ottobre continuato..

ok so i'm a horrible blogger.. but i really have no time, like its not even a joke. as i write this i am supposed to be studying for my italian composition exam in less than 12 hours and i only just returned from munich, germany 12 hours ago. busy doesn't even begin to describe my life at this moment. but i love it! its filled with good things, so it's not bad. so i' still trying to catch up on october entries.. but since i finished some later ones, we're now going to go out of order... and then i'll fix it later. so here comes some later october events!

16/10-19/10
Brussels, Belgium!
We hadn’t taken a trip outside the country yet so about 2 weeks before the weekend of the 16th, we looked up the places we could go on the cheapest airfare. I think Stockholm came in first, but the airport was so far outside the city center that it wasn’t worth it. London and Lyon were in that mix too, but somehow we ended up deciding on Brussels, probably because none of us had ever been there. So we had all the flights we wanted and a hostel but had to wait to book them until we walked home since school was closing. Once we logged on in the computer lab in the dorm, the return flight was sold out. So after doing some rearranging, we booked our original departure flight and a return flight from a different airport in Brussels to a different airport in Brussels on Ryanair, which I’d heard a lot of bad things about. Then the hostel website consistently told us that the rooms were all sold out, but another website allowed us to book one. Hoping that it wasn’t lying we frantically booked that hostel. Definitely the most trouble we’d had in booking or organizing any trip yet. so the Thursday we leave arrives, only 2 days (or less maybe) after we get back from the Heart of Italy tour, so we are tired and still had class those two days as well. Plus Carla and I had a cinema midterm paper due on Thursday. I stayed up until 5:40 and got up at 7 for class, she stayed up all night working on it. So we were pretty tired that day. And we had cinema class until 3 pm, when we ran home and packed our stuff for our 4:55 train to Rome to the airport (our flight was at 9:15). Caitlin left her backpack at the dorm with us because she was going to pick up the same train at a different stop since she had a test at school until 4:45. I get everything packed and we make it to the train station and get our tickets and everything. We’re sitting on the train, and Carla says “I feel like I’m forgetting something” and I say me too, but then she says “well at least I have my passport”. And I’m like oh no!! I don’t have that. And she starts yelling shut up, and everyone is looking at us because I’m like don’t tell me to shut up and that I have to get off the train now! Luckily the train hadn’t moved yet so I got off and so did Carla. I decided to leave all the stuff with her and run back to the dorm since I knew exactly where my passport was. When I got to the dorm and to my room I tried to open my drawer where my passport was, but I had locked it (which I usually do since I have money in there too). So I dumped out my purse on my bed, but then realized that the key was in my backpack, which I had left with Carla at the train station. This is not good since the next train is in 15 minutes and now I can get my passport. I knock on every usac person’s door in the hall and no one is home so I randomly ask some Spanish Erasmus students whose door is open if I could borrow their key, hoping that maybe it’s the same. They don’t really speak English or Italian but I’m trying to explain this is my broken Italian with a few English words thrown in and I know I was all red since I had just run to the dorm.. you should have seen the look on this girls face. I know she though I was crazy. Finally she let me borrow the key, which didn’t work. I went to the front desk to see if they had a master one or anything that could help. They said no they didn’t but a repair man who could open it would be coming in the morning so I should wait till then. I kept trying to explain that no.. I have a flight tonight, I can not wait. And they just kept telling me that tomorrow would be best. Off course Italians fail to see the importance of time in this matter. After I continually told them that I would miss my flight one cleaning woman nicely tried to help me but had no solution either. At this point Carla had come back to the dorm since we had missed the next train anyways and had my key and backpack. I opened the drawer got the passport and went back to the train station, where the next train wasn’t for another hour. At this point we knew we wouldn’t make the 45 min cut off for check in at the airport in Rome, but we would only be 15 minutes late and thought that hopefully that would be ok. The new train went along a different route though and our old tickets that we had already validated were not valid, so we did have to buy some new ones. We get on the first train, but it leaves late. We switch in Orte, and our connection is late, we get of at Roma Tiburtina, and our train to Fiumicino Aeroporto is over 30 minutes late. It’s looking like we are not going to make this flight. We get on the train and it even ends up stopping at one stop for like 15 minutes. When we finally get to the airport, it is 9:15, the departure time of our flight. We start running to the Alitalia desk, where the first person says no it’s the next desk, and the next person says, no it’s the next desk. When we make it to the third desk, he says no the plane is gone. Why did we have to run to 3 different desks for something you all knew?! They told us we would loose all the money except the taxes, and that the next flight to Brussels wasn’t until tomorrow morning. They also told us maybe we should look into other airlines, which of course were located in other terminals. So we knew we had the Alitalia option at 9:30 the next morning for 160 euro. We went and walked around other terminals looking for Brussels airlines or anyone else, but since it was like 10 at night there was no one. We tried to use the internet, but it was so expensive so we just ended up playing a lot of phone tag trying to get people in the states to look things up and book things for us while we sat around in the airport. Eventually we found an 8:30 flight on an airline called Airone, owned by Lufthansa, that was only 100 euro. So we booked that, then went to stand in line at Alitalia to get our taxes back from the flight we missed. That took forever and it was probably around one am by the time we had everything figured out. We knew we’d be staying in the airport as soon as we missed the flight because the last train to Viterbo had already left for the night. And we had already been up for over a day, so we expected to arrive in Brussels really, really tired. My parents, though, nicely agreed to pay for a hotel, which I didn’t think was necessary, but was really nice none the less. It was an amazing Hilton connected to the airport! One of the nicest newest hotels I’ve been in in awhile. We were soo sooo tired when we got there but soo soo happy to have a bed and shower that we just changed and went to sleep for all of 5 hours before we had to leave for our new flight. During all this time, I should mention, that Caitlin did make the train, and we told her to get on the flight so that she wouldn’t have to pay more to switch it the next day. I had her bag though. So she made it to Brussels that night and got to the hostel without any of her stuff. So we got to the airport and on our flight the next morning, still really tired, but the flight was good and we got to Brussels, got on a train and in 15 mins were in the city, where we took a bus to the hostel. The hostel was really nice and didn’t make us pay for the night that Carla and I weren’t there, even though we didn’t call to cancel or anything. And the hostel itself was really nice. There was a bar and free maps and our room was in a building across the street, which was really small, but nice nonetheless. Free breakfast too, and there was butter for the bread, which I miss! We put our stuff in a locker and went straight to begin our first day in Brussels! Fist we walked to the main square through a little outdoor market and by the galleries St Hubert. There is where we got our first taste of Belgian food, French fries! Double fried and super good. Other things we did in Brussels included: ate great food! So many more cuisine choices than in Viterbo/italy, no pasta or pizza all weekend! Ate kebabs and Greek food, walked around and saw the Grote market, Grand place, lots of gothic architecture, which was a refreshing change from the Etruscan stuff we are use to seeing, we went to the chocolate museum and saw them make Belgian chocolate, went to the Delirium bar with most beers in the world (its in the Guinness Book of World Records!) where we all got different types of beer – including apple and cherry beer, which were surprisingly good, we stayed in an awesome hostel with a bar and cool common area and small but nice rooms, we saw the grand place lit up at night, spent some time in a grocery store with a million options (I wish this is what we had in Viterbo!!), bought some amazingggg waffles for 50 cents and amazing chocolate for same price, went to the mussee des beaux arts and saw some famous paintings, went to the small beer museum had some Belgian beer, authentic Belgian twice fried French fries, French written everywhere along with Flemish so now I kind of want to learn Dutch, we had sweeter waffles with ice cream, while watching some random drunk boys in tuxes singing in the grand place, Doritos! At the little convenience store in the supermarket, saw a beautiful cathedral reminiscent of Notre Dame, went up to the 10th floor of parking garage with amazing views thanks to our great free map with suggestions, did some shopping, walked inside the comic book museum, went back to the hostel where Carla tried to open her mini-wine bottle unsuccessfully and flew out of a far away airport (Charleroi) at the crack of dawn on Ryanair on Sunday but it was still the easiest flight back!

24/10
Assisi and Perugia
Today the eurochocolate festival in perugia was going on so USAC planned a trip for anyone who was interested to go and see it. We left at 8 am and had a two hour bus ride to our first stop, Assisi. Assisi is famous for its patron saint, st francis, who decided to live his life like jesus did (or something like that.. I really have no reference for these things other than what I hear). So we had a tour guide and visited the church of saint francis and also of santa chiara while also walking through the town, which was, of course, beautiful. Afterwards we had a little free time, then it as back on the bus for a wuick ride to perugia. The tour guide said perugia was a small town and that the chocolate festival wasn’t a big deal but I didn’t really find either of those things to be true. The main street in perugia, which was definitely around the same size or bigger than viterbo, was lined with chocolate vendors from all over the world. How are you even supposed to choose from that many different types?! Perugia is famous for its own type of chocolates, one of which is the baci, so I knew I would want to try that. It was pretty crowded in the streets of perugia and was hard to hear and pay attention to the guide who was trying to explain the historical significance of the town while we walked by amaing chocolate display after amazing chocolate display. We were like kids in a candy store, literally! Finally we had some free time to check out the town. I got white hot chocolate (really like a melted white chocolate bar, so good!), sampled a chocolate covered bana, some chocolate cookies, so 99 percent coco chocolate (so gross!) so little lindt chocolates and who knows what else. I ended up buying some perugia chocolate to try as well. They even had chocolate pasta, choclate sandwiches, cotton candy with chocolate.. anything you could think of! Milka made a life sized cow out of chocolate. I love chocolate, but I think I had too much that day! Once we got back to viterbo Caitlin and hailey stopped for kebabs. We’ve been there before and the guy must know that we are Americans, because he looks at me and goes obama, obama! And then I said si.. and he gave me a free slice of pizza!