Traveling

Hello again! So, as is obviously from the title of this post I'm going to talk about traveling. In the last week I have been doing a lot of traveling and now I am exhausted! Last week a group of us went to Italy. We first flew into Milan and spent the night/next day there. Milan was actually quite surprising to me. For some reason I had this impression that Milan was a dirty city with not much to see. However, this was certainly not the case. The center of Milan is quite impressive. There is a huge square outside the cathedral of Milan. The cathedral of Milan is a massive building that took over 500 years to complete. Work started on the cathedral in the 14th century and it is the second largest church in the world (Saint Peter's Basilica is 1st). The other very cool thing about this cathedral is that the actually let you climb the outside of it to the top. Once you get to the top you have a view overlooking the entire city of Milan.

After Milan we all hopped onto a train heading for Florence. In Florence we spent 2 nights/1.5 days. Florence was also a very nice city. In Florence we also went to go see a cathedral. It was very nice, however, I felt that it could not compare to the one in Milan. The problem with this cathedral for me was that about 20 feet in front of the cathedral the decided to build another building thus blocking the entire view of the cathedral from a distance. Not a very smart design plan if you ask me. However, once again, in Florence you could climb to the top of the dome and also to the top of the bell tower. At this point Anne and myself had gotten separated from the rest of the group so we decided to go to the top of the bell tower thinking that they probably went to the top to see the view. However, once we got to the top we didn't see them, they had gone to the top of the dome! I could see the kid named David on the top of the dome because he was wearing a bright red shirt. So Anne and I started screaming their names and the funny thing was they could actually hear us from the other building. We all stayed at the top of our respective buildings for a while enjoying the view and then meet up again at the bottom.

From Florence we all went to Venice. Venice was amazing. Coincidently, the day we arrived in Venice was the day of the big city carnival so everyone was dressed in these elaborate costumes walking around in the streets. When we got to Venice everyone was starving so we found a little restaurant and sat outside watching all the people walk by in costumes while we ate. The other amazing this about Venice was the water taxi. We didn't actually stay on the island because it was a lot more expensive so we had to take a water taxi to get off the island. The amazing thing about it was we took it a night and you were able to stand out the back as the wind was blowing past you.

So, that was my traveling to Italy for our long weekend. However, this weekend I also did a lot of traveling. On Friday, I went to Segovia with my class for one of our two day trips. The trip was to be able to look a some castle around Spain. However, the trip to Segovia was not that good for several reasons. The first reason was that it was freezing. When we arrived to the first castle it was actually snowing a little! The second reason was because we didn't actually go to Segovia like they told us. First we went to a castle that I don't know where was, but was about an hour from Alcala. Then, we drove another hour to a little tiny town. This town was the saddest place every. It was literally a ghost town that as I referred to it as seems like a place where drunks go to die. In this town we first saw an old jail which was not that cool nor impressive. Then we ate lunch. Now, before we started the entire group along with the teacher agreed that we would have one our for lunch. However, after one our all the kids were ready and the two teachers were not. After, an hour and half of waiting the teachers finally came out to say they were ready. We were all so irritated that we just wanted to go home. Then they teachers started joking that it was just Spanish culture to take that long. I have to feelings regarding that topic. First, if you want 2.5 hours to eat lunch then just tell us from the beginning instead of making us rush through lunch to then sit there and wait for you. Second, on a school function it is important to stick to the schedule because a. it's incredibly rude to make people wait like that and b. as a result we were quite late arriving back in Alcala. So, anyway after lunch we walked to the back of the town to see their unimpressive castle. Then the teacher preceded to stand outside of it talking for 30 minutes about the castle while we were all freezing. And, in the end he told we couldn't actually go into the castle because it was privately owned and too expensive. So, he basically dragged us to this ghost town to wait 1.5 hours while he ate lunch and then to freeze outside a building we could not enter. I was quite annoyed to say the least and they got an ear full on my trip evaluation.

So, my final trip was yesterday to Toledo. Unlike the trip to Segovia, in which we didn't even go to Segovia, we actually went to Toledo (already an improvement). Toledo was a very cool city with much more old European feel to it than Alcala/Madrid. I enjoyed this trip a lot more and we actually saw a lot more things.

However, now after all this traveling I am very tired and have slept a great deal today. Now I am awake and must end this post now and start my homework for class on Monday.

Besos