Why I have my legs crossed in this picture is beyond me, I dont know what I was doing there. I apologize.
Ok so a couple weeks back we decided to head to London. It probably cracks the top 3 cities I have been too so far and may claim the top spot, tough call though. We did alot in London; we went to Tower of London, Big ben, some museums, (including a wax museaum which was a suprisingly good time) and eye on londo. We stayed in a hostel and also at our friends apartment in Chelsea. Chelsea is apparently the very ritzy area and I easily saw more Aston Martins and Bentley's then I have ever seen before and will probably ever see again. It was almost uncool to own one because they were so common. The apartment we stayed at was a block away from Hugh Grant's house which we stopped by to check out he was nowhere to be found. The highlight of the trip was going to an Ice bar. The ice bar, as the name suggests, was completely made out of ice. Everything was ice, the walls, the bar, the glasses, it was very impressive. Reservations are needed to be made weeks ahead of time and you are only allowed to be in there for 45 minutes at a time but it was still worht it.

This past weekend we went to Amsterdam. Easily the most bizarre and different place I have been. Everything there was backwards. I'm not sure if I necessarily like or disliked the city but it was definetly worth experiencing. A couple interesting facts about Amsterdam that I found out while talking to the townies. For one, the population in Amersterdam is 900,000 and the number of registered bikes in the city is 2 million. Everybody rides a bike, not for exercise but just as a way to get around. It was strange. Also, I inquired why the city is so liberal on it's laws concerning drugs and prostitution. I was told that the city is soo leniant on them and basically legalized them was because it controlled the crime. Apparently, they were unable to control the crime and was afraid the city would became like "los Angelas" the taxi driver told me so they decided to legalize everything, alleviating the crime that comes along with it as well as generating revenue for the city because of tourism. This was what I was told from my taxi driver but he seemed like a legitmate character so I'll take his word for it. Amsterdam concluded our traveling for my time here. I only have two weeks left here in Italy and am trying to make the most of it although it's somewhat difficult being I delayed about every one of my papers that are due at the end of the semester but I'm confidet in my writing skills that this will not present a problem. Next week I will give a recap of everything I saw and did including my Top 5 lists of various topics.

So we left 40 degree Dublin and after spending a night in Rome we got on a plane to go to Malaga Spain which at our time of arrival was about 75 degrees and sunny. We did a lot of relaxing during our stay as we frequented the beaches during a majority of the day. Apparently 75 degrees wasn’t warm enough for the Spaniards to go to the beach as it was mostly bare for the first couple days, however when the weather heated up to around 80 and 85 the beach began to get filled with swimmers, joggers, and exhibitionists. It was a rather lazy vacation as we spent most of the time on the beach and walking through the streets and one day as we were walking in the streets we ran into the Picasso museum, being that it was only 4 euro and we really had nothing else to do we decided to check it out. I was very unimpressed with Picasso, however I thought Picasso lived in like the 16th century and completely unaware that he died like 40 years ago. But anyway I know sometimes people look at famous pieces of art and can claim that they can draw them and most of the time this is not the case but I am pretty confident I can draw what Picasso did, I have no idea why he’s famous let alone me knowing who he actually is. The food and citizens of Malaga were all very pleasant and it was definitely an enjoyable stay. Also, there were 2 for 1 Big Macs at all the McDonald’s in Spain as they celebrated their 25th anniversary of the introduction of Big Mac’s to the Spanish World.


Next Stop: London, this weekend

After another visit to Assisi for a field trip in one of my classes, Guy, Mike, and I headed to Dublin for the weekend. Dublin, although not as green as I had envisioned, basically lived up to what my expectations of Dublin to be. We missed the parade by a day, but on Saturday night Ireland played England in Rugby’s version of the Super Bowl, this only intensified the drinking that the Irish partook in. Ireland eventually was victorious due to what appeared to be something equivalent to a last second field goal, but the win insured Saturday night would be crazy in the streets and bars of Dublin. Every bar we went in was packed and that says something because similar to pizzerias on every block in Perugia, there are pubs on every block in Dublin. We decided to go check out the most famous part of Dublin, the Temple Bar area. The area was named after the first bar located there, Temple Bar. With the big win against England and it being St. Patrick’s Day weekend every bar; probably about 20 in a 3-block radius were packed. These bars were unlike any American bar that I had read about in books or seen on TV. These bars were basically buildings, three stories high and encompassed probably about 10 different rooms, each room in which had it’s own bar. Being that I was in Dublin, and the drink of course is Guinness, I decided to try one even though I was never a real big fan but being I was in Ireland I had to. Before I went to Dublin I had told my teacher where I was going and he said that even if I didn’t like Guinness I was to try one because they taste different in Ireland then anywhere else you can drink one. I was pleasantly surprised to realize that to me and everyone else that had one, Guinness was actually a lot better in Ireland (it was a lot lighter and didn’t overwhelmingly taste like coffee). Another thing we were told before we went was that the Irish don’t like tourists coming to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day weekend. I’m not sure what this person was talking about because the Irish were extremely friendly and social with us, I was a big fan of the Irish. The Irish acted exactly how I would envision the Irish to act. For instance I was walking by a group of guys and I heard one of them go in an Irish accent, “Cheers to Drinking!” this was followed by the rest of the group repeating that cheers. As I walked back to the table I said to myself, “The Irish would cheers to that.” After getting a late start on Saturday we decided to head down to the Guinness factory to see how Guinness is made. Although I was a little disappointed to see that Guinness wasn’t actually brewed there I did learn some interesting facts such as there is one pub for every 150 people in Ireland. What made the factory worthwhile to me was the skybar at the top of the factory with glass walls all around it enabling you to get a good view of the surrounding city while drinking your complimentary pint of Guinness. After a similar night of barhopping and sightseeing on Sunday we headed to Malaga Spain for spring break.

Ok so I haven't really updated my blog with any pictures or eloquent passages but I haven't really done anything too extraordinary, just lived the daily life of a Perugian. However, in the next month will travel endlessly to all corners of the EU. In the next 21 days I will travel to Dublin for St. Patricks Day, Malagaga (beach in Southern Spain) as well as other coastal towns in Spain for spring break. I choose malaga not for the beaches or the sand bars but rather because it was the birthplace of Picasso. After Malaga I will be headed to London and the following weekend Amsterdam. So over the next month there will be many more pictures and more exciting posts to come.

Interesting fact about Perugia, in 100 years spanning parts of the 13th and 14th century 4 popes were killed in Perugia. Three by poisoning and one due to a surfeit of eels(?) not sure what that means but there ya go.

Picture of us in Paris I just found.

Here is a couple pictures from carnivale in venice with some creepy individuals and the other is of the duomo in florence, which looked really fake but it wasn't. Also in the one picture you can see Guy trying to make up for the fact that he was wearing a girl's mask by drinking wine straight from the bottle. I however began my lenten promise early and decided to pass on the libations for the weekend.











I was going into carnivale expecting an Italian version of mardi gras, but that is not what I got. Carnivale was much more sophisticated and mature then I had hoped, but it was still enjoyable being in Venice. Our hotel was on an island, Lido, which was about a 15 minture boat ride from Venice so it made for some interesting rides home at night. Apparently, people in Lido are not very fond of foreigners as many hostess' claimed we'd have to wait 15 mintues to be seated while there were several empty tables not being used, but you'll have that eventually. We contimplated going on a gondola however it was about 25 degrees and it would have cost us about 35 euro. This weekend I will appease my mother and I will attempt to conserve my money and not travel this weekend, I believe the first weekend since I have been here that I have not gone anywhere on the weekend. We have some big weekends coming up as I plan on going to Dublin for St. Patty's day then hopefully either spain or greece for spring break, who knows where I'll venture next. I may wake up tomorrow and decide to go to milan tomorrow, well see.

This past weekend we had a tough decision, either a) take a 10 hour over night train to torino on thursday for the olympics then take a return 10 hour train ride back friday night or b) take a 1.5 hour trip to florence for the weekend. We decided on B and I am pretty pleased with our decision. I'm not a big winter olympics fan, the only reason I would have gone was to say I went, and also tickets were hard to come by and they were also rather expensive, 40 euro for semi-finals of women'scurling, no joke. But anyway we went to florence and it is so far probably my favorite italian city. It's similar to Perugia in that it's very italian looking whereas in Rome it's sometimes hard to tell your actually in Italy, but it's alot bigger then Perugia, had I had a choice of a city to study in in Italy, it would probably be Florence. There isn't that much really famous to see in Florence other then the David and the Duomo, which we saw, but it's still a nice place to walk around and see random italian things. Another thing about Florence is the quantity of students that study there. Every place I went there were american students, I'm not complaining, it was just very weird seeing so many American's in one place. That's about that for Florence, this week however we will be heading to Venice for Carnivale, which is Italy's equivalent to Mardi Gras, apparent during Carnivale christains are allowed to set their morality aside for a couple days however it is a must that you always wear a mask to hide your identity, it sounded like a holiday I would like to partake in so we will be headed their friday to see what Venice has in store for us.

Also a couple more interesting things of note that took place this week.
1) An italian friend of ours, Marina, decided to cook for me, mike, and guy last night. She made us lasagna from scratch, chicken wings and french fries. However, what I found phenominal was when we asked if we could help clean or anything she responded with, "your boys, your not allowed." and she would actually get mad if we tried to help clean or serve ourselves. I will now be offering green cards to any cute italian girls i see.

2) In a really obscure clothing store here in Perugia, I found a surplus of Penn State hoodies. There was no other college or american article of clothing in the story other then the hoodies. I told the owner I was very pleased.

SO, Let catch you up to date to what I have been doing in the past couple weeks. Two weekends ago we ventured to France to see Paris had to offer us. We stayed in a three star hostel that was about 15 euro a night for each of us, so we figured we might as well live in luxury then in a hostel we share with 30 other people. The hotel was very nice, roughly 2 blocks from the Eiffel Tower. We arrived late in the day Friday so we decided to just walk around to get a feel of the city. The city was very nice, very clean unlike Rome, and we soon came to realize absurdly expensive. This city is not for the poor, for example some of the Taxi's were actually Bentleys it was quite ridiculous. We decided to walk down the Champs-else's to see the stores. On this street we stumbled in to by far the nicest McDonald's I have ever seen. Leather couches and chairs everywhere, wire-less internet, and flat screen TV's everywhere. After being mesmerized by the golden arches we tried to find a nice pub to have a drink, we found several all of which had beers ranging from 8-10 euro, we decided to pass on doing that fort the evening and go home to rest up for a long day. We woke up pretty early Saturday around 9 and decided to ascend to the top of the Eiffel tower. It cost about 10 euro to get to the top, but it was a clear day so we decided to head up and it was well worth the trip. After that we went to the Louvre to see some old pictures. The outside of the Louvre was just as impressive as the inside, it used to be a palace until about 1830 when it was turned into a museum. We saw several famous pieces of art, the most recognizable being the Mona Lisa and Venus di milo, you may know the Venus di milo from the Budweiser commercials where the guys ripped her arms off so they could get the Budweiser's she was holding in her hands but anyway. Also, the Mona Lisa wasn't nearly the size of what I had imagined, it was actually quite small and there was a very large crowd huddled over it so I didn't get a chance to get a good look. I was impressed with the Louvre however I felt our horrendous tourguide ruined our chances to get a better feel of the museum. After the Louvre we headed to Notre Dame. It was definitely an interesting structure, no St. Peters, but it was definitely worth seeing. After seeing the Eiffel tower, the Louvre, and Notre dame in about a 10 hour timespan we decided to go rest up the night. Being that we spend a lot of money our lunch we decided to cut back and go to Pizza Hut for dinner. We were hungry and we each got our own pizza's for roughly ten euro, which equates to about $13 dollar. When they bring us our pizzas we realize that what we had actually ordered, was a ten euro personal pan pizza. We were quite distraught and upset. At night we randomly met some American students who showed us around bastielle, a part of the city that had reasonable priced drinks. We eventually decided to head home after bar-hopping a little but not before we got another crepe, which I highly suggest anyone get if in Paris or anywhere they serve them.
Also, I should have pictures up in the next couple days.

SO, Let catch you up to date to what I have been doing in the past couple weeks. Two weekends ago we ventured to France to see Paris had to offer us. We stayed in a three star hostel that was about 15 euro a night for each of us, so we figured we might as well live in luxury then in a hostel we share with 30 other people. The hotel was very nice, roughly 2 blocks from the Eiffel Tower. We arrived late in the day Friday so we decided to just walk around to get a feel of the city. The city was very nice, very clean unlike Rome, and we soon came to realize absurdly expensive. This city is not for the poor, for example some of the Taxi's were actually Bentleys it was quite ridiculous. We decided to walk down the Champs-else's to see the stores. On this street we stumbled in to by far the nicest McDonald's I have ever seen. Leather couches and chairs everywhere, wire-less internet, and flat screen TV's everywhere. After being mesmerized by the golden arches we tried to find a nice pub to have a drink, we found several all of which had beers ranging from 8-10 euro, we decided to pass on doing that fort the evening and go home to rest up for a long day. We woke up pretty early Saturday around 9 and decided to ascend to the top of the Eiffel tower. It cost about 10 euro to get to the top, but it was a clear day so we decided to head up and it was well worth the trip. After that we went to the Louvre to see some old pictures. The outside of the Louvre was just as impressive as the inside, it used to be a palace until about 1830 when it was turned into a museum. We saw several famous pieces of art, the most recognizable being the Mona Lisa and Venus di milo, you may know the Venus di milo from the Budweiser commercials where the guys ripped her arms off so they could get the Budweiser's she was holding in her hands but anyway. Also, the Mona Lisa wasn't nearly the size of what I had imagined, it was actually quite small and there was a very large crowd huddled over it so I didn't get a chance to get a good look. I was impressed with the Louvre however I felt our horrendous tourguide ruined our chances to get a better feel of the museum. After the Louvre we headed to Notre Dame. It was definitely an interesting structure, no St. Peters, but it was definitely worth seeing. After seeing the Eiffel tower, the Louvre, and Notre dame in about a 10 hour timespan we decided to go rest up the night. Being that we spend a lot of money our lunch we decided to cut back and go to Pizza Hut for dinner. We were hungry and we each got our own pizza's for roughly ten euro, which equates to about $13 dollar. When they bring us our pizzas we realize that what we had actually ordered, was a ten euro personal pan pizza. We were quite distraught and upset. At night we randomly met some American students who showed us around bastielle, a part of the city that had reasonable priced drinks. We eventually decided to head home after bar-hopping a little but not before we got another crepe, which I highly suggest anyone get if in Paris or anywhere they serve them.
Also, I should have pictures up in the next couple days.