Svizzera!

SWITZERLAND! My new favorite country. This was one of the best weekends I have had this semester, because everything was just perfect. The travelers were myself, Britney, Courtney, Kalin, Kelly, and Grant. Our Swiss adventure began with getting there—on Friday afternoon we left at 3:19. After a succession of various trains and layovers (one train was very fancy and we had a private coach that was very reminiscent of Harry Potter!), we arrived in Interlaken at around 10ish. We got out of the train station and realized we didn’t know how to get to the hostel, which was fine by us. There were various signs leading there, and we were happy to take a long walk to get there. We were just in awe of the giant mountains we could see rising up around us from every side, even in the dark. And there were so many stars! The air was so clean; our lungs were thanking us for the treat away from the city. We arrived at the hostel, Balmers, and were really excited because it looked like a little Swiss building out of a movie, nestled at the base of a mountain. We checked in and got into our rooms (Kelly, Britney, me and Grant in one, Kalin and Courtney in another). We went to sleep at about 11:00 or so after our long day of travelling. At about 11:30 or 12 we heard people come in, and there were two guys staying in the room. They seemed nice, so we just kind of fell asleep and figured we’d meet them in the morning.

Fast forward to 3:00 in the morning, when I’m woken up by a strange noise. There are no locks on the room, and a drunk man has wondered, naked save for whitie-tighties, into our room! He wanders around, hits Britney/Kelly’s bunk bed, then leaves and leaves the door open. I stare at the door for a while, jump up and close it, and then go to sleep. HA! What a hostel experience. The next morning we woke up and formally met our new roommates. Their names were Chris and Chris, and they went to Georgia Tech! What a small world. I spent all weekend naming people I knew at GA Tech trying to see if we had any mutual friends. Anyway. That day they went to Zurich, and it was the day of SKYDIVING ADVENTURE! We got breakfast, and then walked around Interlaken for a little bit because we were getting picked up at 12. It is such a beautiful little place! I love it. So we went back to the hostel to get picked up at 12, and were piled into a scenic air bus that had about 6 other people from Texas Tech. They were all really nice too—we certainly made some new friends in Svizzera!

Isn't Svizzera beautiful?

Our Hostel

Me and Britney are intense skydivers

View from our hike

Bellisima!

We arrive at the skydiving place (after a very scenic drive) and then get hustled into the building to get trained. We lay on the floor and practiced the moves we would do in the air, and met some of the instructors. We paid (which took a HUGE but worthwhile chunk of money out of my account) and then we had to wait. There were four planes, with each ascent, jump, and descent taking about 30 or so minutes. I was in the 3rd plane. So after the first two planes, I get harnessed up, and me and Britney were on the same plane together. Grant was also on our plane, but he didn’t dive—he just went up to watch. Courtney did the same thing on Kalin and Kelly’s plane. So we get up into the sky, and our instructors Danny and Hans were really nice and talkative. We were being taped the whole time for our DVDs, and they turned out awesome. Can’t wait to show you all ☺ About half way up, Danny tells me I have to get up in his lap (to get attached to him), which of course made me feel quite awkward because he was cute and an intense Swiss man. Britney’s instructor looks over and goes “Is she always this frisky?!” which made us all laugh, and me probably blush bright red. Quite an experience!

The time comes to jump. Britney is first—she’s sitting on the edge of the plane. The door flies open, and she puts her legs over the edge of the plane, she’s strapped onto Hans. I see him pitch forward once, twice, and then—SHE’S GONE! I screamed the loudest I think when I saw her get sucked out of the plane. Suddenly I find myself on the edge of the plane. I don’t know how I got there…Danny just lifted me up of the bench and somehow carried me without my knowledge to the edge of the plane. My legs are out over the edge, my head back against his chest, pitch forward once, twice, and GONEEEEEEEE!

I screamed. Intensely. And also had the most amazing experience of my life. I was falling so fast, while smiling for the cameraman falling ahead of me, and seeing amazing views everywhere I looked. I can’t remember if I breathed, but I don’t think I did for 55 seconds of freefall. Suddenly our parachute deployed, and we descended more slowly for 4 or so minutes, all the while Danny spinning me around so I could see the view from everywhere. It was so amazing. All too soon we were landing, on our butts, in a field of daisies. I was deliriously happy—it was such an amazing experience, and we all felt that it was so worth it. It just went by too fast! After the last planeful went, we were back on the bus heading towards Balmers. We arrived and went to Hooters, of all places. My first Hooters experience, internationally! It was actually pretty good. We spent some more time walking around Interlaken, and then headed back to the hostel. Skydiving takes a lot out of you! Some of us watched the Ring 2 in the movie room, and then we met our two Chris-es from drinks and card games in the lounge room. It was a really terrific day.

The next day we woke up and Britney, Grant, Kalin and I went hiking while Courtney and Kelly went ATVing. We walked through Interlaken and started on a trail up one of the mountains. There was an amazing view, though we all felt really out of shape. People were biking intensely up the mountain and we could barely walk, ha! We found a rock sculpture at one point and all added a rock to it. We ended up wussing out and not making it to the top, but it was still really nice. We then found an authentic looking place for lunch and I had an amazing Swiss meal—a huge plate of hash browns covered with onions and swiss cheese. SO good. We went back to the hostel at that point and met up with Courtney and Kelly, and we watched Wedding Crashers to relax after our intense day. Afterwards, Britney and I sat outside the hostel and read our respective books, it was so nice. We went back to the same place for dinner, and Britney and I split an awesome pizza. Then. We had the most AWESOME chocolate fondue ever. All kinds of fruit and marshmallows, which we dove into. I think Grant was really disgusted by us girls, who were diving into the chocolate. When all the fruit was gone, we each took an apricot and put it on the stick. Then we made makeshift lollipops by repeatedly dipping the apricots in the chocolate and licked it off. I think we really got drunk off of chocolate, it was so amazing. Amazing!

On Monday, we ate breakfast and then walked around the town. I got some chocolate (YUM) and then we headed back to get our luggage for the train. After the first train we parted ways with the two Chris-es, and us Eloners continued on our way home. We were actually really sad to leave Switzerland, because we all loved it so much. I would go back there in a heartbeat.

Me and my instructor!

OMG!!!

AH!

I think that about covers my Swiss adventure! What an amazing country.

La Pausa di Primavera 2009!

Just a forewarning--the pictures may not match up well with my tales of adventure.  Blogspot apparently hates me, and made it quite difficult for me :)

View from Oia

Ciao! So for my spring break post…this one is going to be long! And the moral of the whole tale…NEVER fly Alitalia! Santorini was so beautiful, though.

OK. So Friday, we took the day to pack and get ready. The other group of people left a few hours before us, and Allee, Rebecca and I headed to the airport at about 5 for our 7:20 flight. All was going well, we checked in, were waiting on our plane and….delay. So it gets to the point where our flight into Rome (connection to Athens) was so delayed that we missed our connection flight. So our entire plane is at ticketing getting their flights re-figured out. We ended up having to wait 2 or 3 hours for our flight overall, and they told us that they were putting us up in Rome for the night and putting us on the next flight in the morning. SO. We get to Rome and…they didn’t know we were coming. No one called them and told them an ENTIRE plane of people were about to show up in need of hotels. So they scrambled to figure that out, and after a long process of people trying to get bags (thank goodness I just had carry-ons!) we all got on a charter bus. They then proceeded to drive us to the wrong hotel, and the whole group of people had to walk around Rome at midnight to find the right hotel. We sleep for about two hours, get up again and get to the airport, and get on our flight to Athens. PHEW! We were put in first class, because all the angry Italians from the night before complained so much; so that was nice! And no offense to any of you Canadians, but…there was this BIG Canadian high school tour group getting on our Athens flight, and one of the girls didn’t get on the plane. Seriously, A) how do 5 chaperones lose a girl between the gate and the plane, and B) how did that girl not have ANY friends who realized she was gone?!?! So we had to wait for that for a while, and all I could think of was the song from South Park “Blame Canada.” Allee and I got a huge laugh out of that one, for sure.

We arrive in Athens and get to our hotel at about 12. Our hotel was in a REAL sketch area, but it was ok because the hotel itself wasn’t bad. We dropped our stuff and went out to hit the Acropolis, but when we got there at 3 it had just closed. What a comedy of errors! Fo’ real. Anyway, we explored for a while, checked out the market and some ruins. That night we went to sleep early, and then woke up real early the next morning. We ran to the Acropolis at 8 and got to go in right when it opened, and it was a free day (YAY). It was so worth it…the best thing Athens had to offer. It was really humbling walking amongst those buildings. Here are a few shots:

Black Sand beach!

First view of the Parthenon

First day in Athens

Allee, Rebecca and I

Caryatids

So, after we zipped through the Acropolis, we headed to the airport to go to Santorini, and thankfully there were no delays! We got to the Santorini airport and the man (Katinas) from our hotel was waiting for us. He was really nice, if not slightly crazy. The view on the drive was amazing…anywhere you are on that island you can see the water. Beautiful. We got to our hotel and I was so happy because it was absolutely beautiful. From one window in our room you could see the pool, and further on the ocean, and from the other window you could see the mountains. There were green fields everywhere, and donkeys and horses chilling out right there. We were about a ten-minute leisurely walk from the black sand beach.

View off our balcony

The next day, we woke up early-ish and had breakfast. Katinas drove us to Fira, the main city of Santorini. We looked around in some shops and walked around, and then we walked down to the port. It was hundreds of steps, and at every level their were donkeys waiting to take you down. We were a little sketched out by that though (and by the donkey poop at every step) so we just walked. AMAZING view. We got down to the port and got on a boat that took us to the volcano that formed the island. It was a really nice boat ride, and a beautiful day. So we get to the (active) volcano and they let us loose for about an hour. We walked all over and it was a pretty good hike—there were some spots on the volcano that were spouting sulfurous gas, which was a little nervewracking. There were red flowers coating the ground, and the view down to the water was beautiful. It was a really neat experience to climb on a volcano, and I stole a rock! (Shhh….)

Me on the liquid hot magma mountain of death...

The volcano!

After the volcano, we got back onto the boat and they took us to the hot springs. They told us we could go in, so the whole boat (mostly Americans/English) jumped right on in and the boat drivers were just laughing… it was FREEZING. They told us to swim a little further into the springs, but it never got warmer. They were definitely not hot springs, but ice cold springs. It was ok though, because I swam in the Mediterranean! It was a fun experience, although I am lucky I didn’t get pneumonia ☺ The boat ride back was really nice too, and we dried off in the warm breeze. We took a somewhat jankety cable car back up the mountain, but I thought that it was really fun!

When we got back into Fira Katinas met us and took us on a driving tour of the top half of the island. We saw the typical view of Greek islands—the white/blue houses built into the cliff and it was so pretty everywhere we went. We walked around Oia, another town, and then climbed down the port to meet him. It was a little overcast, so the sunset wasn’t that great, but it was still pretty. We got back to the hotel and relaxed/hung out some more, and ordered in food.

March 31st we slept late (YAY) and then Katinas told us at breakfast that we could go on a wine tasting. He took us to a little family run winery, and we got to try 5 different kinds of wine. The wine man was very nice and explained to us the process of creating and bottling the wine, and I had no idea how complicated it was! Their wine trees are trained to grow very low to the ground on curved branches to keep them out of the dangerous winds.

After the wine tasting, we laid out on the beach for a while. I got sunburned, and my nose was BRIGHT red, but now I’ve got a little tan ☺ The black sand beach was really cool, but not really sand—it was more like tiny pebbles. And in the water, there was no sand, but a giant rock formation because of the way the island was formed. When the sun was high in the sky, it was really hard to walk on the pebbles because they got SO hot. It was really nice to just lay on the beach and hear the waves. Since it’s not high season there yet, the whole island was relatively quiet. There weren’t too many things open, and there really weren’t that many people, but I liked that. After we sat on the beach for a few hours, Rebecca and I went horseback riding for two hours on the beach (Allee is scared of horses). My horse was a little crazy, but it was still so much fun. We were right on the beach and in the water, which has always been a dream of mine to do. Fantastic! That night we went to dinner at a little place and had real good food, and a free drink!

Wine man, Me, Allee, Rebecca

Me on my horse

Rebecca and I on our horses

Our last day our flight was not until 10:30, so we were able to hang around. We kept our room for 20-euro day rate, and woke up late, ate breakfast and went to the beach. We laid out for a while, and then had lunch at a really neat Tahitian themed place right on the beach. Afterwards, we sat by the pool for a while, and then showered and got ready to head out. We ate dinner, and Katinas drove us to the airport. Our flight to Athens went as planned, and we got there about 11:30. Our flight the next day was at 7, so we decided to just stay in the airport. We stayed there that night and then the next morning got on our flight to Rome just fine.

Of course, good old Alitalia, our flight from Rome to Naples was delayed. We didn’t realize how delayed, because it was just about 30 minutes and then we sat on the plane for a while. So by the time we got to Naples and got baggage, we were two hours late. No time for Pompeii, unfortunately. So, we just got on a train back to Florence. At that point we were grumpy from the travel woes, and it was just me and Allee—Rebecca went to Vienna to see her sister. By the time Allee and I got back to Florence we were so happy to be home—it’s weird how much we missed Florence. It was so nice to get back!

Friday Allee and I relaxed all day, watched tv and chilled (that was SO nice). Saturday I went to Pitti Palace and went through all the museums. I was in the Boboli gardens for a little bit, but then it started raining. I walked around a little bit then, and was glad to get out and see some of Florence. Today (Sunday) I went to Santa Croce and sat in on a little bit of Palm Sunday mass which was nice. Then I went to Academia and saw David, and he is so much amazing the second time around! I walked through there, and then went to San Lorenzo leather market. It’s a little intimidating going through there alone, because people try and get you to buy things, but I still enjoyed it. It was a nice day to walk around!

So that’s my spring break. Whew! Santorini was absolutely beautiful. I would recommend it, especially in open season when so much more will be going on.