Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, Spain

Desert! Crazy!
Pin Pon!
French Balls aka Bocce - they all hated us, we sucked a lot - we were eliminated within three tries hahaha
Palm treeeees
GREASE LIGHTNING!!!!
Flamenco Dancers! I have videos of this, I'll put it up on youtube when I have a faster internet connection..
One day of crazy games! This is not the day I won, however...You have to wear the crazy hat if you're going to play crazy games!!! Plus...look at the man on the left - his name was Reinhart - and he wore that speedo every single day...god bless him..
The board of events that we could participate in! Check it out! You thought I was kidding about "Crazy Games" - I most certainly was not...
The Beatles during Jukebox night...Let to Right Jesus (Spain), Placido (Canary Islands), Nick (Holland) and Dino (Belgium)
He balanced on all of that! while it was rolling around and moving and everything!! CRAZY!
Jesus as Tina Turner during Jukebox night!
Kissing as many old men as possible!
I'm a trained assassin..
Miss America style...
This is the beach right outside the front doors of our hotel
More beach
Pool - see that right outside the pool is the beach and ocean! Woohoo!!
Lounging in the shade after getting a little too much sun!
Me and Heather by the pool
Me and the beach on the first day!
These guys were crazy - the guy on top is like 80 and did all crazy Cirque du Soleil stuff
Here's me getting my certificate for winning at "Crazy Games"! I had to bounce a ping pong ball on a ping pong paddle attached to one end of a broomstick and catch it in the net attached to the other end...WOOHOO!!
This lady loved to dance! She got the party started with us at the discoteca...
This is Paul! He's 40 and from Liverpool! Recently divorced, 2 kids, his bridge fell out as soon as he got off of the plane in Fuerteventura so that's why he's not smiling - because he has no front teeth...We hung out with Paul and his friend Anne a lot..
So we get into Madrid - and you can tell because there's a sign for an Iowa Cafeteria???? Along with a Kansas one...and another one - I forget which state - I was pissed, I couldn't find a Connecticut one..This was a really cool building in Madrid! Heather wanted a picture with the moon in it, upper left hand corner, so that is how this photo was born

So ok, everyone's asking for a narrative - see you all make fun of me for my detailed accounts of my daily adventures, but you miss it when it's not there! Mwahahaha....anyways, we get to Fuerteventura, take a cab to the hotel and on the way see nothing but desert. We're like great - this is going to be a nice resort where the beach is 5 million miles away and all the pictures lied, etc. etc. However - we turn the corner and there's Riu All Inclusive Resort! and it's right on the beautiful beach and Heather and I have a 2 floor little apartment dealie all to ourselves! FANTASTIC! So, we get settled in and go immediately to the beach. We grab a snack at the snack bar by the pool on the way and then lay out in the sun which is, at that point, setting - but no we are NOT going inside until it is dark out because this is our spring break and we're getting tan, dammit! Ok so after it gets too cold, we go back to our room, unpack and go to dinner...all-inclusive dinner = fantastic, let me just say that...that night we go to the "show" that they put on - this is our first experience of a show that we will come to know and love very much. This night's show involved parrots that could ride tricycles, add numbers and count! Then the entertainment group ("Animacion") came out and did some sort of entertainment thing, I forget...and it was funny and cheesy and basically a whole lot of fun considering the entire resort was full of parents with their kids and people over the age of 60 - and also from EVERYWHERE - the staff had to be able to speak like 6 different languages, and they allll did - so everytime they'd say something they'd say it again in every language - Spanish, English, Italian, French, Dutch, German...it was crazy. So we made friends with the Animacion people pretty quickly, they kept asking us to play games and stuff so of course we did - our first game experience was Bingo - FANTASTIC! Grammy and Grampy would be proud..and then other days our activities ranged from Riflery to Pin Pon (that's Spanish for...Ping Pong...) to "Crazy Games" to Bocce (aka French Balls) to Darts! PS you better watch out, I'm going to train with Grant's air pistol when I get back, I got a bulls-eye one of the days! :) There was a discoteca a few of the nights that we went to and had a great time dancing and being ridiculous at - Paul is definitely the most ridiculous dancer I have ever seen in my entire life - way worse than Elaine from Seinfeld - he kind of just runs around with his arms up in the air teeter tottering back and forth and like stopping every once in a while to do some sort of hilarious jerky motion with some limb or combination of limbs...all the while without any front teeth...hilarious...I really wish I got it on video...anyways, we basically did a whole lot of laying out in the sun when there was sun to lay out in, and when there wasn't we played games or just hung out and chatted...We planned our days around our meals, as you do when things are all-inclusive like that hehehe...annnnnnd it was just wonderful to be able to kick back and relax and not have to worry about money since it was all already paid for or like feeling like we had to go out and see the sights since...there weren't any sights to see! One night, Heather and I ran up on stage to participate in the Miss Riu Oliva Beach contest! We had to do things such as run around the room and kiss as many guys on the cheek as we could, grab balloons and run with them behind our butts and jump on one of the Animacion group's laps to pop them - his name was Jesus, he was pretty cool! Heather won that contest, I won the kissing one though! Hahaha...We kissed a lot of 60 year old guys, it was funny!! then another contest was walking with a book balanced on our heads around cones...Heather won that one too...Another one was placing 10 guys in order from youngest to oldest - I got 1 guy in the right place...hahaha So, needless to say, Heather - or shall I say "Isabella" won - they asked for people from different countries so she said she was Isabella from Italia (and since they said everything in 6 different languages, including English, she played it off pretty well) Anyways, I got a cool certificate for participating and Heather got a bottle of champagne and a Riu beach bag (very cool - pretty jealous haha)...and I got a bottle of champagne for winning at Crazy Games! Although...we didn't even drink them...we left them in the fridge of our room so we're thinking the cleaning staff had a wild time...Let's see...other than that, we saw Flamenco dancers the last night we were there - they were the main show that night - and also Animacion put on a "Grease" production that was entirely lip synced and absolutely hilarious since none of them knew the words very well...another night was acrobatics night (you see the picture above of the 80 year old man on top of the other guy - he was ridiculous - he did crazy Cirque du Soleil stuff) and another night was Jukebox night where all of Animacion did different songs from the 20th century. So, I think that's all the news that's fit to print about our trip to Fuerteventura - bottom line, if you're ever looking for a really fun All-Inclusive Resort to stay at - Riu is definitely my #1 choice :) Love you all! Ciao!

Toscana

So, Tuscany was amazing! We left Friday morning, got to our hotel and went to the thermal baths (Terme) - where we soaked and relaxed for 2 hours...The baths are basically just a giant swimming pool full of naturally heated water that comes right out of the ground! Apparently the water has healing properties - so needless to say, after 2 hours in it, we were feeling pretty fantastic...After the baths we went back to the hotel and relaxed until dinner at 8. Let me just say that I have never eaten that much food in my life ever before...We had this really good pasta (called Pici pasta - pronounced "peachey") - it's kind of like thick spaghetti - we had that with this vegetable casserole, then salad and bread, then this really good pork with potatoes and peas, then amaretto cake (tasted EXACTLY like "S" cookies Baba and I had with tea all the time at our tea parties...it made me miss Baba tons!!!!) for dessert...it was a whole lot of food and I ate all of it! and it was delicious and then we went to bed....! The next day we went to Montepulciano, did a wine tasting there with amazing - AMAZING - have I said amazing? olive oil - it had a .01 acidity level, it was delicious, so I bought a 750ml bottle...that I am not opening until I am home and miss Italy a whole lot...and we had this really good aged cheese and a non-aged cheese to compare the two..and also 2 different types of red wine. After the wine tasting we had a little while to just walk around Montepulciano, so we did that and then went for a 4 hour walk through the hillside (pictures below). The walk was really amazing, the grass was really tall and swaying in the wind and you can't see it in the pictures but it's actually allllll pieces of clay - which apparently means that it was once an ocean (so weird) - and we even found a shell to prove it! There were all of these giant houses on the hills that used to be for the landowners who share cropped their land out to local farmers. After a while though, the government outlawed share cropping and all of the farmers had to move out, and then the houses became basically for ridiculously rich people. Now they're used for tourists to come and stay there and learn how to cook or learn how the farming worked, etc. Very cool. After the long walk we got back to the bus and our tourguide's girlfriend had made us all these little apricot jam cookies and pignoli bread - kind of like corn bread but with pine nuts on top - it was so good!!!! We got back to the hotel and had dinner - delicious again! Potato soup, salad, chicken, etc....not quite as crazy as the first night - and then we went out to the local "Bar" of the area around our hotel. When I say "Bar" - I mean caffe...and there was supposed to be a "band" playing...Well, we got there and there was a man and woman - the man had a guitar and they had a computer with karaoke on it that they were singing from and it was fantastic. It was absolutely hilarious...our friend Anthony asked them to play "Gloria", so they put it on and he jumped up and went "YESSS!!!" and they asked him to come sing with them so he obviously did...and that was absolutely amazing..we have video...then they asked him to come up again and he sang "Michelle" by the Beatles...so then...Celine Dion "My Heart Will Go On" comes on - and I started singing really loud and then they asked me to come up, so I did and I dragged Laura and Amanda with me...and Heather really got a kick out of that...as I'm sure everyone else did considering I was singing really loudly and we all know I don't have that beautiful of a voice hahaha DEFINITELY not when it comes to a Celine Dion song...so anyways, that was fun - we got back to the hotel, packed up and went to sleep. The next morning we headed off to Siena where we saw a lot of interesting churches - Saint Dominic - where Saint Catherine's head and right thumb are (you can see her head and thumb there, they have wax over them to preserve them but they're really there...so weird...and gross) and we saw a reallllly awesome Ferrari with a "famous Australian actor" in the driver's seat. When someone asked who he was, that's what he said haha...We also went and saw an art exhibit called Le Passione e L'arte with tons of different artists' work such as, Cezane annnnd I forget...I have a brochure - it was very cool though. After that we headed back to Roma. It was a really amazing trip, and it was so nice to be able to go with a group and have things planned for us so that we were sure to enjoy ever minute of it!!!! :) Now for some pictures...Hope you enjoyed reading all about my weekend in Toscana...
Tuscany..
Lone tree....they were used for aesthetics as well as markers for land boundaries by the share croppers
Lots of heads! Michelangelo is up there...(Siena)
She-wolf and Romulus and Remus in Siena
Tuscany...
Me on a hay stack during our 4 hour walk - doesn't it look like a fake background?!!?!
Heather and I...frolicking toward each other in the fields that resemble the shire...
Me and Kalli at Montepulciano's main hot spot
Me, Laura, Amanda, and Katie singing along to "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion with the lovely couple who were our musical entertainment for the evening...
Wine tasting in Montepulciano...!!

Arezzo e Firenze

Ok, so this is a little backwards as far as pictures go, but I think you smart people can handle it :) Heather and I decided to take an impromptu trip to Firenze to see Lindsay! We bought our train tickets the night before, got up really early, caught a 6:45 train and were in Firenze by 10 am - well we would have been if we didn't get off the train one stop too early and have to wait anohter 20 minutes for the next one to come...but you know, what's a trip without some complications huh? So, Lindsay and I talked through e-mail and she decided she'd meet us at the train station in Firenze (she goes to school in Arezzo) - so she met us there, although our train was late and...she doesn't have a cell phone...so that was interesting, but it all worked out. We ended up getting to our little hotel, dropping our stuff off and heading out into Firenze. My thoughts about Firenze are that it is VERY American...VERY VERY VERY - you could very easily go the entire trip there without speaking a word of Italian and there were more north face fleeces and Ugg boots than I've ever seen in Italy in my entire life...but, we did get to see the important sites so that's good - we went to the Uffizi Gallery (longest, largest, most intense gallery EVER), and walked around...saw Ponte Vecchio where there used to be a pole with locks ALLLLL over it. They cut them all off a couple of years ago (no idea why, it was a really charming part of the bridge), but you can still see locks on lamp posts near the bridge, as you can see below. After the Uffizi and Ponte Vecchio we were hungry (what else is new) and found a Mexican restaurant!!!! You can only imagine how excited Heather and I were hahaha - we had really good burritos and chips and guacamole - yummmm....After that, gelato of course...and then we called it an early night because we had been up since 4:30am and it was catching up to us. We walked Lindsay back to the train station and she went back to her little villa in Arezzo. The next day (Saturday), we got up very early, checked out and headed to Accademia where the original "David" is. We weren't allowed to bring cameras in there so, sorry, no pictures :( I thought the David was really amazing - so detailed - it also helped to have an art history major with me the whole time - However, I think the part I liked even more than the David were the "enslaved" statues that were unfinished and looked as though they were trapped in the marble. After Accademia, we got some pizza and caught a train to Arezzo to go to the Antique market with Lindsay, who met us at the train station. We went through the Antique market that literally took over the entire main part of town, grabbed some delicious gnocchi, and began the trek to Lindsay's villa that is her school: Accademia dell'Arte. The walk took a good 45 minutes from the train station (think about that...she has to walk 45 minutes up hills to get into town every time she wants to go out at night, grab a bite to eat outside of the Villa, etc. - CRAZY). Anyways, Heather has more pictures on her camera that I will put up once she gets them on her computer, but there was this really cool cemetery that apparently you have to rent your grave in. Notice I said rent, as in you have to pay for it forever, you never own it, and if your family can't pay, they throw out your headstone and get rid of your body - interesting. But, anyways, people come every single day to light the candle on the headstone and bring flowers - and there are pictures of the deceased on their headstones. It looks more like a condo of coffins, however, because it's all above ground...anyways, more on that when pictures are available...We get to her villa and it's GORGEOUS!!!! There are some pictures of the views for you below. We met some of Lindsay's friends (all crazy theater people of course, it was great!) and caught a ride back into Firenze with Lindsay and her group - they were going into Firenze to see a concert anyways, with their school, so there was a bus and since there are 18 people TOTAL in her program (4 boys, 14 girls...) and some of them weren't attending, there was room for a couple of stragglers on the bus...So we hitched a ride, got back to Firenze, ate at a restaurant by the train station (I got amazing ravioli with pesto sauce mmmmmmmmm yummy! I had been searching for pesto the whole trip) and we caught the train back to Roma. We got back to Roma around 12:30ish, after a long trip full of talking and watching crazy ragazzi (boys) fight and run around the train all drunk. It was a great trip and I'm REALLY glad I got to see Lindsay! Our next trip with her will be Cinque Terre, I believe - very excited for that...Ok, now for the pictures:That yellow building....is Lindsay's Villa...
View from the top of one of her classrooms (the Teatrino - little theater)
Heather and I by the Duomo (there are many - Duomo just means "Dome") in Arezzo
Heather and I - view of Arezzo
Arezzo countryside
Van in Firenze squatting from the amount of water and beer in it!!!
Heather and Me - Honeymoon shot - we got married by Ponte Vecchio (in the background) - we actually just saw a couple taking a picture like this and decided we should continue with our Honeymoon theme that we've done throughout all of the trips so far...
Locks on lamp post by Ponte Vecchio
Me being a bust - he's my ancient cousin or something, right?!?!

Santa Croce at night in FirenzeChips and Guacamole at El Taco in Firenze!
El Taco!!!!! Yummm!!!

The Chronicles of Narnia

Cascata Delle Marmore with our tour guide's hair at the bottom!
Waterfalls...
Me being a Velocaraptor on the bridge
Waterfalls!
Narni
Narni
Narni again..
Me and Heather
Narni from the bus (that's why the picture is not that great when you blow it up, it was taken from the inside of a window)
Same here..
Rocca Albornoz (Castle)? I think?
Alley in Narni
Heather and our DELICIOUS lunch...That pasta was HAND MADE that morning mmmmmm
Me with our delicious lunch!
Heather and I by the Cascata Delle Marmore

Yesterday we went to Narni, which is in a region of Italy known as Umbria. They gave us a little sheet with background information on the area so, I'll type that in here for you!

Umbria: Il Cuore Verde D'Italia
This region, "the green heart of Italy," is known for its medieval hilltop towns, verdant valleys and hearty cuisine. Umbria's history is both turbulent, with factions from these small villages constantly at war, and peaceful, with such figures as St. Francis.

Narni - Pictures of this above
Narni's foundations date to Neolithic times, but the first consistent references to the township can be traced to its Roman origins, when it was called "Narnia." In fact, it is said that C.S. Lewis was inspired by the town, its name, and the local Santa Lucia (Lucy) in his creation of the Chronicles of Narnia.

Cascata Delle Marmore - Pictures of this above
The spectacular Cascata delle Marmore is a waterfall built by the ancient Romans as part of a canal that deviated the Velino river, protecting the town of Rieti from floods. At 514 ft., this cascata is one of the tallest in Europe and is the tallest man made waterfall in the world. Today it is part of a regional park complete with trails and viewpoints.

We also went inside this Church which I believe was called Church of Santa Maria Impensole - it was inside this cave in the mountainside. Apparently it's been used and re-used by tons of different people in different time periods. Some of the rooms were used as torture rooms where Monks kept prisoners. We saw those rooms, which were really cool, and I took a bunch of pictures with my 35mm camera and really fast ISO black and white film (3600 I believe), so they should come out. I'm really excited to drop my film off and see. There was one room that had graffiti all over the walls, which was apparently where the prisoner was kept while he wasn't being tortured, and he scratched graffiti into the walls using his chains, including some on the ceiling! It was really cool. After our visit to the Church we went to another area by the Cascata Delle Marmore and had lunch. We got hand made pasta that had been made that morning, which was ABSOLUTELY amazing...and then we embarked on our trip up to the waterfalls. They were pretty gorgeous, HUGE waterfalls, and as we got closer the umbrellas came out because the spray from the falls got really intense toward the top! After the waterfalls we had an hour to walk around and stuff and then we left to go back home to Roma. It was about a 2 hour bus ride, which is not bad at all. All in all, it was really fun and I'm so glad that we got to experience it!!! :) Enjoy the pictures and everything!!