Ashley Abroad!

Bonjour! Bonjourno! Ciao! Tciao! Salut! Hello!

Here I am, back from two weeks in the Italian sun, well toned from doing all those two-a-days (that's to say, two gelatos per day)...but even if the extra poundage from all the amazing pizza, pasta, and gelato might disappear (maybe), the memories surely won't! It was so incredible I don't even know where to start...so I guess I'll just go in order...

PARIS

First I met Mom at the airport in Paris after her overnight flight. She was exhausted, I was pretty tired, and we took an hour to figure out where to buy RER tickets. But in the end we headed into Paris, just super happy to see eachother again. We met for lunch with some friends of mine and I'm pretty sure Mom fell asleep for a few seconds at the table...those overnight flights are the worst. We swung by the Eiffel Tower for a nap in the park behind it and then headed to our overnight train that would take us to Rome. Luckily, the couchettes were nice and relaxing and we slept pretty well the night we traveled to Rome.

ROME

At last! A 16 hour train ride later and we were finally in Rome. We got settled in to the hotel (Hotel Doria as you can see in the picture below). While Mom was getting cleaned up, I realized my first huge mistake of the trip. I forgot to subtract the day we lost between Paris and Rome and had written on our schedule that we had a day and a half in Rome, when in actuality, we had only half a day! Our next train to Florence left the following morning!! So we began our mad sprint through Rome, heading to the incredible Colloseum (where we skipped the line by paying for an "exclusive tour" that was led by a very interesting man who enjoyed pointing out coincidences between Rome and America. I really didn't see what George Clooney had to do with the Colloseum, but in any case we got to skip the line.) It was massive and breathtaking and so cool to see below the colloseum floor where they kept the animals and prisoners. We also walked the length of the ruins. Its amazing how much is still there of the huge city it used to be. Structures that are thousands of years old! Absolutely stunning. I also really loved the capital building. It was so huge, I could barely fit it all in my camera. After the capital building we spent the evening thoroughly lost before we found the street we were looking for with a good restaurant where I had AMAZING lasagna! We then headed back to the hotel so we could get what sleep we could before the morning train.

PISA

Out of Rome and off to Pisa, where we got lost again trying to find the leaning tower. Amazingly, the tower was in the farthest corner of the city from the train station, so it took us a good two hours to get there. After some quick snapshots we were back on the train and off to Florence.

FLORENCE

Florence was my favorite city my mom and I visited. It had whimsically winding streets that reminded me of Paris and Rennes. The Duomo was incredible. There was nowhere I could stand that would allow me to take a picture of it in its entirety. It was made of beautiful pink and green and white marble and reminded me of a huge easter egg. We waited an hour in the wrong line to see the dome, and then realized that we could get in for free without waiting in line at the main entrance. I could only get a picture of half the interieur of the dome but it was just breathtaking. We had our best dinner by far in Florence. The man at the front desk suggested a local place and it was INCREDIBLE, I would go back to Florence just to eat there again. Afterward, we headed up to the Palazzo and the look out point to get some amazing views of the city. The Duomo dome just outshines all the others. Its humongous - even from so far away! After two full nights in the same place, a fantastic meal, and a new phone for Mom (no longer kept from calling her children - like who knew she liked them so much? ;P ) everyone could breathe and relax again and head optimistically onward to San Marino.

SAN MARINO

To get there we had to take the train to the beach town of Rimini and then take an hour-long bus ride to the very peak of the cliffs of San Marino. We were litterally on a cliff. The ancient fortress (pictures below), the hotel, the restaurants, all built on to this cliff. Our hotel was really fancy, which surprised me because I found all of our hotels at budget sites and stuff, but there it was, catering to wealthy, suit and tie kinda folks while we were walking around in hiking backpacks and flipflops. Later that night we found out why it was so inexpensive. NO ONE stays in San Marino overnight. Its very obviously a day-trip kinda place because EVERYTHING (restaurants, shops, the post office, the museums) is closed after 7pm. We went out to get some dinner around 7 and there was not a soul in sight. It was all very spooky. It was as if the whole town was kidnapped while we got ready for dinner. So we went back to the hotel thoroughly creeped out and ordered some room service and watched the British News coverage of Kate and William's wedding. Very fun.

SIDE NOTE - Mom found these beautiful candles in San Marino and asked the artist if she could pay her to ship them to the states. The artist couldnt find a price online so she suggested taking them to the hotel to ship. The hotel thought we were crazy for asking and sent us to the post office. The post office was open but nobody seemed to want to help us so we decided we'd have better luck in Venice. Thus the beginning of the ridiculous candle story.

VENICE

Venice was...confusing...to say the least. I can't tell you how long it took to find our hotel, then to find the check in location for our hotel, then to find our way back to the hotel each day. All and all, about 90 percent of our time spent in Venice was us being completely and utterly lost. We got lost for over two hours one day trying to find a post office to mail the above-mentioned candles from, only to find every option closed or packed with people. After much back and forth deliberation, Mom was able to fit the candles in her pack and just prayed they wouldnt break on the way home. St Mark's square was incredible and a nice relief from the narrow winding streets of Venice. I felt like such a rat in a maze unable to smell my cheese. I still couldn't find my way back to the hotel or St Mark's square if you dropped me back in Venice today. I was horribly disoriented and sometimes that made it somewhat hard to relax and enjoy things. But the hotel was adorable and the food was yummy and the company was great. So no complaints. We took a lovely gondola ride and it was fun to see for the first time how all the canals connect. After 2 nights and Venice, though, we concluded that one of those nights probably would have been better spent in Rome - but c'est la vie! You live and learn...

BACK HOME FOR MOM, BACK TO FRANCE FOR ME

The day to travel home started at 5am. We caught the 6am water bus, caught the 7am train, connected in Milan, and arrived in a small French Riviera town called Ventimiglia, where Mom and I parted ways. Mom headed to Nice for her night train connection to Paris and I headed to a small town 11 minutes from Ventimiglia called Menton, right on the ocean. I had a lovely hotel there where i just fell into bed at 6pm and didnt move until morning. Mom made it safe to Paris and caught a taxi to the airport, where she had another long flight ahead of her. I was very proud of her travelling endurance. I had a wonderful time in Menton. The town was adorable and I found the best bakery I have ever been to. Pain au chocolat that just melted in your mouth. I also fell asleep on the beach at 10am and woke up at 2 with an atrocious sunburn. Luckily, a full night of heavy aloe, drinking water, and lotion healed it up in just three days. But since I was meeting my friends the day after my sunburn, they got to see me looking like a polished lobster in Cinque Terre.

CINQUE TERRE

The most beautiful place I have ever been in my life. Sparkling blue water, even bluer ski, mountains that run right into the sea. It was so incredible. The first day Margaret, Cate, Bekah, and I all met up and cooked a delicious pasta dinner in our PRIVATE APARTMENT that the hostel owner gave us because of an overbooking situation. It definitely beat being in a ten person dorm. We definitely lounged about and made the most of our lovely apartment before heading out to get some dessert gelato and watch the sun set over the ocean. The second day was filled with five hours of hiking up and down the slopes of the mountains that pass through the five villages that make up Cinque Terre. The five villages are Riomaggiore (where we stayed), Manarola (where we ate a fabulous sea-food dinner), Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterossa (the biggest village with the only beach in Cinque Terre where we would lounge each day until dinner time.) It was like paradise. On the last day, Margaret and I tried to take a boat to Monterossa to have some more beach time and see the villages from the sea. I say tried because we ended up getting on the wrong boat! What was supposed to have been a short ten minute boat ride turned into a half hour in the wrong direction, and then an hour and ten minutes to get to Monterossa on a different boat. We cant complain, though, the captains just laughed when we showed them our wrong tickets and let us ride what should have been a 23 euro boat tour with our 8 euro one way beach tickets. It was incredible!!

OVERVIEW

Weather = Perfect and sunny every day
Food = Incredible, I ate sooo much dark chocolate gelato
Language Barrier = Not bad, most people knew either English or French (although one time I thought I ordered a tuna sandwich and the waitress came out with some crazy alcoholic drink with leaves in it...i was like what is that? where's the sandwich?)
Favorite City = Florence
Favorite Place = Cinque Terre
Favorite Food = Gelato
Icing on the cake = We saw tons of adorable cats running about

Ok thanks for listening so long and thanks to everyone for the wonderful advice!! A special thanks to Nana and Baba for watching the kids and helping mom get all prepared, to Aunt Paula for giving us lots of helpful tips, to Mom for coming, to the girls for letting Mom come on Easter weekend, to Uncle Paul for the hotel help, and to Grandma Nan and Papa J for a wonderful dinner in Rome, and to anyone else I forgot!!! Thanks so much you really made our trip so memorable!!

I have only two weeks left now and they are composed of finals, goodbye parties and events, and then exploring Stockholm, Paris, Normandy, Rennes, and London with my wonderful boyfriend, Will, who's been nice enough to watch my apartment and cats this semester for me! It'll be a pretty busy next few weeks but I'll try to get one more blog in before I say so long! Talk to you soon!

Bye!

~Ashley

Hey everyone! So these latest pictures below (which are quite out of order, Im sorry) are from this past weekend where I got to go with all the people from my program and see four castles in central France!!! Yes, I know, there's only pictures of three castles and its all because I left my camera on the bus by accident at the second castle, so Ill try to steal some friends' facebook pictures of it and upload them to the blog, but until then, you'll just have to imagine it! Ok here are the details...

Brissac - First stop on the list, a quaint little chateau, which actually looked more to me like a manor or a large English estate. It was a nice place to start off and the guided tour was actually really interesting. The Duke and Duchess who curently own the chateau are too old to keep it up and navigate the grand scaircases, so they've left it so generously to their nephew - the Marquis no less - and his wife and children, who do currently reside there. I don't know about you, but I think it would be awesome to be ten years old and living in a castle filled with secret passage ways, secret rooms, and even a dungeon!! When King Henry resided there for a short while, he even installed a panel that slid open to a secret room with a door that led outside for his mistress. Seems a little overkill to me considering every king at that time flaunted their mistresses about...but to each his own.

Next we were off to Villandry, the castle with the most beautifully and maticiously groomed gardens by far, and consequently, the one I forgot to bring my camera to...The castle itself wasn't too extraordinary, but the gardens just went on forever and they were hedged into little mazes and shapes that you could see perfectly from the walkway above that allowed a bird's eye view. No one was even allowed on the dirt path around the garden because it had been combed with large rakes into beautiful patterns as well! It was breathtaking! There were also some woods near by so me and my friends took a stroll through the woods pretending to be fairy tale characters in search of a dragon hiding treasure, it all got very complicated and in the end we never found the treasure, but at least I got to be a rogue theif for a good two hours - and at a castle no less!

Then the first day came to an end and we settled into the adorable town of Tours, where people were very friendly. We were so very tired we thought we would crash right away, but, unfortunately the hostel was very noisy all night and we all got quite a horrible sleep. But breakfast was good the next morning and off we went to the next castle.

Chenonceau - this is the castle that Beauty and the Beast is supposed to be based off of, but maybe they werent refering to the Disney one when they said that, because I really don't see the resemblance...but it was really cool all the same. Its hard to tell from the pictures, but the whole castle is sitting in the middle of a the Loire River. It's completely surround by water and has a long grand hall in back that travels the whole width of the river like a bridge. The kitchens are neat too because they're below the grand hall, closer to the water - I wonder what they did if the river ever flooded! Those kitchens would be underwater! The coolest part of this castle, though, was the hedge maze in the garden. My friends and I kept racing to the center. It was so much fun!

Amboise - After that, it was off to the last - and maybe my favorite - castle, Amboise. It rests on a small hill, but once you go up the towers, you have a gorgeous view of the whole town of Amboise and the Loire river. It was so beautiful!! Unfortunately, we were all exhausted and there was a mandatory hour-long tour about the castle. I don't think I could focus on a single thing our tour guide said, I was like a zombie. My brain had stopped working by then. I liked the interior of the castle well enough even though I was constantly distracted by the beautiful view from the windows.

I got home in time for dinner with my host mom, Puri, and then went straight to bed - saving my homework for Monday morning. And, indeed, I've been doing little but homework this whole week (but I cant complain when I study all afternoon in the beautifully designed Parc du Thabor in the sunny, 75 degree weather, now can I??) But now all my exams are finally done and its time to start packing and printing directions and washing clothes and buying snacks for my TRIP TO ITALY WITH MOM!!! I cannot wait!! Say some prayers that all the transportation works out cause we'll be taking a lot of it!! Two weeks of Italy here I come!! (And luckily for 1 week I'll be in a part of Italy on the border of France, so maybe I'll still get to keep up my French!!) I'll get to see all the sights, then spend the second week lounging on the beach with my friends and reading my French novels!! YAYA!

Alright, well drop me a line - sorry if I dont get back to you til after vacation - but Ill try my best to keep in touch along the way! Enjoy the pics until I put up all the Italy ones!! All my Love!

~Ashley