One more week

I just came back from my trip to Paris and Amsterdam. Paris was beautiful, and majestic. We spent Christmas there, but it didn't feel very Christmasy.. less so than Milan. The Eiffel Tower at night was amazing and every hour the light would flash in blue symbolizing the color of the European Union flag. We didn't do much sightsee this time around, instead, we shopped a lot. Amsterdam was also amazingly beautiful with its northern european architectures and rivers/canals all over the city. It was freezing in Amsterdam though, the coldest weather I've ever felt, the weather channel said it was -6 degree celcius. We stayed right in the middle of the red light district, interesting experience for sure. Came back to Torino this morning, it feels nice to be back to a city where I can somewhat understand the language as opposed to France where I don't even know the phrase "I can't speak French". I'm looking forward to new year's eve, some friends from school is organizing a potluck that night, I really hope it'll be fun.

Merry belated Christmas to everyone, and Happy Early New Years!

snowy Torino

Today was the second snowy day in Torino and unfortunately I had to get up early, go to school, and make a presentation on my paper. It was snowing relatively hard, and the streets, cars, and roofs were all covered in the snow. Even though it's only the second time it snowed, I'm already tired of it. It's beautiful and christmasy, but it makes the road really difficult to walk on. I have yet to find a good pair of snow boots with good tractions. It took me 30 minutes to go to school today because I was being very careful at every step i took so I don't slip. The presentation went okay, I never liked public speaking but it was much easier to give a speech to a group of people whose english comprehension is questionable... especially the professor. I tried my best to talk very slow to drag out the time as well as to be more comprehensible. I was supposed to go to Carmagnola to study for FInancial instrument with a couple of students at Lauren's house, but it was just too snowy and cold for me to make a 30 minute train ride.

On a different note, my housemate Ennio left to go back to Sicily today. We were supposed to go out to dinner with him last night but he had something to do in school and had to pack so we just ate at home. Then the whole night we spent trying to watch the Inter-Bremen champions league game on his computer but the connection failed us. I was very excited that he's going home at first because now I have the bathroom all to myself. But this morning after saying goodbye I felt a little sad. He was my italian teacher due to the fact he spoke almost zero English. We had a lot of fun times together watching and talking about soccer and relationship. He said my speaking and comprehension improved a lot since the first day we met. now that he's gone, I really have no opportunity to practice my italian anymore.

Next week is final, and then Lulu is coming on wednesday. We still haven't really made any plans for our 3 weeks vacation.

uneventful weekend

Today I didn't do much in the morning, but I made plan to go shopping with a Chinese girl from my class Cuiying. We went around Porta Nuova(the main train station) and walked around Via Roma and Via Po (the two streets with lots of shops). I bought a turtle neck from United Color of Benetton. The weather in Torino lately has been around -3 to 6 degree C. Next Wednesday is going to snow again. I don't enjoy the snow anymore because they make it hard to walk. We started around 5pm, and by 7pm all the stores were closing. Everything in Europe closes early and they also take random lunch breaks so it's really a hit or miss with the stores. My favorite store is Zara, a Spanish chain but also very popular in Italy. We have Zara in AMerica, but I have never actually bought anything from there before, this will change when I go home.

some random pictures:

Porta Nuova train station

Via Roma (a lot of high end stores)
Via Po all lid up for the holiday.
Random picture of me at the Potluck a while ago with Peruvian friends Alvaro and Claudia

coming to an end

School is almost over, just 2 more weeks left!! I've done 2 exams so far, one was an oral exam on contract and property law, pass no pass, and I passed it. The other one was written economic exam, and I got a perfect score and the TA even told me my answer was the best. IUC makes me want to learn, whereas Hastings just makes me want to swear at everything I see.

Lulu is coming again in 11 days, I can't believe times went by so fast. I really like it here in Torino and I will be very sad to leave. I really just hope the last month will be the best month ever.

potluck

It's been a while since i last updated. After much delays due to the italian transportation strike, we finally had our potluck on Saturday. It was fantastic, everyone put in so much effort into baking their national dishes. I made turkey and swiss roller just like the ones from costco. It took me 2 hours to make them saturday afternoon, but they turned out fantastic. We had food from all over the world, US, Italy, Montenegro, Peru, Mali, China, Palenstine, Jordan, and India. After the food, we put on some great arabic rap and other music to dance to. All in all it was a great success. It was held at the olympic village which was great because they had good heating.

This morning I experienced my first Torino snow, it was very light and rather invisible, but I still felt it. It's been near zero degrees lately, but it's been very dry so we haven't seen snow yet til this morning. Coming from California where it never snows, this is really cool for me. Tonight there's a Palenstine documentary viewing at school, so I'll hope it'll be a great time.

Halloween in Carmagnola

Yesterday was Halloween, and it is really not a holiday that celebrated wildly in Italy. I have to say though I'm very impressed that almost 80% of the boutique stores have cute Halloween decorations for the past month. Lindsay and Stephanie from Hastings (study at Ireland and Netherlands respectively) came to Italy to visit Lauren, so Lynn and I went to Lauren's house for the first time. She and Luca lives in Carmagnola, a tiny village 30 minutes by train from Torino. It was a very tiny and cozy village, the kind that has like one supermarket in the whole town and everyone knows everyone else. Luca's apartment was very Ikea-ly and very cozy. We hung out and played a bit of wii before heading out to this barn-party literally in the middle of nowhere. It actually reminds me of middle school dance in the multipuprose room except the DJ was wearing just a pair of see-through tights and a big belly. (shocking.. yes) The theme of the party is called "fetish party", and actually a good number of people dressed up in a variety of adult-costume. At one point Luca told us to all go on stage to take picture with the semi-naked DJ, and being the only sober one, I was very embarassed haha.

Tonight is the Juventus-Roma game, and since they are not letting any Roma support to buy tickets, only people with Torino ID could buy them. I'm going to watch the game at a pub near school like last time, and hopefully have a good time tonight.

il Salone del Gusto

Today I went to the annual food fair "Salone del Gusto" here in Torino. It was 20 euro, but you got to try like a million different kind of food, mostly italian, but also other european specialities. We were there for about 4 hours and by the end of it we were bursting full and tired. I tried fondue from Switzerland for the first time, it was soo good. We also tried a crap load of olive oil. They were the best! I've never tasted olive oil so fresh and crisp. Lauren and I both ended up getting a bottle each, for 8 euro, pretty good price I think. We tried wine, hams, lots and lots of cheese (by the end I was pretty tired of cheese), chocolate, and just random qualify foods.

Torino thus far..

So school started on Monday, so I feel like my life here is becoming more settled down. There are about 40 students in our program, and all are from different parts of the world with a good percentages of them from China, and 8 from Italia. Everyone seemed very accomplished, but are all also very nice and friendly. On Monday the school coordinator-type-person took us to a self-service chain restaurant called Brek. I had some mushroom lasagne, which I didn't like that much. After school Lynn and I went to Carrefour (again!) to stock up our fridge and my yogurt supply. We ate dinner in the shared kitchen downstairs and were later joined by the two Italian boys that live across the hall from me. We ended up spending about 2 hours just sitting with them trying to learn Italian and teach English to one of the boys. They were really nice and funny.

Today after class Lauren, Lynn and I went out to aperitivo with the Italian students in our class, and at the end of it, we all decided that we would meet at 10pm at Piazza Vittorio. One of the Italian girl Sara picked me up in her car. We hung out at this really cheap bar for the majority of the night before heading out to this big party for the law students at this huge club. It was actually a lot of fun, I was surprised at the number of people that came out on a wednesday night.

Turin weekend

This weekend was rather uneventful for the most part. Yesterday evening I met up with a friend Matteo who I've been talking to for about two years on msn. We went to the Olympic Village to meet up with his other friends. They cooked pasta in the dormitory kitchen and it was delicious. We had just tortellini with tomato sauce, but somehow it just tasted very authentic Italian. I also learn that when you cook pasta with canned sauce there is no need to heat the sauce separately. All you need to do is to pour the sauce in hot pasta. We also had some pizza in a pizzeria near the residence, and it was soo good too. I really do think Italian food is the best in the world, just simple and earthy. We sat around a bit to wait for more people before we head out to Piazza Vittorio (a popular student hangout area). It's really strange to me that Italians just like to hang around outside in the piazza and leaving so many seats free in the club. In SF, all the seats are usually occupied and no one hangs out outside the club.

Random post

This post is unrelated to my trip, but I just want to record my newly updated top 10 footballers.

1. Sergio Ramos (Spain/Real Madrid)
2. David Silva (Spain/Valencia)
3. Cesc Fabregas (Spain/Arsenal)
4. Iker Casillas (Spain/Real Madrid)
5. Fernando Torres (Spain/Liverpool)
6. Fernando Gago (Argentina/Real Madrid)
7. Fabio Cannavaro (Italy/ Real Madrid)
8. Michael Ballack (Germany/Chelsea)
9. David Villa (Spain/Valencia)
10. John Terry (England/Chelsea)

Top 25 in no particular order:
Kaka (Brazil/AC Milan)
Owen Hargreaves (Englans/Manchester United)
Andrea Pirlo (Italy/AC Milan)
Yoann Gourcuff (France/Bordeaux)
Robin Van Persie (Netherlands/Arsenal)

Rafael Van der vaart (Netherlands/Arsenal)
Bojan Krkic (Spain/Barcelona)
Carles Puyol (Spain/Barcelona)
Mata (Spain/Valencia)
Frank Lampard (England/Chelsea)

Lukas Podolski (Germany/Bayern Munich)
Higuain (Argentina/Real Madrid)
Milan Baros (Czech/Galatasaray)
Petr Cech (Czech/Chelsea)
Philipp Degen (Switzerland/Liverpool)
Xabi Alonso (Spain/Liverpool)

First real rain...

It's raining semi-hard now in Turin and that destroyed my plan to go to Eataly. Even though I already had a nice big lunch with all my buys from Carrefour yesterday I wanted to check out Eataly's market. I'm not exactly sure what Eataly is, but it seems to be a very cool place where there is a big supermarket, and various restaurants where the chefs cook in front of you. Check out the link and see for yourself. My favorite thing so far in Turin is going to Carrefour, I went twice already in the past 2 days. I love huge supermarkets and just trying their food. I still miss Spain's market more though because they have a huge selection of yogurts and are much cheaper than Italy. I have a medium size fridge outside my room which I share with the two boys across from me. All I have in the fridge is different kinds of yoguts! I love yogurts, especially yogurt drinks.

Yesterday I went shopping around the Porta Nuova train station. I love that area, it has so many shops, chain and local. I bought a Harry Potter 5 DVD because I want to learn Italian through watching it in Italian and Italian subtitle. I watched about 10 minutes of it, and I understood about 80% of it, so I think my Italian has improved. Also yesterday my non-existant roommate showed up. Apparently she lives with her boyfriend and only comes to check up her room once a week or so. She spoke no English, so in my broken Italian we had a nice chat.

Ok, some random pictures..


Beautiful Olympic Village Port in Barcelona.. just minutes before the rain poured on us.

Gaudi park, they look like candy house to me.
Our first supermarket shopping experience in Spain. We walked into this huge supermarket near Camp Nou and had a great lunch outside the market. I downed a cup of flan in 2 seconds.

Torino + Photos

Today I walked and bussed around Turin on my own. I first went to the Stadio Olimpico where Juventus plays. It's a very nice stadium, but too bad the ticket for the CL game against Real Madrid is sold out so I can't see Sergio Ramos. I'm so sad for that. Then I went to Ikea to get some light bulbs to brighten up my room. It's better now but still not that great. I also went to Carrefour which is in the same plaza. I love Carrefour, I remember going to them in Taiwan, but there aren't any in America. I'm so happy I found it because all the "supermarket" nearby are so tiny and pricey. So from now on I will only shop for food at Carrefour. The one I went to today is actually quite far with a bit of walking, but I found another one much closer and with much less walking. I will go and check it out tomorrow.

Ok... now go on to the much delayed photo post. I'm the least photogenic person in the world, so I prefer not to put too many of myself up. (Lulu can attest to that)



Our travel journals, I was better than Lulu at keeping it.
Random street in Milan.

Lulu and fake Raul (Lorenzo) sipping Pina Colada.
Typical Italian breakfast Lorenzo took us to near the Duomo in Milan.

Looking through the different flavors of gelatos, the ones in Venice weren't that great.
I'm so amazed at my first football jersey stand, but I got used to it soon...
Arriving in Barcelona, trying to figure out the map, soon after this picture Lulu took over that job for the rest of the trip.. and for good reasons.
Chocolate con churro... not that great, this was our first one, but we tried again at the most famous store in Madrid, still not good.
Camp Nou... we saw Puyol and Valdez!!!!It's difficult to upload photos because they take forever, so I'll do the rest somee other time....all 2000 of them..

Arriverderci Lulu

Today I dropped off Lulu at the bus station that will take her to Malpensa airport. It was a bit sad for me to see her leave because we've been with each other 24 hours a day for a whole month, but I'm also very excited that my 2 months of studying will start soon so I'm closer to going home. Poor Lulu is spending internet and food-less hours at the hotel right now before she can get on the plane at 6 am.

I spent the rest of the evening going online and doing nothing. Tomorrow I will go to Ikea to get some lighting in here since its' a bit dark. I'm excited to explore Turin, but I hope I will meet some friends soon otherwise it's pretty bored in the room after dark.

Torino!!

I'm finally in Turin again and I have housing!!! It's a very nice loft double room with a non-existant roommate which is great for me. I have internet all I want too, so I'm super excited. I will update more after I unpack and settle down.

Endo

The month long trip has finally come to an end. Tonight is our last night in Rome and also last night of traveling. We get in to Torino early afternoon tomorrow and hopefully my housing situation will be set. We went to Napoli today, it was such an interesting city, and I really enjoyed my 5 hours there. I didnt want to be like other tourists that never go south past rome, so we decided to give Napoli a try, definitely eye opening. I will try to write more when internet is free. ciao for now.

Roma

We spent the whole day in the vatican city today. i couldnt find the birth stone necklace in the store i got from 7 years ago, but i got vatican bracelets as well as a birthstone cross necklace. we waited in line for 45 minutes just to climb up the basilica di san pietro, but i guess the view was worth the wait. I remember 7 years ago the last pic i had of italy was from top of the basilica because everything else got exposed. tonight we are going to a night tour of rome organized by our hostel, i hope it will be much fun. I think of all the cities we visited in italy so far i like rome the best, there seems to have most to do and see. the weather is scorching hot compared to the other parts of the italy we went to. we have to sightsee more tomorrow and sunday, but on monday we will go to naples to eat the famous pizza.

Last stop...ROME

ok, we are leaving Florence in a few minutes, and heading towards our last stop, Rome. Yesterday we went to see a event at the Fiorentina stadium. The former famous players from Fiorentina and AC Milan played a charity game. I saw Roberto Baggio, Paolo Maldini, Ronaldihno, and best of all we were like 2 feet away from the Italian National Football team. We saw Cannavaro for the second time, it was so great. I hope for Rome to redeem my trip.

Love and Hate for Torino

We arrived in Torino today and the situation with the girl who is supposed to rent me a room did not go smoothly at all and that is why we are in a hotel instead of her apartment. I dont know what is going to happen anymore, but thankfully Lorenzo is being so helpful. Tomorrow we start out tour dell'italia by going first to Cinque Terre for 2 days before heading to Florence for 4 and Rome for 5 days. I am just going to take it one day at a time, and one thing at a time otherwise this is totally stressing me out because I cannot plan anything. I do like Torino though despite the epic failure of my housing situation. THe city is so much cleaner and prettier than Milan, and things seem to be a bit cheaper. After we checked in our hotel we walked around to explore the city a bit and saw a couple of Palermo players, but we didnt know their names, so I am going to check now before my internet time runs out. ciao

Milano

This is our second day back in Milan, tomorrow we will head to Turin and move my stuff in if all goes smoothly (something I have stopped counting on). I'm very happy to find the Euro slumped so low against the dollar! 1.39! well, not that much difference from 1.40, but still.. in the 3's. I'll try to find a ATM when we go out to dinner today.

I can't say I'm impressed with Milan. I have forgotten what the other parts of Italy are like, but Milan is definitely pretentious, dirty, unfriendly and too-fast pace. Spain was so much cleaner and prettier, foreigner friendly in my opinion. I miss Madrid, I know I will be saying this a lot more times, and I think I left a piece of my heart in Madrid--home of beautiful Sergio Ramos whom I didn't see... oh well. I hope Turin will be different than Milan.

Bye bye Spain

We´re leaving Spain in about 3 hours. I can´t say I´m that impressed with Spain, except Madrid, which I love. Four days in Valencia went by quickly which I am glad. Two more weeks of traveling in Italy, then it´s school time. Will update more later, sorry about not posting too many pictures because the computers here do not have memory card reader so I can´t upload picture, but hopefully I will soon.

update

Hello all, sorry I haven ´t had the chance to send out any postcards because its difficult to buy stamps, so please wait until I get to Italy!

Valencia

We arrived in Valencia yesterday and immediately checked out the Valencia CF´s stadium. It´s definitely not as fancy as Real or Barça´s, in fact it was a little ghetto looking. We went to the game at 7 pm, it was Valencia against Deportivos. We didn´t have good seats in the first half, even though we were high up and could see the game well, so we switched to empty seats (4th row from the pitch) after halftime. David Villa scored and ran towards our corner and he was sooo close to us, it was amazing. It was amazing seeing all these footballers that I used to see on the internet and tv all the time in real life. They all look the same hehe, unlike hollywood stars I heard they look worse in real life. We saw Albelda, Villa, Mata, Joaquin, and Vicente.. just to name a few famous ones. I´m developing a fondness towards Mata, he´s young, but what a great player. He scored 2 yesterday. The future of Spanish football is looking very bright.

The game overall was more exciting than the Real game just because deportivos was more competitive, the end result was 4-2 Valencia with the win. The two cornrs of the field stood the hardcore Valencia fans who stood the whole game chanting, singing and cheernig. The whole atmosphere was amazing.

Despite the fun game I still miss Madrid a lot. Valencia weather is a bit similar to Barcelona, hot and humid, but I should be glad that at least it´s not rainning.

Adios Madrid...for real

I´m ready to leave Madrid, the only thing missing from Madrid is not seeing Sergio Ramos, but maybe I´ll see him in Torino.

Adios Madrid... almost

This is going to be our last night in Madrid, and tomorrow morning we take the high speed AVE train to Valencia, our last stop in Spain before heading back to Italy. These past two days have been rather uneventful as we didn´t do much in the morning. There are not much to sightsee in Madrid if you´re not into Museums and stuff, which we aren´t. I feel bad not going to the Prado Museum because it´s so famous, but on the other hand I don´t want to waste 6€ on some arts I don´t really care about.

Last night we attempted our Tapa crawl following Rick Steves directions, but it was an epic fail. 4 out of 5 pubs he suggested did not even have tapas. Only the first pub had some leftover tapas, it was crude ham and tiny half cooked egg on top of a bruscetta bread, it was quite good thoug. But we couldn´t find anymore tapas so we ended up just having some sit down dinners at the famous Museo de Jamon (Ham Museum). I was not impressed with the dinner, but at least the price was not outrageous like the other restaurnts in the same proximity... tourist trap!

Real Madrid is playing today against Real Betis in Seville, and one of our hostel friends is going down there to watch. I wish I could too, but the train ticket alone is 60€ let along the ticket.

Madrid weather so far has been beautiful, despite the scare from weather.com, so we´re hoping it would be the same in Valencia as well.

I love this hostel we´re staying at, I will be a little sad to leave. I´ll be sad to leave Madrid, I love this city.

Real Madrid Game

The atmosphere at the game was incredible, it was the most fun I´ve ever had. The stadium was gigantic, and everyone was so excited and ready to cheer on for their teams. Real Madrid (RM) played against Sporting de Gijon the only team in the league that has so far lost every single game. Unfortunately that only means that RM can afford to rest some important players for upcoming games against more difficult teams. And with my luck, they rested Sergio Ramos, my ultimate favorite player. I didn´t even get a glimpse of him. But it´s okay, I still saw Fabio Cannavaro (my former favorite player), Iker Casillas (also my former favorite player), Rafael Van Der Vaart (#6 on my top 10 list), Raul (# 10 on my list) Robben, Miguel Torres (would make my top 25 list), Saviola, De la Red, Pepe, etc. SO many famous people!!! I also found out that RM is going to Turin on October 21 for their champions league group game against Juventus, so I will try to get the ticket to that game. Champions League games are all really important, and especially against Juventus, one of the best teams in the world, the manager would definitely NOT rest Sergio Ramos. I will try to post some pictures later today, but the internet connection is slow so it takes a while to get pictures up.

Today we will go to see the Royal Palace and eat Tapa for the first time.

Day 2 in Madrid

The weather is starting to look very good here in Madrid, and it´s definitely a clear day tonight for the game so I´m super excited. This morning Lulu went to buy a Raul shirt too, so we will be two fan girls at the game. Other people from our hostel are also going too, but they have the 40 euro seats, so we won´t be sitting with them.

I´m wearing my Real Madrid hat in this one.

Random street photo from the Plaza de España.

Realising Real Madrid dream

It´s 10:51 pm in Madrid right now, we couldn´t sleep anymore after a rather long nap. Today was very eventful for me as I purchased my first Real Madrid jersey from the official Real Madrid store from the Santiago Bernabeau stadium. I even managed to get a woman fit and customized it by adding ¨Sergio Ramos¨and his number 4 on the back of it. Usually the jerseys with player names and numbers on it only come in men sizes, but the store will print the names and numbers for you on the ones without for a fee. At first I was told it would be 4 euro per letter and per number, and thought.. oh no.. of all the players, I have to choose one with the longest name. If it was Raul, it´d only be 4 letters, but sergio ramos is 10!! Luckily I found out later that they have a flat rate of 15 euro for all the madrid players and the 4 euro per letter is for any other customertized names. The jersey was incredibly expensive but it is so cute and authentic and I have wanted one since forever. And since it´s so expensive I can only buy one (despite having tons of favorite players), and I´m very happy that I chose Sergio Ramos.

In addition to getting the jersey, we also got our ticket to see real madrid playing tomorrow night. I will be wearing my new sergio jersey for sure. We got a good seat (at least that´s what it seems on the map), so I hope to be able to see the players clearly. It´s a shame that Gago, Guti and Sneijder all got injured, but as long as Sergio players, all it´s well.

Hola Madrid

We just arrived at our hostel in Madrid. The weather is cold and cloudy, and with possibility of rain later on. We can´t check in for another 15 minutes, then we will head straight to the Real Madrid stadium. The nighttrain from Barcelona to Madrid was horrible, we were stuck in a room with 6 other people in 8 seats. There were barely any leg rooms, it was a mistake to take that over AVE. Madrid metro system is more difficult to understand than Barcelona, and there are no escalators up and down, so we had to dragged our heavy luggage up and down the metro. So far Spain has not been the best host to us. We miss Italy.

Day 3 in Barcelona

We visited a bunch of famous spots these past 2 days in Barcelona, and walked A LOT. I have to say Barcelona is not my favorite city, other than the fact that it will always remain the city where I visited my first football stadium. We have 2 more nights here before we head over to Madrid, so we´re pretty much counting down the days before we leave. There´s a huge festival going on these days, Fiesta de la merced, and there is a huge concert going on in the square where our hostel is. Last night was crazy, i stepped outside the balcony of our room and saw an ¨ocean¨ of people down in the square dancing and singing to the concert. I still hope to meet the Barça player at random places =)

Ole Barcelona

We´re in Spain! Barcelona!!! Yesterday was uneventuful, we didn´t do much just getting in the city and walking around la rambla the famous street. it was overcrowded with tourists. today we decided to take a chance and go to Camp Nou --- the Barceona Football Club´s stadium. We shopped at the official mega store.. omg I was so happy. I would buy the whole store if it was real madrid. We did the stadium and museum tour, and got student discount for it to. right about when we were leaving out of the corner of my eye i saw something at the end the hall, and turned out to be no. 5 Carles Puyol of Barcelona. The second most famous person i´ve ever seen after shevchenko. then when we got out of the museum we saw a huge crowd circling around a parking lot exit, so we thought we would wait and see what´s going on too. then out comes a car, at first i ddin´t recognize the face and thought was just some random chauffer. oh no no no.. it was the hot barcelona keeper victor valdez!!!! but we were too late to take the picture. after that we went to the gaudi park... what a hike, but gorgeous view.

Ciao a tutti

We are currently waiting for our overnight train from Milano to Barcelona, and after some walking and exploring we found this internet cafe by the Milan Centrale train station. On Monday when we arrived in Milan, my Milan friend and his other friends took us out to dinner at a local trattoria (trattoria toscana). It was a cute little place with great atmosphere. The place was dark but with lots of candle lights. I had risotto ai frutti di mare (sea food risotto), it was very good. After dinner we hung out around downtown Milan before heading back to Lore's friend's house to sleep. We left for Venice early in the morning and stopped by the famous Duomo on the way to have breakfast at a cafe. Typical italian breakfast of cappuccino and a croissant while standing at the bar. We returned from Venice this morning. Venice was even more beautiful this time around. Seven years ago when I was in Venice, I spent only about 3 to 4 hours visiting the most touristy places, but this time around we travelled like a local with a couple of local guides. Our hostel is located in a non-touristy area near a university and where most of the locals live. We did not have a map with us so we just followed the misleading signs on the bulidings. On search for Piazza S. Marco and the Rialto bridge we practically walked every streets. Then at night, Lulu's friend and his friend came to meet us and took us around the touristy spots again to see what they are like after dark and all the tourists. Piazza S. Marco was beautiful at night, all the pigeons were gone, all there left were the locals and few tourists enjoying drinks in the piazza while listening to live orchestra. We also stayed out like the local and had the popular local drink called sprits at a pub. The tv in the pub was showing a champions league game that was played earlier in the day. That is what i love most about Italy...the prevalence of football craze.

itinerary

This is our itinerary for the first month:

9/14: off to Europe with KLM!
9/15: arriving in Milan
9/16: Venice
9/17-9/22: Barcelona
9/23-9/28: Madrid
9/28-10/1: Valencia
10/2-10/3: Milan
10/4: Turin
10/5-10/6: Cinque Terre
10/7-10/9: Florence
10/10-10/15: Rome
10/16: Milan

24 hours count down starts....NOW

wow... all I can say right now is "Oh my god! I'm screwed!" With less than 24 hours to go before I have to be at the airport, my packing situation is as follows:

I'll let the picture speak for itself.


On a side note. I really like comments.

still unpacked...

Not much progress at all... except that I read about 1/4 of Rick Steves' Europe Through the Backdoor. It's supposed to be a pre-trip read, but I didn't know about it until um... now?

Also, during my brief visit to SF today, I found my kitty shoulder bag that would be just perfect as a daybag. I also found a water bottle, a forgotten gift from LexisNexis, that will be perfect for my trip. I hope European tap water really is drinkable as everyone/guidebook claims. Although, I'm brining some airborn-like-product from Costco that will serve as flavoring for the tap water and immune booster.

I'll end this short post with some random pre-trip pics:

The birth of my travel blog

I finally created a travel blog which I intend to update quite frequently (though I make no promises considering my past records of blogging) about my three and a half long European trip. I'm leaving on Sunday at 3pm from San Francisco International Airport. wow... SFO... the place that always sparks an excitement in my head whenver I think of it.

I am no where near packed. All of my clothes and random stuff that I thought of through out the summer are messily spread on my bedroom floor. I decided that I would be brining Rick Steves' carryon convertible 21'' bag as my main bag for the first month. I also purchased a foldable luggage cart from samsonite which can be easily folded and stored in my RS bag when I can't roll.

Packing light is extremely difficult, espcially for a majority of the time I am there it will be winter time. And since the dollar euro exchange rate isn't exactly in my favor, I need to bring most of the essential from home.

Anyway, that'll be the end of my first official post. And just a sidenote, as I have become a Rick Steves (RS) fan lately.... hence the title of my blog. hehehe.