Lindsay and Karina in EMEA:The girls are traveling all over Europe. They started in England with their mom, Karen. My mom and Steph spent a few days with them, visiting Bath (Roman town about two hours from here) and we all attended an Elvis Revival play in Windsor.. Anyway, there saga is very fun to read so I thought I would include it.Italy is a lot warmer:I can happily say that it is a lot warmer in Italy than it was in Prague! Now I can leave our little hotel room without having to be wearing my five layers under the peacoat, gloves, scarf and hat! One more reason to check out the little shops around Italy...:)We arrived at our little hotel in the late afternoon and we all had quite a good laugh when we walked into our room. Not only were the 2 single beds that karina and I were sleeping on basically hard as a rock, i mean so hard that when you sat on them there was no bounce, but the tub doesnt have any shower curtain or door. A funny little story....we were in the elevator with another couple that was from england and we all started talking about how bad this place was and the husband said, "when i went to close the shower door this morning the door fell off!" and all we said was.."you have a shower door!" haha, maybe you had to be there but it was pretty funny.On our first day in Rome we decided to go to Vatican city and walk around there since that is a day in itself. We walked through the sistine chapel and all of the guided rooms then headed over to the basilica. We just happened to be inside the chapel at the right time because 15 minutes later the pope came in and we got to listen to the mass he was giving inside from about 150 yards away which was pretty cool to witness. We were actually about 50 meters away from him and all the cardinals when they walked in and he even waved to everyone that we were standing next to! Even though I had absolutly no idea what he was saying or whether is was a mass or a funeral (lots of people that were sitting in the chairs in front were all dressed in black and the women were wearing veils) I will have to say it was a once in a lifetime experience.The last couple days we have gone to most of the touristy places (colloseum, trevi fountain, plaza nuevo, pathenon) and have lunch or dinner at a little cafe that we find down one of the side streets. I will admit that the coffee, pasta and wine here are better than most places I have ever been..plus the gelato is hard to refuse:) (so much for trying to lose weight while traveling hahaha) The colosseum and pathenon were fun places to go but i will say that the trevi fountain was one of my favorite places so far. Tomorrow we head up to Florence for the week which should be fun because karina lived there for 4 months last year and knows more about the town and where to go and where all the salsa clubs are! (cant wait for that!) Rita and robin fly into florence next wednesday and friday so we will all be together for that next week and up in cinque terra, the five of us in Italy will make some funny stories to share:) Hope everyone has a good and safe halloween and I will send another email when I get a chance!More of Italy:Hi!We have spent the last week between florence, cinque terre and milan and today we are headed up to Lake Como. Florence was great, we had a wonderful little apartment for all of us that was walking distance between everything for one week, we even liked it so much that me, karina and rita are going back next monday for an extra week! I will say that I loved florence, I could definetly go back and study italian there for six months or so :) Cinque terra was absolutely amazing....it means five towns in italian and that is exactly what it was. We ended up trying to find a little room for the five of us NOT KNOWING that the weekend we showed up in town with all of our luggage was a holiday weekend, oh what fun we had finding a room! Robin and I walked around to each little trattoria looking for open rooms and ended up taking a place up the little street in the fourth town, vernazza. At first sight it was a cute little place but little did we know what problems we were going to have in the next 2 days! First, all of us and our luggage got quite the stares from the locals then hauling them up the steep steep stairs to the two little rooms created a little crowd formation below us...it was hilarious to be quite honest. On top of that they have the main water valve in the shower in the downstairs room so when the water went cold my mom accidentally turned it off so all the water didnt work for that whole day and we couldnt get ahold of the guy who rented to room, so that was a lot of fun. The second day we walked through the little trails that led through the towns and we actually lucked out on the weather because it was about 80 degrees and almost the first of November, and the views from the hikes were some of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Fortunatly the morning we were leaving Karina blew the fuse blow drying her hair turning off all electricity to our rooms in building which was just the icing on the cake for our wonderful vacation bungalow:)Mom flew back to california this morning and robin heads home tomorrow morning. Rita, Karina and I are headed up to the swiss-italian border for the next night then to venice for 3 days and back to florence for a week. Karina will continue on to greece where we are going to visit alex and spend a week in athens which I cant wait for. Have a safe and great halloween and I will send another email sometime. Ciao!Back in Florence:So we are back in Florence for the rest of the week and then it is off to Greece! Tomorrow we are doing a day trip to Rome where Rita can go see the sights while Karina and I scope out the piazzas and shops:) We have a cute little apartment right off the ponte vecchio which is a nice change of location and closer to our favorite salsa club...which is the best place to get exercise on friday and saturday night! Our friend is taking us to a local winery for wine tasting on Thursday so that should be fun...aunt robin you left too soon!! We spent the last week between cinque terre, verona and venice and I know I am a broken record when I say how beautiful it all is but it really was. We stopped in verona to break up the trip to venice because we had an extra day and it was a lot of fun there. We got to see the balcony that is so famous from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as well as her house so to speak. All in all it was a nice day to kind of relax and wander the streets...and the best part was our hotel, you would have thought the three of us were waking up like little kids on christmas morning with the happiness we had seeing the beds and the bathroom! haha it was pretty funny...maybe you had to be there:)Venice was absolutley one of the most beautiful places I have ever been too. We had two nights there and the first night we saw the sunset that looked like the sky had been painted with pastel colors that deepened by the minute. It was so peaceful there since not too many people are traveling during winter in europe, which is a plus for us! We took a tour which explained and took us around the whole city which was fascinating. I love the history that each town has and how passionate the Italians are about their heritage. We got lost during the days wandering down the little streets and seeking out the beautiful glass jewelry made in Murano. We met a very nice couple in our hotel visiting from Australia and ended up seeing them everyday at breakfast and dinner because the hotel made the same suggestions for places to eat to all their customers! Karina and I even went to hear a classical violin orchestra in a little church one night which was fun since we got to sit 4 rows away...the chello player was hilarious to watch because he was so animated while playing, I thought he was going to get whiplash from the way he was turning his head the whole night!! See mom, even when you are gone we still go do cultural things:)I hope everyone had a good halloween and enjoy your turkey day coming up! (eats lots of turkey, cranberry and stuffing for me because karina and I will be eating something that i most likely wont be able to pronounce) Lots of love, ciao!
Labels: Karina, Lindsay and gang
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by Kath