgarian Chilli’s, so that was exciting. We look at the menu and realize that not only is the Bulgarian Leva really good for the dollar, but that food is extremely cheap. It’s great! Oh and there are also ten million kinds of cheese on the menu, including fried and such. SO for all you cheese lovers GET EXCITED.
We somehow find our way to the ship after refusing to pay another expensive taxi ride. We stop at a gas station on the way home for some snacks and free wifi, so that was an exciting stop. We get back to the ship to relax and get ready for the evening’s festivities. We head out with a pretty big group of us to hang out on the beach and then go to this club called Extravaganza. Our ship is docked right by this huge stretch of bars and clubs and such, so it was only a short walk. It is a SAS fest per usual, and we all have a great night.
Before I move on to the next day, I feel as if I should explain the title of my blog. So Bulgaria has a huge problem with the Mob because they pretty much run all of the clubs/ everything that is anything. So we were warned at pre-port to stay away from clubs with nice cars parked in front of it, and if guys in nice suits are coming to your direction, definitely get out of their way.
July 24th:
Today starts out a bit late, so Jessica, Melissa, and I all make our way to the beach at the early hour of 1 pm. We pretty much lay out on the beach all day and just relax for the day. Bulgaria was pretty much a vacation for us, so I had to continue reminding myself that it was okay to do nothing except lay on the beach. So we make our way to go buy a snack, and then head back to the ship after a few hours.
Somehow the decision was made to go to a bar crawl in Golden Sands, which is a beach that is about 30 minutes away by cab. I wasn’t prepared to go that far, but I knew that it was going to be fun! So we get into a cab and make our way to golden sands. I get out of the cab in golden sands and realize that it is pretty much beach town meets Vegas. There are so many carnival games and beachy type shops, and sex shops on every corner. It was definitely a site to see. So while I am taking everything in as we are walking to the bar crawl, I see a massive group of people wearing lime green shots carrying various different international plans. And little did I know, that that was the bar crawl I was about to embark on! So we happily grab our lime green shirts and ask the guide for the American flag. However, there was no American flag! That should have been shocking but considering we are the first Americans that this woman we came across had ever met, it shouldn’t have been.
So we embark on our bar crawl journey and get a pretty good look around Golden Sands. Lots of casinos and a baby Eiffel tower and Ferris wheel to complete the Vegas Façade. We realize that Bulgaria is pretty much a vacation spot for Eastern Europeans, and no one else really came to visit. Considering that there were almost 100 Germans rallying around the German flag, we realized that Germans truly loved to vacation in Bulgaria.
July 25th:
Jess, Lisa and I decide to head back to Golden Sands so that we can do some serious shopping and beaching! We walk around for a while and shop around, go eat some pretty delicious food with free wifi (and A/C) and I buy a headband. We head to the beach for a bit but I realize that there are lots of bugs in the sand and I couldn’t bare to have another Mykonos incident, so we quickly left the sand. We say goodbye to golden sands, but not before taking a picture with the baby Eiffel Tower, of course.
That night we go to a club called Coco Cabanna which ended up being a very fun night! I also potentially came across some American secret service people/ members of the mafia. Always a sign of a good night.
July 26th:
You know what the last day in port means!! SHOPPPPPPING! So we set out on an adventure to buy a lot of great things, and we go to this cute little open market thing and buy typical Bulgarian goods.
So as you can tell Bulgaria was not as eventful as some of the ports, but it was definitely a nice vacation! We only had one day in between Bulgaria and Turkey so we had what we call “Turkey Day” which is where we have global studies (gag me) for two hours and don’t have normal class to just learn about the country that we are going to. Sooooo on to TURKEY!!!
Greece: Pantheon? Pants on? Party on? PARTHENON
Hello again everyone! So I am very delayed on my blog ( go figure), but now is my attempt to catch up. So I visited Greece about a week ago, and had an absolutely amazing time. I spent a day and night in Athens, and then traveled to Mykonos to spend two nights there, and then spent my fourth night in Piraeus, which is the port town where we docked. Greece was definitely a top country of mine, especially because my first day in Mykonos was probably one of the best days of my life. Oh, and I have also established a serious love for ATV’s, and must purchase one immediately….or at least ride one in the desert or something. Any takers? ☺ Alright well enough babbling… onto my day by day explanations!!! Woooohoooo
July 16th: (I have fully lost track of days of the week….so the only way I know when I was at places are the dates on my iphoto…thank the heavens)
We arrive in Athens, and set out to see the Acropolis! However before leaving, my roomie Jordan receives news from her friend in Athens that a heat wave has just arrived into Athens, and the Acropolis is supposed to be around 40 degrees Celsius….which is around 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Awesome. Well with that in mind, we head out to trek around the city of Athens and try to find our way. Considering my awesome slacker abilities, I have yet to buy my ferry ticket to Mykonos, so we (Erica, Katie, Jordan, and I) head to the ferry office so we can purchase/ pick up our ferry tickets. Pretty much the whole SAS community planned on going to Mykonos… so we were excited for the SAS-fest to begin. After the ferry office, we decide to take the lazy American route and take one of those obnoxious bus tours with the big, red, double decker busses. While it was 20 euros, the convenience was definitely worth the 20 euros. We hop on the bus and put in our earphones to hear all about the history of Piraeus on the way to Athens. We arrive in Athens after a 20-30 minute drive, and decide to go to the new Acropolis Museum. While we heard it was cool, the main determining factor for us was the Air Conditioning. (Fun fact: When traveling around Europe in the summer, sometimes you will pay ungodly amounts of money to get into museums, aquariums, or ridiculous “cover charges” at restaurants for some amazing AC. ) After walking around the nice museum, we decide that we are over it because everything that we are looking at isn’t even the real thing, but plaster copies of the original. So while it looks nice and real, it is not so much. So obviously to stick it to the man, I violated the museum “no touch rule” and touched a column. HA. Take that I say.
Okay moving on from that…. before giving you the complete wrong image of the museum, the walkway leading up to the museum is plexi glass with ruins beneath it, so that was really cool to be walking over ruins from ancient Greece. Also, there were see-through floors in the museum as well, so the ruins underneath were definitely the coolest part, as well as the see through floors on the second floor, giving everyone on the first floor quite the show. Overall, the museum was definitely worth the 3 euros we paid to get in.
After the museum, we head to the Acropolis itself. We realize later that we end up taking the long route up the hill, but get to see some cool ruins of theaters along the way, so it was worth it. We take some sweet pics of the entire city of Athens, because the Acropolis is definitely the highest pedestrian point of the city. We finally fight through the hoards of tour groups and various ethnic groups plugging up the entrance and arrive to the Acropolis. It was really cool to see all of the ancient ruins, but it was kind of hard to enjoy with such huge crowds. Oh and also, these sites are always being renovated, so there was tons of construction equipment surrounding the Parthenon, which was kind of annoying and took a little bit of the beauty away. But whatever, it was still really cool to see. We also took some sweet pics…so look forward to that on facebook.
We decide that we have sweated past our comfortable level, so we head down the hill and precede to get some AMAZING frozen lemonade which really hits the spot on this 40 degree Celsius kind of day. We head to a restaurant that clearly lures us in with the words “free Air Conditioning” and enjoy our first real Greek meal! I have some delicious stuffed vegetables (Look at how well I’m eating, Mom!) and sample some of Erica and Jordan’s Greek Salads. After lunch, we decide to find this area called “Plaka,” which apparently is home to this cool flea market. While we soon realize that Plaka is a huge neighborhood, we stumble upon this really great shopping street, and buy souvenirs to our heart’s content.
After an exhausting day of ancient ruins and shopping (standard for a SAS summer day), we drag our exhausted selves to our big red double decker bus to take us home. Due to Hilary Clinton’s presence in Athens, our travel plans got a little bit messed up, but we finally made it back to the ship. After napping, I then go out for a nice dinner in Piraeus with Olivia, Katie, Erica, Kristin, and Hannah. It is this super fancy/ cute Greek restaurant which had the best service I have had in any country thus far. I only ordered some boiled zucchini because I kind of already ate on the ship, but it was still delicious. After that we went to this super cool “cocktail lounge bar thing,” but I was way too tired to enjoy myself fully, so I headed back to the ship to rest up for MYKONOS.
July 17th:
I wake up at the ungodly hour of like 5:30 to catch the 7:25 ferry to Mykonos. Due to my last minute purchase, I had to buy a Business Class ticket, which ended up being pretty cool. Shane and I head to the ferry, which is surprisingly extremely nice on the inside. It was very spacious and had great Air Conditioning (clearly very important). We stopped at two other islands before Mykonos, so I got to see some pretty cool places because my seat was located right in front of a window! So great :D. So we arrive in Mykonos and mass chaos ensues, because there are cars on the bottom and people on the top….so imagine that one scene in Avatar when the military car thing unloads all of the mechanical animals and such on Pandora in the beginning of the movie, and that’s pretty much what it looked like. So I am meeting up with Olivia at our hotel, but she flew so I had to get to our hotel somehow. There was a HUGE line for taxis because I realized later that there are ACTUALLY only 30 taxis on the island, so that is why the line was not moving. So I am waiting in line being confused and this guy comes up to me and is like oh Hotel Sofia (where I stayed)! 5 euros I take you. And I’m like awesome! But then I see his car…which is more of a truck ATV. Imagine the trucks that the yard people drive with like the open back and such….. and that is what he drove except mini sized. So I was like ummm definitely not going on that. However there were no taxis and he was still hassling me so then I was just like…. Okay fine. So I went with him and was like holding on to my backpack for dear life because I didn’t want it to fly out of the back of the mini truck. I finally get there safe and sound, which is a relief because half way through I realized he could have easily taken me or something. That moment will probably go on my list of the not smartest things I’ve ever done…sorry parentals! Haha
So I finally reach the hotel which is SO GORGEOUS and I try to check in…but Olivia isn’t there yet so I can’t do it without her. I quickly discover the free wifi and am very content in the AC (go figure). So Olivia arrives and we check in to the cutest little room ever. The hotel is so quaint and beautiful and the people working there are SO NICE and the room is sooooo white and great. I can’t really describe how cute it is without pictures… so I will upload some ASAP. One of the women bring us this delicious beverage because we have to wait for our room to be cleaned, but it was sooo appreciated because it was so delicious. Olivia and I drop off our stuff and immediately go to the pool to clearly use the free wi-fi, because we are technology deprived SASers. We run into some other SASers at the hotel, but otherwise we relax for a while waiting for Olivia’s friends (Kristin and Kim) to arrive as well. After they get there, we decide to go rent ATV’S!!! Best decision of the trip EVER. Not only were they so fun, but there is almost no other way to get around in Mykonos without them. So we get the ATV’s, stop to get gas (so cool), and then make our way over to Super Paradise (the gay beach of Mykonos). We have a great time riding through the countryside and taking it what Mykonos has to offer. I was officially in love with the island.
So Olivia and I are approaching Super Paradise, and we see this massive white villa with music blasting above us on a hill with people dancing and clearly having a great time. We were really upset that we didn’t know them….until we realized that we DID! There were a bunch of Sasers that rented this SICK villa and were hanging out and such. We drive our ATV (a bit of a struggle sesh) to the villa and it is absolutely breathtaking. I like to describe it that if Real World were to have a season in Mykonos, this is the house they would use. It was unreal. So we hang out at the villa for a few hours, until we head back to the hotel to get ready for the evening. We go back to the hotel to shower and stuff, and then ride our ATV’s to Paradise Beach, which is where MARTIN SOLVEIG was playing at Paradise Beach Club that night. If you don’t know who Martin Solveig is, he is the DJ that plays “Hello,” aka is AWESOME. So we stop at this restaurant across the way and eat more delicious Greek food and drink some delicious drinks. The manager loved us so much that he brought us free Champagne! It was perfect.
After that, we head to the beach where there is this huge dance party going on, so naturally I partake in the festivities. We hang out for a while because the club doesn’t even open its’ doors till 11:00 pm, so we head over around 12:30. We have a great time listening to Martin Solveig and dancing the night away. Afterwards, I have pizza and a crepe, which is a perfect end to a perfect day in paradise… Mykonos ☺.
July 18th:
Olivia, Kristin, and Kim all leave for Santorini today, and Katie, Shane, and Erica move from their hotel to mine! So we go rent another set of ATV’s and head over to Paradise beach. This beach is different from SUPER Paradise, because Super Paradise is the (super) FABULOUS gay beach. Anyways we laid on the sand for a while and while unknowingly at the time, I got absolutely eaten up by mosquitos. My legs are COVERED in bug bites and I am in the most pain everrrr. However I can’t let that ruin my fun (until I get back to the good old MV). So we head back to the hotel on our wonderful ATV’s and relax/ get ready for dinner. We head downtown to eat some delicious Greek food, and end up eating right on the water! It was great. We then go to a few bars but head home early.
July 19th:
The sad day comes when we have to leave Mykonos. So we wake up and head to our ferry for the sad ride home. We arrive home and I go on a furious hunt for some medicine for my bug bites. While I don’t find an open pharmacy, I luckily find something at a newspaper stand. That night, everyone decides that we are going to a karaoke bar in Piraeus and it was SO FUN. I can’t wait to post videos on facebook because the singing is quite impeccable. I’m very glad I went because where else will I see Americans invade a Greek karaoke bar and sing “Don’t Stop Believing” at the top of their lungs? Standard debauchery of course.
July 20th:
Per usual, the last day in port is normally reserved for shopping. I wish I could post a picture of my bag of souveniers, because it is actually unreal. Now get excited for your presents :D. hahah. Anywaysssss Erica, Jessica, and I all head to this street where we know where all the shops are and do some pretty good damage. Because this is the last port where Euros are used, we all had to make sure that we used them all up! So luckily we had like 7 streets of the exact same shop to spend them on. Sadly, our time has come to an end, but now onto BULGARIA!
July 16th: (I have fully lost track of days of the week….so the only way I know when I was at places are the dates on my iphoto…thank the heavens)
We arrive in Athens, and set out to see the Acropolis! However before leaving, my roomie Jordan receives news from her friend in Athens that a heat wave has just arrived into Athens, and the Acropolis is supposed to be around 40 degrees Celsius….which is around 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Awesome. Well with that in mind, we head out to trek around the city of Athens and try to find our way. Considering my awesome slacker abilities, I have yet to buy my ferry ticket to Mykonos, so we (Erica, Katie, Jordan, and I) head to the ferry office so we can purchase/ pick up our ferry tickets. Pretty much the whole SAS community planned on going to Mykonos… so we were excited for the SAS-fest to begin. After the ferry office, we decide to take the lazy American route and take one of those obnoxious bus tours with the big, red, double decker busses. While it was 20 euros, the convenience was definitely worth the 20 euros. We hop on the bus and put in our earphones to hear all about the history of Piraeus on the way to Athens. We arrive in Athens after a 20-30 minute drive, and decide to go to the new Acropolis Museum. While we heard it was cool, the main determining factor for us was the Air Conditioning. (Fun fact: When traveling around Europe in the summer, sometimes you will pay ungodly amounts of money to get into museums, aquariums, or ridiculous “cover charges” at restaurants for some amazing AC. ) After walking around the nice museum, we decide that we are over it because everything that we are looking at isn’t even the real thing, but plaster copies of the original. So while it looks nice and real, it is not so much. So obviously to stick it to the man, I violated the museum “no touch rule” and touched a column. HA. Take that I say.
Okay moving on from that…. before giving you the complete wrong image of the museum, the walkway leading up to the museum is plexi glass with ruins beneath it, so that was really cool to be walking over ruins from ancient Greece. Also, there were see-through floors in the museum as well, so the ruins underneath were definitely the coolest part, as well as the see through floors on the second floor, giving everyone on the first floor quite the show. Overall, the museum was definitely worth the 3 euros we paid to get in.
After the museum, we head to the Acropolis itself. We realize later that we end up taking the long route up the hill, but get to see some cool ruins of theaters along the way, so it was worth it. We take some sweet pics of the entire city of Athens, because the Acropolis is definitely the highest pedestrian point of the city. We finally fight through the hoards of tour groups and various ethnic groups plugging up the entrance and arrive to the Acropolis. It was really cool to see all of the ancient ruins, but it was kind of hard to enjoy with such huge crowds. Oh and also, these sites are always being renovated, so there was tons of construction equipment surrounding the Parthenon, which was kind of annoying and took a little bit of the beauty away. But whatever, it was still really cool to see. We also took some sweet pics…so look forward to that on facebook.
We decide that we have sweated past our comfortable level, so we head down the hill and precede to get some AMAZING frozen lemonade which really hits the spot on this 40 degree Celsius kind of day. We head to a restaurant that clearly lures us in with the words “free Air Conditioning” and enjoy our first real Greek meal! I have some delicious stuffed vegetables (Look at how well I’m eating, Mom!) and sample some of Erica and Jordan’s Greek Salads. After lunch, we decide to find this area called “Plaka,” which apparently is home to this cool flea market. While we soon realize that Plaka is a huge neighborhood, we stumble upon this really great shopping street, and buy souvenirs to our heart’s content.
After an exhausting day of ancient ruins and shopping (standard for a SAS summer day), we drag our exhausted selves to our big red double decker bus to take us home. Due to Hilary Clinton’s presence in Athens, our travel plans got a little bit messed up, but we finally made it back to the ship. After napping, I then go out for a nice dinner in Piraeus with Olivia, Katie, Erica, Kristin, and Hannah. It is this super fancy/ cute Greek restaurant which had the best service I have had in any country thus far. I only ordered some boiled zucchini because I kind of already ate on the ship, but it was still delicious. After that we went to this super cool “cocktail lounge bar thing,” but I was way too tired to enjoy myself fully, so I headed back to the ship to rest up for MYKONOS.
July 17th:
I wake up at the ungodly hour of like 5:30 to catch the 7:25 ferry to Mykonos. Due to my last minute purchase, I had to buy a Business Class ticket, which ended up being pretty cool. Shane and I head to the ferry, which is surprisingly extremely nice on the inside. It was very spacious and had great Air Conditioning (clearly very important). We stopped at two other islands before Mykonos, so I got to see some pretty cool places because my seat was located right in front of a window! So great :D. So we arrive in Mykonos and mass chaos ensues, because there are cars on the bottom and people on the top….so imagine that one scene in Avatar when the military car thing unloads all of the mechanical animals and such on Pandora in the beginning of the movie, and that’s pretty much what it looked like. So I am meeting up with Olivia at our hotel, but she flew so I had to get to our hotel somehow. There was a HUGE line for taxis because I realized later that there are ACTUALLY only 30 taxis on the island, so that is why the line was not moving. So I am waiting in line being confused and this guy comes up to me and is like oh Hotel Sofia (where I stayed)! 5 euros I take you. And I’m like awesome! But then I see his car…which is more of a truck ATV. Imagine the trucks that the yard people drive with like the open back and such….. and that is what he drove except mini sized. So I was like ummm definitely not going on that. However there were no taxis and he was still hassling me so then I was just like…. Okay fine. So I went with him and was like holding on to my backpack for dear life because I didn’t want it to fly out of the back of the mini truck. I finally get there safe and sound, which is a relief because half way through I realized he could have easily taken me or something. That moment will probably go on my list of the not smartest things I’ve ever done…sorry parentals! Haha
So I finally reach the hotel which is SO GORGEOUS and I try to check in…but Olivia isn’t there yet so I can’t do it without her. I quickly discover the free wifi and am very content in the AC (go figure). So Olivia arrives and we check in to the cutest little room ever. The hotel is so quaint and beautiful and the people working there are SO NICE and the room is sooooo white and great. I can’t really describe how cute it is without pictures… so I will upload some ASAP. One of the women bring us this delicious beverage because we have to wait for our room to be cleaned, but it was sooo appreciated because it was so delicious. Olivia and I drop off our stuff and immediately go to the pool to clearly use the free wi-fi, because we are technology deprived SASers. We run into some other SASers at the hotel, but otherwise we relax for a while waiting for Olivia’s friends (Kristin and Kim) to arrive as well. After they get there, we decide to go rent ATV’S!!! Best decision of the trip EVER. Not only were they so fun, but there is almost no other way to get around in Mykonos without them. So we get the ATV’s, stop to get gas (so cool), and then make our way over to Super Paradise (the gay beach of Mykonos). We have a great time riding through the countryside and taking it what Mykonos has to offer. I was officially in love with the island.
So Olivia and I are approaching Super Paradise, and we see this massive white villa with music blasting above us on a hill with people dancing and clearly having a great time. We were really upset that we didn’t know them….until we realized that we DID! There were a bunch of Sasers that rented this SICK villa and were hanging out and such. We drive our ATV (a bit of a struggle sesh) to the villa and it is absolutely breathtaking. I like to describe it that if Real World were to have a season in Mykonos, this is the house they would use. It was unreal. So we hang out at the villa for a few hours, until we head back to the hotel to get ready for the evening. We go back to the hotel to shower and stuff, and then ride our ATV’s to Paradise Beach, which is where MARTIN SOLVEIG was playing at Paradise Beach Club that night. If you don’t know who Martin Solveig is, he is the DJ that plays “Hello,” aka is AWESOME. So we stop at this restaurant across the way and eat more delicious Greek food and drink some delicious drinks. The manager loved us so much that he brought us free Champagne! It was perfect.
After that, we head to the beach where there is this huge dance party going on, so naturally I partake in the festivities. We hang out for a while because the club doesn’t even open its’ doors till 11:00 pm, so we head over around 12:30. We have a great time listening to Martin Solveig and dancing the night away. Afterwards, I have pizza and a crepe, which is a perfect end to a perfect day in paradise… Mykonos ☺.
July 18th:
Olivia, Kristin, and Kim all leave for Santorini today, and Katie, Shane, and Erica move from their hotel to mine! So we go rent another set of ATV’s and head over to Paradise beach. This beach is different from SUPER Paradise, because Super Paradise is the (super) FABULOUS gay beach. Anyways we laid on the sand for a while and while unknowingly at the time, I got absolutely eaten up by mosquitos. My legs are COVERED in bug bites and I am in the most pain everrrr. However I can’t let that ruin my fun (until I get back to the good old MV). So we head back to the hotel on our wonderful ATV’s and relax/ get ready for dinner. We head downtown to eat some delicious Greek food, and end up eating right on the water! It was great. We then go to a few bars but head home early.
July 19th:
The sad day comes when we have to leave Mykonos. So we wake up and head to our ferry for the sad ride home. We arrive home and I go on a furious hunt for some medicine for my bug bites. While I don’t find an open pharmacy, I luckily find something at a newspaper stand. That night, everyone decides that we are going to a karaoke bar in Piraeus and it was SO FUN. I can’t wait to post videos on facebook because the singing is quite impeccable. I’m very glad I went because where else will I see Americans invade a Greek karaoke bar and sing “Don’t Stop Believing” at the top of their lungs? Standard debauchery of course.
July 20th:
Per usual, the last day in port is normally reserved for shopping. I wish I could post a picture of my bag of souveniers, because it is actually unreal. Now get excited for your presents :D. hahah. Anywaysssss Erica, Jessica, and I all head to this street where we know where all the shops are and do some pretty good damage. Because this is the last port where Euros are used, we all had to make sure that we used them all up! So luckily we had like 7 streets of the exact same shop to spend them on. Sadly, our time has come to an end, but now onto BULGARIA!
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Croatia!!!!
So for those of you that haven’t been to Dubrovnik, you must put that on a list of things to see before you die. It is by far one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited, if not the most beautiful. Dubrovnik is a gem in itself, and that does not even include the breathtaking ocean views. The water is so clear that it is not uncommon to see the bottom of the Adriatic, and cliff jumping is considered the norm. I had no idea what to expect when we arrived in Croatia, I honestly had never even heard anything about Croatia until SAS. But I am sure glad I did. While this port was a bit more relaxing then Spain and Italy, it held more natural beauty than I could ever imagine. Dubrovnik is not called the “Pearl of the Adriatic” for no reason, it most definitely deserves that title. Anyways, on to my daily activities!
Monday, July 11th:
We arrived in Dubrovnik today, and I was excited to see what all of the hype was all about. So me and what I thought was a few friends decided to walk around the city, turned into quite the large group of us. While I love surrounding myself with lots of people, just a word to the wise, traveling with a large group could not be more annoying and stressful!! So while we did get a slow start, we finally arrived to the “Old City” which is pretty much the epitome of Dubrovnik. The entire city is surrounded by the city walls, and the ground is beautifully tiled with cobble stone that could be confused with tile… aka it was so smooth! It was so pretty. So we enter the old city and walk around, go to the oldest pharmacy in the world (I think) and walk into some churches and monestaries and such. But what is so cool about Dubrovnik is that there are all these little ally ways that are so picturesque and cute, and have the nicest little restaurants. So to get out of the heat, a group of us walked up one of the alleys that turned out to be quite residential, and was really beautiful and quaint.
After a while, the large group turned into just Olivia, Tim, and I. We found the second oldest synagogue in Europe (the first being Prague), and looked around the museum and the synagogue! It was cool to finally see some jewy-ness considering I had been in enough Cathedrals and Basilicas and what not to fulfill my life quota. The synagoge was small but it was so beautifully decorated. We talked to a rabbi that was there, so that was nice to hear his take on the Jewish communities in Croatia. Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, is where the majority of the Jews are located. After the synagogue I was instantly pulled into Michal Negrin (for those of you that have been to Israel…. You know what I’m saying) and had to look at the gorgeous jewelry. I made the mistake of not buying any jewelry in Israel, so I naturally had to redeem myself by buying some earrings in Croatia. :D They are so pink and sparkly!!! So great.
After my small heart attack of excitement, Olivia goes into a museum, and Tim and I decide to walk around and explore. We find this super cute marketplace that smells so strongly of lavender! All of the little stands are selling bags of lavender that makes the whole street smell great. We continue exploring and find ourselves at the bay outside of the walls and see the beauty that Dubrovnik truly holds. We take in the red roofed houses that top the rolling hills, dotted with purple flowers. The site truly was breathtaking. We walk around the outside of the walls before somehow finding our way back to meet with Olivia. We decide that it is lunch time, so we eat at a pizzeria (what else) and drink some delicious Croatian beer.
Afterwards, Olivia leaves to go to her villa but Tim and I still decide to walk the walls. It’s kind of hard to explain without posting pictures, but I will do the best I can. So Dubrovnik is completely surrounded by walls (imagine Great Wall of China-esqe) to protect it because It’s been involved in quite a few wars. I would be able to tell you if I paid attention in Global Studies, but I don’t…..so yeah. However you are allowed to walk on top of the wall, which essentially gives you a bird’s eye view of the city. We get some gelato (of course…. A scoop of “cookies” and “snickers” really made for a great afternoon snack) and head over to the walls. While the walls are beautiful, I realized that they are not for the athletically unfit. The stairs are very steep and the heat doesn’t help, but the views are definitely worth the sweat. So we walk around the whole wall, and realize that Dubrovnik is by far one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen. While on the walls, we see both of Dubrovnik’s well known “cliff jumping” bars. It is SO COOL. You walk to the bars and they are all outside obviously and you can buy a drink and then CLIFF JUMP into the sea. It’s so cool!!!! I never went to the cliff jumping bars but did experience a little bit of cliff (more like large rock) jumping. When I can post pictures, I will so you can understand more ☺.
We finish walking the walls and are beyond exhausted, so we start heading back to the ship. I got separated from the group I was walking with and got a little bit lost, which was scary, but ended up giving me a great walking tour of the harbor! Needless to say I was never so excited to see the MV explorer as I was that afternoon. I finally get back to the ship and start getting ready for the evening. We head out to dinner and I eat the most delicious risotto ever, and continue to soak up the rest of the evening in this beautiful city.
Tuesday, July 12:
I kind of take it easy today, and don’t really make it off the ship until about 2:30 pm. However Jess, Erica, and I try to find this marketplace (which we never found), but end up finding a super nice area instead! We take the bus to what we think is the marketplace, but end up in this super cute area with lots of restaurants and hotels and such. We meander down the area and head straight to the beach! The only unfortunate thing about Dubrovink is that there are no sandy beaches on the mainland, just on the Islands. So by beach, I really mean rocks that lead right into the water. We relax for the afternoon and then head back to the ship. Erica, Melissa, and I head back to that same area to grab some food, and to buy tickets for an island hopping cruise for the following day.
Wednesday, July 13:
Erica, Katie, Jess, Melissa, and I all go on this Island hopping boat tour that takes us to three islands around Dubrovnik. We go to Kolocep, Sipan, and then Laupid (idk how to spell that). The boat trip was so nice and soothing. We go to Kolocep for about 40 minutes, and then head back to the boat to head to Sipan. Kolocep had a very nice beach and a great place for relaxation, but Sipan wasn’t so much the same. Sipan was very hot, and not as beachy as we would have liked. However I ate a magnum bar (YUMMMMM) in Sipan so I can’t complain. We eat a delicious lunch on the boat, and then head over to Laupid. We get three hours to beach it up at Laupid, and we take full advantage of that. We head to the other side of the Island, which is apparently where the nicer beach is, and run into a bunch of SASers! We have a great time playing around in the water and cooling off from the disgusting heat. We then head back to the ship after our very relaxing day of Island hopping. We eat dinner on the ship, and start getting ready for our final night out in Croatia! SAS really likes to do everything together, so of course about 300ish of us go to the same club, which ends up being super fun!
Thursday, July 14:
Erica, Jordan Edelheit (not my roommate, who is Jordan Palisi), and I, head out to do some shopping and cliff jumping for our last day in Croatia. We stop at the grocery store located right next to our ship, and buy a baguette and some cheese to eat for breakfast/ lunch. We shop around and I buy my bracelet for the country (it’s super cool) and some post cards! We then find our way to the beach because sometimes Dubrovnik is SO HOT that you literally have to get in the water before you melt or something. So we go to this area where you can cliff jump….but by cliff jumping I mean jump from a small boulder hahaha. Unfortunately I got very nervous and it took me approximately 20 minutes to jump off the rock, but I finally did it and it was so fun!! The water was so perfect and you could see right down to the bottom. We spend some time treading in the water and then go on a desperate hunt to find some shade. We find a bench right on the “bay” (or whatever you call the area where all the boats are parked) and dig into our typical European lunch. The bread was so fresh and the cheese (which I don’t even like normally) was delicious. Jordan bought a chocolate bar earlier, but that turned into a nutella like state, so we spread that on our bread as well, and that is SO GOOD. After relaxing in the shade and taking in the last hours of Dubrovnik, Erica and I head back to the ship. I find an internet café before I have to leave, and get some much needed facebook time in ☺.
While Croatia was definitely a more relaxing port, It has definitely been one of my favorites so far. Now we have two more days at sea and we arrive in Greece on Sunday! Expect many Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants references ☺
Monday, July 11th:
We arrived in Dubrovnik today, and I was excited to see what all of the hype was all about. So me and what I thought was a few friends decided to walk around the city, turned into quite the large group of us. While I love surrounding myself with lots of people, just a word to the wise, traveling with a large group could not be more annoying and stressful!! So while we did get a slow start, we finally arrived to the “Old City” which is pretty much the epitome of Dubrovnik. The entire city is surrounded by the city walls, and the ground is beautifully tiled with cobble stone that could be confused with tile… aka it was so smooth! It was so pretty. So we enter the old city and walk around, go to the oldest pharmacy in the world (I think) and walk into some churches and monestaries and such. But what is so cool about Dubrovnik is that there are all these little ally ways that are so picturesque and cute, and have the nicest little restaurants. So to get out of the heat, a group of us walked up one of the alleys that turned out to be quite residential, and was really beautiful and quaint.
After a while, the large group turned into just Olivia, Tim, and I. We found the second oldest synagogue in Europe (the first being Prague), and looked around the museum and the synagogue! It was cool to finally see some jewy-ness considering I had been in enough Cathedrals and Basilicas and what not to fulfill my life quota. The synagoge was small but it was so beautifully decorated. We talked to a rabbi that was there, so that was nice to hear his take on the Jewish communities in Croatia. Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, is where the majority of the Jews are located. After the synagogue I was instantly pulled into Michal Negrin (for those of you that have been to Israel…. You know what I’m saying) and had to look at the gorgeous jewelry. I made the mistake of not buying any jewelry in Israel, so I naturally had to redeem myself by buying some earrings in Croatia. :D They are so pink and sparkly!!! So great.
After my small heart attack of excitement, Olivia goes into a museum, and Tim and I decide to walk around and explore. We find this super cute marketplace that smells so strongly of lavender! All of the little stands are selling bags of lavender that makes the whole street smell great. We continue exploring and find ourselves at the bay outside of the walls and see the beauty that Dubrovnik truly holds. We take in the red roofed houses that top the rolling hills, dotted with purple flowers. The site truly was breathtaking. We walk around the outside of the walls before somehow finding our way back to meet with Olivia. We decide that it is lunch time, so we eat at a pizzeria (what else) and drink some delicious Croatian beer.
Afterwards, Olivia leaves to go to her villa but Tim and I still decide to walk the walls. It’s kind of hard to explain without posting pictures, but I will do the best I can. So Dubrovnik is completely surrounded by walls (imagine Great Wall of China-esqe) to protect it because It’s been involved in quite a few wars. I would be able to tell you if I paid attention in Global Studies, but I don’t…..so yeah. However you are allowed to walk on top of the wall, which essentially gives you a bird’s eye view of the city. We get some gelato (of course…. A scoop of “cookies” and “snickers” really made for a great afternoon snack) and head over to the walls. While the walls are beautiful, I realized that they are not for the athletically unfit. The stairs are very steep and the heat doesn’t help, but the views are definitely worth the sweat. So we walk around the whole wall, and realize that Dubrovnik is by far one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen. While on the walls, we see both of Dubrovnik’s well known “cliff jumping” bars. It is SO COOL. You walk to the bars and they are all outside obviously and you can buy a drink and then CLIFF JUMP into the sea. It’s so cool!!!! I never went to the cliff jumping bars but did experience a little bit of cliff (more like large rock) jumping. When I can post pictures, I will so you can understand more ☺.
We finish walking the walls and are beyond exhausted, so we start heading back to the ship. I got separated from the group I was walking with and got a little bit lost, which was scary, but ended up giving me a great walking tour of the harbor! Needless to say I was never so excited to see the MV explorer as I was that afternoon. I finally get back to the ship and start getting ready for the evening. We head out to dinner and I eat the most delicious risotto ever, and continue to soak up the rest of the evening in this beautiful city.
Tuesday, July 12:
I kind of take it easy today, and don’t really make it off the ship until about 2:30 pm. However Jess, Erica, and I try to find this marketplace (which we never found), but end up finding a super nice area instead! We take the bus to what we think is the marketplace, but end up in this super cute area with lots of restaurants and hotels and such. We meander down the area and head straight to the beach! The only unfortunate thing about Dubrovink is that there are no sandy beaches on the mainland, just on the Islands. So by beach, I really mean rocks that lead right into the water. We relax for the afternoon and then head back to the ship. Erica, Melissa, and I head back to that same area to grab some food, and to buy tickets for an island hopping cruise for the following day.
Wednesday, July 13:
Erica, Katie, Jess, Melissa, and I all go on this Island hopping boat tour that takes us to three islands around Dubrovnik. We go to Kolocep, Sipan, and then Laupid (idk how to spell that). The boat trip was so nice and soothing. We go to Kolocep for about 40 minutes, and then head back to the boat to head to Sipan. Kolocep had a very nice beach and a great place for relaxation, but Sipan wasn’t so much the same. Sipan was very hot, and not as beachy as we would have liked. However I ate a magnum bar (YUMMMMM) in Sipan so I can’t complain. We eat a delicious lunch on the boat, and then head over to Laupid. We get three hours to beach it up at Laupid, and we take full advantage of that. We head to the other side of the Island, which is apparently where the nicer beach is, and run into a bunch of SASers! We have a great time playing around in the water and cooling off from the disgusting heat. We then head back to the ship after our very relaxing day of Island hopping. We eat dinner on the ship, and start getting ready for our final night out in Croatia! SAS really likes to do everything together, so of course about 300ish of us go to the same club, which ends up being super fun!
Thursday, July 14:
Erica, Jordan Edelheit (not my roommate, who is Jordan Palisi), and I, head out to do some shopping and cliff jumping for our last day in Croatia. We stop at the grocery store located right next to our ship, and buy a baguette and some cheese to eat for breakfast/ lunch. We shop around and I buy my bracelet for the country (it’s super cool) and some post cards! We then find our way to the beach because sometimes Dubrovnik is SO HOT that you literally have to get in the water before you melt or something. So we go to this area where you can cliff jump….but by cliff jumping I mean jump from a small boulder hahaha. Unfortunately I got very nervous and it took me approximately 20 minutes to jump off the rock, but I finally did it and it was so fun!! The water was so perfect and you could see right down to the bottom. We spend some time treading in the water and then go on a desperate hunt to find some shade. We find a bench right on the “bay” (or whatever you call the area where all the boats are parked) and dig into our typical European lunch. The bread was so fresh and the cheese (which I don’t even like normally) was delicious. Jordan bought a chocolate bar earlier, but that turned into a nutella like state, so we spread that on our bread as well, and that is SO GOOD. After relaxing in the shade and taking in the last hours of Dubrovnik, Erica and I head back to the ship. I find an internet café before I have to leave, and get some much needed facebook time in ☺.
While Croatia was definitely a more relaxing port, It has definitely been one of my favorites so far. Now we have two more days at sea and we arrive in Greece on Sunday! Expect many Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants references ☺
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Hola Barcelona/ Ciao Bella!!!
Barcelona/ Italy Blog Post
Hello Everyone! I know that it’s been a while since I’ve updated, but that’s because I’ve been traveling all around Spain and Barcelona. I have absolutely zero concept of time, but I know I was in Spain on June 27-30 and then in Italy on July 2-8. I will go through the general details of each day so you can live vicariously through me (obvs).
Monday, June 27th:
I arrive in the morning and walk around Barcelona on Las Ramblas (this huge touristy street with lots of street vendors and such) and walked literally like five miles to this beautiful cathedral called Le Sigrada Familia and it was SO breathtaking. Gaudi (an artist/ architect) started it but got killed in the middle of it so they've been continuing to build it for like over 50 years even though he's dead. It's really amazing though. Along the way we stopped to eat some Tapas and I had this delicious egg and potato omelet thing with Spanish beer and it was like mixed with Lemon and it was so good. I also ate something called Chocolate con churros, which is like melted chocolate mixed with milk and churros to dip it in and it was SO GOOD. I walked around with this girl Jordan (not my roommate who is also named Jordan) but she's Jewish and super awesome and this girl named Tyra. So then that night we get back to the boat and I see Olivia (one of the girls I went to Ibiza with) and she invites me to dinner at this Tapas place with a bunch of people. We go to dinner at like 9:15 and we don't get seated till 10:00!!! Except it was sooooooo fun and delicious! The restaurant is called Taller De Tapas and it was really fun. Dinner ended at like 11:30, so then afterwards we headed to a club (or Disco as Europeans call it) which was early for Barcelona, considering people don’t even start going out to clubs until around 1:30 am. While it was a late night, I definitely had a great time.
Tuesday, June 28th:
I wake up after hardly enough sleep to pack whatever I can fit into my northface backpack and head to the airport for our 12:00 flight. We arrive in Ibiza after an hour and were all exhausted, so we headed to our apartment/ hostel, which was surprisingly pretty nice, and take a nap. After our nap, me, Sam, and Olivia, meet up with my friend Paul, and his friends Nick and Natalia. We head to the other side of the Island, San Antonio to watch the sunset, which we ended up missing both nights ☹. After that, we walk up and down the center of San Antonio on a street that is pretty identical to Bourbon Street. I purchase a chicken baguette (SO GOOD) and eat while taking this crazy street in. We head over to a club called Es Paradis, where we are attending Fiesta Del Agua, which is essentially a water party. We are dancing and having a great time till about 5 am (crazy lifestyle I’m telling you), when the water starts flowing from the ceiling! There is a sunken area in the middle of the dance floor that basically turns into a pool for the last hour and a half of the night. There is definitely nothing like that in the states, but I’m glad I was able to experience it. It ended up being a great evening!
Wednesday, June 29th:
Slept in till 1:30 and then went to eat lunch at the “Haddock” aka the HARD ROCK café. We dined for a while and I drank coffee with Ice Cream in it and it was sooooooo good. While Olivia was having a nice conversation with the Canadians next to us, me and Sam headed to the beach to soak in some rays, and were shocked to find a lot of…..boobs! This was my first topless beach experience, which was a bit shocking but very “European” at the same time. We thought it was great. We also got yelled at for laying in lawn chairs and not paying for them, and apparently there was a huge sign that told us we needed to, but me and Sam had no idea. After the beach, we head to get ready for another crazy Ibiza night! We take the bus to the other side of the Island again, and dine at this delicious restaurant that was located right on the water. While it was a little pricey, the delicious Sangria was definitely worth it. We then head out to Space, where we see Armin Van Buren (insane) and Fedde Le Grand (Who I really liked) and a bunch of other DJ’s. It was SO AWESOME. I definitely need to go back to experience more of the insanity that is Ibiza. Who wants to come? :D
Thursday, June 30th :
We get back to the ship at around 8:00 am, so we naturally head to the dining hall to get some breakfast! I then sleep until 2 pm, and wake up to hang out with Herman and Nauzli (two of my AKPsi brothers)! I took a cab to Herman’s apartment where I meet him, Brittany Yary’s (another bro) sister, and her co-worker. We take the metro (I had no idea there was one….it def would have saved me a lot of money :/) back to Las Ramblas to meet up with Nauzli and Timpane (a bro who I met for the first time!) and go to the Catedral de Barcelona which was beyond beautiful. I had to start heading back to the ship, so I stopped to exchange my travelers checks and got insanely ripped off and probably got 100 less euros than I should have.
After Spain, we have one day in between on the ship before Italy. So on July 1st we had the Sea Olympics! The Sea Olympics were pretty fun and because my team’s color was purple, I very much enjoyed wearing my favorite color!! While it was fun, everyone was recovering from Spain and getting ready for Italy so it was a bit hectic on the ship.
Saturday, July 2:
WE ARRIVE IN ITALIA!!! I was very excited to be in Italy, even though it was in Naples, which I will get into more details later. Erica, Katie, Shane, Mia, Jordan (roomie), and I, wake up earlyish to head out to Pompeii! We struggle to find the metro train business, but we finally find it after following some other SASers. We take the metro to Pompeii and walk around the really cool city of ruins. However, it is quite warm, so we only last a few hours. After Pompeii, we head to Sorrento, which is the most BEAUTIFUL city ever. It is the beginning of the Amalfi Coast, so it is just breathtaking. We got a delicious lunch (lemme tell you, the food in Italy is literally to die for), drank some delicious wine, and relaxed in the shade for a while. We then walked around the city, got some amazing Gelato, and were planning on going to Capri. However, the ferry to Capri was a bit pricier than we expected, so we didn’t end up going. We took the bus back and spoke to some locals, who were so great to talk to. We stopped at this pizza place right outside of the Train Station, and this meal was probably the cheapest and most delicious in all of Naples. We were all a bit delirious with exhaustion, but it was really fun to just sit and eat some AMAZING Naples pizza. We start heading back to the ship, and on our way home, we had a bit of an altercation with a vespa. This guy was riding a vespa on the sidewalk (not as uncommon as one would think in Europe) and like was literally riding right through our group of friends. Us, being in a pizza coma didn’t really realize what was going on and before we knew it he almost ran me and Erica over while attempting to steal Katie’s purse. Luckily he wasn’t as successful as he would have liked to be, and only broke her strap but didn’t end up actually grabbing the purse. We were all definitely shaken up from that and all vowed that we hated Naples hahahah. We didn’t do anything that night because we were all exhausted and kind of scared
Sunday, July 3:
We woke up and the six of us that decided to travel around Italy together (Katie, Erica, Jessica, Rob (my neighbor), and Shane went to the Pompeii museum in Naples. We looked at all of the artifacts from Pompeii which was really cool to see the ancient statues and such. We then decided to eat lunch at this little restaurant that lured us in by saying, “Come in! Drink!” We assumed that they knew English but those four words were literally the only English that everyone in the restaurant knew. So it was definitely a bit of a struggle with the language barrier, especially when I said that we wanted plates, and the waitress thought that I meant ice. However we ate some decent spaghetti and survived the restaurant without too many problems. However, we realized that in italy, restaurants will often bring you food that you don’t order, and while you think it’s free, it most definitely isn’t. At this restaurant we went to, the waiter brought us these three huge plates of meat and canteloupe, and while it looked good, none of us were planning on eating it. So while me, the obnoxious American, tried to explain using my hands that we didn’t want it, they did not understand what we were saying so I had to resort to literally handing the plate back to the waiter and shaking my finger, “no.” I thought it was funny, but am definitely glad that we realized that because those three plates of food we weren’t going to eat would have cost us a whopping 15 euros….which is like 23 dollars ish. After lunch, we head to Sorrento again because we can’t stand to be in Naples any longer, and we walk around and get gelato. We head back to the ship around 5 to get ready for our night train to VENICE! We head to the train station in a rush because we were worried we were going to miss our train. We get there and the board says that our train is CANCELLED. We are freaking out because we don’t understand what that actually means, and we soon find out that the train is only delayed, but that it is delayed 90 minutes. So we sit around at the train station eating McDonalds (don’t judge me) because there is nothing else to do. We finally get on our train and it looks like Harry Potter! Well not really. Our group of six was separated into 4 and 2, and even though we thought we could all be in the same car, we were not so lucky. But, we hung out and talked for a while in one of the cars (and by car I mean compartment) until we got tired enough to fall asleep. I kept waking up in a panic because we had to make a connection and I kept worrying that we were going to miss it. Also, my “bed” was not the most comfortable and considering I slept with my valuables tied to me, it was a bit difficult to get comfortable. We arrive in Bologna (our connection) at like 5:30 am, and are barely awake. We then mosey onto the train and finally arrive in Venice!!
Monday, July 4th: HAPPY 4TH OF JULY (Even though we didn’t do anything American)
So because of the night train, I can’t really separate my days, soooooo sorry. Anywayssss we get to Venice with all of our stuff and start looking around for a hostel. We finally find a hotel which has AC/ fans/ and private bathrooms, so we consider ourselves likely. We put our stuff in storage because our room is not ready yet, freshen up a bit, and then head out to enjoy Venice! I get an espresso (not as large as I wanted….I clearly was confused) and a Croissant which is a typical Italian breakfast. We then start walking around the city in search of the Grand Canal! Which we kind of stumbled upon. We were taking in the beauty of the city, and realized how lucky we were to actually be seeing Venice. We then find a gondola and I convince him to give us a ride for 10 euro a piece (20 euro cheaper at least than pretty much everyone else) and he does! We were so happy that we were riding in a gondola and it was definitely worth the 10 euros. We then eat at this delicious place that our gondola driver (or whatever) recommended, and ate and relaxed and drank wine and had a great relaxing lunch. We finish and decide to go to this famous square, St. Mark Piazza or whatever, get some gelato and decide to go home. Except for the fact that we got SO LOST. Venice is not easily navigatable so we got really lost and the 20 minute walk took us like an hour. We go take naps and shower, and go to this American-esqu (kind of) pizza place because it has free wi-fi. The food was pretty good, but we just wanted to take advantage of the free wi-fi, that wasn’t even very reliable. We then go back to our hotel, and Erica and I decide to walk around the city ourselves. However, Venice does not have a very hoppin night life, so we really just walked around and talked because there wasn’t much to do.
Tuesday, July 5
We wake up and do some SERIOUS shopping in Venice (well I do…) and soak up the rest of the city. Oh, I forgot that me and Rob went to go find the Jewish Ghetto which really turned out to be just kind of an empty square, but it was cool to see Hebrew written on the buildings. We then stopped to get lunch and I ate an entire pizza (oops hahahah) which was DELICIOUS before we meet up with the rest of the crew to take the train to Rome. Because we are cheapos, we take the 6 hour train ride vs. the 3 hour one because its 30 euros cheaper. So we get on the train with some bottles of wine so that we can entertain ourselves during the six hours. We end up having a great time, even though six hours did seem like a pretty long time when we were aching to get to Rome. We finally arrive in Rome and I take out my handy dandy guide book (Let’s Go! Europe….Seriously I would recommend that to all students) to find this hostel called Alessandro’s Palace. I correctly navigate us to the hostel, and we book our rooms! The hostel was super nice, had its’ own bar, with free pizza at 8:30 and complimentary breakfast and coffee in the morning. We also got free wi-fi and the six of us got our own room, which was super nice. We unload our stuff, get some free pizza, and then shower and get ready for dinner. We finally make it out to dinner at around 10ish, and go to this street called Campo De Fiori (thanks Hadas ☺). We picked the first restaurant we saw, and it was SO DELICIOUS. I literally had the best Pesto sauce of my entire life and could have eaten a whole freaking bowl of it. Yum yum yum yum. After that we go to this nightclub/bar thing where we hang out for a bit before we all headed home for the evening. But as a side note,
Wednesday, June 6:
Before I continue, I must let everyone know that I LOVE ROME. I fell in love with the city because I love how modern meets ancient, and it is absolutely full of life. Okay now….We wake up early (which was only a good idea in theory….hahahah) to do some serious Roman Site seeing. However, none of us know where we are going! So we start randomly walking around Rome until we find this monument which I thought were the Spanish steps, but were definitely not. It was a monument dedicated to the first king of Italy……. But still very beautiful! We then walk among some ruins (so great….I love ruins) to find the Coliseum!! It was so great and naturally I sang “This is what dreams are made of” on my way to reenact the Lizzie McGuire movie. We walk around the Coliseum because we were too cheap and tired to want to wait in line to go inside. We run into some Gladiators and one of them ends up being Israeli! So we get the super touristy gladiator picture foooo free. Yeeee. We then go to find food, and unfortunately we had our worst meal ever in Italy. We went to this restaurant that was run by Indians, so that was mistake number one. The food looked like we could have heated it up ourselves, and it was basically a huge rip off. So a lesson to everyone out there, don’t freaking eat at restaurants right next to huge tourist monuments! They are overpriced and not good at all. So then we continue on our way and make our way to the Spanish steps and the Trevi fountain! We struggled to find them, but luckily we found them with relativity no difficulty.
The coolest thing about Rome is how these ancient monuments are just located in the middle of a modern city. Like the Spanish steps are just at the end of this really nice shopping street, and the trevi fountain is kind of hidden within some buildings. And while they were both so beautiful, there were SO MANY TOURISTS, so it was a bit overwhelming. Then after the Spanish steps, we naturally went to go eat Gelato because I ate it every day in Italy… yum! Then we start making our trek to the Vatican… or to the metro to go to Vatican city. So we got there and me being Jewish obvi I didn’t think that I would like the St. Peter’s Basicila, but I was shockingly surprised. There was a small line but we didn’t really have to wait because we kind of squeezed our way to the front before the doors closed. I expected that I wouldn’t be interested, but I was actually so BLOWN AWAY. The cathedral was sooooo intricate and so beautiful and so breathtaking. I’m not one for churches or anything, but I feel like I could have spent all day looking at the intricate art and architecture. It is just a building that can’t be adequately represented in photos, but really needs to be seen in person. Anyways, after St. Peter’s Basilica, we went back to the hostel to relax because we were SUPER tired. We all relaxed and then started getting ready to go out to dinner.
The bartender at the hostel showed us this area that is pretty much only for the locals and has the most authentic Italian restaurants in all of Rome! So we took a bus which was actually an awful idea because it was SO CROWDED and awful. We were like sardines stuffed on the bus, and it was definitely not a fun experience. But after we finally arrived at the stop, we got off and started wandering around the streets looking for the best restaurant. So we turned down some alleys and found this SUPER romantic quaint little restaurant that had roses on all the tables and a guitar player playing outside. So we decide to eat there and I have a hard time ordering because the pastas aren’t very descriptive… well the menu is in four different languages, and the English section says the type of pasta but like what type it is. So it’s confusing but I ordered plain old Spaghetti and tomato sauce which was still beyond delicious. And let me tell you, the parmesan cheese was SO GOOD and I’ve never really been a huge parmesan cheese fan. But it was delicious and the best I’ve ever had probably. After dinner, the waiter came and told us that there was a wishing well downstairs, so we all went downstairs into the basement and everyone pretty much had a very emotional experience. It was so beautiful and just not even explainable. It just added to my love for Rome, especially the ancient meets modern part of it.
After the wishing well, we walk around the neighborhood and decide to walk next to the river, which is a beautiful area. When we get down there, there was some sort of promenade with restaurants, bars, shops, etc. we stopped at this hookah bar and smoked some hookah and drank more wine right by the river, and it was a really great evening for everyone. Me and Jessica went on a walk farther down, and we saw this Acapella group perform and they were so talented they gave me tingles. Then we started walking home (terrible idea) and the 20-30 minute walk ended up taking about 2 hours. Considering I was falling asleep at the hookah bar, I was not very happy to still be walking. We finally made it home and slept very soundly.
Thursday, June 7:
Wow, I can’t believe I wrote so much about Wednesday! Crazy that you can do so much in one day….. (smart side comment obviously) But anywayyyyyyyys today we wake up and go to the Sistine chapel! We wait in line for about an hour which isn’t sooo bad….except that when we left the Sistine chapel there was no line at all. But we wait in line and I buy a scarf from some woman who is selling them and I buy it for 3 euros instead of 8, so clearly I’m a pro haggler Yeeeeee. Then we get in and walk through the museum and again I am shocked by the beauty of the Sistine Chapel. It really was breathtaking minus the whole being shuffled like cattle to get into the building because there are so many freaking tourists!!! Ah I definitely could not deal with the tourists any longer than I had to. After the Sistine chapel, we went to get lunch at a decent place and then went to the Panthenon! The Panthenon was the last touristy site that we visited, and it was so cool. They have a hole in the dome of the roof and apparently when it snows it becomes like a snow globe inside the building, and is really a site to see. After that some of the people in our group had to head back to the ship from some field trips, so we all headed to the Trevi fountain again and then split ways. Jessica and I went shopping where I spent way too much money (clearly), and then went back to the hostel. We went out to this “take away” pizza place across the street for dinner where I had this delicious sun dried tomato pizza and some traditional margarita pizza…and what was cool was that they weighed the slices to see how much to charge you! It was like fro yo for pizza. Then afterwards we went to Campo De Fiori to go out to some bars, but it was not as popular as we thought. However we walked around and met some people and found a whole in the wall bar which was filled with only Italians so that was really fun!!! Overall it was a fun experience even though we did not end up going to our original destination. Me and Jessica ended up meeting some Italians, so it’s always fun meeting up with some locals and talking to them and getting to know them and such.
Friday, June 8:
Sadly this is are last day in Rome!!! I was so sad to leave the city that I truly did fall in love with from the beginning. But, I was definitely ready to stop living out of my backpack and finally spread out my stuff on the ship. Jessica and I woke up and had an espresso and croissant and walked around the neighborhood of where our hotel was and soaked up all the time we had left in Rome. We then went to the train station to catch our train which ended up being 2 hours delayed, but we finally made it safely back to the ship.
Considering I don’t even want to go back through and read this whole blog/ even check for spelling errors (please don’t mind those), I will be shocked if you actually read it all the way through all the way to the bottom! Buttttt now you have a play by play for my Spain and Italy trip and tomorrow I leave for Croatia, and I will update you on that when I return ☺.
Hello Everyone! I know that it’s been a while since I’ve updated, but that’s because I’ve been traveling all around Spain and Barcelona. I have absolutely zero concept of time, but I know I was in Spain on June 27-30 and then in Italy on July 2-8. I will go through the general details of each day so you can live vicariously through me (obvs).
Monday, June 27th:
I arrive in the morning and walk around Barcelona on Las Ramblas (this huge touristy street with lots of street vendors and such) and walked literally like five miles to this beautiful cathedral called Le Sigrada Familia and it was SO breathtaking. Gaudi (an artist/ architect) started it but got killed in the middle of it so they've been continuing to build it for like over 50 years even though he's dead. It's really amazing though. Along the way we stopped to eat some Tapas and I had this delicious egg and potato omelet thing with Spanish beer and it was like mixed with Lemon and it was so good. I also ate something called Chocolate con churros, which is like melted chocolate mixed with milk and churros to dip it in and it was SO GOOD. I walked around with this girl Jordan (not my roommate who is also named Jordan) but she's Jewish and super awesome and this girl named Tyra. So then that night we get back to the boat and I see Olivia (one of the girls I went to Ibiza with) and she invites me to dinner at this Tapas place with a bunch of people. We go to dinner at like 9:15 and we don't get seated till 10:00!!! Except it was sooooooo fun and delicious! The restaurant is called Taller De Tapas and it was really fun. Dinner ended at like 11:30, so then afterwards we headed to a club (or Disco as Europeans call it) which was early for Barcelona, considering people don’t even start going out to clubs until around 1:30 am. While it was a late night, I definitely had a great time.
Tuesday, June 28th:
I wake up after hardly enough sleep to pack whatever I can fit into my northface backpack and head to the airport for our 12:00 flight. We arrive in Ibiza after an hour and were all exhausted, so we headed to our apartment/ hostel, which was surprisingly pretty nice, and take a nap. After our nap, me, Sam, and Olivia, meet up with my friend Paul, and his friends Nick and Natalia. We head to the other side of the Island, San Antonio to watch the sunset, which we ended up missing both nights ☹. After that, we walk up and down the center of San Antonio on a street that is pretty identical to Bourbon Street. I purchase a chicken baguette (SO GOOD) and eat while taking this crazy street in. We head over to a club called Es Paradis, where we are attending Fiesta Del Agua, which is essentially a water party. We are dancing and having a great time till about 5 am (crazy lifestyle I’m telling you), when the water starts flowing from the ceiling! There is a sunken area in the middle of the dance floor that basically turns into a pool for the last hour and a half of the night. There is definitely nothing like that in the states, but I’m glad I was able to experience it. It ended up being a great evening!
Wednesday, June 29th:
Slept in till 1:30 and then went to eat lunch at the “Haddock” aka the HARD ROCK café. We dined for a while and I drank coffee with Ice Cream in it and it was sooooooo good. While Olivia was having a nice conversation with the Canadians next to us, me and Sam headed to the beach to soak in some rays, and were shocked to find a lot of…..boobs! This was my first topless beach experience, which was a bit shocking but very “European” at the same time. We thought it was great. We also got yelled at for laying in lawn chairs and not paying for them, and apparently there was a huge sign that told us we needed to, but me and Sam had no idea. After the beach, we head to get ready for another crazy Ibiza night! We take the bus to the other side of the Island again, and dine at this delicious restaurant that was located right on the water. While it was a little pricey, the delicious Sangria was definitely worth it. We then head out to Space, where we see Armin Van Buren (insane) and Fedde Le Grand (Who I really liked) and a bunch of other DJ’s. It was SO AWESOME. I definitely need to go back to experience more of the insanity that is Ibiza. Who wants to come? :D
Thursday, June 30th :
We get back to the ship at around 8:00 am, so we naturally head to the dining hall to get some breakfast! I then sleep until 2 pm, and wake up to hang out with Herman and Nauzli (two of my AKPsi brothers)! I took a cab to Herman’s apartment where I meet him, Brittany Yary’s (another bro) sister, and her co-worker. We take the metro (I had no idea there was one….it def would have saved me a lot of money :/) back to Las Ramblas to meet up with Nauzli and Timpane (a bro who I met for the first time!) and go to the Catedral de Barcelona which was beyond beautiful. I had to start heading back to the ship, so I stopped to exchange my travelers checks and got insanely ripped off and probably got 100 less euros than I should have.
After Spain, we have one day in between on the ship before Italy. So on July 1st we had the Sea Olympics! The Sea Olympics were pretty fun and because my team’s color was purple, I very much enjoyed wearing my favorite color!! While it was fun, everyone was recovering from Spain and getting ready for Italy so it was a bit hectic on the ship.
Saturday, July 2:
WE ARRIVE IN ITALIA!!! I was very excited to be in Italy, even though it was in Naples, which I will get into more details later. Erica, Katie, Shane, Mia, Jordan (roomie), and I, wake up earlyish to head out to Pompeii! We struggle to find the metro train business, but we finally find it after following some other SASers. We take the metro to Pompeii and walk around the really cool city of ruins. However, it is quite warm, so we only last a few hours. After Pompeii, we head to Sorrento, which is the most BEAUTIFUL city ever. It is the beginning of the Amalfi Coast, so it is just breathtaking. We got a delicious lunch (lemme tell you, the food in Italy is literally to die for), drank some delicious wine, and relaxed in the shade for a while. We then walked around the city, got some amazing Gelato, and were planning on going to Capri. However, the ferry to Capri was a bit pricier than we expected, so we didn’t end up going. We took the bus back and spoke to some locals, who were so great to talk to. We stopped at this pizza place right outside of the Train Station, and this meal was probably the cheapest and most delicious in all of Naples. We were all a bit delirious with exhaustion, but it was really fun to just sit and eat some AMAZING Naples pizza. We start heading back to the ship, and on our way home, we had a bit of an altercation with a vespa. This guy was riding a vespa on the sidewalk (not as uncommon as one would think in Europe) and like was literally riding right through our group of friends. Us, being in a pizza coma didn’t really realize what was going on and before we knew it he almost ran me and Erica over while attempting to steal Katie’s purse. Luckily he wasn’t as successful as he would have liked to be, and only broke her strap but didn’t end up actually grabbing the purse. We were all definitely shaken up from that and all vowed that we hated Naples hahahah. We didn’t do anything that night because we were all exhausted and kind of scared
Sunday, July 3:
We woke up and the six of us that decided to travel around Italy together (Katie, Erica, Jessica, Rob (my neighbor), and Shane went to the Pompeii museum in Naples. We looked at all of the artifacts from Pompeii which was really cool to see the ancient statues and such. We then decided to eat lunch at this little restaurant that lured us in by saying, “Come in! Drink!” We assumed that they knew English but those four words were literally the only English that everyone in the restaurant knew. So it was definitely a bit of a struggle with the language barrier, especially when I said that we wanted plates, and the waitress thought that I meant ice. However we ate some decent spaghetti and survived the restaurant without too many problems. However, we realized that in italy, restaurants will often bring you food that you don’t order, and while you think it’s free, it most definitely isn’t. At this restaurant we went to, the waiter brought us these three huge plates of meat and canteloupe, and while it looked good, none of us were planning on eating it. So while me, the obnoxious American, tried to explain using my hands that we didn’t want it, they did not understand what we were saying so I had to resort to literally handing the plate back to the waiter and shaking my finger, “no.” I thought it was funny, but am definitely glad that we realized that because those three plates of food we weren’t going to eat would have cost us a whopping 15 euros….which is like 23 dollars ish. After lunch, we head to Sorrento again because we can’t stand to be in Naples any longer, and we walk around and get gelato. We head back to the ship around 5 to get ready for our night train to VENICE! We head to the train station in a rush because we were worried we were going to miss our train. We get there and the board says that our train is CANCELLED. We are freaking out because we don’t understand what that actually means, and we soon find out that the train is only delayed, but that it is delayed 90 minutes. So we sit around at the train station eating McDonalds (don’t judge me) because there is nothing else to do. We finally get on our train and it looks like Harry Potter! Well not really. Our group of six was separated into 4 and 2, and even though we thought we could all be in the same car, we were not so lucky. But, we hung out and talked for a while in one of the cars (and by car I mean compartment) until we got tired enough to fall asleep. I kept waking up in a panic because we had to make a connection and I kept worrying that we were going to miss it. Also, my “bed” was not the most comfortable and considering I slept with my valuables tied to me, it was a bit difficult to get comfortable. We arrive in Bologna (our connection) at like 5:30 am, and are barely awake. We then mosey onto the train and finally arrive in Venice!!
Monday, July 4th: HAPPY 4TH OF JULY (Even though we didn’t do anything American)
So because of the night train, I can’t really separate my days, soooooo sorry. Anywayssss we get to Venice with all of our stuff and start looking around for a hostel. We finally find a hotel which has AC/ fans/ and private bathrooms, so we consider ourselves likely. We put our stuff in storage because our room is not ready yet, freshen up a bit, and then head out to enjoy Venice! I get an espresso (not as large as I wanted….I clearly was confused) and a Croissant which is a typical Italian breakfast. We then start walking around the city in search of the Grand Canal! Which we kind of stumbled upon. We were taking in the beauty of the city, and realized how lucky we were to actually be seeing Venice. We then find a gondola and I convince him to give us a ride for 10 euro a piece (20 euro cheaper at least than pretty much everyone else) and he does! We were so happy that we were riding in a gondola and it was definitely worth the 10 euros. We then eat at this delicious place that our gondola driver (or whatever) recommended, and ate and relaxed and drank wine and had a great relaxing lunch. We finish and decide to go to this famous square, St. Mark Piazza or whatever, get some gelato and decide to go home. Except for the fact that we got SO LOST. Venice is not easily navigatable so we got really lost and the 20 minute walk took us like an hour. We go take naps and shower, and go to this American-esqu (kind of) pizza place because it has free wi-fi. The food was pretty good, but we just wanted to take advantage of the free wi-fi, that wasn’t even very reliable. We then go back to our hotel, and Erica and I decide to walk around the city ourselves. However, Venice does not have a very hoppin night life, so we really just walked around and talked because there wasn’t much to do.
Tuesday, July 5
We wake up and do some SERIOUS shopping in Venice (well I do…) and soak up the rest of the city. Oh, I forgot that me and Rob went to go find the Jewish Ghetto which really turned out to be just kind of an empty square, but it was cool to see Hebrew written on the buildings. We then stopped to get lunch and I ate an entire pizza (oops hahahah) which was DELICIOUS before we meet up with the rest of the crew to take the train to Rome. Because we are cheapos, we take the 6 hour train ride vs. the 3 hour one because its 30 euros cheaper. So we get on the train with some bottles of wine so that we can entertain ourselves during the six hours. We end up having a great time, even though six hours did seem like a pretty long time when we were aching to get to Rome. We finally arrive in Rome and I take out my handy dandy guide book (Let’s Go! Europe….Seriously I would recommend that to all students) to find this hostel called Alessandro’s Palace. I correctly navigate us to the hostel, and we book our rooms! The hostel was super nice, had its’ own bar, with free pizza at 8:30 and complimentary breakfast and coffee in the morning. We also got free wi-fi and the six of us got our own room, which was super nice. We unload our stuff, get some free pizza, and then shower and get ready for dinner. We finally make it out to dinner at around 10ish, and go to this street called Campo De Fiori (thanks Hadas ☺). We picked the first restaurant we saw, and it was SO DELICIOUS. I literally had the best Pesto sauce of my entire life and could have eaten a whole freaking bowl of it. Yum yum yum yum. After that we go to this nightclub/bar thing where we hang out for a bit before we all headed home for the evening. But as a side note,
Wednesday, June 6:
Before I continue, I must let everyone know that I LOVE ROME. I fell in love with the city because I love how modern meets ancient, and it is absolutely full of life. Okay now….We wake up early (which was only a good idea in theory….hahahah) to do some serious Roman Site seeing. However, none of us know where we are going! So we start randomly walking around Rome until we find this monument which I thought were the Spanish steps, but were definitely not. It was a monument dedicated to the first king of Italy……. But still very beautiful! We then walk among some ruins (so great….I love ruins) to find the Coliseum!! It was so great and naturally I sang “This is what dreams are made of” on my way to reenact the Lizzie McGuire movie. We walk around the Coliseum because we were too cheap and tired to want to wait in line to go inside. We run into some Gladiators and one of them ends up being Israeli! So we get the super touristy gladiator picture foooo free. Yeeee. We then go to find food, and unfortunately we had our worst meal ever in Italy. We went to this restaurant that was run by Indians, so that was mistake number one. The food looked like we could have heated it up ourselves, and it was basically a huge rip off. So a lesson to everyone out there, don’t freaking eat at restaurants right next to huge tourist monuments! They are overpriced and not good at all. So then we continue on our way and make our way to the Spanish steps and the Trevi fountain! We struggled to find them, but luckily we found them with relativity no difficulty.
The coolest thing about Rome is how these ancient monuments are just located in the middle of a modern city. Like the Spanish steps are just at the end of this really nice shopping street, and the trevi fountain is kind of hidden within some buildings. And while they were both so beautiful, there were SO MANY TOURISTS, so it was a bit overwhelming. Then after the Spanish steps, we naturally went to go eat Gelato because I ate it every day in Italy… yum! Then we start making our trek to the Vatican… or to the metro to go to Vatican city. So we got there and me being Jewish obvi I didn’t think that I would like the St. Peter’s Basicila, but I was shockingly surprised. There was a small line but we didn’t really have to wait because we kind of squeezed our way to the front before the doors closed. I expected that I wouldn’t be interested, but I was actually so BLOWN AWAY. The cathedral was sooooo intricate and so beautiful and so breathtaking. I’m not one for churches or anything, but I feel like I could have spent all day looking at the intricate art and architecture. It is just a building that can’t be adequately represented in photos, but really needs to be seen in person. Anyways, after St. Peter’s Basilica, we went back to the hostel to relax because we were SUPER tired. We all relaxed and then started getting ready to go out to dinner.
The bartender at the hostel showed us this area that is pretty much only for the locals and has the most authentic Italian restaurants in all of Rome! So we took a bus which was actually an awful idea because it was SO CROWDED and awful. We were like sardines stuffed on the bus, and it was definitely not a fun experience. But after we finally arrived at the stop, we got off and started wandering around the streets looking for the best restaurant. So we turned down some alleys and found this SUPER romantic quaint little restaurant that had roses on all the tables and a guitar player playing outside. So we decide to eat there and I have a hard time ordering because the pastas aren’t very descriptive… well the menu is in four different languages, and the English section says the type of pasta but like what type it is. So it’s confusing but I ordered plain old Spaghetti and tomato sauce which was still beyond delicious. And let me tell you, the parmesan cheese was SO GOOD and I’ve never really been a huge parmesan cheese fan. But it was delicious and the best I’ve ever had probably. After dinner, the waiter came and told us that there was a wishing well downstairs, so we all went downstairs into the basement and everyone pretty much had a very emotional experience. It was so beautiful and just not even explainable. It just added to my love for Rome, especially the ancient meets modern part of it.
After the wishing well, we walk around the neighborhood and decide to walk next to the river, which is a beautiful area. When we get down there, there was some sort of promenade with restaurants, bars, shops, etc. we stopped at this hookah bar and smoked some hookah and drank more wine right by the river, and it was a really great evening for everyone. Me and Jessica went on a walk farther down, and we saw this Acapella group perform and they were so talented they gave me tingles. Then we started walking home (terrible idea) and the 20-30 minute walk ended up taking about 2 hours. Considering I was falling asleep at the hookah bar, I was not very happy to still be walking. We finally made it home and slept very soundly.
Thursday, June 7:
Wow, I can’t believe I wrote so much about Wednesday! Crazy that you can do so much in one day….. (smart side comment obviously) But anywayyyyyyyys today we wake up and go to the Sistine chapel! We wait in line for about an hour which isn’t sooo bad….except that when we left the Sistine chapel there was no line at all. But we wait in line and I buy a scarf from some woman who is selling them and I buy it for 3 euros instead of 8, so clearly I’m a pro haggler Yeeeeee. Then we get in and walk through the museum and again I am shocked by the beauty of the Sistine Chapel. It really was breathtaking minus the whole being shuffled like cattle to get into the building because there are so many freaking tourists!!! Ah I definitely could not deal with the tourists any longer than I had to. After the Sistine chapel, we went to get lunch at a decent place and then went to the Panthenon! The Panthenon was the last touristy site that we visited, and it was so cool. They have a hole in the dome of the roof and apparently when it snows it becomes like a snow globe inside the building, and is really a site to see. After that some of the people in our group had to head back to the ship from some field trips, so we all headed to the Trevi fountain again and then split ways. Jessica and I went shopping where I spent way too much money (clearly), and then went back to the hostel. We went out to this “take away” pizza place across the street for dinner where I had this delicious sun dried tomato pizza and some traditional margarita pizza…and what was cool was that they weighed the slices to see how much to charge you! It was like fro yo for pizza. Then afterwards we went to Campo De Fiori to go out to some bars, but it was not as popular as we thought. However we walked around and met some people and found a whole in the wall bar which was filled with only Italians so that was really fun!!! Overall it was a fun experience even though we did not end up going to our original destination. Me and Jessica ended up meeting some Italians, so it’s always fun meeting up with some locals and talking to them and getting to know them and such.
Friday, June 8:
Sadly this is are last day in Rome!!! I was so sad to leave the city that I truly did fall in love with from the beginning. But, I was definitely ready to stop living out of my backpack and finally spread out my stuff on the ship. Jessica and I woke up and had an espresso and croissant and walked around the neighborhood of where our hotel was and soaked up all the time we had left in Rome. We then went to the train station to catch our train which ended up being 2 hours delayed, but we finally made it safely back to the ship.
Considering I don’t even want to go back through and read this whole blog/ even check for spelling errors (please don’t mind those), I will be shocked if you actually read it all the way through all the way to the bottom! Buttttt now you have a play by play for my Spain and Italy trip and tomorrow I leave for Croatia, and I will update you on that when I return ☺.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
I'M ON A BOAT (correction: Ship)
Hello everyone! So I know I haven't written in a while, because the Internet here is noooo bueno and you have to pay for it and I am scared to use my minutes! But this is now the fifth full day on the ship, but it feels like I've been on this ship foreverrrr! Like you know when you’re at summer camp and every day feels like a week? That's exactly how it is here. I pretty much have a set schedule, so I will explain it all here!
I wake up at around 8:10 when my roommate Jordan wakes me up. I roll out of bed so we can leave the cabin in time for breakfast, which ends at 8:30, so naturally we roll up at around 8:25. I then eat breakfast which consists of the same thing everyday. There are potatoes, runny scrambled eggs, some type of omelet that is also made with runny eggs, a mystery meat, French toast, oatmeal or something similar, fruit, danishes, bagels and or toast and of course coffee. That might sound good but considering it's the same thing everyday, it gets really boring, oh I forgot to add that there are hard boiled eggs. My breakfast consists of hardboiled eggs, toast with peanut butter (sooooo crucial) coffee ( just as important) and cereal normally to eat or take it as contraband back to my room because we aren't allowed to take food from the dining room but naturally I feel the need to.
After breakfast we go back to our room and get ready for our classes at 9:20. Jordan has some awful Econ class and I have global studies which is where I'm writing this blog post. It's the class that everyone is required to take, and it's pretty boring. Hence why I'm not paying attention. It's all about the Mediterranean so it's kindaaaa interesting but normally not.
So after global studies I go to the gym at 11. You have to sign up but a lot of times people don't go at the time they sign up for, so I just kind of show up. I work out and then do my stretching routine on the deck which is awesome. Stretching outside definitely trumps stretching inside. Depending on if I'm planning on laying out later in the day,I might or might not shower. I then meet my group of friends for lunch at 12:15 for lunch. If you think my rant about breakfast was long, GET READY for the other meals.
So SAS (semester at sea) has a strange obsession with potatoes. Lunch and dinner always have potatoes!!!!! But in addition to potatoes, there is some variety of pasta, rice, mystery meat, salad, steamed vegetables, soup of some sort, sometimes a hummus wrap if I'm lucky and a questionable dessert that is good on occasion. The meals (all on different days... You can't have all the good food on one day, it would just be a crisis) that were the most exciting included rice with chicken in it, fried rice with eggs in it, hummus and lettuce wraps, and these delicious devils food cake brownies that I put peanut butter on and it was like a Reese’s brownie and def top desert on the ship so far. So for every meal I'll have salad and rice, but last night I hit a wall and just couldn't eat anything in the dining hall so I had a PB and banana sandwich. There's a grill that serves pretty good food but you have to pay for it so you need to make sure that you don't eat at it everyyyyy day. The reason I'm going on about the food is because it is just soo terrible!!!!!! And like its just the same thing everyday and ive never eaten so much salad in my life!!! No joke.
Okay so now after lunch, I either read for class or lay out by the pool ( except not today because it's cloudy) until 2:55 when I have my intercultural communication class. It's kinda boring but kinda okay because ive never taken a communication class before so I like learning about the different theories. I also made a friend with some girl yesterday so that's good because there are a lot of serious beezies on this boat. Then right after intercultural comm, I have my water sanitation class. Originally I was going to drop because like, water sanitation? Come on that's boring. But the teacher is a substitute from the previous voyage and js awesome. Because he makes the class a lot more ISCORy (for the non-aztecs reading my blog, ISCOR is my major and it stands for International Security and Conflict Resolution) and I like that. He's great. Also there are actual boys in that class, and with the 75% girls vs 25% boys, you can imagine the conflict.
So moving on..... Most of my friends have reading to do, but because all my classes are pass/ fail, it's really hard to motivate myself to do work. So I don't! Then after class I have dinner at 6:15 with the same group from lunch ( my roommate Jordan, Jessica Christman, and these two awesome girls Katie and Erica and occasionally other people). Dinner is the same as lunch pretty much, so normally I just drink wine instead of eating. I'm ONLY kidding but perhaps while in other countries, I will do that :).
After dinner is normally do whatever you want. People congregate on the deck, and sometimes it's daunting to meet new people, but that's what you gotta do! Okay global studies is over and now I'm going to the gym :). I will post more later, especially when I'm in the countries and have wifi!!!
In case you were wondering about the title, it's because we aren't allowed to call the MV explorer ( my new home) a boat because it's a ship. It's kind of a funny joke
I wake up at around 8:10 when my roommate Jordan wakes me up. I roll out of bed so we can leave the cabin in time for breakfast, which ends at 8:30, so naturally we roll up at around 8:25. I then eat breakfast which consists of the same thing everyday. There are potatoes, runny scrambled eggs, some type of omelet that is also made with runny eggs, a mystery meat, French toast, oatmeal or something similar, fruit, danishes, bagels and or toast and of course coffee. That might sound good but considering it's the same thing everyday, it gets really boring, oh I forgot to add that there are hard boiled eggs. My breakfast consists of hardboiled eggs, toast with peanut butter (sooooo crucial) coffee ( just as important) and cereal normally to eat or take it as contraband back to my room because we aren't allowed to take food from the dining room but naturally I feel the need to.
After breakfast we go back to our room and get ready for our classes at 9:20. Jordan has some awful Econ class and I have global studies which is where I'm writing this blog post. It's the class that everyone is required to take, and it's pretty boring. Hence why I'm not paying attention. It's all about the Mediterranean so it's kindaaaa interesting but normally not.
So after global studies I go to the gym at 11. You have to sign up but a lot of times people don't go at the time they sign up for, so I just kind of show up. I work out and then do my stretching routine on the deck which is awesome. Stretching outside definitely trumps stretching inside. Depending on if I'm planning on laying out later in the day,I might or might not shower. I then meet my group of friends for lunch at 12:15 for lunch. If you think my rant about breakfast was long, GET READY for the other meals.
So SAS (semester at sea) has a strange obsession with potatoes. Lunch and dinner always have potatoes!!!!! But in addition to potatoes, there is some variety of pasta, rice, mystery meat, salad, steamed vegetables, soup of some sort, sometimes a hummus wrap if I'm lucky and a questionable dessert that is good on occasion. The meals (all on different days... You can't have all the good food on one day, it would just be a crisis) that were the most exciting included rice with chicken in it, fried rice with eggs in it, hummus and lettuce wraps, and these delicious devils food cake brownies that I put peanut butter on and it was like a Reese’s brownie and def top desert on the ship so far. So for every meal I'll have salad and rice, but last night I hit a wall and just couldn't eat anything in the dining hall so I had a PB and banana sandwich. There's a grill that serves pretty good food but you have to pay for it so you need to make sure that you don't eat at it everyyyyy day. The reason I'm going on about the food is because it is just soo terrible!!!!!! And like its just the same thing everyday and ive never eaten so much salad in my life!!! No joke.
Okay so now after lunch, I either read for class or lay out by the pool ( except not today because it's cloudy) until 2:55 when I have my intercultural communication class. It's kinda boring but kinda okay because ive never taken a communication class before so I like learning about the different theories. I also made a friend with some girl yesterday so that's good because there are a lot of serious beezies on this boat. Then right after intercultural comm, I have my water sanitation class. Originally I was going to drop because like, water sanitation? Come on that's boring. But the teacher is a substitute from the previous voyage and js awesome. Because he makes the class a lot more ISCORy (for the non-aztecs reading my blog, ISCOR is my major and it stands for International Security and Conflict Resolution) and I like that. He's great. Also there are actual boys in that class, and with the 75% girls vs 25% boys, you can imagine the conflict.
So moving on..... Most of my friends have reading to do, but because all my classes are pass/ fail, it's really hard to motivate myself to do work. So I don't! Then after class I have dinner at 6:15 with the same group from lunch ( my roommate Jordan, Jessica Christman, and these two awesome girls Katie and Erica and occasionally other people). Dinner is the same as lunch pretty much, so normally I just drink wine instead of eating. I'm ONLY kidding but perhaps while in other countries, I will do that :).
After dinner is normally do whatever you want. People congregate on the deck, and sometimes it's daunting to meet new people, but that's what you gotta do! Okay global studies is over and now I'm going to the gym :). I will post more later, especially when I'm in the countries and have wifi!!!
In case you were wondering about the title, it's because we aren't allowed to call the MV explorer ( my new home) a boat because it's a ship. It's kind of a funny joke
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