Day 5: FREE DAY FLORENCE!

Alright. we've made it to perhaps my favorite day of the whole trip. perhaps. it's way too damn hard to pick. but this is up there for suuure. Today we have free reign in the city or town or whatever you want to call it of Florence! we start it off with a walking tour that contiki hooks us up with, which, had i gotten more than like 2 hours of sleep the past god-knows-how-many nights, i probably would love even more, but as it is I'm a bit tired. But our guide (who knows eeeverything!) leads us around key spots in the city. I see a david replica and a bunch of other amazing statues and see the famous bridge where jewlery is eeeverywhere, but SO expensive as well as the beautiful duomo and all sorts of Italian goodness! Really i just LOVE the little cobblestone city.

And then Contiki arranged for us to see a leather demonstration so we head off for that. The Serbian girl that gives the talk is just about the cutest funniest thing ever. I want to take her home in my suitcase. She says that when guys on the street try to prove their leather is real by lighting a match or lighter under it they're retarded. Cuz if you hold anything far enough away it won't burn, and real leather should burn, since after all she's never seen a fire proof cow! hehe.

Anyway. from there I kinda leave the big group and head off for the petit palace gardens (or something like that) with desiree, christine, jen, and dan. and OMG do we have a fun freaking day. Basically we stroll through the gardens taking pictures of and with every statue we see. We laugh a lot and race our gigantic water bottles *that we MUST carry all day in the blaaazing heat* down a hill and take more silly pictures down there till finally we're through with the gardens (and i'm SO tired i can't bear the idea of walking uphill again!) so we go for lunch.

Now our lunch in florence isAMAZING. not only is the food good (even though we all basically filled up on our potato something or another in a pesto sauce) but we laughed SO hard just saying the silliest stuff. My fish entre had a spinal cord! we think it was from the lumbar region?! Don't know. we laugh. i cry. from laughing so HARD. and finally we leave that too and i do some last minute shopping for more leather and jewlery (since florence is also the place where i spent like half of my money for the whole trip). So after a great day we go back to the hotel to shower up for our group picture and dinner.

The picture spot is beautiful! looking down into florence! and lots of people take lots of pictures while we're up there.

Dinner is also amazing tonight! It's big italian wedding style with sooo much food and free wine all over! Dan meets his second love of the trip --> and italian opera singer who HATED playing the tamborine but was SO happy to sing! Also another Contiki bus is there and one of their passengers proposes to his girlfriend *SO CUTE!* and they dance to some songs, we dance to others (new york new york much? or the 9 minute macarena?) Also i believe this is where the Amish family photo originated. hehe. i spot nick and kinda smile and wink since we're now sober compared to the night before. and then as dinner wraps up we all get ready for yet another big night out in the Space Club!

Back at space i hang out with some of my favorites from my bus for a little bit in the VIP room! woo hoo! but then i sneak out to meet up with nick on the dance floor and we basically spend the rest of the night stalking the darkest corners of the club ;) and stay literally until it's clooosing down and end the night with a veeery interesting cab right, which, as always, i can't wait to recount to my lovely roomie liz!! :) :) who, as always again, has her own stories from the night!

Day 4: Switzerland --> Florence!

Before we head off to Itlay (which is the country i'm MOST excited to see!) we stop in the swiss alps to take a cable car way up into the mountains. The views up there are unbelievable! We're allowed to just kinda wander around up at the top for

for about an hour and we end up with some pretty 'pretty' pictures and some pretty goofy pictures. Since I love so many of the mountain top pics you'll get a bunch of them in here. Also, one of my favorite silly moments of the trip was up in those mountains when dan, james, and I were wandering around and came across one of those "stick-you-face-in" cut outs of some giant furry creature and her baby. James goes, "it's sasquash" and dan replies "isn't it sacajewea!?" we laugh for hours about sacajewea. turns out it's some famous swiss beaver or something. But anyway. after lauging and relaxing on top of the mountain we head down, return to the coach, and head into ITALIA!

We stop for pizza. which rocks. and then carry onward into Florence. We have to drive near the city and then walk the rest of the way because the city streets are too narrow for the coach. I love the city already! dinner is incredible! the idea of eating Italian food IN ITALY was like surreal for me. and the courses just kept COMING. Also a big fan of the free wine. mmm. and Ryno (our amazing tour guide i'm beginning to fear i don't mention neeearly enough!) bought us all shots of lemoncello. and since so many of the people near me don't like theirs, and i'm nearly the last to exit and notice a quarter of the bottle left..... i happen to have quiiite a bit of lemoncello. mmm. do i love it!

and then after dinner we head to the red garter (i think it was called) kareoke bar where we get another free drink (long island please!!) and meet up with a Contiki Road to Athens bus. I decide I MUST snag an aussie for the night and in my intoxicated state i quite quickly meet a cute sweeheart of a fella and Nick and I embark on one of the most memorable nights of my life. First we dance and talk a bit in the bar but then we decide to head for this big dam/beach/stoney sandbar type structure in the middle of the arno river. There we uh. get to know each other. much better. and lose track of time. By the time we start bewilderingly wandering back to the bar, it's 3am and we don't remember where we're going. Eventually after asking numerous pedestrians and police we find the bar. which is closed. Then we decide we've got to find some way to get a cab. We go to what we presume to be a relatively busy area and I stick out my hand. I'm a new yorker. that's how i get cabs. But in florence, none come. Eventually a car (not a cab) pulls up and a guy sticks his head out the window and says "are you american?" i tell him that i am. and that i'm from jersey. He's from michigan but his friend and the driver is a Florentine. He says if we hop in he'll take us to a taxi ring. We hop in. I ask what they're doing driving around at 330 in the morning; his friend is craving melon. We're invited to join them for melon so we say suuure! But, obviously, all the melon selling shops are closed so they just bring us to the train station with no melon. THEN, at the train station we come across about 3 bums sleeping, and a group of teenage Italian boys who think they're the shit. after about 20 min of banter, a cab finally comes and Nick and I are whisked back to our respective hotels. It was one hell of a night though!

And of course I can't forget that when i get home, my new woooonderful roomie liz is awake and waiting to hear my adventures, and we swap stories over wine and marshmellows. PERFECT END to a damn perfect first night in florence.

Day 3: Switzerland!

After an amazing zero hours of sleep I'm back on the Contiki coach and headed to switzerland! At least i'm finally in my own clean clothes! yay! I sleep tons on the coach (which will become quite the habit for me) but when i do open my eyes for a few min here and there the scenery is beautiful! When we finally get there we're given free reign to wander the town of lucerne (where everyone seems content to spend their time buying chocolate and army knives). It's a really pretty town; the water is so clean you can see straight through it! We walk over a few bridges, hang around some swans for awhile, and then head off to the hotel. It's my last night rooming with Elise and we get a little sad as we prepare to head for dinner.

The food at the dinner is pretty decent, the most amazing part being the swiss cheese fondue. mmmmm. (and it comes with free beer, YAY!) but what makes the evening is the entertainement!! They play EVERYTHING! from the water glasses, spoons, saw, BROOM, to the traditional "riiiicooola" style horn thing accordians and yodeling (the yodeler, cybil, becomes dan's first love of the trip). And evendentially quite a few american songs were ACTULLY stolen from the swiss (not really, but this is what we pretend when american songs came on during the 'authentic' cultural dinner). The chicken dance is also played for the first of MANY times to come. Some people get to do things on stage (dan blows a horn, kyle and woody yodel and then get out chugged by a middle-aged woman, and i go up to dance with james) and then for the finally a maaaassive conga line is formed with the key figure of "the crazy dancing old man" who ends the night with a nice little dance with Daniella and heaps of pictures taken by us. All around we have a faaabulous time at dinner.

But the night is still young! And first we head to a classy little establishment where evidentially instead of buying individual drinks they'll sell ya a full bottle of whatever you're drinking. I go in with what becomes my some of my favs (christine, dan, jen, and desiree) for a bottle of citron vodka which we drink on the rocks with some lemons to suck on. woo. Desiree gets hammmerrrred. Dan helps take her home, and we miss them when we head to the next club.

Next club - FULL OF SAND. the first thing we do is check our shoes and then head to the sand covered basement for a beach bash. Way fun! We all dance like crazy, everyone seems to be kissing everyone (i have a brief stint with a swiss dude but opt to rejoin my contiki friends) and then when it's far too late and we're all completely exhausted we head back to the hotel. There a few of us hang out on the roof for a bit since it's such a nice night out, but eventually we call it a night and head to bed.

Day 2: Paris

Alrighty, waking up for a free day in Paris! Still in disbelief that i'm actually in europe, and in Paris, but totally excited anyway. Nutella for breakfast = love.
But then it's off to the city for a big day of tracking down my luggage at the airport with ashley who has also lost her luggage.
First we decide to stop at Notre Dame since it's on our way to the metro anyway and we want to do SOMETHING touristy while we're in Paris. So after a quick photo shoot were off.
And boy do we MASTER the paris metro system. i swear we were alllll over that thing! but it was actually really fun. Felt a bit like a local. Only a local who takes pictures of the metro. so i guess not very local at all. ;)
Finally we get to the airport and see a huge pile of bags, immidiately ashley runs and spots hers, and i develop a previously unknown super human strength to tear through the pile of luggage looking for mine. It's not there. We talk to a very nice lady at the luggage center and she says mine's been sent to the hotel already and then fills out a slip granting each of us 150 Euro for our troubles! HURRAY! lose my luggage again British airways!! (though i'd later lose roughly that amount in a club in prague, calling it a wash. but that's ahead of my story).
So then we gleefully start leaving the airport but decide that since we're VERY hungry we should be real parisians (i've heard they have more than we do!) and eat a McDonalds (which the airport has). i get a tasty little treat called a croquet McDo. cute aye?
And then we take the metro (which we officially rock at by now) to a gorgeous basilica and chill there for a bit getting ice cream and beer. mmm. and get back to the bus just in time for the drive back to the hotel.

Of course my luggage is still not there, so Elise, my lovely roommate, lends me a dress for our big night out at the Moulin Rouge! We take a bunch of pics outside the place and then head in for a great food, free wine, a little bit of dancing (thank ya james!) a bottle of good champagne (again cheers to james on that one) and then a fabulous show complete with topless dancers, crazy acrobats, and of course, miniature ponies. ha. AMAZING.

After the show we go back to the hotel (to discover that my suitcase STILL has not arrived by 12am) and then a good portion of the crew ventures into the walking distance town trying to find an open bar. all we can find is a Thai place that would basically be dried up if we all drank there and the gathering basically falls apart. then a brave and daring 8 of us venture into what we presume is the latin quarter by cab only to find it's all closed. so by asking a series of street walking parisians we eventually find two fellas that go with us to some club whose name i can no longer recall. We have a blast dancing away and then 3 of us stay to basically shut down the bar. The bartender/owner's nephew somehow knows simmy's parents or something so she's 'enjoying his company' and getting brandon and i tons of free drinks while we take it easy after hours too.

Then once everyone's off work there we go with Ali (the bartender) and the 2 bouncers for breakfast were we meet a nice little french girl and get treated for food! Finally Ali drives us home at like 6am. and low and behold! my suitcase was finally there! So with suitcase in tow brandon and i sneak into some ladies yard?! and we chill on her patio watching the sunrise until she calls out her window that if we don't leave she'll call the cops.
We leave. and then go back to the hotel just in time for breakfast and to catch the coach to switzerland!

Day 1: Paris!

Alrighty, let the fun begin! so my mom brings me to the airport in philly and i'm off!! Ryan's on my flight over and happens to be in the row behind me, but we don't talk too much cuz after all there's free wine to be drank, bad movies to be watched, naps to be taken, and for me, a new cosmo to be read. We transfer through Heathrow (which will become the devil incarnate for me and my luggage...) where we meet james! Instantly we're best friends. i love him intensely for the rest of the trip ;)

From LHR we get to paris ...where sadly they do not stamp my passport :( I wait many minutes for my luggage (after james and ryan both get theirs) only to discover it has been left in Heathrow, and they may fly it out to paris on a flight later that day. but then again, they may not. (and they do not). but i'm determined not to be upset by it just yet because i'm about to meet a good portion of the rest of my contiki family, who, despite the fact that the *contiki* sign is on like a standard computer sheet in size 18 ish font, are suprisingly easy to find.
we meet, we chat, we wait for Kevin to find some lost sheep, then we take a shuttle to town to pick up the early arrivals who already got to wander the parisian streets, then we hit the hotel.
My roommate is Elise, who is undoubtedly one of my favorite people by the end of the trip :) and she lets me borrow key things as i have no luggage. I wander into the town near the hotel, buy some essentials for myself, have a beer at the hotel bar, and then it's off to dinner and the eiffel tower!!!
Dinner was ok, we were all perplexed by the gelatinous desserts/starters, but we eat them anyway (or try to..) but really the highlight of the night was the eiffel tower. the first time we say it earlier in the day our tour guide (ryno, who was amaaaaazing, who will be mentioned often and at length throughout the journey) tricked us into looking the other way until BAM. there it was. and really really. more amazing than i'd imagined. So when we finally go up in we have an excess of drama in the line at the halfway point. James "goes bitch" on some horribly mean looking russian-esque woman whose son has cut half of our group and is trying the get his mean family to join his mean self. melissa and i get stuck in the crossfire. between russians. completely cutoff from our fellow travelers. Ass hole boy ends up waiting for his mean mother. victory is ours. the view from the top is amaaazing, but cold. so we don't stay for too long. then we take the stairs down for the second half. just as we hit the bottom a light show starts and lasts for 10 minutes. it's beauuutiful. then it's back to the bus, and back to the hotel for the only decent night's sleep i'll get for the rest of the trip.
oh. and my luggage. still not there.

LIFE IS A HIGHWAY!

AH! so as jon already pointed out i did a terrible job keeping this updated while i was over there, but generally of the like 3 times i used the internet one was a frantic search for my luggage and the other two times were between 4 and 5 AM while i was drunk off my ass (which any of you who got an e-mail was sure to notice!!). but this post is just gonna be a general OMG-I-HAD-SO-MUCH-FUN-AND-AM-GOING-THROUGH-WITHDRAWLS post. and then eventually (maybe even immidiately afterward) i'll start the day by day or country by country breakdown. I honestly can't believe i'm even awake right now, but my body still has trouble with that whole sleeping more than 2-3 hours a night thing and i've been pushing it with 6 each night since i've been home. Really what i need is a little nap on the beloved Contiki Coach!

Seriously since we've been back everyone's just been posting pictures like crazy on facebook (I swear i've never lived on there so much!!! it's sick really...) an just reliving all the crazy good times. I wasn't sure what to expect from the people, but i really consider so many of them some of my best friends now and i'm already missing them like crazy! But my dad always says that the best part of a long trip is coming home! and as much as i wish desperately that i was back in europe with my loves, it is nice to be home. plus jackie and jon said i looked like death warmed over by the time i got here so much longer of that crazy partying schedule maaay have just killed me. best way to go though :)

anyway... that's all for this post. but stay tuned cuz trust me, there are pleeeeenty of stories to come ;)