long overdue

... so i guess since i've been back in the states for over a month, i should finish stories about the summer - it'll happen; you know, good things come to those who wait and all that nonsense. school is keeping me inordinately busy, but when i find some time, you guys have egypt and morocco to look forward to!

at least there's mr. baba's

VAR01, Highlights of Varna was possibly the biggest joke of a tour I have ever lived through. A few of us kept on looking at each other throughout the morning and just said “if these are the highlights of this city, it’s going to be a long four days.” Their national archeological museum consisted of gold bracelets, a recreated gravesite, and pieces of Byzantine art that made St. John look like he had leprosy. After Greece and Italy, Bulgaria offered nothing to us in the form of cultural enrichment. So we drank a lot… and tanned a lot… sometimes we tanned while drinking, just to switch things up. If we were really into it, we drank on a pirate ship. The next four days included Club Arrogance, Hotel Plesko, swimming in the Black Sea, a lot of sand, and, overall, just a shitshow of events. The description of what we all did during the 96 hours we were in Varna would take longer than its worth, so let’s just put is this way: this summer was the first year Semester at Sea has included Bulgaria in its summer itinerary; we left Varna, and two days later, Varna was taken off of the list of destinations for summer 2010; this is the kind of legacy we leave.

istanbul... there are no words to describe

I’m glad that I can just write these posts chronologically, because otherwise, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with Turkey. First off, we spent five days there, which we’ve only done for Italy thus far, but secondly, it’s the first country that comes with a true culture shock. At the pre-port meeting for Turkey, the deans warned us about the dangers of the country, most of which involves terrorism and bombings of touristy regions around Istanbul. But, short of just camping out on the ship for 5 days, there's really no way to avoid the risks of this area (it's heavily populated by Muslims, but since it's a crossroads, lots of other minority groups co-mingle; hence the tension)… so, instead of heeding their advice, we roamed all around the city the first day, and it's not really that bad; I'd say the biggest threat(s) at the moment are the crazily sleazy Turkish men who are unabashedly forward to every girl getting off of the ship.

The Grand Bazaar is literally just what it sounds like: sensory overload to the max, huge crowds, and just overall CRAZINESS. There are 4400+ shops in this labyrinth, and every guy working there just looks at Americans as big bulls eyes, and if you’re a girl, it’s for more than one reason. In our group, Greg and Kaene fended off the dirty ones, but they left for a hookah bar, and shit went downhill quickly. Infamous quotes and actions from the bazaar:

- “can I touch you?"

- my friend getting forcibly made out with by a Turkish midget

- vendors geeting us with: “excuse me, thank you”… who taught these people English?

- every single part Asian person calling me “my sister"

- "my turn to help you spend your money"

- "your teeth are fake, yes? your second set?"

- Roby pissing off a Turkish man and being told to “get the fuck out” of his store

Most girls on the ship had some ridiculous stories from this place, but my personal scarring experience didn’t occur until the train ride back from Beyazit to Karakoy (our ship). I guess I should have prefaced this entire post with the fact that, even though it sounds like I hated Turkey, I didn’t; the nature of our first day there was just so hectic and overwhelming, it just sounds like we had a bad experience. Really, the only terrible time I had is the story I’m about to tell.

So, we’re on the train that has no A/C, elbow to elbow with people who don’t believe in deodorant, my friends are in front of me and strangers are behind. Mistake #1: never turn your back towards a group of people you don’t know. Anyway, there’s about 5 stops between the bazaar and the port, and as the stops go on, I become VERY aware of the guy behind me getting progressively closer. Not only is he starting to give me the heeby-jeebies, but he’s also holding a bag and doing something strange with his hands behind said bag; I just ignore it for a while, as there are only 2 stops left. Mistake #2: if something ever feels awry, you really should never ‘just ignore it,’ you need to get the fuck out of there. The train stops for the last time, and all of the sudden I feel something bump against me… I whip around, and, I shit you not, I see this man with his hands IN his pants JACKING OFF ON MY ASS. Just take a moment to wrap your head around this scenario, and then think of what reaction you could possibly come up with. Being in total shock, I just did the first thing that came to my head, which was move away QUICKLY and yell “WHAT THE FUCK?!” grabbing the attention of every single person in there. My second reaction was to punch the guy in the mouth, but we were in Turkey, a country where women are treated like second-class citizens… I’m not sure how kindly they would have taken to an Asian girl from America decking a Turkish man in the face on the train, and, while getting molested on the public transportation system is awful, I’d wager to say being thrown into a Turkish jail is much worse. Meanwhile, the 3 other semester at sea kids are kind of confused because they weren’t sure what just happened, they just knew we needed to get the hell off of the train at this point. Of course, his stop is the same as ours, and as we mass exodus off of that godforsaken coach I can’t stop myself from elbowing him in his chest as he literally flees from sight. The last thing I remember yelling at him was “YOU’RE A TERRIBLE PERSON AND I HOPE YOUR DAUGHTER IS A WHORE,” and moved on with my life. Thus began my love-hate relationship with this crazy country.

Anyway, I was kind of over the idea of going out to bars and clubs that night because I was slightly traumatized still, but luckily, quite a few other people felt the same way, so we went to see the new Harry Potter movie instead - we all just hoped to God that it was in English and not Turkish. So, we walk into the theater, it’s down a dark alley, by the way (go figure), and are all kind of confused because it looks exactly like a theater that a play would be performed in, gold curtain, stage, and all; and nothing like a movie theater. But, everything worked out in the end, the curtain went up and a screen appeared from behind, and I hear the glorious sound of the Queen’s English coming out of the speakers, the first thing that went right all day. Overall, it wasn’t a bad way to end my first night in Turkey.

The second day was a great deal better than the first. I learned from my mistakes and travelled with more guys (and always had my back against a wall while standing in moving locomotives). We went to Sultanahmet, the area where most of the famous historical sights are located within Istanbul, ie. the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, and Basilica Cistern. The one that I was most excited to go see was, without a doubt, the Hagia Sophia, but out of the three, it was the one that disappointed me the most. It was an unreal experience to get to go see something that I’ve waited, literally, years for, but the Blue Mosque is SO much more impressive (but in the Hagia Sophia’s defense, the mosque was built specifically to trump it, and it’s amazing, still, in its own right). My favorite event of the day was standing between the two monumental buildings while the Call of Prayer was being played; it’s hard to explain, but the atmosphere, coupled with the eeriness of the situation sends chills down your spine. After visiting these two places, we went to the Basilica Cistern, which is nothing short of an amazing feat of engineering. Experiencing the Cistern is unlike any other thing I have done thus far. Usually, when something is a tourist attraction, it generally has a large, ostentatious sign (or it, itself, is a large, ostentatious building) to tell you where are. Without the line coming out of the building, I wouldn’t have even know this thing was there; the nondescript entryway leading to this complicated maze of underground columns and vaulted ceilings 50 feet underground is really the craziest dichotomy I think I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to believe that this place used to be used to store water, and it’s even harder to believe that it was built over 1500 years ago. It doesn’t seem like it, but doing the tourist thing takes a lot out of you, so by mid-afternoon, we were beat, and decided to head back to the port area to find a place to eat. Later that night, we came back to the same place and smoked hookah (in the US, I think this is something that people do to be badass, but in some of these countries, it’s literally just an integral part of the culture, and locals do it as a socializing/time passing activity, which I find to be way more appealing) and ate some more, because the food was good, the internet was free, and the restaurant was on the bridge that overlooked the Bosporus: what more could you ask for? Obviously, nothing, because a group of a dozen of us, or so, stayed there for hours (this is where some of you guys received your facebook videos from)… such an amazing day.

I didn’t expect it at the time, but my third day partly consisted of a trip to Asia, which is wicked, because when’s the next time I’m going to be able to say “oh, you know, I think I’ll just pop into Asia for a couple of hours, see you later!” It started pretty late, because Colby, Roby, Tara, and I didn’t have to meet one of our other friends, Meghan, until 10 (her cousin, Sarah, has been living in Turkey for the last year or so and offered to show us around) by the water. We took a ride down the Bosporus River and jumped off onto a little fishermen’s island, where we hiked to the top of it and stumbled across one of the greatest views I’ve seen since Dubrovnik. On top of the ruins of an old fort/castle, we saw the mouth of the Black Sea on one side, and Turkey on the other. For lunch, we had an authentic Turkish meal, and, as a bonus, met some Spanish women from Madrid that were on vacation. And because going to Asia for the day wasn’t enough, our group decided to go try out a hamam… a.k.a turksih bath… a.k.a. completely naked in front of strangers (and friends, which wasn’t THAT awkward…) while someone beats you for a while. Overall, it was an experience that was worth experience, but maybe only once, haha. That night, some of us went to the futbol game, and some of us went to see the Sufi Dervish; I did the latter, but, from what I hear, I should have gone to see that game.

Our last, real, full day in Turkey is easily the most amusing memory I have of the country; the whole day just seems hilarious in retrospect. We went to Topkaki Palace because it’s on the list of places to see in Istanbul, but 20 yards away from the building, a Turkish man speed walks past Colby, Roby, and me and just says in a hushed tone “palaceisclosedtoday!” and rushes away. So now, we’re thinking maybe this guy is about to blow this place up and is trying to tell us to get the fuck out of there; so we do. We make our way, instead, to the spice bazaar, where, not only do they sell spices, they apparently also sell pet ducklings, peacocks, puppies, and “Turkish Viagra” (“make eight times one night!”). Here, Roby was told to “fuck off” by a Turk (I don’t think they appreciated his bargaining methods), Colby was told that he looked like a local (blatant lie), and I was approached with “excuse me, where are you from, you are very brown.” Oh, and we were accosted by a self-proclaimed pedophile; lesson learned, do not return to the spice bazaar. We decided to end our stay in Istanbul with a bang, and so we went to Taksim Square that night and bar hopped well into the morning. It was nice to have a long break from the constant partying, but I’m not going to lie, the clubs in Turkey aren’t too shabby.

olympic games? we're def in greece

For the most part, days at sea aren’t really memorable enough to blog about, but Sea Olympics deserves to be mentioned, at least a little, especially because our sea DOMINATED the games. Let me back track and explain what that means/why that’s even remotely important or interesting (though it’s going to seem way more exciting to me regardless). Our ship has four-ish floors of student cabins (2, 3, 4, and 5), and each is separated into 2 seas (ie. Aegean Sea, Black Sea, etc.) via port or starboard cabin. I was one of three captains of our hall, the Yellow Sea, and the three of us decided that there was no way we were going to make losing an option, because the prize for the winning the games is disembarking first in Norfolk, which is, apparently, a hellish process and painstakingly long. Usually, the ship docks at 8am and the last people don’t get to leave until at least four hours later… so, long story short, I’m off this ship first – digression aside, on to Greece!


Greece is like Italy’s overshadowed younger brother: not quite as good, but a very close second (although, the Greeks are definitely the nicest people on the face of this planet). Piraeus is a strange port, in that, unless you get a taxi, you will be walking a good 2 miles to get to ANYWHERE you actually want to be... and then it’s another 15 minute metro ride to Athens or a couple (thousand) hour ferry ride to an island. Obviously, the first thing I went to see was the Acropolis, but because everyone else did their tours through Semester at Sea, it was just me and Colby wandering around Athens on our own, with our collective Greek vocabulary amounting to “yassis” and nothing else… you can already tell that this is a good idea. The area surrounding the Acropolis has crazy little shops, including my favorite store yet: Brettos, home of the best wine tasting I’ve ever experienced (I ran into a couple form Fairfax, Virginia in here; small world).
So, while we were in Rome, some of our group went to a bar crawl, so we decided that it’d be a good idea to do it again in Athens… such a bad idea. If Greece is Italy’s younger brother, Athens’ nightlife is like Rome’s gothic second cousin: weird as fuck. One restaurant, 3 bars, and a club later (one free shot at every location didn’t redeem the fact that our group of 15 were ALONE in the club), 4 of us just said ‘fuck it’ at 3am and grabbed a taxi home; we all thought this was the end of the night… our cab driver didn’t get the memo. Here’s a pearl of wisdom that I wish someone had told me before this night happened: it is generally never a good thing when the person in control of where you’re headed to is 1) a stranger and 2) trying to convince you to “come, it’s ok, I show you good time.” I’m not sure how this happens, but the next thing I know, we’re cruising down a side road, slow down next to two “women” standing on the street, and our driver exclaims, “see, that is a man woman.” The only thought running through my mind at the moment, as it should be, was “WHAT THE FUCK??”… and then we stop in front of Anatolia, a strip club, and my mind apparently explodes, because I just start hysterically laughing at the situation. The cab driver shoos us out of the car and says he’ll give us ten minutes; all I’m thinking is “ten minutes to do what??” I guess I can check “go to a shady strip club and watch my friend swing on the pole in Greece” off of my to-do list. We eventually made it home, if that’s any consolation whatsoever.


The next morning, I woke up hating life a little, but I had to make it on time for the bus that left at 8am, and headed to the Oracle of Delphi in central Greece, which was WAY cool. The ruins were not even remotely close to what I thought the Oracle was: it’s huge. We got back to Piraeus around 7pm that night (but Tara and I told Colby that we were going to meet him for dinner at 6, so we hauled ass back to Athens), passing by both the old and new Olympic stadiums along the way, and, because I had no intention of winding up in another strip club, we went shopping around the streets instead. I don’t think I’m really going to be able to explain the eclectic nature of the streets of Athens at night, with all the bootleg vendors and gypsies swarming around, but the ridiculousness of it all can be summed up in one sentence: I bought an old Greek man’s passport. For 5 euro… he told me that he usually sells it for 25 euro, but he was making an exception (which leads me to the question of how many passports is he selling on a regular basis?).

Coby, Hilary, Tara, and I spent the next to days on the island of Hydra (it was that or Mykonos), land of no cars and too many donkeys. I’m not sure how, but everything the first day seemed to serendipitously work out for us on the first day: we made it onto the ferry literally a minute before it departed; when we got there, Colby and I decided to go down a small alley that led us to a guest house, where we were able to book a villa for dirt cheap (it had a terrace that overlooked the harbor, a marble bathroom, a bed with a canopy, a loft, and a jacuzzi)… and then the other shoe dropped: Colby got deathly ill so I bought him sketchy Greek medicine (Coldex??), Hilary’s card got eaten by the ATM and later threw up (unrelated occurrences), Tara sat on a sea urchin and may have had the whopping cough, and I had so many mosquito bites on my leg, we thought I contracted malaria. Beyond those things, however, Hydra is definitely on my list of top three favorite places ever. I got to go cliff diving again, had one of the best gyros in Greece, met an old Irish guy with only one real tooth (he called it a ‘clitoral stimulator’; that ended our conversation quickly), and swam into/explored a cave. I’m happy I didn’t go to Mykonos, because the kids that did all came back to port the next day late, half dead, and possibly drugged. Way to be, Greece.

"dubrovnik is the new ibiza"

Okay, I’m not going to lie, I didn’t really have the best impression of Croatia before we got there… Aside from Leigh Anne’s mom telling me that Dubrovnik was beautiful, everyone else I talked to basically told me I was going to die there. However, I kind of really loved Croatia by the end of it, just in a very different way than I’ve loved Italy and Spain – they’re not really comparable countries anyway, and it was nice to have a relaxing port after those two intense ones anyway.

The first day, I had to buy a new camera in the morning because I broke mine in Venice… it cost 1,670 Kuna to buy a new camera and memory card in Croatia. I almost had a conniption when I saw the figure on the receipt, but then I realized that amounted to around $330 US dollars and felt better about my life (fucking hate kuna though, by the way; worst currency ever). I took a tour around the Old City through SAS and got to see the churches, museums, and city walls that surround the area. I’m not going to go into detail about the history, but it’s definitely wickedly interesting, and ALL the citizens in Croatia are freakishly proud of their independence (just don’t ask about the civil war). Apparently, Dubrovnik is the birthplace of cliffjumping as a sport, and we just so happen to be there the week of the Red Bull Challenge, where these (psycho) guys jump off a wooden plank 20-40 meters above the sea while doing crazy tricks. I guess I got caught up in the excitement, because I (along with Meghan and Tara) figure it can’t be that hard and spontaneously decide that we’re going cliff diving too. We follow this sign that says “this way to the most beautiful view of Croatia,” climb into a hobbit hole, and come out the other side into a bar. The rock we picked was named “Leo” because it’s shaped like a lion’s face; we had to climb UP his face (because higher is definitely a good idea; sometimes we’re stupid) to get to the edge… but if you looked down, you could still see rocks, so you kind of have to leap outwards and just say a little prayer. I got talked into going twice, but it was legit SO FUN. At dinner an hour later, we were still kind of on an adrenaline high. We asked the waiters which clubs were the best ones to go to for people our age, so they told us, and then said they'd meet us there... and then gave us free shots of something that looked suspiciously like vodka, except it tasted more like black licorice fire. Later, when I went to the restroom, I ran into ALL of the waiters in the back room, who proceed to pour me along with each one of them a CUP of this shit and tell me to drink with them. I finally find out that the crap they’re giving us is grappa (which I am positive has to be Croatian for gasoline; I know, smart, taking anonymous drinks, right?)… basically it's like moonshine but much worse tasting. That night is actually not that noteworthy, we just ended up at a club called EastWest, but so did the rest of our shipboard community, so meh.

Day 2 consisted of a trip to Mostar, Bosnia. I’m happy I went, but seriously, there was NOTHING to see there, and the whole trip can be summed up as a string of silly mishappenings, but still, I LOVE MOSTAR.

Meghan and I tried to sneak into Montenegro the next day, but it was nothing short of an epic fail, so we went to the island of Lopud with a group of other kids instead. This was probably the most relaxing day of the trip. That night, the three of us serendipitously ran into the entire boy’s waterpolo team from Stanford who was in Croatia, playing their club team. It definitely became a night that will live in infamy, but not for the obvious reasons. Let’s just say, Norwegians are compelling.

ohmygod italy!

DISCLAIMER: This post is long as fuck. Sorry about it.
I’m just going to start off by saying that absolutely nothing I can say or write will be able to do justice to how amazing Italy is (which is why it’s taken me like 3 weeks to actually update about the country); from the people to the food to the landscape… I’m coming back sometime soon, no question. But, with that being said, that means I’m about to write like an epic post about this place. I’m never going to be able to stop talking about it.

We landed in Civitavecchia on July 1st and literally, every store we pass on our way to the train station to get a ticket to Rome was either a liquor store or a gelato shop. I immediately love the city. As soon as the three of us (Colby, Roby, and me) get out of the train station in Rome, I notice that we’re in Chinatown. I think, wow, that’s kind of weird… but apparently it’s not at all, because for the next 4 cities we go to, Chinatown is right next to the train station… wtf. Why does Italy have a Chinatown?
Anyway, because we only had like a day to do Rome, we chose to spend most of our time traveling around Vatican City and St. Peter’s Basilica (the journey to the top of the cupola is legit indescribable… and I’m not sure if I mean that in a good or bad way), but we got to see other random things along the way to our hostel: tomb of the unknown soldier, the coliseum, the usual. Oh, and a completely psychotic hailstorm coming towards us at the same time as a riot/protest that closed off ALL of the roads headed towards our hostel due to the hundred or so armed policemen in full S.W.A.T. gear. Sweet life. We had to join the protestors just to make it to the other side of the roundabout. I think they were chanting for socialism.

So, we finally make it to this hostel, but it turns out that our group was too big for them to accommodate (and half went first), so we had to go meet the rest of the semester at sea kids at a different, much, much, MUCH, sketchier hostel… that was connected to a counterfeit purse-making storefront. The woman at the front desk was pretty adamant about keeping our passports as “collateral”, but I was equally, if not more so, adamant about not leaving my identity at the whim of some crazy person, and I don’t lose, so homegirl ended up with no passports and two extra people in our room; we paid 9 euro each that night to sleep in the ghetto of Italy.

I got somehow separated with my group for a couple of hours that night and randomly pulled up next to their taxi cab at 2am, so I jumped out of mine and into theirs; the drivers were DEFINITELY not happy (shouting sounds the same in all languages), but playing dumb and acting like you have no idea what’s wrong gets you far in foreign countries. Nicole, Roby and I all decided that it would be a good idea to go see the Trevi Fountain at this point… which is a good 30 minute walk from where we were, so we took the bus… but then found out it was going in the wrong direction… and ended up in the REAL ghetto; I thought I got off the bus and wound up in Detroit. Two hours and a failed excursion later, we never made it to the fountain, but we made it back to our hostel in sketchville safe, so I call that endeavor a success.

7am, or 3 hours later, the three of us have to get up, sneak out the two extra people that stayed with us, and then hop on a train to Pisa. For some reason, our tickets said “Civitavecchia to Pisa” instead of “Rome to Pisa,” so as good Samaritans, we went to the ticket office to pay the extra euro to fix this problem. Only one woman on duty spoke English, so the gentleman helping us pointed our group into her direction. But I guess that day was her designated ‘I’m going to be a flaming bitch’ day, because as we’re walking towards her, she looks up, slams down her “closed” sign, shakes her head, and says “my shift ends at 9am.” Until the day I die, I will remember the time on the wall, reading 8:56am; lying bitch. We tell her we have a train to catch and she’s the only person that can help us/the nice old man pointed us in your direction. She turns to said ‘nice old man,’ has a mini argument with him in Italian, and in perfect English says, “Fuck you, David!” and walks away. So, we said, “Fuck you, Train Station Bitch” and hopped on the train without paying the additional 8 euro. We tried. On a happier note, Pisa was fun. I’m pretty sure they put the train station and the Leaning Tower on opposite ends of the city so that people are forced to traverse the whole town because there’s NOTHING else in Pisa to see. I met a nice old man who spoke just like Luigi in Super Mario Brothers, but Pisa was tame otherwise.

I’m pretty sure I’ve wanted to visit Florence since before I could walk, so I was practically giddy on the way there, and let me just say, it did not disappoint. We found the best hostel (and by ‘best’ I mean ‘includes air conditioning’) and did all that you could ask to do in a day and a half: wandering aimlessly for a couple of hours, full-on three course Italian dinner, illegal pictures of Michelangelo’s David/Boticelli’s Birth of Venus, accidentally stumbling across a gigolo, getting shouted at by an angry hotel owner (“this is not tourist information!!”)… and then we went to Venice.

Venice and I have a love/hate relationship, in that I loved being there, but I do believe that Venice resented my presence. While I was there, we got screwed on our hotel situation, got lost for 4 hours, didn’t get back to our hotel until 3am, only inhabited the room for 4 hours, probably caught malaria, and paid 30 extra euro because they hate Americans. We drank by the canal, on the steps of some church at sunset with another group of SAS kids that we met and they told us that we should go check out San Marco on the other end of the island… obviously we decide to just go. We immediately get lost, so Colby decides to ask EVERY single person that passes our way which direction this place is. On the way there, we stumble across a concert? Legit, the best time ever. We met super nice Italians, a bunch of kids from Minnesota studying for the summer, and some Californians that wanted to buy Roby gelato. We made it to San Marco (eventually), but it took us FOREVER to get back. We eventually ran into a group of shit-faced American girls walking with a couple of Italians (looked like a poster for human trafficking for real) who got us back to where we needed to be.

The next day I literally went to church and thanked God for letting us find them because we were about fifteen minutes away from just laying down on the street and sleeping, and as safe as Venice is, it’s never okay to be homeless. When we got to the bridge that led us to the side we recognized, all 3 of us for some reason just sprinted over it and almost broke down, we were so happy. Oh, and then I busted my ass about two centimeters away from the dirty-ass water and broke my camera. Funny thing is though, I completely didn’t care about any of this crap, because realizing you know where you are in a a foreign country for the first time in 6 hours has a way of making nothing else seem like that big of a deal; I just rolled with it. So the next day, after we got into a fight with the hotel manager’s younger brother, we visited Murano, the glass making capital of the world; they seriously make everything imaginable out of this sweet looking glass. I’d show pictures, but I smashed my Canon into smithereens the night before. Sad life. Anywho, we caught our flight to Naples after doing some last minute shopping and got back on the ship on the fourth of July, aka America’s most glorious holiday in the history of the world.

Let me start off by saying that Naples has been my least favorite place, strictly because it’s like a big slum, everyone there is grouchy, and it reminded me of inner-city areas in the U.S. That being said, I was still in Italy, and I did go to the shop where pizza was invented to have a slice, so I’m going to stop complaining about it.
Anyway, back to the 4th. So, for the 4th of July, I made sure I only found people to go out with that were ready to be stupid Americans with me (when’s the next time I’m going to be in Italy on a major holiday)… we shoved 8 people into a taxi because we were told that you definitely should never walk from the port to Vittoria Square. Ever. and headed to the ONE strip of bars that was for people our age and mobbed the streets. Sidenote about the taxi though, Italians can’t drive worth balls. For part of the journey, we went the wrong way up a one way street. But anyway, seriously, 400 college kids mingling amongst locals all along the streets. It was fantasic. I made people sing the national anthem, god bless America, and, at one point, got the old man who owned one of the bars to give me free food and a bottle of wine? He also taught me key Italian phrases like “do you have a facebook?” and “no thank you I don’t want your drink.” Nice man. He loved me for some reason; I think his name was Giuseppe.
So I legit talk to everyone anyway, but two bottles of wine later, I’m even more loquacious. Tara has pictures of me with people that I don’t really recall meeting? I don’t really know how or at what time we got back (or at what point of the night did we lose Lois), you just know that it had to be the BEST Independence Day ever when you have people coming up to you for the next two days “Wow, you two were really feeling good that night; do you even remember seeing me?”

My last day in Italy consisted of me roaming around Pompeii and Naples until on-ship time because didn’t wake up until 9am and missed the ferry out to Capri. Oh well. You win some, you lose some, and I’d call 7 cities in 5 days of Italy a win for sure.

barcelona, te amo

So, I’ve had a total of 6 hours of sleep in the last 3 days; Barcelona has defeated me. A group of us left the ship at 3:45am on Thursday, arrived in Barcelona at 9am, and hit the ground running. Honestly, the first day is now kind of a blur because it seemed like a never-ending string of events… I just know that at some point of the day, we saw all the tourist-y things you’re supposed to see (La Sagrada Familia, Gaudi architecture, etc.), minus the Picasso Museum and Park Guell (which I saw the next day). But that’s the boring stuff. Everything that’s worth mentioning occurred after dinner on both days, although I guess one could argue that that’s the case for most days, anywhere.

For dinner on our first night, we went to see a flamenco show, which was, in a nutshell, fantastic. Afterwards a group of us brought some drinks back to the hotel to hang around for a few hours, because in Spain, they don’t party until midnight or later… So, we’re all piled into one room, and we may or may not have been a little too loud, because our next door neighbor comes by and kind of hints to us that it’s getting late and that he’s sleeping soon because he has an early flight the next day. We learn that his name is Henry, he’s 30, and a DEA officer from Germany… and then we get him to have drinks with us… and then he proceeds to go to the bars and clubs with us for the remainder of the night. Now, to preface the rest of this story, there was a group of 16ish of us, and Henry didn’t really seem like a creeper. Until 3 hours later when he tells my friend that they should go back to the hotel and drink together in her room; or 4 hours later when he decides to have happy hands while trying to whisper (German?) in my ear. Yeah, suffice to say, Henry got ‘accidentally’ left at the last club we went to. Hope he made it back to the Deutschland on time, wouldn’t want the Germans to lose out on such an outstanding officer of the law.

Anyway, I would finish the Barcelona trip update right now, but there’s two more days to fill in, and I have two papers to write, so expect it sometime before Italy (hopefully?)!
Oh, yeah. Italy in 3 days. Hell yes.

Update:
Our second day was our free day to do whatever we wanted, so a small group of us decided to just run around and see as much of Barcelona as possible; fútbol stadium, Picasso, the Park, and a ridiculous amount of time on their transit system (which is WAY cleaner and nicer than the ones in the U.S… but you have to constantly make sure no one is trying to jack your shit, so it’s not that great). Because our trip was through semester at sea, and they kind of messed up on the hotel situation, we stayed at Hotel Melia, a 5 star hotel in the city. Shit was absurd; I didn’t find time to sleep, but I sure as hell found time to take a legit bath. Every time I shower on the ship, I feel like Will Farrel in Elf; so bogus.
But anyway, a dozen of us went to dinner out on Port Olympic, which was, by far, the best meal I had in Spain. The only weird thing was the fact that street vendors/sellers of crap things kept on coming around and trying to get us to buy their junk; one of the guys got bamboozled into buying roses for all the girls at the table because the guy wouldn’t leave him/kept on calling him names. It was actually kind of funny.
And, again, since the nightlife doesn’t even begin until midnight, after dinner, we went to the market, bought wine and liquor, and sat out on the beach that overlooks the strip of clubs and hung out/waited for things to actually wake up.
Occurrences of the night, in no particular order… because at some point, I ceased to remember the logical string of events (stupid), so I’d be lying if I tried:
- Two words: ICE BAR. Well, one word, really: IceBarcelona.
- Looking at my leg after my friend pointed it out, and seeing a flippin’ river of blood pouring out of my knee
- So, I guess ‘falling down’ would a reasonable event to add to the list (except I don’t remember it happening, and no one remembers seeing, so I’m not even sure how to explain the situation)
- Running into a billion other semester at sea kids at a rando club called Opium
- Saying ‘Razzmatazz’ over and over again because someone else wanted to go there (it’s another club that’s 5 stories tall and is actually like 6 clubs in one; so sick), and apparently, I thought it was a sweet word to just start repeating?
- Getting back to the hotel room at 4am, and seeing my roommate for the trip passed out on the bed with Spice Girls in Spanish playing on the T.V.
- Apologizing profusely to some Europeans about the death of Michael Jackson. They love him over here like a fat kid loves cake.

Day 3 (I know, Barcelona seems to be never ending; bear with me), we had to check out of our rooms by 9am and go to the wine cellar that is the official provider of wine and cava to the Spanish royal family; such a hard life. Except, it was kind of difficult, because at this point, I was running on about 3 hours of sleep, woke up still feeling retarded, and didn’t have enough time to grab any food or water. So, long story short, I had champagne, and a cracker for breakfast. My sweat smelled like red wine.

We then went to one of the oldest monasteries in Spain on top of a mountain for lunch and to sightsee. But, before I go into detail about this, let me go off on a tangent really quickly and ask, why did semester at sea think it was a good idea to schedule a wine tasting at 11am? And more importantly, who thought it was a good idea to go straight from a vineyard to an effing monastery? I felt like everything I was doing there was sacrilegious. The mixture of dehydration, sleep depravation, altitude, and bottles of alcohol was a killer.
We didn’t get back to Cadiz until about 9:30pm that night, even though port time was officially 5pm. When I saw the ship for the first time in 4 days, I’m pretty sure I now know how Muslims feel when they go to Mecca; I was so ready to crash and sleep for the next three days until we docked in Italy... and then I remembered we have classes. Ugh.

cabin fever y cadiz

We seem to have crossed over some invisible line of demarcation that separated the 'shitty waters and tempests' in which we were previously sailing, into the ‘pleasant seas and sunny skies’ area, which I hope is never ending. Great news, because the anticipation is over (you guys have no idea how long everyone has been waiting to just see the sun), but bad news bears for my (already lacking) studies. I brought a book out on deck to read today… I was outside for four hours… I got from page 23 to page 27. I did, however, find out the enormous amounts of boatcest that’s going on right now (obviously the far more interesting and important matter). I mean, I figured it was bound to happen, it’s a flippin’ floating mattress with nothing but locked doors, so I don’t think it would take a genius to realize (who)what 700 teenagers are willing to do, but I didn’t think it was going to take three days. Seriously, ladies, can we keep our vaginas in our pants until at least we’ve docked at the first port?

Whoever said that semester at sea academia is a no big deal, obviously took classes pass/fail. I have two papers and a midterm next week. Well, maybe I’m being a little melodramatic, one of the papers is kind of a joke (2 pages double-spaced. Really?) and the midterm is in a class covering topics that I took when I was a freshman in high school, but I mean, work is work… plus, direct credit transfer means my GPA is affected regardless. Kind of bogus. But that doesn’t even matter, because at the moment, I’m in Spain, sitting in an outdoor internet café, sipping on jack and coke, watching Los Estadios Unidos beat the crap out of España in fútbol; 2-0 is a beautiful thing to see. However, the Spaniards weren’t so receptive to the sound of crazy drunk college kids screaming “LOS ESTADOS UNIDOS SON MEJORES!”
So today, I got to explore Cadiz with my first SAS friend that I met on the plane. Background story about this city: super old port town in Spain that used to be rich, but now not so much; fun fact, it’s actually where Christopher Columbus sailed from when he stumbled upon the Americas. Random happenings/things I’ve learned while I’ve been here:

- An old Englishman from Davonshire named Colin Gibson (picture) is in Spain with his wife for a few days. He’s originally from Plymouth, which is also where Sir Francis Drake was from, and in the 1600s Drake fire-bombed the Spanish Armada in the Port of Cadiz. You might be asking yourself why you’re reading this, because it’s relevant to no one, and therefore, no one really needs to know this. And if you feel this way, then welcome to my life, fifteen minutes into the conversation that I was having with this man. All I did was say ‘hello,’ which may have been followed by ‘how are you?’ Mistake. Don’t ask open-ended questions.
- 6 pitchers of sangria in a day more detrimental to your health than you might originally think.
- Playing the piano, alone, when you’re drunk is no fun.; having your drunk friend try to play The Phantom of the Opera for you while he’s drunk and making up words is way better.
- They only serve good food on the boat on days when you’re not even on it
- Topless beaches... I'm pretty sure it's just a European excuse to screw in public

i signed up for a boat, not a submarine

The captain told us the other day that we should be pleased with ourselves because this ship was built/designed specifically to go around the Mediterranean (it’s super small and really fast… that’s what she said), so we get to see it perform its intended purpose. I agree, and I think it will be pretty cool… when we get there. Right now, however, we might as well be in a canoe. I don’t think the engineers that designed this thing took into consideration that it may have to trek its tiny ass across the Atlantic’s rough waters before it reaches the calm sea to complete “it’s intended purpose.” The horizon bobs up and down a good 20 feet through the windows; I feel like I’m on a bad roller coaster ride that no one is allowed to get off of… plus, my cabin is in the front of the boat, which definitely feels everything the roughest, always.

Anyway, I’m not going to talk about it anymore, because there’s no point complaining about trivial things, so, I’ll debrief you guys on how life on the ship has been/will be until we go ashore in Cadiz. My living situation is kind of weird because we have a quad (4 bed room, but it’s the size of a coat closet… ok, maybe 2 coat closets, and I’m not even exaggerating at this point), but one of the girls never showed up, so technically we’re now in a triple? Either way, it doesn’t matter; it just translates to not enough space for anyone, at any time. Ever.
The two girls that did show up alright; we kind of just inhabit the same space, so it's no worries, I suppose. I can’t say I’m all that surprised that I didn’t become, like, best friends with my roommates; can’t win ‘em all, and I’m pretty sure I used up all of my ‘amazing roommates’ allotment for the last two years of college. But, basically, that just means I’m literally only ever in my cabin to sleep (which might actually attribute to why my roommates hate me, I’m the first one up and last one back, so I’m constantly waking everyone up…. Whoops?)

Starting last night, the ship has Pub Night for every day we’re at sea, as long as we’re not docking the next day (hungover students stomping all over Europe wasn’t what they were aiming for). Last night was fine because the weather was amazingly calm and warm, but I’m pretty sure tonight is going to be a shitshow; I can’t walk in a straight line as it is because the boat is doing backflips in this storm, so I can’t even begin to imagine what’s going to happen with 700 tipsy students.

As for the classes, I actually really enjoy mine: International Ethics and Human Rights, Greek Philosophy, and Global Studies. BUT, today is only day 2 of classes, and I’m ridiculously behind on reading, already fell asleep in a class, and lost my philosophy book. I’ve decided I’m rubbish at this school thing.

Best sign of the day: “due to someone put cheese in the toaster, now it is out of order”

what the fuck are sea legs, and why don't i have a pair yet?

I have never seen so many pissed off girls crowded around a big bin of confiscated hair straighteners before in my life… apparently, port security seizes all dryers and straighteners that are not auto-shut-off (I’m not really sure how one would go about confirming that, though) before you’re allowed to board a ship; who knew.

Fun facts that I’ve learned on my first day on the M.V. Explorer:
- 7,000 condoms were handed out during the last voyage
- Every person that’s from a school in California goes to a “San” something, and you will never be able to differentiate any of them
- Knowing the difference between port and starboard doesn’t even kind of matter when you can’t make it to either side to puke your brains out (but thankfully, this isn’t firsthand experience)
- Granola tastes way better going down, compared to going up (quite unfortunately, this is firsthand)
- Running on a treadmill, on a boat, in the middle of a storm is quite possibly the worst idea in the history of mankind
- Meeting 700 new names and faces means that reintroducing yourself to the same person three times makes you look like a jackass (but you can’t very well say that the reason for this is because they have very undistinguishing features)
Classes start Thursday; this is most certainly not a cruise.

oh canada!

What would you do if you were alone, your flight to a foreign country was three and a half hours delayed, making you land at 2am in B.F.E., and all shuttles and taxis to your hotel stop servicing at 12:30am? Well, I’m not sure what you would do, but what I did was hop into a car with three strangers, that I spoke briefly with while waiting in JFK, and somehow, miraculously, making it to my hotel, 30 minutes away, anyway. Sometimes, it pays to be a tree-talker.

Turns out though, it didn’t really matter what time I got into Halifax, because anything important in that city can be seen and done in one day flat. For a country that is crap at war, they have kind of an intense militaristic history; the Citadel is kind of out-of-character for what I perceived Canada to be. They do, however, and this did not shock me, have a shit-ton of bars and clubs, most of which the 741 kids on semester at sea mobbed at some point during the night. Instead of going with the crowd (when do I ever, though), this kid that sat next to me on the plane, who also happened to be an SAS-er, and I befriended some locals who just so happened to be turning 19 (it’s the drinking age there, so imagine a 21st birthday party, but Canadian style), went bar-hopping with them, sang karaoke, hung out at one of their lofts, and got free drinks, shots, food, and weed. Gotta love that Canadian hospitality, but gotta hate that ‘wake-up-after-three hours-of-sleep-still-drunk-and-pack-for-three-months’ feeling.
Anyway, and I never thought I’d be saying this, so I might only ever admit it once, but…. I LOVE CANADIANS.

hello new york, you're spectacular. what else is new?

If I went into detail about every place/thing I’ve experienced in the two and a half days that I’ve been in New York, this would be an absurdly lengthy post, so I’ll refrain (but only slightly because this place deserves that much talk), but, let’s just say I had an amazing tour guide, who, consequently, happens to be a pretty baller hostess as well.

I flew into JFK Thursday night, mainly without a hitch… excluding the level orange ‘high risk of terrorist attack’ threat, getting threatened by TSA guards, and being accosted by an unregistered taxi driver… apparently, and it would have been nice to know this ahead of time, once you walk out of JFK from baggage claim, you should definitely proceed directly to the row of shiny yellow cabs and just pick one. You go to them, they should not approach you. However, in the event that you're an idiot, and there's a guy waiting by the door asking if you need a cab, and you say 'yes' (in my defense, I was just answering a simple question), you should not simply allow him to take your luggage as he tells you to follow him to his vehicle. Also, once you have seen said vehicle, and it's a silver jeep with tinted windows and not a yellow taxi, you should really just ask for your bags back. But, if you all of the sudden realize how stupid you are too little too late (ie. now that your bags are already in his trunk), I guess you should just do what I did... and ask to sit in the front seat. I figured if shit was going down, I'm stabbing the fucker in the leg, no question. But, like I said, nothing terrible happened, so crisis averted.

Friday, I got to explore all over God’s green earth on my own until about 2pm, so I was able to see the main parts of lower Manhattan, but the standout experience of the day was definitely the Bodies Exhibit… so.freaking.amazing. It’s basically a huge warehouse-turned-museum that houses large amounts of factoids about the human body, accompanied by a ton of cadavers and parts for effect. Useless information [+] kind of gross and gory exhibit [=] I’m enthralled for hours (where else would I learn the fact that there’s a tiny bone in the face that is connected to every single other bone on the skull?).

Some other noteworthy events of Friday:

- exploring Soho, Wall Street, and the seaport

- taking the subway for the first time, but second time because I suck at life (got a MetroCard single use pass, accidentally turned the bar the wrong way, and subsequently got locked out. second time around was more successful.)

- dinner at the Yale Club
- faceplanting at the Yale Club. three times. no need to go into detail.
- first legit taxi ride, complete with nonstop horn honking

So I’m about to sound like a complete nerd for the remainder of this post, but I’m not really worried about it, so I guess people are just going to have to deal. The morning consisted of roaming through a bookstore, or, rather, THE bookstore, because Strand is world renowned… if you’ve been in, you understand why; followed by a visit to the Union Square Market, where the greatest blueberry and ginger jam in existence is sold. Seriously.
Anywho, I’m kind of an art history/architecture dork (and if you didn’t know that about me, then you definitely don’t know me well enough to be reading this, haha), so, in a nutshell, Guggenheim, The Met, time square/Time Warner Center, Columbus Circle… obviously, I found Saturday to be ridiculously wondrous.
We wrapped up the day with dinner at Katz’s Deli (it’s where Harry met Sally), because living in the lower east side means you can walk anywhere. Heavy-ass dinner, followed by the Best Brunch in New York (Sarabeth’s) means I left New York never wanting to eat another thing again in my life. I love New York… but not enough to own that lame-o t-shirt.
Onward to Halifax!