Bienvenido a la Fería!!!

Bon journo!! That's my attempt at Italian for you. Well, right now I am finishing up the weekend of Feria, which I'll explain later, but its safe to say that I'm completely exhausted. I only have two weekends left here and I'm slowly running out of energy. I'm actually getting really bored of recounting every moment of the trips I go on, especially since this last one was nearly a week long, so I might just skim the surface of Italy and give more details when I get home. I had some of the most tiring travel experiences of my life, but it was definetely worth it. We started out taking the night bus from Sevilla to Madrid, (so from 11pm to about 5am...always a treat), and then we spent the next 7 hours between the bus station and the airport, trying to make some sort of sleeping area wherever we could.

We got to Rome on Friday evening and the only thing any of us had energy to do was eat and go to sleep. The next morning it was beautiful out and we went site seeing throughout all of Rome. We got lucky for the first few days we were in Italy because it was Italy's culture week, so all of the public museums (including the Colesseum and Forum) were free for everyone. There was a lot of people, but it didn't take very long at all to get in. The Colesseum was SO cool...much bigger than I had imagined. The coolest thing about Rome was that you'd just be walking and then all of the sudden you stumble upon some crazy ruins. We got all of our hearts desire of beautiful pictures that day, unfortunately it would end up being the only nice day we had the entire trip. That evening we made our way to Florence on the train and got there around dinner time so we hit up what would end up being our fall back favorite...McDonald's euro menu!! Whooooo! We had all pretty much drained our bank accounts so the euro menu was pretty much all we could afford, except for an actual meal once in awhile. Both the hostels in Rome and Florence were super nice, the Florence one even had a rooftop terrace and a pool...pretty shwanky. The next day in Florence it was raining, but we made the best of it and went to see the David and Il Duomo (a really beautiful church that we mistakenly waited like 2 hours for), during the morning. It was super cool to see the David, I had no idea how HUGE it was...about 7 feet tall I think. Even snuck some pictures before the camera nazis verbally assaulted me. In the afternoon we wandered around an old antique market, then a food market where we enjoyed some delicious samples of cheese, wine, bread, and amazzzing pesto. The market was right outside of the church holding the tombs of Michelanglo, Dante, Machievelli, and Galileo, so that was really awesome to go inside of. Afterwards we wandered around some more, getting sucked into the amazing shopping of Florence, (except for me who ate stolen hostel bread for meals), until it was once again time for us to pack up and move on to Venice. That was one of the things I really didn't like about our trip is that we were constantly having to think about leaving before we even got somewhere.

Venice was quite an experience. We got there at about 11pm, and were completely blown away by the fact that, yes, it actually is completely surrounded by water, and their public transit system is actually a waterbus. An extremely expensive water bus at that—6.50 per ride or 18 euro for a 24 hour pass...yeah. So we talked to some cute persuasive Italian boys who told us that their boat went to our stop, (even though we had a book that said it didn't...i wasn't in charge thank you very much), so we got on and hoped for the best. Of course, when their stop came they said “Oh, em, this-a no-a stop at-a Arsenale, we-a sorry!” So we had to get off at the next nearest stop which put us that much farther from our hostel, but one of the girls, Anne, was like a frickin GPS so we had faith.


One thing about Venice is that is was unnecessarily dark. They really would have benefited from a few more streetlights. When we were blindly walking around there was also not a soul outside, so it made for a pretty creepy setting- winding roads, dark alleys, dead ends that ran into WATER, and endless bridges that all looked the same, but we finally found our hostel, and what a treat it was. At first we didn't even think it could be right, since we were in an alley and all the windows were dark and barred and boarded up. But low and behold it was our hostel. We had to walk over to their sister hostel since the doors were locked and grab the keys to our rooms. We walk up the 1000 stairs to the room and open the door on another horror movie set. The room wasn't that bad, but we were all already creeped out and the room was all sorts of old fashioned furniture, including a dresser blocking a suspicious looking closet. Originally it was supposed to be 5 in that room and 2 in another but upon assessing the situation, we decided to make it a close fit and get all of us in the same room. Me, Janelle, and Amber slept three to a double bed and tried to tell funny stories until we could fall asleep but there were strange noises all night.

The next day of course it poured pretty much the whole day. In the morning we explored the city a bit and walked through Saint Mark's Basilica which was really pretty, and then walked through the high end shopping district on accident to try and look for a cheap place to eat before our walking tour through the city. As a part of our walking tour we got a gondola ride which was a little bit more like a boat ride from hell because the wind was whipping the rain in our face, but when we got on the inside canals it was fun. Also during our tour, our guide informed us about the walking platforms that they were setting up—they were for the flood that was coming by later that night when there would be water that came over our ankles....we had picked the perfect time to leave. We got our stuff together and were on the move again, back to Rome.

The distance from Venice to Rome was the longest of our journey, and in order to avoid spending 100+ euros, we knew we would be taking the slow train (about 7 hours), to Rome overnight. And boy was that an experience. We hadn't really gotten a good night's sleep the entire trip what with our over night bus, sleeping on the airport floor, and haunted hostels, but this was by far the worst sleep of my life. Me, Amber, and Janelle got into a cabin, and since Janelle had “found” it, she decided she had rights to her own bench, even though she is the size of a fourth grader. Meanwhile, me and Amber spent the next 7 hours in positions I never thought were possible of any human being, let alone myself. On top of that, we made stops about every hour at train stations and since we were all terrified of missing our stop, we would wake up each time. There was also the occasional ticket person screaming, “BIGLIETTES!”, while they whipped open the doors and flicked on the lights. Worst part of it all, we found out from our friends in the other cabin that the chairs pull out into beds. So there was no need to have our asses in each other's faces after all. Awesome. But, en fin, we made it to Rome relatively unharmed and only a little bitter.

That day we were super excited, even though completely delirious with exhaustion, because we had our tour of Vatican City. Of COURSE it down poured harder than ever and I was wearing slippery sandles that put me at least 50 feet from the group at all times, but it was still one of my favorite things about Italy. It was really great to have a guide again because its really cool to learn about the stuff you're seeing and not just look at it. As a part of the tour we went through the Vatican Museum, Saint Peter's Basilica, and the Sistine Chapel...sooooooo beautiful. And the things we learned were absolutely unbelieveable...some of it literally I'm not sure if I believe, but nonetheless, impressive. And even though there were camera Nazi's, I snuck some sweet pics of the Sistine Chapel.

That night, everyone went to a pub crawl with the hostel, but I stayed in for lack of money and also because at some point during the day while I was slipping around the Vatican, I pulled some sort of muscle in my back and couldn't really walk. So I decided to sit that one out and actually get sleep for once. The next morning was beautiful, (obviously), and we walked around the city a bit before heading to the airport on our 15 hour travel home. Fun stuff.

I really loved Italy but when I do it again I will change a lot of things. First of all, all I could think about while I was there was how much I wanted my family to be there with me, or at least someone from my family. It's just one of those places that I think would be so much more fun to do with them. I think that about a lot of places, but I felt that way especially about Italy, and Paris also. I liked the girls I went with but it was a really big group and there was always tension somewhere. I also would have liked more time in each place—even though the weather was absolutely awful for us, so it was okay to leave after a little while—I felt like we were traveling more than we were actually in a city. BUT I can't stress enough that just like literally every other place I've been over the past four months, I had an amaaaazzzzing time and I will never forget it in my life.

Now, it case you guys don't remember why we have this second spring break, it's because of a little thing called Feria. This is a week when pretty much all of Sevilla and people from all around Spain come to these fair grounds where they have these things called “casetas” (some kind of hybrid between a tent and a house type thing), set up and there are rides and horses and rebujito (traditional Feria drink made of wine and 7up), and best of all are the flamenco dresses. And dancing, lotttsss of dancing. The dance they do for Feria is known as Sevillanas, and it is so cool to see literally everyone dancing it, even the tiny little kids dressed up in huge dresses. It is truly an authentic spanish experience. Of course as such, anyone that isn't Spanish feels a tad bit out of place. There are only certain people who own casetas—usually businessed will or a rich family or a group of families will rent one, but not everyone has one, and you can't go in them uninvited. There are public casetas which are fun too, but the real experience is in the private ones. People stay at the fair grounds all day and all night, some don't even go home the whole week. I was lucky enough to go into a couple casetas, one was one of my spanish friends', and the other was Pepita's. Pepita's daughter came with her husband and the two girls, Maria and Ana, who I've talked about before when they came for Pepita's birthday. Whenever Pepita talks to Rosa (her daughter/Ana and Maria's mom), she says that Ana always asks about me “Y Emi? Y Emi?” It was so good to see them again! And they looked so beautiful in their dresses, both made by Pepita of course. They invited me to come with them to their caseta and what an experience that was. Seeing it from the inside is so different than looking in on it. We had a bunch of different foods for lunch and...I tried JAMON for the first time! Ahhhhhh! Peer pressure. When in Rome I guess. Or Feria, whatever. I have never really liked ham, so this wasn't much of a surprise, but it was definetely better than the lunch meat crap we have at home. Probably the coolest thing was seeing Maria and Pepita dance Sevillanas with each other. I got some pics but I totally should've taken a video. Later on we went for a ride in the horse carriage, Ana was super pumped at first but by the end she was struggling to keep her eyes open.

Me and some friends went again that night and wandered around the grounds, imitating what we could of Sevillanas, but mostly just admiring everything; the colors, the music and voices, the lights...todo. Trying to take it all in and not let it go. On Saturday afternoon I went to Pepita's caseta again and she invited Amber to come too so that was really fun. Amber told her that her mom and two friends are coming to visit and Pepita decided we have to have them over for coffee and cake. We told her they don't speak a lick of Spanish but she didn't seem to mind. I'll let you all know how that goes. That night we went to “La Calle del Inferno”--literally Hell Street, which is what they call the area with all the rides. And I can see why. Good grief, every one of the rides went at least twice as fast as the ones in America. Even the Ferris Wheel looked like it should be outlawed. But it was SO much fun, I haven't screamed and laughed so hard in a long time.

On Sunday me and the whole fam ate lunch together, and Rosa, Isidrio, Maria and Ana had to leave afterwards. Ana was sitting on my bed just chillin and her mom came in and said that she had to say goodbye, but Ana didn't want to. “You're going to stay here with Emily then? Go back to Wisconsin with her?” “Si!” she responded. I told her she could stay with me and help me with spanish, and she seemed to like the idea. I said goodbye to everyone, and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. When Rosa told me that it was a real pleasure to get to know me and good luck with everything in life, I almost started crying right there. I hugged and kissed them all goodbye, (though I don't think Ana understood), and watched them walk out the door. Pepita told me later that Ana fell asleep in the car and when she woke up she said, “Emi isn't coming with us?” I'm gonna miss that little girl. Later on Sunday we all bid farewell to la Feria with the fireworks over the river, and my heart broke a little.

Well, for this post I will leave you without much of a sentimental note. I think I will be writing one more blog, (I can't believe that), and that one will be pretty much my final thoughts about the whole experience, which will be sure get a couple tears, from me at least. (And without a doubt, my mom). The past few days it has been in the 90s and almost unbearable, I'm quite sluggish. If I can swing it I think I'm gonna make one more trip to the beach this weekend to get some studying done while I get even tanner :) Well, in 11 days my friends I will be seeing some of you, and within too long after that I'll see you all, and I can't wait. Until then I'll be winding down the school year with papers and finals and saying goodbye to this amazing city. Watch out for the last post sometime next week! <3 <3