Day 2 and 3 of Cinque Terre Paradise, unpronounceable volcanoes and calcio!

Saturday was the hike-9km, 7 hours. The beginning was horrible, with half a million stairs to climb up, and then it started pouring, but we were near a little restaurant in the mountain so we took cover. We ended in Manarolla, where we climbed up so rocks and watched sunset. Then we found a restaurant, where we ran into some friends from JFRC, and had an amazing seafood dinner (salmon ravioli for me, an appetizer of seafood for all of us to share). Then we took the train back to our town and then went up to the clock tower and relaxed!

We'd already walked for over 45 minutes...

Monterosso behind us

Vernazza

Before the rain came to us, the town in the distance (Corniglia) looked amazing behind the sheet of rain

Manorolla (the best fisherman town of the 5, also where we had dinner)

sunset

We climbed rocks and took random pictures... :)

cute kitty :)

Our appetizer... That we actually received after dinner since it was an actual dish, even though it had more diverse seafood and was cheaper than the appetizer... Because clearly that makes sense?

Sunday was more relaxing. We woke up around 10, changed into swimsuits and shorts (it was so nice to finally be able to wake up and put on a swim suit, shorts and a tank top... I miss summer!) and went off to the beach, where we spent about 5 hours. While Michal put on more sunscreen, Julia and I put on less so that we could actually tan. We both did tan and avoided burning, while Michal also avoided getting burned. So I was able to come back to Rome a little bit tan. As we did on Friday, Julia and I ran into the ocean, screaming and jumping from the freezing cold water, but we kept running in. On the third time we both went under water, and tried swimming for a bit, but ended up freezing so we didn't stay in for long. But it was fun, we were brave, and before we completely froze our bodies, it felt good to be in cold water rather than under the hot sun. Then we went to get linner (lunch and dinner) and then caught the train back to Rome.

The view from where we were sitting... It was nice to open my eyes every once in a while and see this view! I want to go back... 

Random para-gliders that landed literally 5 feet away from us...

The weekend was amazing and I want to go back. It was so incredibly relaxing, with no thoughts of the finals or homework we had coming up, nothing but the present. All we did was sit, eat, tan, swim a bit, hike, eat more and enjoy the beach more. Now that's what I call a vacation :)

Then Monday and Tuesday was spent in class and just hanging out with Michal outside of class. Monday Julia and I went to the Spanish Steps to do homework, but soon after we sat down it started pouring so we ran to the metro to take cover. The past few days were also spent figuring out whether Michal's flight was still on back to Poland. He was able to get home safely (though I must say, if I didn't have finals to study for, I would be kinda hoping that his flight could be canceled so he could stay here longer :P). The whole volcano erupting thing is crazy-sooo many flights canceled, and the England airport has been closed for 5 days... Finally the airports started opening up yesterday, but this Eyjafjallajokull volcano (that has been dormant for 200 years and has erupted multiple times within the past week) is crazy-first of all, the name-how in the world do you pronounce this thing? I found a couple of pronunciations of it online, but according to Iceland's Embassy in Washington DC it's:  AY-yah-fyah-lah-YOH-kuul... try saying that five times fast... :P 

And today we had calcio (soccer) championships. Although we lost we still had a ton of fun and it was pretty intense. At one point I didn't know who to cheer for since I had friends on both teams... After we went to BP for pizza and just hung out and talked there. Fun times :)

"We're seeing a movie and then going to a very Italian McDonald's" and Day 1 of Cinque Terre Paradise!

So when Michal visited Julia and I told him that all we're doing that night is going to downtown Rome and seeing a movie. Obviously he didn't believe us, but we also told him that all we're doing is going to find a McDonald's that's supposedly really good (in actuality we were looking for L'Archetta, the best spaghetti place ever). I'm not sure if he believed us, there's a possibility that he did, but who knows. Anyways, we took him to see the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and the Pantheon at night, then dinner and then gelato heaven with its 60 flavors of gelato. All in all I think it was a pretty great first day in Rome for him :)

Then Thursday night we left for Cinque Terre. We got to Cinque Terre, got off the train in Riomaggiore, walked 5 feet, looked down and realized that the sea was right there and that we were on a cliff. Since we got there at 4:30am we walked around a bit. We found our hostel but since it didn't open till 10:30 we explored the town (which is tiny and filled with stairs). It was pitch black out, with maybe a person here and there walking there dog. It was basically a ghost town though, until about 6am when people started coming out to begin their day. We went up to this castle/observatory/clock tower and saw the sky getting lighter, then we went to the beach (which is really a small area of big rocks, no sand) and hung out there for a while. We slept, talked, walked, enjoyed :) Then, since we still had an hour before the hostel opened (even though the guy came in at 9:30, he refused to let us in), we played cards, which was definitely a lot of fun!

When we were finally able to check in, this guy comes up to us (probably around our age) and tells us to follow him to our hostel (which we later find out is more like an apartment), turned the corner and saw stairs. and more stairs. and even more stairs. We eventually counted that there were 166 steps to our apartment :( It was painful and tiring and Julia, Michal and I collapsed on our beds from exhaustion. That's 1/3 of how many stairs we had to climb to get to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. So after we recovered from this, we changed into our swimsuits and went to the last town, Monterosso, to go to the beach. The weather was beautiful, a perfect day for the beach. Since the sun was shining down hard, Julia and I put a ton of sunscreen on, though we ended up putting on so much we didn't really tan. Michal, on the other hand, didn't really listen to me so he got a little burned. But he learned his lesson and when we went on the hike the following day and the beach on Sunday, he put more sunscreen on.

View from the train

It started raining later that day, it was so pretty

166 stairs to the top... :(

Day 2 and 3 of Cinque Terre and pictures tomorrow... :)

WWII and Villa d'Este Weekend

WWII weekend was so interesting. It definitely lived up to and exceeded everyone's expectations, with lots of interesting information and places.

The first day included the Piana delle Orme Museum, the American Cemetery and Memorial, Anzio (a port city) and then a wonderful dinner about an hour outside of Rome.

The museum was set up like a diorama, set up in chronological order so you could learn all about the history of Italy in WWII.

Random peacocks around the museum

One of the rooms was a room of toys...

One of the reasons we went to the American cemetery is because a former Loyola (academy and college) student is buried there. We had flowers to put on the grave, and then under a statue of two brothers (army and navy) we put a wreath from JFRC and took a picture with it, which is apparently being sent to the president.

The Loyola Academy and University graduate: John J. Burke

One of 2 soldiers that got a medal of honor (also, only 1/3 of all American soldiers are buried here, the rest were buried in their home town)

Then we went to Anzio port which is like the Normandy of Italy, but the reason it's not really heard of is because the next day the whole Normandy thing happened, so that took all the focus off of Italy.

So the second day began backwards. It was all about what had happened in 24-hour period.

It began with us going to Le Fosse Ardeatine which was the site of a mass execution of Italians by the German soldiers as a reaction to what had happened the previous day (the bombing on Via Rassela). It was so sad and so real, seeing the cells where people had been executed.

For all the martyrs of Italy

One of the execution rooms

Then we went to the historical museum of liberation, where we saw holding cells for the Italians that were going to be executed in Fosse Ardeatine. Just like the Fosse Ardeatine, it was once again a sad place to go. In the cells the walls were behind glass, to preserve the writings of the people on the walls: there were markings to show how long the person had been there, there were poems and letters and songs and various "be brave" sentences.

Then, finally, we saw the beginning of this whole massacre:Via Rosseli is where two people decided to set off a bomb while the German soldiers were patrolling the area. Unfortunately, the Germans later killed 10 people per each soldier that was killed. You can still see the holes from the bullets. here's a website if you want to read more about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardeatine_massacre

Then we had an amazing lunch at L'Archetta, which was a spaghetti house of 250 different kinds of pasta. It was amazing, by far the best pasta I've had since getting to Italy and it was impossible to pick what to eat, I may as well just close my eyes and point to a dish and chances are it's gonna be amazing! Julia and I both took a menu from the place, so you'll see how many options there are.

Villa d'Este was amazing too. The gardens were beautiful and we even saw a wedding there! It was supposed to rain all day but it never did, so we got lucky :)