All is well in the Santa Maria Novella house! We were all accounted for this morning and BJ and I are up and ready for our 9:30AM class :)
Today, after class, the school is taking us on a guided tour of the Uffizi, one of the world's most famous museums. It houses some of the greatest works of art ever from Michaelangelo, Raphael, DaVinci, etc.....
After the tour the school is buying us dinner! Thank god... $$$$$ :(
I will post pictures of our outings the last two nights, later.
off to class.
Tuesday, May 27
Tonight ....
Tuesday Night ... we had a crazy fun night tonight! BJ and I are going to bed.....obviously, it is 1:3oAM! :)
Pat, and his wife Jaunessa ... plus some kids from the other school (matt and nayeff) and Natalie L and Lindsey W are also not home yet. But they are together at some club so we are hoping all is well :)
Unfortunately Nat L and Nayeff were both extremely intoxicated earlier this evening, so we hope they make it home okay! :)
BUT Jaunessa lived here for 9 months as an undergrad and knows her way around.....and, on top of that she is a smart strong woman.......smarter and stronger than most men I know!
so she will HOPEFULLY get the whole crew home, no matter how PARTY time the last club they go to is......but, officially, this is BJ and I signing off and going to bed. WE are home, safe and happy!
Love you guys
Pat, and his wife Jaunessa ... plus some kids from the other school (matt and nayeff) and Natalie L and Lindsey W are also not home yet. But they are together at some club so we are hoping all is well :)
Unfortunately Nat L and Nayeff were both extremely intoxicated earlier this evening, so we hope they make it home okay! :)
BUT Jaunessa lived here for 9 months as an undergrad and knows her way around.....and, on top of that she is a smart strong woman.......smarter and stronger than most men I know!
so she will HOPEFULLY get the whole crew home, no matter how PARTY time the last club they go to is......but, officially, this is BJ and I signing off and going to bed. WE are home, safe and happy!
Love you guys
Monday Party Time
Well, last night a little crazy!
We had a gorgeous and hot day, we got all our reading done earlier than normal. So we decided to party it up!
We got all ready, me.pat.brian.jaunessa. and lindsey wehmeyer
We headed out to this bar called Fish..or Fish Bar or something. Whatever, it was a pretty cool bar, but the undergrads showed up and there were just too many 18 to 19 year olds running around. So after some wild turkey and vodka redbulls we followed some new friends we met at the bar, one only spoke spanish the other one only italian and the third spoke italian and english. we followed them to this bar YAB that was HOPPING for a Monday night! He knew some people so we got in the front of the line and went in, we all got a little hammered.
I ran into another GU law friend, Steve Deshazo, who was there...and we talked and he lives near us so he and I bounced out early....the rest of this is his version of what happened, I may not remember all of it.
Apparently we came back, I ate all of the dinner leftovers that I had made earlier. I then asked him to compare the decision to invade Iraq with the decision to enter WWII. After drawing the comparison I asked him to take a stance on if the Iraq was was right, and then afterwards I wanted him to argue in the alternative.
He then walked me to my bed, sat next to the bed and read to me the introduction of the book Fight Club to put me to sleep.
At this point Brian, Pat and Jaunessa come home. None remember the walk home. Brian sees Steve and they go for a walk, I forgot what they were looking for, but likely food...since we tend to hope that Italy will have one place open at 2AM! They find that the bike Steve purchased in Florence had been stolen. Brian comes back and passed out.
During this time Jaunessa changes for bed and passes out with her contacts still in...
And finally, a great way to end the night...at 2AM pat gets the hot plate all fired up and starts to make some eggs, while waiting for the hot plate to heat up Pat passes out in a chair, with the hot plate on and the eggs in the pan. I wake up at 6AM to find the eggs still "cooking", Jaunessa sleeping alone in the bed, Pat still passed out fully clothed. lol
Then we all went to class today, participated a ton and had a great day!
The girls below are making us dinner tonight...MEXICAN!! we are a tad nervous about mexican food products in italy.. lol
We had a gorgeous and hot day, we got all our reading done earlier than normal. So we decided to party it up!
We got all ready, me.pat.brian.jaunessa. and lindsey wehmeyer
We headed out to this bar called Fish..or Fish Bar or something. Whatever, it was a pretty cool bar, but the undergrads showed up and there were just too many 18 to 19 year olds running around. So after some wild turkey and vodka redbulls we followed some new friends we met at the bar, one only spoke spanish the other one only italian and the third spoke italian and english. we followed them to this bar YAB that was HOPPING for a Monday night! He knew some people so we got in the front of the line and went in, we all got a little hammered.
I ran into another GU law friend, Steve Deshazo, who was there...and we talked and he lives near us so he and I bounced out early....the rest of this is his version of what happened, I may not remember all of it.
Apparently we came back, I ate all of the dinner leftovers that I had made earlier. I then asked him to compare the decision to invade Iraq with the decision to enter WWII. After drawing the comparison I asked him to take a stance on if the Iraq was was right, and then afterwards I wanted him to argue in the alternative.
He then walked me to my bed, sat next to the bed and read to me the introduction of the book Fight Club to put me to sleep.
At this point Brian, Pat and Jaunessa come home. None remember the walk home. Brian sees Steve and they go for a walk, I forgot what they were looking for, but likely food...since we tend to hope that Italy will have one place open at 2AM! They find that the bike Steve purchased in Florence had been stolen. Brian comes back and passed out.
During this time Jaunessa changes for bed and passes out with her contacts still in...
And finally, a great way to end the night...at 2AM pat gets the hot plate all fired up and starts to make some eggs, while waiting for the hot plate to heat up Pat passes out in a chair, with the hot plate on and the eggs in the pan. I wake up at 6AM to find the eggs still "cooking", Jaunessa sleeping alone in the bed, Pat still passed out fully clothed. lol
Then we all went to class today, participated a ton and had a great day!
The girls below are making us dinner tonight...MEXICAN!! we are a tad nervous about mexican food products in italy.. lol
Monday, May 26
In and Around...
Today, Jaunessa and I took a walk around Florence because it was a gorgeous day and here are some pictures that I snapped in and around town :)
Happy Memorial Day
HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY FROM YOUR BOYS :)
Unfortunately Italy does not celebrate memorial day (shocking i know!)
Here are some pics from the last week and a half to demonstrate where you all should be right now, celebrating and enjoying your day off! We miss you all!!
Unfortunately Italy does not celebrate memorial day (shocking i know!)
Here are some pics from the last week and a half to demonstrate where you all should be right now, celebrating and enjoying your day off! We miss you all!!
Sunday, May 25
The first beach we went to in Cinque Terre
Story is far below......the head out in the water I zoom in to is BJ's
The Kids.....PICS
The story is below...here are the kids and their Dad that I talk about when telling about Cinque Terre!
Nights out Cinque Terre
our nights out were limited to one bar (after dinner) and we had an awesome time :) I'm going to repeat this for all the picture pages, but read below to get the full story of the weekend so the pics have some sort of explanation :)
Our Little Town PICS
Riomaggiore was the town we stayed in, one of five in Cinque Terre.
Here are pics of the town. It was breathtaking! Read below to get the full scoop on our Cinque Terre Weekend :)
Here are pics of the town. It was breathtaking! Read below to get the full scoop on our Cinque Terre Weekend :)
Cinque Terra Beach PICS
Not technically Cinque Terre, one town north called Levanto. Read my big post below to get the details of our Cinque Terre weekend.
Hiking PICS *more*
These are going to trickle in since I am reading as I'm doing this, also...read the blog post about the weekend before the pics, they will make sense and I am not posting them in proper time line order :)
Cinque Terre HIKE
These are going to trickle in since I am reading as I'm doing this, also...read the blog post about the weekend before the pics, they will make sense and I am not posting them in proper timeline order :)
We are back and alive!!!
...before I forget, Jaunessa (Pat's wife) has now joined us for a little over a week :) so she was here for all of this.
The Cinque Terre trip was a huge success :)
A QUICK breakdown of what Cinque Terre is....it is a series of Five Towns (IE..Cinque Terre) on the north west coast of Italy, on the Mediterranean Sea. They are small towns, only one has a sand beach, the furthest north, Monterosso. We stayed in the furthest south town called Riomaggiore. There is a train that goes about every 30 mins that stops at all the towns, which is really convenient.
Here is the day by day run down, we left thursday and just got back.
Thursday:
BJ and I went early because we have earlier classes, so we headed straight for the train station. The trip was somewhat annoying because of delayed trains and the simple fact that Bj and I have never been there before so we were constantly on edge that maybe we got the wrong train, or that we would miss one of the stations we had to get off and connect with a new train, etc. PLUS it was a three hour trek so, for it being our first time it seemed to take forever! There was none of that familiarity that can make a trip seem faster because you know where you are.
We got there, checked in, got our apartment. It was small as expected, NICE, but small for us 2 and the six that were about four hours behind us. Oh yeah...the shower was almost unusable because of how it was set up, it was at a complete angle, so you either had to squat or brace yourself or you would slide and fall. It was so strange. That, combined with the fact that our toilet back that fills with water for your flush took almost an hour to refill after the flush. So with us eight, we had to use the bidet when we went number one and when we were all in the apartment at once, most of us (minus BJ and some late night sneakers) went to a nearby market's bathroom for number twos. TMI, I know.
So we all get there, BJ and I couldn't wait to eat dinner so we have this great meal. We all go out that night to the only bar in the town we were in, it was really fun though. Everyone spoke english, we met some california guy who was in from Spain in a band. The girls got creeped on by some old local that was super weird, pat took a picture of him and like grabbed at pat to steal his digital camera away from him. But we were all fine, the locals all knew him and said to just 'shoo him away' lol oh well.
Friday:
The next day we slowly got up and worked our way down to this beach in an outlying town. Just one town north out of Cinque Terre. They were supposed to have the best beaches, they did....a big sand beach with bars on it. The boys rocked out the speedos and the girls got their sun tan lotion and towels out....unfortunately no one thought to rock out the sun screen. :( Poor BJ and I. Oh well, we had a blast. All the guys and some of the girls went swimming in the Sea...it was cool to be able to say I swam in the Mediterranean Sea. The water was great once you got in, the waves were perfect too!
That night we went out and met up with professors who were in town too and had a great dinner. We all went back to that same Centrale Bar, made some new friends, had drinks and went home.
Saturday:
So, on Saturday we decided we wanted to try the Monterosso beach but we wanted to do some hiking too. There is a long 5 hour hike between the first town that we stayed at and the fifth town, the one we wanted to go to the beach...well two of the group left and did the walk from the very first town, the rest of us hopped a train and started at the third town, so..to go from 3-5 towns. From those who had done it before, it is really just a simple walk on a concrete path until the third town, then it gets pretty hard.
So we met up with them in town three and all started on the third to fourth town section of the hike, it was pretty hard! Four Kilometers of up and down in the woods, on the cliffs, etc. It was gorgeous though! Took a hair over an hour. We got to the fourth town and we all wanted to just train to the last town and not hike it, for varying reasons. BJ wore not good footwear and was still hurting from the night before and also forgot his hiking pass (yes you have to pay for it), there were rain clouds coming in and some of us didn't want to get stuck on this hike and have it start to pour rain. Plus some were just over it and wanted food and if it stayed nice, to lay on the beach.
So pat and Jaunessa did the last leg together and the rest of us headed towards the last town on the train. We had lunch and looked and some beach shops and they all laid on the beach, I was in the shade because I was a little red from the day before and realized that not only did no one (including me) bring sun block to the beach the day before, no one brought any to Cinque Terre (all left here in Florence). So I sat in the shade and watched and did some school reading :)
BJ, Lindsey and I all left a tad early to get in and get some stuff done in the tiny apartment before the rest of the crew came in. I showered BJ showered Lindsey napped...etc.
The beach was gorgeous, it was creepy though because there were some sketchy ... I want to say Mexican ... guys who were clearly sitting there taking pictures of these study abroad college girls all around, just blatantly zooming in and photographing these girls, some with their boyfriends, it was sick and creepy. Was surprised no boyfriend came over and had a 'chat' with them, but I was not sure if anyone else saw it.
That night we found a great food/horrible service place way up on the cliff in our local town and we had a BJ birthday dinner :) Aside from the lackluster service it was great! Two girls got sick, one head/tired/cough the other threw up (she is thinking she is getting allergic to lobster). So they went home, we grabbed one last goodbye drink from that Centrale bar and went back to the apartment to finish up the 2 euro wine we had there :) We didn't want to bring it all back.
It was HILARIOUS this time when we went to the bar because there were these two young brother and sister...my guess is girl 15/16 boy 13ish....we saw them earlier having a beer in the little piazza out front of our apartment and we thought it was funny, but later that night we saw them at the Centrale bar with their Dad having drinks. It was amazing!!! We overheard the 13yearold boy explaining to his dad what a mojito was "Dad it is like lime, mint and rum combined, I hope they use Bacardi" and the best was when the Dad went to get the drinks the young girl goes "Hey, if they don't have mojitos get me Jack and Coke" BJ almost pissed himself laughing!
We saw that they were carrying american money and talked/dressed just like Americans, so they must have been from usa. It was stunning, remember..no age laws in Italy! very weird moment.
They had mojitos...two rounds of them, they were sauced! We got a pic of them that I will post later when the camera is recharged :)
Sunday:
We woke up, cleaned up, checked out, got on the train....the girls went back to Florence but in a last minute UNPLANNED (make adjustments to your itinerary) moment, we got off at the Pisa train station and walked to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We first debated for about a second if we wanted to do it, and we thought...why the hell not!? We are walking distance from a huge famous building and will likely not be again. So we saw it, got some dorky but necessary pictures that will be posted later too.
**phew**
We are now back, we have a ton of reading to do and pat and I both have a presentation to give tomorrow. So we are preparing for that night now.
I will post the pictures up in a little bit.
See you :)
The Cinque Terre trip was a huge success :)
A QUICK breakdown of what Cinque Terre is....it is a series of Five Towns (IE..Cinque Terre) on the north west coast of Italy, on the Mediterranean Sea. They are small towns, only one has a sand beach, the furthest north, Monterosso. We stayed in the furthest south town called Riomaggiore. There is a train that goes about every 30 mins that stops at all the towns, which is really convenient.
Here is the day by day run down, we left thursday and just got back.
Thursday:
BJ and I went early because we have earlier classes, so we headed straight for the train station. The trip was somewhat annoying because of delayed trains and the simple fact that Bj and I have never been there before so we were constantly on edge that maybe we got the wrong train, or that we would miss one of the stations we had to get off and connect with a new train, etc. PLUS it was a three hour trek so, for it being our first time it seemed to take forever! There was none of that familiarity that can make a trip seem faster because you know where you are.
We got there, checked in, got our apartment. It was small as expected, NICE, but small for us 2 and the six that were about four hours behind us. Oh yeah...the shower was almost unusable because of how it was set up, it was at a complete angle, so you either had to squat or brace yourself or you would slide and fall. It was so strange. That, combined with the fact that our toilet back that fills with water for your flush took almost an hour to refill after the flush. So with us eight, we had to use the bidet when we went number one and when we were all in the apartment at once, most of us (minus BJ and some late night sneakers) went to a nearby market's bathroom for number twos. TMI, I know.
So we all get there, BJ and I couldn't wait to eat dinner so we have this great meal. We all go out that night to the only bar in the town we were in, it was really fun though. Everyone spoke english, we met some california guy who was in from Spain in a band. The girls got creeped on by some old local that was super weird, pat took a picture of him and like grabbed at pat to steal his digital camera away from him. But we were all fine, the locals all knew him and said to just 'shoo him away' lol oh well.
Friday:
The next day we slowly got up and worked our way down to this beach in an outlying town. Just one town north out of Cinque Terre. They were supposed to have the best beaches, they did....a big sand beach with bars on it. The boys rocked out the speedos and the girls got their sun tan lotion and towels out....unfortunately no one thought to rock out the sun screen. :( Poor BJ and I. Oh well, we had a blast. All the guys and some of the girls went swimming in the Sea...it was cool to be able to say I swam in the Mediterranean Sea. The water was great once you got in, the waves were perfect too!
That night we went out and met up with professors who were in town too and had a great dinner. We all went back to that same Centrale Bar, made some new friends, had drinks and went home.
Saturday:
So, on Saturday we decided we wanted to try the Monterosso beach but we wanted to do some hiking too. There is a long 5 hour hike between the first town that we stayed at and the fifth town, the one we wanted to go to the beach...well two of the group left and did the walk from the very first town, the rest of us hopped a train and started at the third town, so..to go from 3-5 towns. From those who had done it before, it is really just a simple walk on a concrete path until the third town, then it gets pretty hard.
So we met up with them in town three and all started on the third to fourth town section of the hike, it was pretty hard! Four Kilometers of up and down in the woods, on the cliffs, etc. It was gorgeous though! Took a hair over an hour. We got to the fourth town and we all wanted to just train to the last town and not hike it, for varying reasons. BJ wore not good footwear and was still hurting from the night before and also forgot his hiking pass (yes you have to pay for it), there were rain clouds coming in and some of us didn't want to get stuck on this hike and have it start to pour rain. Plus some were just over it and wanted food and if it stayed nice, to lay on the beach.
So pat and Jaunessa did the last leg together and the rest of us headed towards the last town on the train. We had lunch and looked and some beach shops and they all laid on the beach, I was in the shade because I was a little red from the day before and realized that not only did no one (including me) bring sun block to the beach the day before, no one brought any to Cinque Terre (all left here in Florence). So I sat in the shade and watched and did some school reading :)
BJ, Lindsey and I all left a tad early to get in and get some stuff done in the tiny apartment before the rest of the crew came in. I showered BJ showered Lindsey napped...etc.
The beach was gorgeous, it was creepy though because there were some sketchy ... I want to say Mexican ... guys who were clearly sitting there taking pictures of these study abroad college girls all around, just blatantly zooming in and photographing these girls, some with their boyfriends, it was sick and creepy. Was surprised no boyfriend came over and had a 'chat' with them, but I was not sure if anyone else saw it.
That night we found a great food/horrible service place way up on the cliff in our local town and we had a BJ birthday dinner :) Aside from the lackluster service it was great! Two girls got sick, one head/tired/cough the other threw up (she is thinking she is getting allergic to lobster). So they went home, we grabbed one last goodbye drink from that Centrale bar and went back to the apartment to finish up the 2 euro wine we had there :) We didn't want to bring it all back.
It was HILARIOUS this time when we went to the bar because there were these two young brother and sister...my guess is girl 15/16 boy 13ish....we saw them earlier having a beer in the little piazza out front of our apartment and we thought it was funny, but later that night we saw them at the Centrale bar with their Dad having drinks. It was amazing!!! We overheard the 13yearold boy explaining to his dad what a mojito was "Dad it is like lime, mint and rum combined, I hope they use Bacardi" and the best was when the Dad went to get the drinks the young girl goes "Hey, if they don't have mojitos get me Jack and Coke" BJ almost pissed himself laughing!
We saw that they were carrying american money and talked/dressed just like Americans, so they must have been from usa. It was stunning, remember..no age laws in Italy! very weird moment.
They had mojitos...two rounds of them, they were sauced! We got a pic of them that I will post later when the camera is recharged :)
Sunday:
We woke up, cleaned up, checked out, got on the train....the girls went back to Florence but in a last minute UNPLANNED (make adjustments to your itinerary) moment, we got off at the Pisa train station and walked to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We first debated for about a second if we wanted to do it, and we thought...why the hell not!? We are walking distance from a huge famous building and will likely not be again. So we saw it, got some dorky but necessary pictures that will be posted later too.
**phew**
We are now back, we have a ton of reading to do and pat and I both have a presentation to give tomorrow. So we are preparing for that night now.
I will post the pictures up in a little bit.
See you :)
Wednesday, May 21
Correction
The previous post is not entirely true. There were some circumstances that were not explained. But when Sean posts and drinks it is always interesting to see what actually ends up on the page.
OKAY!
So............we are going to Cinque Terre tomorrow....right after class BJ and I have a string of trains to make to be sure we make it to our apartment we are renting at five PM! :)
scary!
So, I know I owe you guys a lot of great stories, like.ummmmmm, last night..when we decided to take our nice dinner for the ladies and hit it up hard with them and the neighboring students from the other law school!!!
------- EDITED FOR CONTENT ------
- BJ, when wasted, asked the girls to paint his toe nails......and they did, in an amazing hot red color, the best part.............no one has polish remover!!!!! hahah, and apparently no one around here sells it, so BJ has awesome toe nails painted slutty red, lmao!!!
- When I reached the point of no return with red wine, I stumble to bed :) :) :)
Pat was good that night, but tonight he is TRASHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We did our hike up in the hills around Florence, it was GORGEOUS!!!!! We hiked all over, it was amazing, the following pictures are from our hike, this is the view over and above Florence. awesome!
scary!
So, I know I owe you guys a lot of great stories, like.ummmmmm, last night..when we decided to take our nice dinner for the ladies and hit it up hard with them and the neighboring students from the other law school!!!
------- EDITED FOR CONTENT ------
- BJ, when wasted, asked the girls to paint his toe nails......and they did, in an amazing hot red color, the best part.............no one has polish remover!!!!! hahah, and apparently no one around here sells it, so BJ has awesome toe nails painted slutty red, lmao!!!
- When I reached the point of no return with red wine, I stumble to bed :) :) :)
Pat was good that night, but tonight he is TRASHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We did our hike up in the hills around Florence, it was GORGEOUS!!!!! We hiked all over, it was amazing, the following pictures are from our hike, this is the view over and above Florence. awesome!
"Santa Maria Novella"
Pictures of our apartment!! We love it, even BJ with the pull out bed. We have to use the Air Conditioner a lot though, because it gets really warm and we can't open the windows because of the mosquitoes.
The girls in the pictures are the ones that live on level below us and also go to GU Law :)
Also, please note the bidet picture with Pat and I! He was very excited, but we never really use it....just an extra step that we are not accustomed to.
The girls in the pictures are the ones that live on level below us and also go to GU Law :)
Also, please note the bidet picture with Pat and I! He was very excited, but we never really use it....just an extra step that we are not accustomed to.
phew....
Finished up with classes, they went surprisingly well, considering last night!
BJ and I are off to grab some lunch
Today at 4PM we are doing a hike in the hills around florence and then having a dinner with the school.
When I get home I will post more pictures and put in a pretty long blog about how things are here !
BJ and I are off to grab some lunch
Today at 4PM we are doing a hike in the hills around florence and then having a dinner with the school.
When I get home I will post more pictures and put in a pretty long blog about how things are here !
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