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.