First Day Trip (Part Two): PISA!!

Buon Giorno Blog Buddies,

I thought the McDonald's sign with the leaning tower of Pisa was hilarious! Of course they are going to sideline next to one of the world's most famous structures, and I was very tempted to get that Big Mac (but I resisted). The bus to Pisa was much less enjoyable than to Lucca, as we did a bunch of roundabouts in order to get back onto the right freeway. And the inside of the bus cabin, reminded me of the inside of a plane, so I was feeling a little queasy. It didn't help that Italian drivers accelerate into roundabouts, and brake hard to allow a few vespas ahead of them.

I noticed nearly every city has a toll booth going into and when you exit, making personal car trips an expensive venture. Not to mention gas runs about $7.89 a gallon? They compute it into liters here, so its a bit tricky to figure it out.

Any ways! Pisa was full of anticipation because everyone wanted to grab a cliche photo of holding it up. (Which I did take, but as you all know about now, that I travelled thousands of miles, only to have a cell phone camera. Which I guess in the grand scheme of things is silly, but I think it has taken rather fine photos.... Any ways, my friends all took my picture with their cameras, and none of them have uploaded it Facebook or sent it to me yet. Not sure why I needed all this in parentheses, but there you go.)

This is the first thing you see, when walking into the Piazza







The closest building is the Baptistery, where to this day, babies are still
 baptized into the Catholic Church.
The second building being the Il Duomo, the main church of Pisa,
and the third building: The Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The Baptistery:



Il Duomo:

And finally:

The tour guide told us a cool way of looking at the buildings, plus the nearby graveyard. Babies are born and baptized through the first building. Worship and live their lives through the Duomo (church), then come to rest inside of the graveyard. And they are all in very close proximity together. The graveyard was just over a fence, but we didn't pay to see it. :(

Random fountain, just outside the Leaning Tower

Huge Marble steps leading up to the Duomo building

Random shot, before going INTO the church building. :D

The interior of the church was extremely beautiful and this is where the cell phone shots get a little grimy, and do not really show the true glory of what is inside.

Pisa was one of my favorite places, Lucca being my first outside of Florence. I have a third part of this day trip which has some videos (SHORT snippets of two cool areas in both Pisa and Lucca).

Best wishes to my sister who is currently in Oakland donating bone marrow and saving a woman's life right now. Love you Alicia. :)

First Day Trip (Part One): Lucca!

Buon Giorno Blog Buddies!

Lucca was the first stop of the Day Trip, and we had to be prepped and ready to go by 8:30 am. The jet lag had started to dissipate a little, but it wasn't that bad. If you know me, I hate getting up before 11:00am, and usually these early mornings are difficult and I'm never on time.
But I arrived with enough time to try a sugar donut with chocolate in the middle... BEST THING EVER. ahhh. But I haven't had it since, and its been a week. Go me!

The bus we took was built by Mercedes, so it was one of the nicer models, but sitting up front is NEVER good. Italian driving is probably the most intense thing I've been through, but judging by some of the other foreign countries from the Amazing Race, I kinda knew what to expect. I'm going to try and get a video of what it is like driving in Italy... haha. Here is Victoria and I on the way there:

Any ways, Lucca has a small town feel to it, with Italian culture thriving. Fashion is stressed and articulated in Italy, everything has to be in perfect order. In Lucca this was very apparent, as Prada, Gucci, Armani, etc were all dominant. Every child, and I mean, every child, is dressed concisely, and without deviation to designer clothing. A little vain, perhaps, but I love it. Self-image is so important here. I think I will do an entire blog about Italian fashion, because some stuff, is soooo weird.

After we arrived, we decided to warm up with a cup of hot chocolate, before renting bikes to take around a high-path that overlooked and circled around the city. This was probably the best 3 euros I've ever spent thus far, because it was so much fun!!!

Here are some pictures!
(Once again, these are the cell phone pictures... until I can get the chord to upload, I am limited!)

Nice little example of Globization






I was one lucky guy, riding with these three! From the left: Lauren, Victoria, Brea
And here I am (I lost control of the bike on the third count... haha... typicalalex)



As you can see, an Italian family... well groomed, and the child equally so, if not better than the parents. lol


All right, for my next blog can you guess where I'm heading off to?
(I'll give you a hint... its not the golden arches....)

I'M IN ITALY!!!

CIAO Blog buddies!

I made it to Italia! And let's jump right into it: It's amazing!!!

First some housekeeping business:
"Blog Email": elkgrovealex@gmail.com You can use this to contact me privately, off the blog, but if you wish to make comments directly to my posts, I believe you have to have a google/gmail account and be logged in. It is free to sign up.

My phone number has been cancelled, so I will not be able to receive texts, and will have a new number when I get home. I'll get that out to people when I return. :)

I might try Twitter, but with the time difference, its kinda annoying.

All right, onto the good and fun stuff!

I am in FIRENZE, ITALIA!

This was my plane out of Sacramento! Seeing it there, made me realize I was really leaving to a land far, far away. I refused to be worried, afraid, and anxious prior to this moment! I had three layovers, which sounds horrible, but I discovered that I was susceptible to severe air sickness. It was so terrible that landing was a blessing each and every time. I was able to buy medicine that put me out for my next flights (whereas with the group flight, I would've had 13 hours of misery).

Frankfurt, Germany was intimidating, but the Germans were really friendly with me. Almost missed my flight though, which was scary.

Florence Airport I met two incredible people right off the bat: Victoria and Brea, we became instant friends, and shared a taxi to our hotel. It was a lovely stay. Haha. Met everyone, but I will admit, day one, I was super homesick!

Next day we got to our apartment (I'll do a separate blog with pictures to boot - but it is kinda messy right now. haha - 7 guys. )

We live in Central Florence, about 10 minutes away from the Il Duomo (which literally translates to a cathedral church - the main church of a town/city). Here was my very first photo (which was taken by my cell phone, because I forgot the connector chord to my digital camera. :( I think someone else has one that would work for mine, but it will take me a while to figure out just who that is. haha)

This is the view on the way to school! haha. And here are a bunch of random shots:

There is so much more! But it would be very boring to cram it all into one little blog post. :)

This is my intro to Italy, and just a few snapshots I did around Florence, day one.

Tomorrow's blog will feature part one of my first day trip. It is quite exciting and the pictures are great!!

Ciao for now!!!

Shelby C. and Me