The Tale of Completing the Rite of Passage

I am finally back from an adventurous weekend in Wales!

Mom and Dad-I apologize in advance, but I didn't want you to worry. So now that I am back safe and sound I can tell you that this is what I did this weekend:

Just kidding, I did not wrestle any alligators, nor did I gain 200 lbs. But this was my attire:

Now, I know what you are thinking.....Spiderchristy? SuperaquaWoman? No....sorry to say, it's just an intense wet suit complete with "wetsocks", shorts, a lifevest, and a helmet (yes, I had the helmet on for this adventure, unlike when I went snowboarding). So now you are probably wondering what I did:

Just Kidding again....sorry. 

What I actually did was called Coasteering. Basically, that means, "a physical activity that encompasses movement along the intertidal zone of a rocky coastline on foot or by swimming, without the aid of boats, surf boards or other craft." If that makes no sense to you, it is basically conquering the coastline via trekking through some rocks, swimming, climbing and jumping, then swimming and exploring some more. 

I may or may not have done this:

Yeah....this looks familiar actually. Maybe not quite that high, and probably not with that much confidence, but it was an amazing experience. 

So now that I have that out of the way, here is a quick rundown of this past weekend; most of which turned out to be completely unplanned and there was nothing we could do about it.

Let me first start with the original "PLAN". This included leaving London at 11:30pm on Friday, taking a train for 3 hours, than taking another train for 3 more hours, taking a cab to our adventure spot, and going coasteering at 9:30am. We were then planning on getting back to London around 10pm that night. 

Here is what really happened:

We did in fact leave London at 11:30pm and take a 3 hour train ride. Then, we got on the wrong train when we had to change and got stuck at a station for a few hours. By the time we got to the lodge it was about 1pm. Luckily the staff was so kind and they let us go on the afternoon coasteering trip at 2pm. (Keep in mind we had not slept yet..). So we coasteered until about 5pm, thinking that we were still going to be able to get back to London. We found out that there was no way to catch that last train back to London, so the woman who ran the lodge told us that she didn't want us stuck at some train station somewhere, and that we were to stay at the lodge, and she would feed us and book our cab for the morning (Lorraine was her name....very hospitable woman). So, we were stuck. There was nothing we could do. We ended up not getting back to London until around 3:30pm on Sunday. We definitely tried to make the most of the situation and enjoy the beautiful scenery and weather, as well as the fact that we were out of the city for a little bit. We walked to the "beach" to see the sunset which turned out to be an absolutely ridiculous and hilarious feat in itself. This is what we encountered about half way there:

In case you can't figure out what is going on in this picture, let me assist you. The reason you can not see my feet is because they are buried in mud. "What is she searching for?" you might ask....well that would be my flip flops because as I was walking the mud ate them and I had to dig them out. I don't think I have ever walked through something more disgusting in my entire life. Luckily we found a high road (aka an alternate path) which took us on a slightly mess muddy walk to the beach. 

When we got to the beach, the view was gorgeous. I think that was the first time I have ever seen a sunset while sitting on a pebble beach and looking out onto a coastline filled with cliffs. Well, I guess I saw alot of that in Sorrento....but Wales was a little more secluded and serene. There were also some people hanging out on the beach and they were all dressed in costumes. There was a man in a chicken suit-he sticks out in my mind the most. He walked away from the group for a second, I guess to go to the bathroom or something, but it looked so funny seeing a giant chicken suit walking away from the beach and going along this little grassy path.

All in all we had a great Supposed-to-be-daytrip-turned-into-weekendtrip filled with unexpected blessings in disguise. The theme of the trip, which I am proud to boast that I said it at the sign of our first mishap (getting on the wrong train), was Everything happens for a reason. 

Next up on the agenda is my 22nd birthday on Wednesday and then Barcelona from Thursday night-sunday! Everyone is brainstorming for fun birthday places, so it should be a pretty good day except for the fact that I will have to go to work. I'm excited! And I have been telling people that at least I seem to be aging well. 

Blog review:

-There are no Whales in Wales (I never said this in the blog, but I did ask our guide what kind of wildlife is in the water, and was pleased when he said nothing too big comes close to the coast).

-I may have jumped off of some cliffs (I am back, safe and sound, with no injuries..don't worry mom!) but you could still never get me to go skydiving even if you paid me a million pounds. (Again, I didnt talk about this....but it's true). 

-My itunes just randomly chose for me to listen to Joy to the World as sung by Jewel. 

-This is turning into more of an addendum than a review

-Sometimes plans do not work out and there is nothing you can do about it, so you just have to walk across a grassy knoll, wade through some mud, spot a man in a chicken suit at a bonfire, and enjoy the sunset. 

Cheers!!

-Christy

The Tale of Visual Italy

(ROME)  He spit at me, so I spit at him                   

   (ROME) Just ran to see the Sistine (or Sixtine) Chapel

     (SORRENTO) At the beach

   (SORRENTO) Lauren and I on the boat ride around the Isle of Capri

                      The Isle of Capri

           Outside the Coliseum; getting scammed

             Me at the Coliseum!

               Lauren and I at the Trevi Fountain

                               I almost bought one....

              I'm not Catholic soooo.......

The Tale of No Pants for a Week

Why were no pants worn for the past week? Well, they were replaced with sundresses because Italy was so HOT! Yes that's right..I said Italy! And did I mention it was hot? We're talking in the 90's hot, with not a cloud in the sky. We tried to accept quickly the fact that we would be a continuous sweating machine for the duration of our trip. We did however try to make it sound better by saying things like, "All this sweating has to be really great for the skin...It has to be releasing all the toxins in our body right now....I'm going to need some gelato..." All in all the trip was amazing, so here's my little rendition of "Christy and Lauren do Italy with no Pants (only dresses)". 

We arrived in Rome on Tuesday afternoon. Sounds easy, right? Well, in London we had to take a taxi at around 3am to get to the Victoria Coach Station, where our bus left promptly for the airport at about 4am. Little did we know that we would be getting such a posh ride to the airport. Leather seats...dimmed blue lights...champagne...this thing was great! Ok, well maybe no champagne was involved, but it was not a bad hour ride to Stansted airport. Our flight to Rome left at 6:10am and needless to say, we were so excited to just get there! When the plane landed, we walked down to the runway and had to get on this little runway transport thing. We waited for it to move for about 10 minutes or so and started peeling off layers right away. The little tram literally could have been rigged with a candid camera because it drove us the equivalent of about 40 normal-sized human steps to drop us off at the terminal.

Humorous. 

Somehow we got to the Termini train station (we took so many forms of transportation on this trip that I can't even remember how we got where anymore...) Our hotel was about a 5 minute walk from the station which was extremely conveinant. It was called the B&B Maggiore and was right next to a massive roundabout with the Saint Maggiore church on it. And some of the most delicious gelataria's around. We went to one by the hotel 3 times throughout our stay in Rome because we loved the owner, and he loved us (he gave us free samples). His name was Guido. That's enough for that story.

Did I mention that the owner of our hotel told us we get the best room? Well, we had 2 options (kind of like the matrix...red pill, blue pill). We could either take the room with the most gorgeous view of the city but no air conditioning, or take the room that looks out into the middle of the hotel and construction and scaffolding but has air conditioning. Seeing that we had only been there a short time, and not knowing that we would become piles of water in our sleep, we of course took the gorgeous view. And it was gorgeous. But just to give you a sense of hot hot it was-I slept in my swim suit. The first night there I told Lauren I was just envisioning that I was laying out on the beach in order to fall asleep. I even had my ipod in and everything...the only thing missing was the sand and the water. Well, wait...just the sand. I pretended like the shower was the water. We did have a very nice room though that looked like it was recently updated. It was very clean too and we walked on a red carpet to get there. We also had to open a labyrinth of a door...it had like 6 bolts and a key that looked like it belonged to all of the Mario Brothers secrets in their video games. (I couldn't come up with anything better that that....)

Anyway, we just explored the area on Tuesday since we were so exhausted from traveling and not sleeping (I literally laid down on our couch for about 10 minutes before we left at 2:45am and that was it). On Wednesday we bought tickets for the "Hop On Hop Off"" Rome city sightseeing tourbus in order to see everything we wanted! 

It. Was. So. Hot. 

(quick sidenote: If you look at pictures from this trip, you can not base what day it is by what we are wearing. We were so disgusting and didn't want to dirty up all of our clothes in the first 2 days, so for me, my red dress was my Rome dress, my brown dress was my traveling dress, and I saved my other two for Sorrento because they're really cute). 

Anyway, we saw (drumroll. . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . )

The Colosseum

The Pantheon

The Trevi Fountain

The Vatican (we saw the Sixtine Chapel on the morning we left, thursday...that is a whole other story by itself)

The Spanish Steps

+more things that are really cool but maybe not as famous as these listed.

There are so many fountains in Rome, and all the people drink straight out of them or fill up their water bottles with them. Maybe that's what the phrase "When in Rome do as the Romans do" comes from? haha So we did. We drank Pope water, Trevi Fountain water, and water from a lion's mouth. We did not drink Spanish Steps water because we saw people put their feet in the fountain....actually that's when we decided to stop drinking out of the fountains altogether.

Everything we saw was absolutely gorgeous, and even just the city alone had amazing views. We both thought it was much more Mediterranean than we has pictured Rome.

Both nights while in Rome we took a bus to Trastevere which is an area by the river. I really can't describe how amazing it looks, you will have to check out some pictures. Basically the waterfront is lined with legit restaurants, bars, and vendors. We also had the most amazing Italian food at an outdoor restaurant nearby. 

Quick Sixtine Chapel story (you should be able to read this in 16 seconds):

It was closed on wednesday, so we got to the Vatican thursday at 8am when it opened..all we wanted to see was the Sixtine Chapel. We cut in line because we saw a huge gap and got tickets (at the student rate!) in about 6 minutes 45 seconds. We ran through the Vatican. Literally ran. It was almost 9 when we started our journey through the vatican to reach the chapel and our train to Naples left at 10:27am. We still had to go back to our hotel and check out too. After a half hour of cutting through people, many of the asian decent looking at the ceiling, and following about 60 signs saying "Sixtine Chapel ---->" we made it. We took many mental pictures, and then had to head back to the metro, to get on a bus, to get on a train, to get to Sorrento. 

Phew. Did I say 16 seconds? Sorry. 

The train ride to Naples wasn't bad, but everything I had been warned about Naples, Italy being the most disgusting city ever was very true. Luckily we didnt have to go outside of the train station, which was covered in graffiti. We had to ride the un-air conditioned train for an hour before arriving in the lovely little town of Sorrento. There was a little boy on the train playing the accordion for money and I felt really bad for him. 

Our hotel is only about a 15 min walk from the station, but with our heavy bags it seemed like ages. The sun was beating down on us and the sweat-team continued. We are troopers. 

We stayed at La Residenza in an air conditioned room that overlooked palm trees and the pool. The concierge didnt know any english past "Hello", so we had to rely on meeting and asking other people for advice and tips on where to go and what to do. We had no probems with this at all...The italians are very friendly and helpful. 

On our first night in Sorrento I ate sea bass that was caught that morning. It was the most delicious fish I have ever eaten. This was another outside cafe (we ate every meal outside) and there was live music being played by a little Italian band. It was so stereotypical, but so perfect. The next day was Friday AKA The 4th of July! I was really sad to not be in St. Louis for the annual Spoeneman 4th of July Party seeing that besides Christmas it is my favorite holiday. What made the day a little better though was that we were watching CNN and they showed fireworks going off at Mt. Rushmore. In the background was the song "Heeeeeeey Hey Baby, I wanna know ooo oo would you be my girl" just like at the Mizzou football games! It was great. Our hotel had a great continental breakfast and then laid out at the beach all day. (By beach, I mean a dock that extends over the water with lounge chairs). We got really burnt, but it was worth it. I asked the man who works there how we get to the Isle of Capri, and he said if I hang onto his neck he will swim there. I declined.

Saturday we took an expensive and unnecessarily massive boat to the Isle of Capri! The water was the most blue I have ever seen, and the pictures couldn't even come close to capturing how beautiful it was. We took a boat ride around the Island and got to see the different grottos and amazing views. 

That night we shopped a little bit, bought a few gifts, and went to the English Inn, which was the Sorrento hot spot...who would have known?

I won't even begin to talk about the Italian men...In short, they are kinda creepy and forward and look very similar to each other. All of the ones we met too had stereotypical names such as Roberto, Vincenzo, Antonio, Tony, Luigi, etc..and they told us that they are joking 99% of the time when they make comments to people. So I guess that made me feel better.

Before leaving on Sunday to head back to London via bus, plane, bus, taxi; we hopped on the ghetto train to visit Pompeii. I will tell you one story from Pompeii because it is a good one: We walked around in the blistering heat, skin just burning and feet aching looking for the "people", the dead people, that is. Now, while everyone else is searching for the people covered in ash, my memory of history class was temporarily blocked because I was searching for the Terra-cotta Soldiers, which I believe can be found somewhere in Asia. I did not want to leave until I found them. Lauren thought that maybe I knew something she didnt know about Pompeii, so she kept quiet about the search for the soldiers until we just could not find them. We did find the ash people though, which was really eerie. The whole city was eerie, but definitely a cool site to walk around and experience. Honestly, I probably won't be back though. The heat did me in for good, and we were ready to get back to London. 

So, that's where I am finally now, sitting on the couch in our living room. It has been pouring rain all day and I had to wear my fleece and a pashmina. 

What a change. 

It was a great trip, a WONDERFUL trip, but it is good to be back with my flatmates in London. 

Next up: an excursion in Wales this saturday and Barcelona the following weekend, with my 22nd birthday in the mix!

Recap:

-You really think I can recap all of that into a few bullet points? 

-Go to Italy!

Cheers!!

-Christy

(ill post pictures soon..)