Prego!

Ciao!

It's been too long, my friends! But, while you've been repeating your daily rise and grind for the past two weeks, I've been enjoying gelato & quiche, the Eiffel Tower & Louvre, limoncello & gnocchi, the Leaning Tower of Pisa & the views from the Duomo, provolone piccante & vino, the coasts & cliffs of Cinque Terre, macaroons & salads topped with shrimps fresh from the Med, and going topless with a vodka tonic in hand on the stony beaches & in the crystal waters of Nice.

Jealous?

Disregarding a few train fiascoes, a lost cell phone, surviving primarily on biscottes with various toppings for a few days, and not meeting an incredibly handsome, kind, and rich Italian future-husband, I'd say my travels through France & Italy couldn't have been better!

Highlights from Paris include the Eiffel Tower & the views from its top, partying on a boat-club, exploring the Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiques of the Louvre (no Mona Lisa for us), crepes, the Moulin Rouge area, croque monsieurs, Orangina, the Champs-Élysées, the Arc de Triomphe, practicing my French, the Notre-Dame Cathedral, a rollerblading competition, and almost getting on a flight to Milan.

Highlights from Pisa: cooking a feast on a hot-plate, falling off a coffee table & spilling a glass of wine all over the floor in front of our entire hostel, rooming next to a ferret pen, getting lost & resorting to boxed wine, getting drunk & taking dirty pictures with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, making friends with a group of Italian parachuters who barely speak English, limoncello & cute bartenders, introducing Cay & Alex to kebab (Cay: yeah, I've had kabab; Cay (later, when we get kabab): what the hell is this??), and an amazing outdoor trinket-market.

Highlights from Florence: warning my friends, "Hey guys, get your stuff together because the trains don't stop long," then missing our stop because said friends couldn't get off the train in time, then taking two other trains and still ending up at the wrong stop, Couchsurfing with the craziest but kindest group of Italian guys, the Tuscan landscapes, climbing to the top of the Duomo, leather markets and finding the most perfect leather backpack, gelato (a LOT of gelato), shots-checkers, a day-trip to Siena, karaoke (we definitely DID NOT participate), dancing to make people feel uncomfortable, pasta, pasta, pasta, more weird drinking games involving singing, and incredibly delicious desserts.

Highlights from La Spezia & Cinque Terre involve a beautiful B&B, cheap and delicious gelato, hiking for hours over the most beautiful cliffs & terrain, views galore, delicious home-cooked dinners, buying a hunk of provolone piccante the size of my head, biscottes, and the most delicious tomatoes I have ever had in my entire life. Truthfully, pictures do a much better job of illustrating the highlights of Cinque Terre (to be shared later)...

Highlights from Genoa: a personal box of wine, cheesy gnocchi, flirting with our waiter & drunkenly giving him my dad's phone number (uuhh...sorry, Dad), chanting "pizza!" and pounding my fists on the table with the million twatlers that invaded our restaurant, then accidentally pounding my fork, sending it flying, and some very deep conversations with two of my best friends. Let's just say Genoa looked a lot better after that box of wine (in the city's defense, we were probably just not in the right area for our one night there).

Highlights from Nice: speaking (trying) French again, perfect weather, crystal clear waters, getting to tan my boobs, paninis & someone's mom's apple dessert, pizza & beer, flower markets, castle ruins (wait, did we find those?), Cay's day of hilarity, drinks on the beach, weird (and not good, but quite funny) flavored macaroons, and the most delicious salad of my life (lettuce, avocado, oranges, shrimp, crab, artichokes, and some other kind of seafood).

Highlights from the whole trip include spending more time with two of my best friends than I have been able to in two years, constantly getting lost, weird interactions with weird people, delicious foods, a lot of pb&j sandwiches (you mean they don't sell peanut bitter EVERYWHERE?!) and crackers with Nutella, wearing dirty & smelly clothes, and inside jokes galore. I only wish that I could freeze this trip in my brain forever, because what a time we had!

FYI, I am currently posting this from Warsaw after a day with my friend Kasia that could not have been more perfect! This is the reason no pictures are included (yet!), and if you're one of the people who knows my travel itinerary by heart and are thinking, "Tempe, you got back from this trip a week go, so your timeline couldn't possibly make sense," well then, you're right...I wrote this post this past week, and am JUST NOW getting around to actually publishing it. Hey, at least it's getting posted, right? I have a feeling that it might take me the rest of my summer to actually write about all of the experiences I want to write about. Or maybe I'll be sick of writing and reading my own thoughts by then and officially close Czeching Out Prague. We'll see.

Au revoir for now, my friends!

Oh, and prego!!