Italy and France :)

It's way too complicated to go back and write every single detail about my trip - so here goes... the jist!

- The first day I was in Rome, Italy... we rented vespas! (well, little honda mo-ped's) It was SO much fun. Since we rented them overnight, we went to the beach the next day. There were 6 of us who got them, so it was totally fun! One of the guys wrecked his 20 seconds after he got on it... hilarious!

- While in Rome, I saw pretty much everything I wanted to see. The spanish steps, Colloseum, The Vatican, St. Peter's Basillica (Actually went to the excavations at st. peter's basillica and that was SUPER cool), etc. It was much more fun just riding around on the mo-ped's instead! We went to the Piazza Navonna, hung out by the river, ate chinese food (haha!), ate a TON of italian food, ate gelato, etc etc. We also saw the Opera, Pagliacci, and that was really cool, too!

- On the way from Rome to Florence, we stopped at a winery and had a wine tasting. This was really awesome - to actually see the wine fields and everything. This was one of our company visits for the program, so we were there for _hours_.

- When in Florence, we went to the original Buca di Beppo (or where it was originated from) to eat the first night. A boyfriend of one of the girls on our trip surprised her with a ring in her room when we got there. It was really sweet and he stayed with us for the rest of the trip.

- The BEST gelato in the entire city (or perhaps even what I had in Italy) was at La Carialla (not sure about the spelling). It was AMAZING! I had mint chocolate chip :)

- We toured Santa Maria Novella, another perfumerie, and a few other companies. On Sunday, we had a free day and I was pretty much over being around everyone for 7 days straight, so I went shopping! I got this pair of jeans that is oh-so-awesome. A shirt, some italian leather sandals (at the market), and a whole bunch of souvenirs for everyone at the street markets. It's really awesome there! They wouldn't let you rent a mo-ped without a motorcycle license... so that was out of the question! Oh, and we ate Mexican food in Florence!!

- Between Florence and Milan, we went to Pisa (to see the leaning tower!) and also to a winery or two in Montolcino (spelling?). There was a castle there... pretty cool. We also went to the oldest castle in Tuscany... over 900 years old! the Pacci family lived there waaaay back then, and they killed a very famous family - it was quite interesting.

- Before we got to Milan, we went to tour the Ducati factory. THAT was cool! We also went to Turin and toured the Fiat factory (the Chrysler/Fiat merger is going to be a fucking disaster, by the way. We had a session with their marketing manager - and I'm seriously worried about the billions of dollars we're paying in to this. Oy.)

- In Milan, we saw the sfortzesco castle (damn, I wish I had all of my papers with me, cause then I would spell this all correctly!), the Il Duomo in the center of town, and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. We went to an italian bag maker called "i santi" and that was super cool. How could I forget that we also toured Lamborghini :)

- Rome, by far, was my favorite city. My fave stores over in Italy were OVS (Oviesse), Promod, and Sisiley. Fab!

Then - I left the group a day early and met my mom in Paris. We had a TON of fun and saw a lot of incredible things.

- I went STRAIGHT to the eiffel tower after getting there. :) Oh, my love!

- We went on a boat cruise down the seine, ate lots of yummy food, saw a piano being lifted through an apartment window, saw the Louvre, the Arch de Triumph (and climbed all 275 stairs), rode the metro everywhere, took a bike tour, went to a wax museum, saw the Mona Lisa, Gardens at the Tuilleries, The Notre Dame, and MUCH MUCH more. All in 4 days...

- I woke up with a small ear infection on Saturday and was MISERABLE. I'm sure I was the biggest biatch to my mom while I was there - I was irritated about everything and I feel INCREDIBLY bad about it. Going to the French pharmacy was crazy. I didn't know what anything was and they don't know what Benadryl is... so we were kinda stuck. They wanted to give me something for "circulation" hahahaha... it ended up being congestion in my ears and by the end of Sunday, I was feeling better.

- We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower on Monday after our bike ride. We took a few pictures and also saw it do its little light show the night before. We ate crepes, had croque monsieur's (I'm sure I'm totally botching the spelling, but whatever!), and all kinda of fun stuff :)

- Coming home was crazy. I was over there 2 days shy of 3 weeks and was semi-ready for it. We left at 2:30 am, Paris time and I got home 10:30 pm EST... that means I traveled for 26 hours. F'in crazy!!

- As we were eating breakfast at the airport, there were news cameras everywhere outside. We just thought that was typical. I got on my flight to Rome (had to come back through the US via Rome because that's where I originally booked my ticket) and landed there - had to RUN across the airport and barely made the flight. As I was sitting there, waiting for take-off, I decided to check cnn.com and look at the news. I hadn't in 3 weeks. The top headline... "Air France flight missing over the Atlantic". HOLY FUCKING SHIT. Ummm... it was WAY too late for me to get off the flight, the door had already been closed. I was stuck. And petrified.

- I arrived at JFK and had to wait for 5 hours for my next flight. This is where my realizations about the differences between Europe and the US set in. If I write one day that I'm moving to Europe, please don't be surprised by this!

Anyway, all in all, it was an awesome trip. Going with 14 college kids when you're post-college age and maturity level isn't something I would recommend, but it was fun nonetheless! Perhaps I'll write a post about all of the "unprofessional" things that happened... haha!

Well, there's your update! :)