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.

I decided to dress as european as I could in Prague, hence the button-up over the sweater.

I apologize to my avid readers who have been deprived of my elequont submissions to my blog. allora, Two weeks ago we ventured to the Czech Republic to see the trendy city of Prague. A couple things about Prague, I've never quite seen a city like it, it has very colorful and intricate buildings and every building is unlike the one next to it, makes for a very interesting sight. The people, food, and weather of the city was somewhat questionable. The people weren't very nice and they smelled pretty bad, made for painful rides in the subway. The food was never too tasty and the waitresses all seemed to hate us for some reason, I don't really know why. The weather was about 15 degrees and snowed a decent amount we were there, however that is to be expected in the xzech republic. Other then those things I thoroughly enjoyed my trip there, we took a tour in a bus around the city to see st. charles bridge and also Prague Castle, were we managed to create an international snowball fight with some germans who were also there. Like the city buildings, the night life in Prague was also just as unique. I have some interesting stories but for the meantime will refrain from telling them.