Ciao Roma, Buenos Dias Barcelona

Tomorrow is my last day in Rome, and in Italy. We have been in Italy for about 10 days, and boy was it an experience. Italy is significantly different from the 5 other countries in Europe we’ve been too. I’m interested to see how it compares to Spain, which is next. Anyways, Italy was good to us. I would recommend, to those who may plan a euro trip in the future, to start out in Italy and move out west. Italy, in my opinion, was definitely what I thought Eastern Europe would be like. It is a pretty different culture, reminded me a lot of India. People here seem to lack peripheral vision and bump into you often. You will always be in their way, and will need to get used to weaving through traffic, and the driving really reminded me of India. I think William had sort of a culture shock here, as did I. It was shocking to see Italia so different from the states, very shocking. Out of all the countries, Italy probably made me miss southern hospitality the most. An old man even yelled me at on my way to the train station in Florence. We’re not sure why, but I think it’s because I didn’t make way for him when we were crossing the streets from opposite ends. I could only go a certain way because I had rolling luggage that had to go up the ramp, and he just happened to want to hog the ramp and apparently didn’t want me to go on it? We really don’t know, but he started saying something to me in Italian, first I smiled because I thought he was being nice, and then I quickly realized he wasn’t, to which my response was… good. I didn’t get [too] bitchy; I just turned my head up and looked down at the 5 foot 2 man with my half-open “I’m not amused” look. William also stopped to try and figure out what was going on and said, “he’s crazy let’s go.” We are still not sure if he was just having a bad day, or if he was deranged.

Venice made my Italy trip. I absolutely LOVED it. After the initial “I hate [other] tourists!” shock, I realized that I could have stayed there for 10 days and have been fine. Especially with that delicious Chinese restaurant! Florence was good. We bumped into some tourists from Woodlands in Rome, who had just come to Rome from Florence also and they told us how much they were unimpressed with Florence. I definitely thought it was overrated, but climbing to the top of the Duomo was a great highlight of the trip and made Florence for me. The only downfall for Florence (for us) was weather. It was so hot. Rome was hot on the first day, but after that the weather was great, but Florence was psychotically hot; I think like 92 degrees, which is a lot when you’re walking around. Rome is about 85.

Rome, or what William likes to call it, “Roma: The Land of the Dead” was nice, but it had it’s own type of charm. William’s title definitely sums it up: most of the attractions are from the ancient world, like BC era. I think it would have been great to start of with the old and visit the Roman Forum and move to Brussels, and then to Versailles in France. It’s hard to really appreciate the beauty of the ruins… which looked oh so ruined, when you still have images of the chandeliers from the most beautiful palace in the world.

Italian Fights, Mafia Style

Italians can fight. And they do. We’ve witnessed several, and boy, are they show stoppers. We’ve seen an Italian catfight, an Italian Cop vs. minority Roma fight, and one of my favorites: local customer vs. storeowner vs. cop fight over prosciutto.

Cats Take Out Their Claws (or just point fingers)

These French tipped divas took out their pointy fingers at one another at a bakery. The waitress, with black lip liner, and the customer (?) with multi-colored hair pointed fingers at one another while screaming at the top of their lungs. Their fingers got closer and closer to one another’s face and while one towered over the other, the little one showed more and more of her teeth. This was really more of a big girl vs. mini girl fight. Me and William were on a mission, so we didn’t get to see it play out, but the owner, a man, hesitantly, but amused, watched carefully from the counter, ready to break the fight with croissants and jelly buns if it came to that. The way it was looking, it would be probably be wiser to throw the cappuccino machine.

Roma vs. Polizia

Not sure what started it, but I can take a guess. I’m assuming the Roma women were standing and begging near the ticket sales booth and the local cop decided to give them a hard time about it. Whatever it was, it offended the crap out of the Roma woman who, with baby belly-packed to her front, yelled in a condescending, accusing voice to the cop. Once again, I had no idea what was really going on, but the cop stumbled with his words, looked embarrassed, but didn’t seem to back down. His face turned redder as more and more Roma came to defend their homegirl.

Bacon Makes the World Go Around

Whether it’s your only source of protein on a farm in Wisconsin, or meat of garnish, bacon is the best thing to happen to the carnivorous world. [As you can tell, I’m having withdrawals and can’t wait to have some.] In this train station market, the customers, man and wife, fought with the storeowner about something. The husband was very distraught, with perched eyebrows and a frown turned upside down! As he yelled in Italian, he waved a giant packet of bacon in the air. Yummy! The storeowner just shouted back and in came the lame polizia, being useless, but trying to look macho with their machine guns. Obviously the machine gun was not loaded, or else I’m sure the guy would have noticed the cop and put the bacon down. I mean, either the guns are truly plastic, or that is some important bacon. Really, all bacon is.

Anyways, back to Italian life, I realized that Italians just don’t sweat. While American and other tourists drowned in their own sweat (my first day in Rome), Italians walk around, without looking slightly sticky, cigs in mouth and all. I mean even the freaking nuns are sweat-less. In pure jealousy I sadly asked William, “How come nuns aren’t hot in their dark gowns?” Hoping to be enlightened, but instead heard with mutual sadness and sarcasm, “Because Neeti, nuns walk with god.” All said without even turning around! But then I noticed the 7 drops of sweat running down the back of William’s neck. Next time I come to Rome, I’m gonna walk with god.

Best of Rome: Capuchin Crypt

This place was awesome! So it’s basically a resting place of over 4000 friars, along with poor Romans. Wikipedia explains it better than I can so here, “Large numbers of the bones are nailed to the walls in intricate patterns, many are piled high among countless others, some hang from the ceiling as working light fixtures. There are six total rooms in the crypt, all but one featuring a unique display of human bones.”
I loved it!!! It was so neat and it was free! It’s about 5 or 6 small chapels, but it is a sight to see. I’ve always wanted to be cremated, but if an artist would like to inherit my bones and create something cool, let me know! (I like birds).

Our American Friends

We’ve actually gotten really lucky with lines for the many sights we’ve seen. With the exception of Versailles and The Vatican Museum. Luckily, in the line for the Vatican Museum, we met us some good ‘ole New Mexicans! We had ourselves a blast, so much so that our two-hour wait seemed like 20 minutes. We talked about everything from being, “dumb” Americans, to bacon-less breakfasts, to the damage to our lungs from second-hand smoke, to “which smart car would you drive?” Overall, it was nice to see people who understood that pizza should not be paper thin or else it’s just dressing on a cracker, and they found comfort in the fact that we agreed with their NM slogan, “Toss no mas (aka don’t litter)” and realized that this needs to be translated and put all over Europe, especially in parks. As much as I love and appreciate being immersed in a different culture, it’s always nice to know you’re not the only one cursing the smokestack pushing their stroller, or condemning the hookers in the Red Light District.

Italian food has been great. I freaking love gnocchi and my favorite: Spaghetti Carbonara. YUMMO. Even the pizza is good, when it’s not on a cracker. And the gelato and nutella don’t hurt either. But a nice way to end our trip was getting some limoncella on the house because our waiter loved us. I think it had to do with the fact that we inhaled our food like poor children; he felt as though we could use a drink, so he gave us the strongest shit he could find. I think it was limoncella? Either way, he gave us back our credit card and said drink on the house and smiled. I smiled back because overall, Italy treated us well, but now… Estoy muy emocionado de ir a España!

STRIKE, You’re Out…on the street.

The title basically sums up our day.

Today we woke up and decided to take a morning trip to Pisa. I wanted to see the small city as well as the quirky little tower that won’t stand up straight. It started out nice and dandy as we walked about 30 minutes to the tower from the train station in sunny weather and with the cool breeze. By the time we got there, the cool breeze was still there, and if you were standing in shade you were fine, but suddenly the nice sun decided to be a little bitch and burn. It was pretty scorching so we decided, “ok lets take a few pics and head back, since we had explored much of the city on the way there.” As we walked back, hopping from curb to curb, in order to follow the shade, we finally came to the train station and bought our one-ways back to Florence.

The Tables Turn
So we wait, and wait. Train seems to be delayed 7 minutes, no biggie. We are at our platform along with a few others and a British couple our age. While we are sitting there, William is reading something on his iphone and I am staring at the departures screen and stare at the same words that have been scrolling down the bottom for about 10 minutes. Unable to read Italian, I didn’t put in the effort to try to decipher what I thought was just useless information. Finally, I noticed the word ‘cancellation.’ So I think to myself, Oh crap our train must have gotten cancelled, but I don’t panic or even tell William because I figure it must not be the one we are waiting for at the moment if William hasn’t said anything. Another word I notice is “nacionalidad.” Strange, cancellation and national in the same sentence and I turn to William and ask, “what is that message talking about?” He reads it and comes to the same conclusion, “they must have cancelled our train, oh well let’s wait for the next one”, which is what we had to do this morning on our way to Pisa. HEADS UP: If you are in ITALIA and you notice that some trains are being “cancelled” don’t leave your city. Keep reading to find out why.

Within seconds, (I have really good instincts) I feel that something is not right. I realize that the iphone is distracting William and continue to try to translate the rest of the message, as I am focusing on it. I realize that something important is happening across the nation, that’s about all I can make of it, but good enough and as I’m about to take the iphone away and express my concern, a large man starts yelling at the British couple (not in a mean way) in Italian that the train is cancelled, some more stuff in Italian, and my favorite phrase he used to describe our situation: “train is KAPUT! You get? TRAIN IS KAPUT!!!!! NACIONALIDAD, T-R-A-I-N I-S K-A-P-U-T!!!” The British girl starts freaking out trying to communicate with this man who obviously is very annoyed by her and her high pitch voice. He cringes and yells the same things he’s been yelling while she stupidly does what she’s been doing. [Seriously, she looked like a chicken with her head cut off.] As this goes on me and William watch in total amusement until he says one word that makes us freeze, “Strike.” “Nacionalidad Strike.” Ok so one, and then two words that make us freeze.

Funny thing is, is that William had read about this before we left. As part of our extensive research, William approached me one day and said, “alright I think we’re totally ready. I even read what to do when the trains go on strike.” I laughed. So immediately after hearing the word strike, I asked William, “What do we do?” William obviously didn’t read anything that helpful. We go back to the main part of the station and look at the board and notice that every single departure now reads, “cancelled.” How lovely. I watch the British couple, well just the girl, go into sheer panic mode and convince her boyfriend that they must leave the train station, which reminded me of my dad. If he were here, before I even went to Europe, I’d have all sorts of Emergency info typed up onto a word doc, duplicated, laminated, and discretely placed in my purse telling me what to do. In case of a strike, it would read – similar to what this girl was thinking – “in case of strike, quickly proceed out of station, hold possessions close by, immediately take taxi out of town. Proceed far, far away, for a violent riot may occur, in which it would be your best interest to avoid.” So while the couple used their valuable pounds to take them to safety, I decided to man it through any riots, which did not occur.

Instead, people left annoyed, sat hopelessly, and I saw an old, Italian lady cry. Can you guess what I did? a) get angry b) get confused c) get hungry d) all of the above.


The answer is D, but in a very particular order. First, I got super confused. I stayed calm and looked at the board. I noticed that the only train still running was to the Pisa airport, so I asked William if we should try to fly back to Florence. He looked hesitant. Then I asked about buses – there are none. Lastly, I wondered about a taxi, but it was over an hour drive and I’d have to pay both ways for the driver and rather be stuck in Pisa. Next, we became hungry. Instead of strictly sticking to Italian food like we’ve been doing, we went to McDonalds. I guess it was a comforting thing because I usually avoid McDonalds at all costs. While I got a 6 piece, William got The Big Mac, and we paid 40 cents for our ketchup?!?!?! Third, I got angry. We all knew that was coming. I went into my “American- superior – arrogant – this would never happen in America mode”, and this NEVER happens, I'm usually the one saying, "ok calm down, not everything can be like it is in America". It didn’t last long though. Other Americans also seemed to do this, but we all kept it on the down low. We approached an American man and asked him what he knew, because all the TVs were playing the same dumb cell phone commercial on repeat instead of the news. He told us that he stood in line for information and found out there will be a train, 5 hours later, at 6 that will be the one and only train out of Pisa straight to Florence. We were happy, but very scared because we were both pretty sure it would be very ugly. Sadly, at this time we also remembered naively watching CNN world one night in Paris while the tourists were abandoned at the train stations in Spain during their strike and thinking that it would never be us.

William tried to convince me to go and explore more of Pisa, but I just had this feeling that we shouldn’t leave the station. I told William, “let’s just go sit on the platform where the train will be leaving from and wait, and gather up the courage we will need to fight our way onto the train.” He agreed. So we waited, then we decided to go to information and see if there were any updates. After waiting in line the woman confirmed what the American man had told us and we returned to our bench on the platform. Two hours later, our board now flashed a departure time. It showed that there was 5 minutes before a train arrived to go to Florence. I was shocked! What??? But the train wasn’t supposed to come for another 3.5 hours. I was so confused, as the train came and people ran to second class, I grabbed William’s hand and jumped onto first class, being the first ones on, avoiding the crowd, and grabbing us some wonderful, cushion-ey seats in the air conditioned den. I figured we’d have to find a way onto this train, one way or another, and I did. No one even came to check our tickets! My first time in first class!

We quickly returned to Florence, overjoyed that we happened to be on the platform when this surprise train came. I skipped off the train, only to see hundreds of people waiting hopelessly in the Florence train station to reach their final destinations. My smile turned to a frown and I immediately felt bad for the poor souls who would have to wait until who knows when.



Dear Italy,

Please get it together. I do not think it is right that people cannot rely on your only affordable mode of transportation. I saw old grandmas sad because they couldn’t attend their granddaughters’ weddings, children who were feeling the heat waves of your park-less cities, people scared that they wouldn’t get home in time to take their medications, and foreign tourists who were missing their flights on very expensive vacations. Yes, I understand these things “just happen,” but obviously for a reason: something is not right. It is your responsibility to help the people and workers of your country and if your trains continue randomly going on strikes, it will only hurt you when the thousands of tourists return home and tell everyone that vacation to Italy is not worth it when you spend half of it at a train station.

Yours truly,
Disgruntled tourist: Neeti Prasad

Venice and Our tiny Moment of Fame

When we arrived in Venice, William was like a kid in a candy store. He could not wait to get off the Vaporetto and explore this water town. He declared it his favorite stop before he even explored it, due to all the water canals. Strangely, he didn’t feel this way for Amsterdam, which is also a water canal city; I’m pretty sure he was a dolphin in his last life. Anyways, my first impression of Venice was not so pretty. While William basically frolicked through the streets, I couldn’t help but stare at the hundreds of tourists around me. They were everywhere (and yes I realize I’m one of them). But this was different. The populations of young people were seriously lacking and the number of old people were comparable to the pigeon population here. I cannot figure out of which I saw more. I guess I was just shocked to see so many tourists, after traveling to 6 cities and being one of very few tourists, it was strange to see nothing but tourists. Even worse, this town, of what I thought was romantic young couples was filled with tourist groups of massive sizes. The only time I saw young people was when we walked with a group of 50 along the main canal. As me and William ventured out of St. Mark’s Square into the real Venice, we were glad to see the college students by the mass get herded onto undersized boats and shipped off to a less rowdy place.

This is when I fell in love with Venice. I remember reading everywhere that you cannot really get lost in Venice, so go ahead and get lost. And as the sun set, the crowds disappeared, and the waters became restless (due to a storm somewhere), we set out to venture the streets of Venezia. We took random twists and turns and ended up tiptoeing through streets and basically eavesdropping, in a cute way though. The farther we got into the city, away from our hotel, away from St. Marks, the more we saw how Venetians lived their lives. We walked down a narrow street with windows open, but curtains closed and listened to the nice and peaceful sounds of forks and knives against ceramic plates and bowls. Our designated exploration time was everyone else’s dinnertime. Families gathered, ate, drank, laughed and shared stories of their day, though we couldn’t understand. We were so nervous they would hear, but we kept going down our path, wanting to hear more. Eventually we realized we were totally lost and decided to track our way back to the Great Canal.

St. Mark’s Square, The Basilica San Marco and Doge’s Palace, were just ok. I really just liked Doge’s Palace, but I won’t bore you with the details. I’ll just tell you my favorite part: The Chastity Belt. OMG I had never seen one of these!!! So weird! At first I thought it was some sort of torture device for men; a belt to smoosh their private into a million pieces. So when I asked William what it was, he told me, “Yes, it’s definitely a torture device.” But, as I continued to wonder how exactly it worked, he totally realized I didn’t know what it was. When he told me it was a chastity belt, I was totally shocked; those really exist? It was scary; and I doubt it is even bearable to wear.

Hundreds of people crowded St. Mark’s Square, which I later realized was to feed pigeons? I feared the spread of disease. I’m glad we got all that over with. My favorite part of Venice was the shopping and music. Oh and our moment of fame. Our hotel, Hotel Doni, was a cute little one right off the canal behind St. Mark’s Square. Very convenient location, and a quiet area because the canal was a small one. I liked having the canal there, because our window looked out to it. It was nice to look out at in the morning and pretty to hear the gondolas passing in the evening. Anyways, earlier, we took our gondola ride, which was very nice. It was in the morning because we’d have to sell a kidney to ride it in the evening and the traffic was less. Our Gondolier was a burly man, sort of intimidating, until he started singing! LOL. He was interesting that’s for sure. But either way he gave us some good tips and showed us a few places including Marco Polo’s home and the Casa Nova Home. But, while we were riding our gondola, people would stop, by the mass, and take pictures of us. We were sort of freaked out, but our gondolier seemed to like the attention. People took pictures from the sides of streets, bridges, restaurants, you name it. I was so confused until later when I noticed from my balcony that after 50 gondolas passed by, I only saw one couple. Majority of Gondoliers serve groups, tours, families, groups of friends, and even random people splitting costs, but hardly couples. When those people saw William and me they finally saw what people traditionally expect to see on a gondola, a (multi-racial!) couple.

Same thing happened in my window. As hundreds of gondolas passed our canal, I stood out to watch them because many of them hired singers and accordion players to entertain them on their cruises. As I stood over my balcony taking in my beautiful surroundings, people pointed, waved, tapped their friends and pointed up at me and took several pictures. It was so weird. I almost was afraid to leave the window, afraid to disappoint and have tomatoes thrown in. After about 5 pictures, I told William what was going on and he joined in. We stood under our green and white striped cloth covered balcony, leaning over, with the wind in our face, posing for people’s pictures. And they just kept coming until I heard a growl. My tummy, of course. Then we left for dinner. The best food I’ve had on the trip was a place with the original title: Chinese Ristorante. We ordered Chicken with Black Mushrooms, Cashew Chicken, Cantonese rice, and red wine only to be totally shocked and in love with this Venetian-Chinese restaurant. The chicken was in perfect bite-size pieces and totally clean, the rice was not greasy at all and the mushrooms were so unique, but delicious. So now you know, come to Chinese Ristorante for a pleasant surprise in Venice. The A.C. and modern interior weren’t too bad either.

Thanks Mom!

SO as you may know (or maybe not), moms love to worry. Worry just about everything. My mom has been so chill about this trip it’s awesome. I’ve g-chatted with her a few times, emailed her almost daily, which is funny cause even though she knows I’ll email her everyday, she hasn’t been checking (or at least not responding) everyday. This comforts me because I love that she’s not on edge, and that she’s chilling at home/work. One thing, however, that my mom likes to freak out about is… packing. She is fixed on the fact that if you take all the essentials and right tools with you, traveling can be blissful and if lacking, dreadful. As you man know (or not) from my first blog, I went through a pretty extensive process to make sure I was taking the essentials to comfortably get me through this trip. (Some of the more difficult finds were: a small side shoulder bag, converters for 7 countries, and a dual voltage hair straightener). But, come on, no matter how much you plan, you’re always going to forget something!

Case 1: I thought I had everything, but as we all know, moms are always right (I don’t know how) and we still manage to forget things. For example, I hardly shave. Hair does not grow well on my body (thank god!). Stupidly, I still should have shaved before coming to Europe because then I wouldn’t have had to again until I came home. Of course I wore a skirt in London and realized holy crap, I need to shave and I do not have a razor. Then I was like ok, maybe I packed one? Just maybe? I opened my toiletry bag to see that I hadn’t, but found a Zip-Loc bag and miraculously in the bag were Q-tips, cotton balls, antiseptic, Vaseline (not sure why), band-aids, and you guessed it, a razor. Thanks mom! I happily shaved and accidently forgot my razor in the shower. But who cares! I have shiny smooth legs and bare armpits to last me till end of July!

Case 2: I am still on a train. This time I’m going from Milan to Venice. I had more funny moments with the sweet, old Italian lady I met on the train from Lucerne. We were still going on the train and just passed Switzerland into Italy, and into a town named Como. It was BEAUTIFUL. She looked at me and said, “George Clooney?” and I said yes and she explained that he has a HUGE villa right here in Como and told me to look for it. I was so distracted by the hundreds of colorful homes circling the gorgeous, turquoise lake that I didn’t look for his house and she said she didn’t see it either. But she said it was grand! Then she took off her glasses to clean them and said, “haha look, made in America at grand store Costco! How funny, made in America!” I took my Fendi glasses off and said, “look made in Italia” and for some reason we all found this hilarious; she was so cute! When we left to switch trains she grabbed my arm and patted me on the back, and held my hand and said ciao like 10 times! I love sweet people who don’t who don’t let language barriers stop them from having a good time on a long ass train ride. I need to do that more often. OK I SIDE TRACKED. Back to the case, I get on the train to Venice and grab a huge, comfy seat. Me and William were able to get off the other train, buy our ticket and run to get on our last train to Venice in all of 10 minutes with 5 minutes ‘til departure! Go us! We’re chilling until some Italian guy tells us we are in first class and that those seats are reserved. We, along with a few others, reluctantly get up, only to have our seats replaced by 8 year olds. WTF. We walk out in the the large luggage department and see people waiting and realize we don’t have a seat. I see the FILTHY floor and have to decide: should I just brave it? should I kill my legs for the next two hours? NEITHER! I decide to look at my outer pocket, knowing that my mom always keep plastic Target bags in there for dirty clothes, shoes, etc. But I find something better, a large brown bag material. Then, I remember my mom saying, “Here I’m folding this brown bag paper in there just in case you need to pack some delicate stuff when you come home. This is way better than putting one of those “FRAGILE” stickers on there, cause then they just throw it harder.” Thanks MOM! I don’t have delicates, but I do have a clean bottom. I laid this out on the floor and sat comfortably in the den with sweet A.C. Finally, when the first stop was announced, I got up and went to coach and the second people stood up and grabbed us some seats!

I’m sure I’m going to have other “thanks mom!” moments, but I decided I’d give some credit to my mother before I forget.

There goes another piece of my heart in the Swiss Alps

Hello, I write to you from my train ride from Lucerne to Milan. I have seen many pretty things, but none compare to this train ride. There was one thing I regretted most and it was not being able to go on to Mt. Rigi or Piatus. I had the time to do it, but not the money! But this train ride through the Swiss Alps gave me the same, if not better views of the mountains, cliffs, valleys, rivers, waterfalls, homes, cows, and most importantly, life in the mountains.

This morning we left our hotel at 6 to catch our train out of Lucerne to Arth-Goldau where we took another transfer to Milan and yet another transfer to Venice. I am currently on the train from Arth-Goldau to Milan and wish this 3-hour ride were a 3-day ride. I have never gotten chills this many times in a row. The bright green trees create a beautiful contrast with the forest green trees that line the mountain against the deep blue sky. Every once in a while you confuse the snow-covered mountaintops with the clouds. The lake is a deep blue-green, which contrasts with the rivers in the valley that are icy blue, almost like spring water, which again contrasts with the bright white of the waterfalls flowing down the mountains. The colorful homes scattered everywhere add the perfect touch to the landscape, similar to sprinkles on that already scrumptious looking cupcake. The black and white cows are a pretty surprise as well, but not as exciting as the wild horses galloping through the field and disappearing in the tall, skinny trees. As the train goes through another tunnel and we ride along next to the streaming river down in the valley, it’s amazing to see the silver fish jumping in and out of the water and you wish you could pull the string, step off the train and explore this haven. As the sun rises over the mountains I began to understand why people choose to live out here with the sheep and trees and not with the man-made lakes and Wal-marts.

We were lucky enough to sit with a sweet, little Italian lady who was very familiar with the route. She could speak English, but very little. She used her hands and face as tools to act things out and communicate what she couldn’t translate. As I sat there taking pictures of the beautiful scenery, she warned me every time a tunnel came and could even tell me how long the dreadful tunnels would last. In one she told me it was 30 Km! When I asked William if the tunnels were actually mountains she explained with her hands that indeed the train was going through a mountain. She even busted out her map told me some interesting facts: the northern part of Switzerland speaks German, the west speaks French and the south speaks Italian. She laughed and asked, “Interesante eh?” She was also able to tell me exactly when the sun came out. She said the north is usually cloudy and overcast, but still beautiful and not gloomy. The Central is overcast and becomes sunny and after 2 more bridges, you will notice it’s completely sunny. She was right. Two bridges later, the sun came out, making the rivers below glisten and the waterfalls sparkle. Once again, my camera does not do Switzerland justice, in fact by the time I got my camera the view would pass or a tree would block it. William didn’t even take pictures in Switzerland and kept telling me to give up; nothing looked the same on camera. I just hope my memory lasts.

After asking about our routes she told us she was from Sicily, Italy. She told us her favorite Italian city was Venice and that we must ride the gondola, she also mentioned loving Rome and told me to hold on to my purse tightly. She also mentioned the crime in Eastern Europe, mainly Romania from her experience. Then she reenacted what petty thieves do. She bumped into William and said, “Oh!! Pardon, Pardon!!” and pretended to grab his purse (with a sly look) and run off. She finally asked where I was from and I told her Texas to which her response was, “oh petrol.” I’m glad she knew us for that and not anything else, unless she was just being polite. She explained her daughter lived in Portland, my other favorite place in the world that I have yet to visit.

Overall I give Switzerland 10 thumbs up and will be back soon. If you love the great outdoors and nature as much as I do, this place is a must. As I write to you I can look out my window and see snow covered mountains with waterfalls coming down the side and wild horses running on lime-green grass and realize Italia has some big shoes to fill.

Title pending

Yesterday was a VERY interesting day. Yes, maybe even more interesting than the Red Light District. We started off the day with everything crossed off our Amsterdam list and William decided that we should go on a bike tour through the country to 1. Kill time ‘til our (OMG crazy) train ride 2. Because it would be pretty. I agreed, mostly because I knew William really wanted to do it. As we got there to meet up for our tour, I immediately noticed that I was the only non-Caucasian person, therefore in my mind I immediately came to the (correct, even if maybe slightly stereotypical) conclusion that everyone would have not one problem on the bike. I was right. While William, and all the other people, mostly Aussies and other Dutch and Europeans were in their element I was a crazy fool on my bike. But to justify my lack of agility on the bike, I hadn’t ridden one since I was 10 years old!

Anyways, once I was on the bike, I was great; it was just balancing myself on it to get going. I swear, if I had gotten on the bike in my driveway to ride down the street, I’d put all the kids to shame, but since I was doing it in front of a bunch of pros and swift Amsterdam-ians it was as if I was truly special. Yes, Amsterdam is THE city to take a bike tour in and yes, Amsterdam is THE best place to get on a bike and go, if you can handle the heat. Luckily there were no tragedies, and believe me there were plenty of opportunities for those.

Examples, Things I did not do that you should: Look for crossing bikers, look for crossing humans, look for kids chasing their balls (that cross your path), look for waddling ducks, look for the elderly, look for the elderly on wheel chair bikes, look closely at the hundreds of CANALS, look for cars, look for amazing biker children, look for giant trams that can smash you, look at the biker in front of you, mind the biker behind you, remember the pedestrians on the sidewalk next to you and most importantly realize that you are not invincible. I ignored all this and took a leap of faith every time I came to an intersection.
I really can’t believe I didn’t look both ways before crossing intersections, but honestly if I had done so, I’d also have ended up in one of the many canals. I’m pretty sure the lovely people boating on this perfect day would have disliked Americans more than they already do if one landed on their brunch table.

Moving on, the tour itself was amazing. If you wonder where all the beautiful wild flowers shown in Ralph Lauren catalogs come from, let me tell you. The fields of The Netherlands are filled with aromas of amazing flowers and you can see them in all colors imaginable for miles. Most of the bike ride I smelled that and cow poo. The cow poo because we went to a cheese farm! Happy cows come from Cali and Amsterdam! The farmer, who was a native of Aussie, citizen of Netherlands and a speaker of Hindi, was quite entertaining. He explained how he made cheese and showed us around at hundreds of cheese aging up to 15 years old. He also made… CLOGS. Very cool to see where these things really come from. He explained the process and I promise it wasn’t as boring as it sounds.

In the end we covered a lot of things and places in the tour that we may never have covered on our own. It’s easy to explore the city, and much harder to explore the country. I’d highly recommend taking a tour of the countryside despite your assumption that there’s nothing out there to see. Believe me, there’s plenty, and if you’re a city girl like me, you’ll be amazed at the views and will have a refreshing day out of the town.


Amsterdam ended, not too quickly, we were ready to move on to the peaceful and beautiful (even though all of our trip is) part: Switzerland, Lucerne specifically. So we caught a tram for our 8:30 departure from the train station. Once we got here, we saw the chaos that is a Europe train station. OMFG. Super duper confusing, and this is excluding the fact that our entire ticket was written in German. So we ask for our platform and it hasn’t been announced, but they tell us that it will be switched to 7a they think. We go there along with several others who’ve been told the same thing. We get there, we wait. As we wait I look around and think to myself, “man these people don’t look like tourists or Swiss.” Then we have 10 minutes till the train in our platform leaves supposedly to Zurich and I’m starting to feel nervous because everyone is getting on, but we aren’t sure if that train is the right one and there is NO ONE to ask. Finally, we realize that train is for Moscow and feel scared for the poor souls who will go to sleep on that train and wake up there instead of Zurich.

As Americans we often have a hard time approaching and asking Europeans questions. We don’t want to go through that awkward language barrier issue, we realize how much gets lost in translation, and lastly, we just don’t always get what they’re trying to say. During this whole confusing experience we wanted to ask the train attendants, who also looked as though they were waiting to board Zurich, and timidly approached them. Luckily a BRIT! beat us to it. His words exactly, “Where exactly is this train going? Moscow? Well why was I told that my train leaves here. [Upon being asked to see his ticket he responds] Yes, here it is, but I don’t know what any of it says; it’s all in German!” Hallelujah! Someone calls out this crappy system and also points out that none of us speak German. UGH. The attendants finally, by the grace of god, decide to pull out their walkie talkie?!?! What? They had that all along??? RUDE. Things get figured out and our train comes 30 minutes late. We board only to find that our bunk with beds is 6 to a room with a dinky ladder and enough space for me to slide into. Lucerne better be Utopia.

Hoes Before Bros

Brussels is an amazing city! It truly has that old Europe feel to it. I always wanted to go to Eastern Europe, that is what I thought of when I thought of a real Eurotrip. After going to Brussels and being around very few tourists, I see how traveling to busy, tourist-filled cities is comforting rather than annoying. Being the only tourists is slightly more uncomfortable than being the obnoxious, loud one. Luckily, Brussels was kind to us, but I must admit, I felt slightly scared at times realizing that if I truly needed help, it would be hard since hardly anyone spoke English. Either way, Brussels is beautiful and not to mention, delicious. William and me tried all their traditional dishes and they are delightful! We didn’t get a chance to try mussels and crème, but I heard it’s a hit. Similar to France they have a very large Arab and African population. I had some good Turkish food and DELICIOUS chocolate. They have so much chocolate, it’s insane.

Anyways, back to Amsterdam as my title is dedicated to it, we arrived in Amsterdam today. It is approximately two hours from Brussels. From the moment we got here I loved it! The city is beautiful and the canals are adorable. However, the young crowd will make any frat house look like a tea party. These people are insane. I’m sure a lot had to do with Amsterdam beating Brazil, but it looked to me as though hardcore partying is in their blood. Unlike the other countries I’ve been to in Europe, tobacco is not a huge issue (France was a scary chain smoking city). Mary Jane is thing here. And by here, I mean EVERYWHERE. It’s the norm. But back to the party animals. I saw guys pretending to jump off of old cathedrals (DRUNK), teens jump into canals, and packs of dudes running around the street with the Holland flag. It was indeed an experience.

But, anyways, on to the hoes. What is the first thing that comes into mind when you think Amsterdam? Tulips? Yeah, that’s what comes to my mind, but I’m sure Red Light District came to yours. Dirty, dirty. Anyways, I thought it would be cool to go to the red light district and told William this would be a fun place to go today. There is a lot of history behind the district, lots of tours, and it’s not a shady, dark, creepy place like you’d imagine. The district is unionized and the girls are “well taken care of.” That’s the BS they tell you. I saw girls that were obviously on some interesting drugs and others that looked like trashy beyond trash. However, they weren’t totally unattractive, but they do come in all shapes and sizes. They get totally offended if you take pictures of them so I only was able to sneak one. I figured if I can’t take pictures (my life!) I’d have to sneak a good one.



This lovely lady had a giant stick that she banged against her window when she saw people taking pictures of her. So I took it across the canal, everyone thank my wonderful zoom. I didn’t want to offend these girls. I went in with the attitude, “they do what they gotta do” and that went out the window in like 5 minutes. They gave me dirty looks, and I gave them dirtier looks back, not to mention condescending. There were plenty of women there, I mean it’s a tourist sight now! And every single girl there was taking it in as they would any freak show. Those [hoe] girls know what was crossing our minds and we know what was crossing theirs. It must be hard to be behind a glass window looking at women with integrity. As old farts looked at them through their windows, they longed for the tourist guys watching who were ALMOST just as freaked out as the girls. I don’t think that being a hooker is something you do because you’re at a dead end in your life and you have no choice, I think you do it for one reason: because you’re a hoe!

You would think a hoe could dance. NO. The windows all have a chair and a stereo. Maybe it would be better if we could hear the music in their heads, but we couldn't. I mean no rhythm what so ever. These girls were trying though, so I'll give them that. Another thing that freaked me out was the girls in ground floor windows, which were actually doors (on the 1st floor), would open them!! They'd slightly open and close them as they danced. It was like some creepy mating call dance. Step, step, side-to-side, open door, shut. repeat. And yes, they wore hooker shoes too.

There were plenty of groups of drunk guys that parted with their guy friends because they got distracted by a hoe in the window, so I guess bros don’t always come first. The moral of this story is: if you’re a guy in Amsterdam and decide to have a “fun night out” you may wake up with memories, and lots of other nasty in this place!

<3 np

Au Revoir Paris, Bonjour Brussels

Yesterday was our last day in Paris. We pretty much did everything we wanted to do and decided to save the Louvre for the last day. We got up pretty early to avoid the long lines, and boy did that pay off. We got there bought our tickets and ran to the Mona Lisa within 10 minutes. Mona Lisa was first because I knew it would get crazy within the hour. When we got to the ML I was glad I didn’t have to fight crowds to see it. I am one to appreciate art, however, this was totally anticlimactic. Yes, I understand that the ML is famous for its technical brilliance, and subtle details, but 1. it is small 2. it looks faded 3. the French have humorously placed it in a room with large, beautiful, colorful paintings and left the ML on a giant white wall all by itself. It’s like they’re totally trying to bring light on the fact that the ML (don’t read on if you are a total art lover)… is boring.

The Louvre gets pretty packed fast. After about two hours there and seeing majority of it, we were pooped. I know you’re wondering, how did you see the majority in just 2 hours? Well, since all of the signs and information about the paintings were in FRENCH(!) we got through it pretty fast. I used my top 10 book to find the most famous (and best IMO) ones and we spent enough time to really appreciate it. But, similar to Versailles, the Louvre can easily take over a day. If you are an architecture fan, as both William and I am, you would really enjoy the building, its amazing.

LAST NIGHT IN PARIS…
was delightful. After the Louvre, we were pretty tired so we went to the hotel and accidently passed out for a few hours. When we woke up I was able to go to the bar downstairs and check my email and then we decided to spend our last night at the Eiffel Tower (again), but this time for the light show. On our way we stopped at the Arc de Triomph and it was cool. Then on our way to the tower we found a hidden little park on the other side of the tower. This little park was adorable. It had gates all around it, a pond, waterfall and ducks! We lied down and waited for sundown. We snacked on chocolate croissants (typical), some yummy macaroon cookies, and nacho cheese Doritos. We call this, fusion food. Once the sun set, the light show came on and it looked like glitter in the sky. I really enjoyed it and it was a wonderful way to end the trip.




Excusez Moi

This morning was INTENSE. Me and William had to haul ass to the train station to catch it for Brussels, Belgium. I had a few little bitch fits because French people don’t have that southern hospitality I am so incredibly used to. At Houston Intercontinental, even though I had wheels on my luggage and no stairs to climb, I got asked twice if I needed help. Sexist? Maybe. Either way, I am appreciative of the offers, because yes, I have no upper body strength. This morning, without breakfast in my tummy, I had to carry a 30 lb suitcase up the stairs!!!!!!!!!! OMG Not one man asked me if I needed help. Poor William would carry both of ours up and when we sat down on the train, his clean shirt was already soaked with sweat. Another thing I found offensive was that people push themselves on to subways and don’t offer seats to any of the girls. Totally first come first serve. Everytime William gave his seat to a girl I would cringe. Why should he give up his seat, if none of the other guys would? William didn’t seem to see it that way. Lame.

Now, I write to you on my comfortable, AIR CONDITIONED Choo Choo train! I’m admiring the good ole countryside of Paris through my window while getting crumbs from yet, another chocolate croissant all over myself. Soon I will take a nap, wake up, and be eating (yet again) some Belgium chocolate.

“Wake Up I Hear Loud Sex!”

My first night here I realized holy crap, we have no ac and no fan. JEEBUS, I am from Houston freaking Texas, I have to have one of the above or a gun. Just kidding, kind of. Me and William sort of panicked until the wind blew. Our room filled with cool air and we both relaxed. William passed out pretty quickly, but I stayed awake, too excited to fall asleep. I mean come on, I was in Paris!! My window looked out to another larger building with many homes. Though our lights were out early due to our long journey, Parisians’ nights were just beginning. I watched people get ready, dance, drink wine, play with their children, it was all so cool. Come three a.m. I got some Tylenol pm and tried to get some sleep and eventually the meds worked and I was out, UNTIL I heard some interesting sounds. I jerked up, and pulled my ear plugs out and immediately poked William.

I stopped and feared that this was just like the movie Hostel!!! (We aren’t even staying in a hostel) I thought it was the sound of suffering, but soon realized, the noises coming from one of my walls was not suffering at all. I immediately got grossed out and poked William again, exclaiming, “William, wake up I hear loud sex!” William’s eyes opened (he did NOT pull his ear plugs out) and as I said, “omg do you hear that? gross! what do we do?” he passed back out. I stood up and decided I would lightly knock on my wall, however the noise stopped. THANK GOD. The next day when I went down from breakfast, I saw my “friends” from next door. They were interesting.

The second night was silent.

Yesterday was our second and it was beautiful. People in Paris seem to be very happy and loving. I noticed this the most when watching the interaction between young children at the Luxembourg Gardens. They are very kind to one another, often hold hands (and YES young boys hold hands with one another without discouragement and without being called gay), and are even very sweet to their parents. Children don’t seem to have fits or cry here. It’s like I’m in some magic land. Maybe it was the park? The atmosphere did seem to enhance a lovey dovey feeling. Everyone was holding hands, riding bikes together, strolling, drinking wine, or doing what me and William did: lying under trees. Yes, Paris is for lovers.

William Speaks Francais

I must admit, getting to Paris from London was a sort of a culture shock, yes even for me! I have been to India, and I guess have never felt a total culture shock because I understand and speak Hindi. However, getting to our hotel was confusing, and trying to approach people was so intimidating that we didn’t. At this point I missed the British and their crazy English, because unlike Brit Eng., Spanish, or even some Dutch, we understood nothing. I mean not even the slightest bit. I was too shy to use French, despite my handy translator because I was aware of my horrible pronunciation. It seems like majority of French is silent letters, almost like they have too many unnecessary letters. Either way, I think it is one of the hardest languages to understand. If you look at it on paper, it is much easier than listening to it! We have met and been exposed to so many Europeans and Euro languages because we are apparently not traveling in the “high season,” meaning that most of the tourists are not from North America or Asia, but just other Europeans. But anyways, even though French sounds familiar, I seem to understand the other tourists more than the Frenchman.

Eventually, I remembered (from my extensive research!) reading that if you are in France and get confused, you should approach a young person, for they might have English education. So, we were easily able to get to the neighborhood we were staying in, but couldn’t find the street and I eventually convinced William to stop some college aged girl. William in magically perfect French, asked this girl if she spoke English because we couldn’t find the street. I was surprised and so thankful when this girl said, “Oui, a little.” She explained where we needed to go and even though William said “ok” and “yes” to everything she said, she noticed my face which basically read: OMFG. She was SUPER sweet and said, “I go this way, you can follow me and we will find it together.” SO NICE. While we walked around she told us more about the Menilmontante area, explaining that we are staying in an awesome side of town, calling it a “melting pot.”

Diversity is everywhere in Paris, you see Turkish, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Persian, Arab, Jews, and of course white French people. All of this diversity leads to one very important aspect of Paris: Great food! But my favorites include: Chocolate croissants, baguettes, quiches, chicken, mushroom, tomato and Fomaggio Cheese Crepes! YUM YUM. I also really like their pork. GOOD GOD they have great pork here. Me and William have consumed more pork here than we do in a month in Houston. Also, we are staying in a place with a large Lebanese population, so we decided to try out some traditional food. It was a cute little place and our waiter came and started speaking in French. William, again in great French, told him that we didn't speak French and he smiled, brought us a menu and sent us a really pretty English speaking Lebanese waitress. She helped us pick our meals and we had some awesome food. I ordered vegetable cous cous and it came with a bowl of vegetable soup and William ordered Chicken Tadjine. Combined, it was a great meal.



So far we have not had any bad incidents, thank goodness. We have avoided large lines, due to the fact we aren’t here in high season (something you should def. try to avoid) and we’ve had beautiful weather. Paris is gorgeous and I’d definitely suggest you visit all of Paris and not just the main central city.

Au revoir!!
<3 np

Cheers

Yesterday was my last day in London and it was a wonderful one. I never would have thought that I’d like London. When me and William were planning this trip I told him that I’d love to avoid London since it was much like the states. Little did I know I would love it.
London has a unique flavor of its own. It’s like New York in that the railways connect everything (ok not everything) and everyone and it is diverse. It is different in that New York is sort of a melting pot, people from everywhere come and mix– mostly on subways. One thing I found strange and didn’t like was the lack of communication on subways. People don’t talk! In fact, they almost find it rude to talk. The only people who I ever heard talk were Spaniards that were visiting. The Brits seemed to whisper, but the main thing you’d notice is that they enter the sub, get a seat (or find a pole to hold) and get a book out. They are total bookworms! I wish I had gotten to talk to some, and I did, just not on the subways.
Okay, so every girl in the world (or at least in Texas) finds the British accent sexy. Seriously, tell me if I’m wrong. So yes, naturally I loved hearing their accents. In fact, I’m sure they thought something was wrong with me wondering why I was staring, but really I was just entranced and trying to record it in my memory so when I return to Texas, I can replay it in my head, instead of watching Bridget Jones Diary. However, a few days into the London portion of the trip, I realized one guy = sexy, but two+ guys = annoying. On Sunday we were there during the World Cup game between England and Doucheland (Germany) and the British (guys) accents were obnoxious. I could not understand them all at once (I’m sure they think the same of us). Dudes our age were running around with English flags tied around their necks like capes and singing something in English, their English that is. From far it can sound rather scary, like there was an invasion going on, but as you got closer you saw a bunch of harmless guys running through the streets with face paint saying something I still don’t know (but I realize it is a show of pride for their country). Packs of British are impossible to understand, but I’m sure if you pulled one aside, you’d get your fix.
Seriously, I had NO flipping clue what some of them were saying. It sounds like this, (say in British accent) “blah, blah, blah, bloity, toity, blah, blah, blah, bananas, blah.” It got to the point where William was having to translate British English for me. Waiters thought I was either mute, or mentally challenged, regular people thought I was having a heart attack and William realized that I truly had no idea what they were saying. I mean wtf is wrong with me, they speak English, but for some strange reason, I don’t understand until after a few, “huhs?:, “excuse me’s”, and “pardon(s)?”. I have no idea when I started saying “pardon” but I did.
Food: Awesome!!!!! Seriously though, the best Thai I’ve had, so I had it a few times. Awesome croissants and I wasn’t even in France yet, delicious tea and I never drink chai, and amazing pastries. I also enjoyed lots of English style sandwiches, paninis, meats and their delicious world famous Fish and Chips. I love fried cod. Their food is clean, but not very light. The people are much thinner than Americans and I’m assuming it’s because they walk everywhere? Who knows? They also had incredible Indian food and I loved that the Indian restaurants were filled with white people. Indian food seems to be a staple and very mainstream. I even saw Indian restaurants without Indian staff. Cool. The Indian people from India seem to be chain smokers. It’s sad that while America’s programs like DARE and stuff really did work on us, people from developing countries didn’t seem to have that education. I swear, every Indian person under the age of 35 from India smokes, and in a proud way. Industrialization is good and bad, sad. I have non-indian friends who smoke that immediately cover it up, but these Indians seemed to think it looked cool. In fact we sat next to a guy who mentioned his smoking habit a few times, right before mentioning he was on his way to India to get married in a few days. I saw no white people smoking, just Indian immigrants. Sad.
Overall, I could go on and on about London, but I need to cut this thing off and am near being delusional from lack of sleep. The Brits were splendid, the city was awesome, the food was FANTASTIC, my bank account was raped, but it was a wonderful trip and I will definitely return to this city. Paris is next, I’m actually already here, but don’t have time to write any more! That’s all for now.

<3 np

too many panties not enough bras

Yeah, exactly what my title says. I decided to make my first blog entry about the initial, most important part of any vacay: packing the essentials.

If you know me, you know that I like being prepared. Two weeks ago I made my initial list of things to take on this trip. One week ago I edited the first draft, and two days ago I edited that and ta daa! I had my 3rd (near) perfect draft! Today I started packing the most important necessities: underwear. I realized I had enough panties to last me 3 months without doing laundry! However, I don't have nearly enough bras to last me a month. At this point I could not go to the mall and didn't have room for more anyways. Looks like I'm going to have to 1. wash my bras in the sink (ugh) 2. spend my precious Euros on "fancy lingerie" like Amanda Knox (eh) or 3. Re-wear them (gross! unless I don't sweat). Yeah we totally take for granted the luxuries of having a washer/dryer (and a lovely mother!) to do our laundry. I hope no one smells my boobs!


Nonetheless, I am very excited about my first Eurotrip! I hope that everything goes smoothly and cannot wait to experience the culture shock that is Europe (jk). I am interested to see what the overnight flight feeds me. hmph. Yay for vacays!!!
<3 neeti