New Year

Hello!
So I promised to make a post long ago about my travels after leaving Lüneburg. I have finally graduated, so I have no excuse to not write about it! Sorry for the delay.

Let me begin with beautiful Italy:
I arrived in Pisa on a friday, after moving out earlier in the day from Lüneburg. Thankfully I had a place to keep my stuff while I was away with my friend Tricia. Almost immediately after driving up with her boyfriend Olli, he dropped me off at the Hamburg train station and had a quick lunch with Tricia there since she works nearby. I left from the Lübeck airport airport using Ryanair. Overall, Ryanair was a pretty good way to travel from one location to another, aside from my mishap in Poland.
Anyway, I arrived in Pisa and met my host from couchsurfing there. He didn't speak any english, but we managed to communicate with me speaking spanish, interesting experience. It was very easy to get around in Rome since the languages are very similar when you speak in basic terms like: "how much is this?" or "Where is the bathroom". Italian is a beautiful language, I think that's what made my experience in Italy a lot smoother and more wonderful. I should mention the interesting thing that happened once I got off the airplane was that there was a German shepherd sitting off to the side as the passengers came out. He immediately jumped up and starting sniffing people. It didn't hit me until I went by that the dog was sniffing for drugs. That was a creative way of catching anyone that carried drugs.

My host lived about 5 min walking distance from the airport. We spent the night talking about all sorts of things, one of them was how he feels Italy wants to be a more politically progressive state, but since the Vatican is right at the center of it, they're pretty much pinned down by it. It was an observation that never really hit me, but it made so much sense. He made me some pasta and bought some wine for the occasion; honestly it was some of the best wine i'd ever had. But he said that it was ok, there was better available. I'm not shocked to hear that from a country that's best known for its wine.

The next morning I was able to explore Pisa. There were of course the main attractions, the plaza that has the leaning tower:






As you can see, there were people posing with the tower, and I thought it was a little ridiculous. Nothing screamed "tourist" liks a stupid pose like that. As you can tell, i'm not a fan. So, I just took a picture with a normal pose in front of the tower. Funny enough, the people that took the picture for me were also American tourists, they were in Pisa along with a basketball team from the University of Tennesse I believe.

I'm already pretty tan there from just walking there a few hours. It was very sunny and beautiful in Pisa. I had a Calzone while there, the food is on a different and delicious level there too. I mainly walked around in Pisa and did some sightseeing. I also had gelato, very fitting since it was really hot as well. Really hot, I have no idea why I wore black. 

While walking around, I ran into this mural:

I forget the artist, but it was quite a surprise running into it.

Later on I caught a train that went from Pisa to Rome, the ticket was about 19 euros, it was relatively cheap. I arrived late in the day to Rome so I had to do my sightseeing the next day. Rome was different than any city i'd ever been in. It's so old, that the old parts of it have been covered up with the new metropolitan parts of Rome. It's also really big, if you've ever been to Houston, it's kind of like that in terms that it's expanded, but it's still easy to walk around. On my first day, I saw the colosseum, circo maximo, some old roman ruins (not overrun by cats! I saw very few stray cats). It was amazing to walk through ruins that had stood for thousands of years.

I stayed in a camping area about an hour away from the center of the city. It was 10 euros/night, but I also slept in a tent, which wasn't a big deal. Safety wasn't an issue either, I felt rather safe walking around, while taking the necessary precautions of course.

The other awesome thing about Rome is that they have water fountains everywhere- so I didn't spend anything on bottled water. I just carried my trusty nalgene along with me.

I walked along pretty much the old center of Rome, and I ran into a museum that was dedicated to Italian immigrants. Some of the things they had on display would be unbelievable today:

It's sad to think that there was such a big wave of active hostility towards immigrants. Moving along though, I also went to the trevi fountain, HUGE tourist crowd there, it was difficult to find someone to take a picture and get in front of the fountain, but I managed it:

Walking around Rome was tiring, but also inspiring; to think other greats lived and worked in this same city was just mind-blowing. For lunch, I went into a restaurant and had some lasagna, although it was great, they charged extra for the bread and do not include tip, so if you plan to sit down somewhere, be prepared to pay a little more for a meal.

The next day I went to the Vatican, which also had huge crowds. I sent my mom a post card from the Vatican City and she got it a few days after I arrived in the US. Unfortunately both the vatican and the colosseum had intimidating lines, so I didn't even try to get into either. In every city, I get a map so I can map a walking route. I was killing time to catch my next flight, and I almost missed a huge landmark: the pantheon! Quite embarrassing, but I did managed to see it. There were so many people inside, but it is still considered a place of worship, so the workers kept shushing everyone very often.

I was in Rome for about 3 days, I left in the late afternoon to catch my flight to Paris, which i'll write about in the next segment.