I don't know how I can possibly write about everything I did over spring break... I haven't even been able to get all the photos up yet, there are too many! I guess I can start with the general comments...

Italy is fabulous! Before we left the weather predictions were saying there was a chance of rain in every city we were going to visit for the entire week so we were prepared for some bad weather. By some stroke of luck, however, we barely saw a handful of sprinkles over the course of the week. Italy was all sunshine and cool breezes for us! We did almost all of our traveling by train and it got old after a while. From Milan to Venice, Venice to Florence and Florence to Rome were all about 4 hours or less. But, from Rome to Palermo, Sicily was FOURTEEN hours and it was miserable!!!! Our car was one of the only cars to have five of six seats filled so none of us could recline our seats or put our feet up! Sometime after 3am two of the passengers in our car got off at a stop and the other three of us got a few hours sleep where we were able to lie down before the ticket checker came by and woke us all up again. At that point I never wanted to get on a train again, so I was glad we were flying back to Rome instead of taking another night train.

The food was fantastic, as I'm sure you'd imagine. We ate a LOT of pizza this week. When looking for the cheapest meals, it turned out that a cheese pizza and a bottle of water was usually the winner. Most of the pizza had a thinner crust than what we eat in the U.S. but they give you a pizza the size of a medium pizza back home so it's plenty for one person. The desserts were great, too! I ate my share of cannoli and chocolate! The pasta was good, too... I think I had lasagna, spaghetti and tortellini at different points during the week and they were all yummy!

Let me see... highlights... Well, I'd already been to Venice and there wasn't much more I could see that I hadn't seen when was there before. But, I still enjoyed it because it's a beautiful city and truly one of a kind. When we were in Florence we didn't get to see much because it was Monday and we forgot that most public museums, gardens, castles, etc. are all closed on Mondays in Europe. So, we didn't get to go inside the Piti Palace or its famous gardens and we didn't get to go inside the museum that holds the original statue of David by Michelangelo and that was a bummer. Once again though, the weather was great and we were able to walk everywhere we needed to go and we saw a lot of beautiful architecture.

Matt and I had a few hours in Rome before we caught our train to Sicily so we walked through as much of the city as we could and completely overwhelmed ourselves. We literally just kind of "stumbled upon" the Colosseum as we were looking down a narrow street trying to find our way to the center of the city. It was pretty incredible how it just kind of showed up right before our eyes. I already mentioned how the train ride to Palermo, Sicily was awful, but our experiences in Sicily were interesting, too. Palermo is the biggest city and it was really strange compared to the other cities we've seen. It was very dirty and a lot of it seemed rundown. The traffic was AWFUL and we saw a couple stereotypical Italian men get out of their cars to yell things at the other people in traffic. We took a bus to a nearby town called Corleone which is the town "The Godfather" is based on and there's supposedly still a lot of mafia influence thriving there. We got dropped off right in the middle of their lunchtime so almost everything was closed and all the people were just watching us from their windows clearly wondering what the hell we were doing there. We walked for a little bit and then ended up sitting in a plaza waiting for two hours for the bus to come back and pick us up. As we were sitting there waiting all the old men of the town came to the plaza with their canes and their matching hats and sat on the benches talking to each other and watching us. We were convinced they were retired mafiosos. Apart from that I can only say that Sicily really does have the most incredible landscape I think I've ever seen. It's a great mixture of coastline, mountains, and green, rolling hills and plains. I loved it!

Then there's Rome... What can I say about Rome? I couldn't wrap my head around that city no matter how hard I tried. We had two jam-packed days of sightseeing and still couldn't see everything we wanted to. There are ruins strewn about around the entire city and all of them are tied to names and stories that seem like legends and myths to us. Much of the ancient city dates to before the death of Christ and some of those relics are still standing today. Most of the time we just walked around stunned and snapping photos. We went to see the Vatican on Friday and that was interesting as well. We got to see the inside of St. Peter's Basilica, the room of the tombs of the Popes, St. Peter's Square, and the Sistene Chapel. We weren't able to see the Pope speak because we didn't get tickets in time, but we were able to see more of Rome with the time we saved. The whole thing was really surreal.

Now we're back in Barcelona with three days left of spring break. Easter is HUGE here since the country is about 97% Catholic, so we get an extended break. Everything is shut down for the most part both today and tomorrow, but I'm hoping to get out and accomplish some sightseeing in Barcelona on Tuesday... or maybe a day at the beach, depending on the weather. Coming up we have a trip with our group to Vall de Boi this weekend; I'm not sure exactly what we'll be doing there but I know it involves the mountains and possibly some hiking. The weekend after that I think I'll be taking a day-trip to Tarragona which is a site with Roman ruins just outside the city. And beyond that I know I have a trip to Amsterdam planned May 8-10, but the rest of the weekends are up in the air. I'll be home in 6 weeks!

Photos from this week will be up sometime later today...