A Blog in Reflection

One year ago today, I left on the adventure of my life.

I packed all of my bags, said "Ciao!" to my friends and family, and high tailed it out of the country. That got me to thinking about all of the amazing places I've been in 365 days and holy crap, there are a lot of them.

You are more than welcome to peruse my adventures as they have happened to me here in this blog, but here's a little (geo)graphical explanation of my adventures: Map o da world. Or if you don't want to see the names of the places, here's just a picture.

But the link should show you all of the names of places too. Granted, I probably forgot some a long the way (like Assissi.... I loved Assissi. St. Francis is awesome)(And Duluth. I was for sure in Duluth this summer), got them out of order, or didn't list every time I was back in KC this year. But the main point is here are the 25 (more like 27 with the ones I forgot because I'm a dumb ass and Google Maps won't let me add more than A-Y) cities that I've considered part of my journey this year. 

I don't know if this year will hold as many cities, or as many "adventures" but I'm glad this one was so thrilling. 

Venice: Part Two! Let there be food.

Ok ok. Strike two. I get it. I'm (again) so sorry that I haven't posted since Tuesday, but for some strange reason, they couple this thing called 'study' with this other thing called 'abroad' and I am forced to do both. So that's real life.

VENICE! Part two!

Saturday was the day of food. We woke up at a reasonable hour and grabbed some breakfast before catching a bus (and by that I mean a boat. It's a boat bus) to Murano which is an island in Venice that specializes in glass. So fancy magees, we eventually figure out how this boatbus system works and wait by the dock for our ride. Get on the boat (sing I'm on a Boat part two) and go for 45 minutes until we arrive at the island. This also involves making sure that we get off at the right stop because our Hostel gave us a special little card for a free glass blowing show and such. We get off at the right stop, wander for about 3 minutes and run right into this seemingly-non-entrance-like entrance.  So, on a whim, we walk in to a completely deserted glass store and marvel and the wonders found within. After a few minutes a woman came in and escorted us to a back room where there were several people watching the glass master and assistants make stunning things. At the moment they were collectively working on a rooster (someone had ordered 24 of them....  good.) but eventually he just made a simply glass horse. But the deal is that one moment it looked like a smouldering ball of hot glass, and the next it was a horse standing on it's hind legs on the table. It was amazing. Then he took a piece of paper and put it on the horse's legs and Whoosh! It burst into flame. Careful children, do no touch.

After we purchased things in the magical glass room, we wandered around various other glass shops until we found a small hidden restaurant.  There I ordered basically linguini with king crab and it came out the most beautiful plate I think I've ever seen.  And it was one of the best things I've had in Italy. Not even a joke. We ended up waiting a long time for the check, but the guy doing dishes kept blowing kisses my way, and although it was kind of creepy, it was funny too.

We shopped and shopped and eventually made our way back to the hostel by way of another boatbus.  Then we met the delightful Bissen family for dinner.  We walked into this Italian place basically down the street from our hostel, and I endeavored to try the black cuttle fish. Remember that guy I met in the airport? Michael? He said to try it if I had the opportunity, and here I was. So there I went.

To be fair, this dish looked like bits of tire chopped up and covered in tar. That is not an understatement. But you know you only live once, and sometimes you just have to eat what you have. And I'm so glad I did. It was absolutely delicious. Granted, it was not much for date food (that whole black teeth thing) but I throughly enjoyed it.

And after a delicious meal with good company, the three of us went out to a wine bar and enjoyed our last night in Venice with red wine and chocolate. Winning? Yes. Then back to the hostel for a hostel game of war.

Fast forward.  Minus that one time that some strange beeping noise went off at 5 in the morning, we slept well and got up and went out to enjoy our last day in Venice. To our surprise, the city had partially flooded. Now I'm talking a good several inches of water coving the piazza by St. Mark's. There were lines of people avoiding the water by walking on these nifty little foot bridge things and we made our way inside the Basilica. Uh, the floor was wet there too. But after about 500 years, I suppose nothing is surprising and mass was still going on. Boy oh boy oh boy was it pretty. This is a place where you just walk around dumbfounded because everything is so amazingly gorgeous. There was a choir, there was incense, there was an astounding amount of art. It was fantastic.

Back out side, do the rouser by a lion statue (no big deal), and play in the rain for a bit and off to buy more gifts and enjoy our last lovely moments in a stunning city. Exhausted but culturally filled, we got on the plane with a beautiful men's soccer team, and headed back to Rome. Unfortunately, they had to make a connecting flight and didn't stay.  That was the saddest part of my weekend.

And now I am walking out the door to go to Florence with my Italian High Renaissance class. Wish me luck, I've got a presentation tomorrow.  I'll try to update you on my life (you know, now that I've escaped the library) on Sunday.

Venice-Long awaited day 1

First of all, I'm terribly sorry that I didn't post last night. I was actually trying to do homework (aren't you proud?) and by the time I looked at the clock it was well past my bed time, and any sentence that I would have typed would have looked something like: thewuick brown foasx juqqpmed over the lazy doggs.e

See? Aren't you glad that I didn't publish anything to the internet? It's just better that way.

Anyway, I will now attempt to adequately fill you in on what I did this weekend! (Drum roll please) I went to Venice!  Woohoo! Ok, the end.

I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'll give you all the dirty details, don't you worry.

So on Friday morning Molly, Erica, and I got up at a reasonable hour so that we could drop by Giovanni's and fuel up for a busy day. Then we caught the train to the airport where, you guessed it, we got on a plane.  To be more specific, we used one of those nifty electronic ticket machines and it just scanned your passport and printed off your ticket and BAM, you could get on the plane. (You know, after you go through security and such. Let's be real.)

After 15 minutes on the runway and a 45 minute flight, we landed in the city of gondolas, masks, and glass. (I typed 'class' there for a minute, and I think that's reasonable too.) The first thing we thought was, ah, well crap, it's raining. But then, like a bolt of lightening, we opened our eyes and noticed all of the stunning colors that the rain was literally bringing out of the woodwork and paving stones. It was basically the most beautiful city I have yet to see anywhere. We're talking the kinds of colors where you look down and want to literally video tape the street. Not the people walking on the street, the actual stones you are walking on. It's that pretty. Then you add on the canals, the boats, the seafood, the masks, the glass, and the lack of car traffic (where would they drive? Nowhere. The streets are too narrow and have too many right angle turns, and almost always end at water or stairs to a bridge.  Those are all bad things for motor vehicles.) make it absolutely stunning.

We dropped off our stuff at the hostel, got that biz-nas taken care of, and began our explorative adventures. We walked around for a while, staring with mouths wide open at all of the mask shops. Insisted on going in several (ok, these things are amazing. All of the walls are covered in masks just made for people like me who insist on pretending to be other people, or like Erica who live the Phantom of the Opera on a regular basis.) We found some lunch where Molly had the extreme pleasure of having "scallops" otherwise translated as chicken, and Erica tried some octopus. Who said we weren't adventurous?  Eventually, we decided that we would walk over across town to find what is probably Venice's (that sounds funny) most well known crown jewel: St. Mark's Basilica.

So we grab our nifty map and start walking. Now here's something that you may have guessed, Venice is actually constructed somewhat like a maze. All of the streets pretty much lead back to some sort of canal, but the trouble is that they do not all lead to a part of the canal (which ever it may be) where a bridge is. Therefore the next hour or so was dedicated to winding around streets that you could reach your arms out and touch both sides getting back to bridge-less parts of the canal, and turning around and going back the way we came. After many detours and scenic routes, we finally arrived at the San Rialto bridge and finally felt like we had made it to somewhere significant! Not that wandering around Venice wasn't significant, because we learned a lot about the city.

So we amused ourselves taking pictures of St. Mark's in the dark and mimicking sculptures as well as very large modeling adds. We had finally reached a point where everything was beautiful and we were just so happy to be in Venice. Thus, we took pictures only between the group hugs, and eventually we decided that we should wander toward some food.

In this process of searching for something we discovered that there were some gondolas lined up along the quieter canals.  This is what we call dream fodder. So on a whim, and fully intending to actually get in a gondola at some point this weekend, we went up to ask how much a ride for the three of us cost. With the initial bid of 100 euros, we walked away to consult each other. 3. 2. 1. Second gondola-eer (that's just what I'm going to call them) followed us with an improved number of 90 euros for the three of us. 40 minutes? 90 euros? SOLD. We jumped in the boat and we were off seeing the city of Venice by night, in a gondola.  Bucket list: Check.

After 40 minutes of awesomeness, we got Marco (the gondola-eer) to take a picture of us, and we actually went to find food. Hey guys, remember that time we rode a gondola in Venice? Oh yeah, those were the good old days.

So we had dinner and reflected on how freaking amazing our lives are, and that we were in Venice, and that we're awesome, and that we had another two days to explore this magical city.

Tay tuned for day two!

Hey look over there!

So I know it's been 3 days since you've last read anything remotely exciting, but I'm going to have to keep you waiting another one.

First, I'm so super sorry, I promise there are tons of adventures to be told (literally, so many). And there are even some good pictures. I'll talk about food, and friends, and the stunning city of Venice, and things I bought (only in vague terms. Some of them will be surprises!) and why I am living the dream.

But until I craft the time to actually type out my adventures moment by moment, you are going to have to put up with me doing homework and preping for a presentation I have to do in Florence this coming weekend. (The month of November has hit, and it's going to fly.)

I love you all, I promise there are excellent stories-I was adventurous this weekend.