The Amazing European Vacation!

I just got back from an amazing, and incredibly busy 10 days in Europe! It started, as all my trips seem to start, with a terrible nights’ sleep. Only this time I wasn’t sleeping because I was anxious, I wasn’t sleeping because the chairs at the SLC airport are terribly uncomfortable! I was flying standby and when that happens it is never certain that I will be able to get on the flight I would like to, and this happened a few times on this trip! I was planning on flying to New York on a midnight flight that looked very empty, once I got to the airport it turned out that the flight was overbooked by quite a few people. I didn’t have the heart to call my parents and have them come pick me up, so I just “slept” at the airport. I really didn’t sleep much; mostly I just wandered around and talked to the cleaning crews. But the morning came and I was able to get on a flight to Atlanta and then on to Rome!

Rome was incredible! The weather was perfect, blue skies with big fluffy clouds; it really couldn’t have been prettier! We started the trip by spending the day at the Vatican, it was breath taking! As with all Catholic owned spots the Vatican was over-the-top extravagant with gold leafing on every surface, marble, and life-sized paintings and statues of all the popes. We hiked to the top of the Vatican to get a full view of Rome, and it really is an incredible city! Once we left the Vatican we hit the town and visited as many Piazzas as we could fit in, my personal favorite of all the Piazza’s we saw was the Piazza di Navaro. Every time we went it was a new adventure, not to mention the beautiful fountains they had there! The first time we were walking through there were hundreds of artists out, I loved walking through and watching them paint and perusing the one they were selling. The second time we went there was an Italian Communist Youth Rally that was very exciting, and the last time we walked through there was a real life mime performing! I loved it

We were only in Rome from Friday to Sunday; on Sunday we rented our car and started heading north. We took the scenic route up the coast into Pisa where we saw the tower, which was surprisingly cool! For some reason I had really low expectations for it. We spent that night in a hostel in this incredible little village called Biassa. It was really small, but I had so much fun exploring! It was just 15 minutes away from the Cinque Terre which is these 5 villages that are built into the cliffs along the Italian Rivera. We spent the next day hiking between these villages and it was so incredible! I can’t even use words to describe these villages so please see the pictures for details.

In the interest of time, space, and the sanity of my blog readers I am going to sum of the next few days of my trip by just saying that it was spent in the car driving through some of the most beautiful country side I have ever seen! We visited Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Germany, and Austria. But by far my favorite place we visited was Bled, Slovenia. All the places we went were beautiful, but for some reason Slovenia seemed to be my “brand” of beautiful. There were hardly any tourist there which I really appreciated, but more than that Bled was really naturally beautiful. The town is built around a lake that has an island in the middle that had a church on it, there was a large cliff that lead into the lake that had a fantastic castle on top. We hiked through the mud to the top of the cliff to visit the castle, and of course whenever you get me and mud in the same room it is bound to interesting, and indeed it was! I fell once while going up a steep hill, luckily I just fell on my hands and that was easily cleaned up, the second time was a little different… I not only fell on my butt, but I slid about 15 feet down the hill… yikes! After changing into clean clothes Tristan and I went to the Vintgar Gorge and did a nice little nature walk near a beautiful raging river!

We then traveled back to Italy to see Venice. We were lucky and happened to be in Venice during a festival. I never found out what the festival was, but when we were on the bus into Venice there were about 15 people on the bus with us that were dressed in the most elaborate Elizabethan costumes I have ever seen! One of the ladies looked exactly like Queen Elizabeth and she sat on the bus texting on her Blackberry. I had no clue Queen Elizabeth not only used public transit but also texted! It was amazing!

We found a beautiful chapel that was having a Vivaldi concert, who just happens to be my favorite composer! The chapel itself was amazing; it was filled with beautiful sculptures and paintings, it had marble and hardwood floors and incredible stained glass windows! We had fantastic seats, we were about 8 feet from the musicians who were on a small stage. When the music started I was absolutely thrilled, I was sitting on the edge of my seat and, as much as I hate to admit it, grinning like an idiot. By about the third song I noticed that the upright bass player, who didn’t have a very large part in the concert was looking at me, and kind of smirking. I also realized that I looked ridiculous, I promptly composed myself and sat back in my seat and tried to look appropriate. That lasted for just a few minutes when I was back on the edge of my seat grinning! The bassist continued to laugh at me the rest of the concert, but it was so incredible I didn’t care!

The next day was when we were supposed to fly out of Venice back to the US, but as seemed to be the standard for this trip it was overbooked and we weren’t able to make it on that flight. The next flight that we could fly out on was the next day, but leaving from Pisa. We rented another car and drove through Tuscany to Pisa. It was a beautiful drive, but the downside to this was the car… the only car we could get was a smart car. It was awful, and it really was as small as it looked! We didn’t want to pay for another hostel, so we thought we could just sleep at the airport, unfortunately the airport in Pisa closes, so we slept in the smartcar. I didn’t know it was possible, but I actually slept better in the SLC airport! But after a few long flights I made it back home, and still really miss Europe. It was so beautiful and amazingly surreal! I can’t wait to go back and see more!