A beautiful life!

    Hi!!!! I've been rather dormant on the blog front lately. It's hard when you're caught up in exciting adventures like hikes in Switzerland, cliff jumping in Greece and lively soccer action in Italy....(I know, my life sucks). However, I don't want to forget the details of the greatest experience of my life (at least this far). It seems like it was just five minutes ago that I was asking my sister the day I left for Italy, if I go to the baggage claim first (before I had even checked my bags..seriously don't judge me, ok, do...) But now, six flights (and more to come..yay), countless train, bus and taxi rides later, I feel like a confident traveler...ready to embrace the next cultural, unplanned, excitement each new place throws at me. With that being said, here's a little run-down of the past few weeks of my European life...hehehehe I still feel really cool saying i'm in Europe.
Switzerland: With swim suits, cameras, walking shoes, passports, and train tickets in stow a bunch of us girls headed to Lugano, Switzerland for a breathtaking vacation (within a vacation). After several hours of traveling we reached our adorable hostel which was surrounded with green trees, pretty pathways, flowers etc. and overlooked the Swiss mountains of the "small " (it's hard to say small when you come from a town of 472 people...) city Lugano...oh and it had a pool :) I don't know how many times we declared "this is the life" as we popped in and out of the pool and sat with our books, suntan lotion and umbrellas looking out on Switzerland.
    That night, after exchanging our euros for franks, we headed out to find a cool place to eat, nearly passed out when I saw the price on the first menu we looked at. 21 frank--(= to the american dollar) for a dish of pasta, yikes.  We continued to walk, assuming that must have been one of the fancier restaurants...nope, even Mcdonalds had 15 frank burgers!!! EEEEK!!! Finally, we found a quaint little Mexican restaurant where we sipped tiny margaritas (we were all expecting the big ones we see in America, beings that we paid over 20 frank for a pitcher) and then ate our cheapish burritos...which were actually fantastic! This little experience set the tone for our spending, it's no wonder all of the citizens were so tiny, you can't afford to eat there.  After dinner, we walked and found a cute bar and ordered expensive german beers and chatted with the owner who eventually took pity on us and our dwindling wallets and brought us out little pizza crusts to nibble on as we talked, laughed and cheersed each other. Eventually, we continued our walk by the shoreline, to find a stage of live music where we danced and met  the locals, who were all very nice.
   The band even came and talked to us when they were done, however, the conversation was so awkward that at one point I asked if they had rode the Ferris wheel yet. Cool times.  But, while we were down there we got in on a huge game of life size (is that right?) chess, which reminded me of the one they play in Harry Potter.  My team won!!! It was so cool, we even had a crowd watching us!
    The next day, we got up bright and early to go explore. We hiked up huge hills, saw where all the rich retirees lived and before we knew it, we found ourselves in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. I usually start hyperventilating at these moments, but then we looked over... the lake surrounding Lugano was shimmering with  fog and reflecting the huge mountains above it. I decided there is much more important things to hyperventilate about like the picture I was seeing right at that moment.  After awhile, the gals figured out where we were going and we enjoyed the rest of  the trip relaxing, walking, trying to get by on our small amount of franks and getting to know Lugano. It was one of those trips that when you see it fading in the background, all you can do is sigh contently.

GREECE: oh golly gee, I don't even know how to describe my experience here.  Words, pictures..nothing can do justice to the fantastic, out of this world time I had in Greece. But,I'll give it a whirl!
   The week before we left, we were all pumping ourselves up, playing greek tunes, watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Mama Mia, if it weren't for the out of control heat and lack of a/c we would have been jumping on the bed, I actually would have been jumping across all of the beds.  Greece has been on my list since I was just a wee girl, and finally I was going to it! Hot diggity dog, I still am excited about it and it's already happened.

   Saturday morning, with our pre-packed suitcases, we hit the train station yet again and took off to Bologna, Italy where our cheap Ryanair flight would take off to Thessaloniki, Greece.  Exhausted from not being able to sleep before the night before, I konked out immediately on the plane which made it fantastic to be woken up to the city of Thessaloniki in what seemed like a matter of minutes. After taking in the greek signs and the new culture we were stepping into, we headed off to what would be one of the coolest hostel stays yet!
    Upon our hostel arrival, we were greeted with peach tea, comfy chairs and great conversation with the owners and their friends as well as fellow hosteliers. After we claimed our bunks and settled in the owners invited us to a grill out, that they were throwing! woo hoo, a greek grill out!!!  Here we met tons of fun people who took us out and showed us the town, some of the girls even got a vespa ride (don't worry mom, I was not among them.) It was cool to see the ins and out of Thesalonikki from a local perspective. They also introduced us to these amazing donut type things, which was obviously my main highlight for the night.
   The following day we threw on our suits and headed for the beach, we were all excited to plop in the ocean and get our tans on! It was a relaxing, sandy day...a little break from all the traveling, but not for long! At 4am we were up and at em' ready to hop on our 5 hour train ride to Athens. Yawning and a tad out of it, we bid our farewells to Thessaloniki and hopped abroad our train. The five hours were filled head nodding, draining ipod batteries, and a lot of uncomfortable shifting! So, it was rather surprising how energetic we were when we reached our hotel in 105 degree Athens. After, throwing our bags in our rooms, we took off in search of the Acropolis, oh and a  gyro, which we found for 1.80(euro)...score! (Greece was a lot cheaper than anywhere else we have been).
  Sweating like pigs and drinking like um...i don't know, we finally reached our destination! It was so amazing to see what you've only seen on t.v., textbooks, and magazines. I gawked at the Parthenon, and took about a hundred pictures, still not believing that I was standing in front of one of the most famous ancient architectural monuments in the world. The trek up to it, was worth every marble, slippery stair. We also saw the temple of Zeus! After a long day of exploring we treated ourselves to a greek dinner and ordered tons of tzatziki, which we are all now addicted to. (Tzatziki was involved in nearly every one of our outings in Greece.) After dinner, we headed back to our hotel for an early night, because once again we were going to be up at 5am for a ferry ride to SANTORINI!!!

It's way better in real life, so you should really check it out!

  After getting walked in on going to the bathroom on the ferry ride (the second time, I've been walked in on..cool, I guess I don't know how to use locks) I was ready for the five hour transport to be over with! But, wow was Santorini worth the wait! It was the place you see when you imagine what Greece looks like.  Blue top churches, cave like homes, donkeys, little white streets and igloo type buildings. I was in sisterhood heaven. When our mini bus reached our super awesome and perfectly located hostel in the gorgeous town of Oia we were all insanely giddy. (Adjective central, I know). After taking a look around at our freakishly amazing hostel, we headed off to the secret beach (one of my friends had been there before, so she showed us the ropes).  The "secret" beach was where all the girls jump off that rock in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants ...we obviously had to recreate their jump! It was so much fun!!! Afterwards we fell asleep on rocks...that's how they do it in Greece.  Oh and did i mention how beautiful it was??? Check out my pictures if you want to see! Getting to the secret beach wasn't easy (walking down steep stairs and climbing/tumbling over huge rocks) but getting back was even harder, I now understand why they have donkeys to bring you up the huge, sweat filled hike. However, felt bad for the donkeys so we took the longest, sweatiest, love handle burner back to our hostel to shower and change into something nice for our first sunset in Santorini...and what a sunset it was.  It's no wonder a Santorini sunset is in one of top 100 things one must see before they die!
  Our hostel had happy hour during the sunset, so we sat on the balcony drank a glass of wine and felt like champions. Afterwards, we headed to eat a delicious meal at one of the many cool, local restaurants! It had a great view of all the "city" lights reflecting off the Aegean sea of Santorini.
  The next day we headed to the black beach, where we were sure at this point our feet were morphing into Frodo's... seriously everything was so sharp! However, despite the "ouch, ouch, ouch" every time we walked without our shoes, it was the perfect temperature and we had most of the beach to ourselves which was so cool.  We swam, sat on rocks, sang little mermaid songs and relaxed.  A little hike away was a cute little place to eat and I had one of the best apple salads of my life. yum.  As the day passed, I realized that my legs were slowly turning into red peppers, so a few of us  headed back to explore the town a bit! Here we found the coolest bookstore ever, no literally it's in the top 20 best bookstores in the world! And I was there! I even bought a little book that they published. The idea behind the book is to read it and then send it to someone else (preferably someone you like or love) they even give you a little envelope to send it in. It was pretty hard to say no to the beautiful  book man selling it to us, but the story was really cute. So Gram, you'll probably be reading it soon.   
  Afterwards, we headed back to our hostel to watch the sunset and once again it was unbelievable! I could never get used to something like that. Gosh, I want to go back already! That night we went out and had some fantastic seafood and amazing chocolate waffles and cheersed to the greatest trip ever.  Reluctantly after our bellies were full, we headed back to our beds, dreading our goodbye to Santorini in the morning.  
The next day our van was waiting at nine thirty, sensing our depression about leaving Greece he cheered us up with some really good greek jams and groovy greek dance moves.  Soon, we were all laughing and  dancing with him! It was a good farewell. And then with a wave goodbye and 3 plane rides, one taxi and one train ride later we were back in Florence. Each time I get back from a trip I realize how much Florence feels like home. I feel so lucky and blessed! 
    Ok, if you read all of this I'm super super flattered, actually if you even read any of this I'm flattered. However, I'm not done! I want to share some of my Florence highlights!  

1. Historical soccer game, known as Calcio Fiorentino which really isn't soccer as it is just a free for all brawl consisting of tackling, head locks, punching, kicking and body slams...even the players seemed to forget a ball and a goal are involved. Also, it was the first time I've seen the Florentines getting crazy....-no shirts, beers galore chanting and yelling...It was one of the most interesting things I've done here and the looks on our shocked faces when the game began were priceless. 
2. Self Fashion show: For my fashion and desirability class, our professor took us to a really cool building in Florence that promotes self fashion designers, the ones we met designed outfits out of yarn, handmade sequin dresses and painted old unwanted boots into high fashion ones. We drank sangria and had a little apertivo as we watched a body painting and learned about the designers.  Super fun to talk with all the locals and be apart of something I never would have known about if it weren't for my class. (I'm on to my next session however, so i'll be learning about the Italian Mafia!!!) 

3. Being apart of the real soccer action as Italia played(unfortunately very poorly) for the Europe cup.  For the first time, I felt like the Italians liked me as I walked the streets in my Italia shirt to our meeting ground API had set up for us to watch the game. I was getting high fives, thumbs ups and praised. It was so much fun to be apart of the buzz and I was actually getting excited about the game (we had front row seats at an outside big screen, we also were served pasta and desert as we watched!) I forgot how much fun it can be when you watch a sports event especially when the fans are so lively and excited.  Even though we lost, it was still pretty incredible to be living in the country that just played for the Europe cup! 

This past weekend, we took a day excursion to Sienna which was so much fun, we also had a wine tasting and ate some fabulous treats! Now, I'm back to school and still learning my way around Florence.

Always have my Minnesota/ND peeps in my head! xoxoxo! Sorry about how long this was!