May 17th - Cruising

Today was spent entirely at sea. I woke up early and went to the gym - it was so weird running looking out the window and only seeing water on all sides. For a moment it made me a little nervous.

It was so much fun exploring the ship and trying new things today! There was mini golf, a sports court, ping-pong, rollerskating, rock climbing, a card game room, free ice cream, ice skating, a library, and cute activities all day. We got to watch a fun ice show and just enjoy the relaxation of the ship.

We did have class today though. From 10 to 3 with an hour for lunch. It was so much more exciting and easier to pay attention this time than in a classroom. It was so fun to listen to everyone's opinions and views. I feel so much more connected with all the students and teachers knowing the I've had the opportunity to spend so much time with them. Although last week in Italy was only 7 days, it honestly felt like we have been gone for a month with all the information we have crammed in and all the places we have gone.

Every night we have dinner at the same time and I realized today that it would cause us to miss the sunset our entire cruise. I was not okay with this. So right before dessert was served I "went to the bathroom" and snuck out to the deck to check out the sunset. I'm sooo glad that I did.

It was absolutely beautiful! And funny story. After snapping a few pictures I leaned against the rail to just enjoy the peace of listening to the waves and watching the sunset. After a bit I noticed that a small chinese man was standing maybe 10 feet behind be taking pictures. I apologized for being in his way and he in his thick chinese accent he said. "No no. My intention is to get your profile." haha so I stayed there. He even asked me face a different directions at a certain point. After a minute he motioned me over to show me the picture he had taken. It turned out quite nice. Glad I got to help him out ;)

After dinner everyone kinda did there own thing. My roommates had decided to watch a movie but there was no way I was sitting down in front of a television in a cramped cabin room when there was entire cruise ship at my finger tips. I headed outside and noticed a full moon. It was absolutely breathtaking! The waves were so still that the reflection of the moon and the trail of light extended from the horizon all the way to where I stood on the ship. I wish my camera could have captured how beautiful it was.

I honestly can't believe how blessed I am to have this experience; to travel to another country, be emersed in the culture, and enjoy the beaty of the world from a cruise ship. I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn, to travel, and to experience new things.

May 16th - Sicily

For our first stop on the cruise, we landed on the island of Sicily and had the day to explore on our own. ("never go on against a Sicilian when death is on the line!" name that movie.) I had decided not to book a shore excursion because I wanted to see how my foot was feeling and then gage my day based on that - plus the shore excursions were sooo expensive! My foot was still pretty sore but how often to do you get to be in Sicily? I didn't want to spend the day on a ship. So Kelsey and I joined a few of the professors and headed on our way. We just decided to walk the streets and explore the churches we came upon.

We made our way to the highest one we could find and the view was stunning!

It's still hard to believe that I've really been in Italy and this time and now I'm actually on my first cruise ship.

Instead of hiking back down the hill we decided to try and catch a public bus. it was quite the challenge to figure out where to catch one but after a few attempts to have conversations with different locals we connected the pieces of information and figured things out (I had decided that day to stay with Rob and Natalie (one of the professors and his wife) because Natalie is 25 weeks pregnant so everyone had to go slow for her and I didn't feel like I'm was the one slowing everyone down).

We finally caught the bus but after a few minutes it didn't take us long to realize that we were headed further up the mountain - not down like we intended. We hopped off - crossed the street, and waited for a bus to come the other way. Not too much longer a bus came - it happened to be the same driver. I'm sure he thought we were nuts. Although we didn't get to see the quaint city like we were planning, we got to enjoy the ride and travel like the locals. We finally made it back to the ship and were able to eat lunch and sit in the sun and relax. I loved it!

Kelsey and I did our best to lay out in the sun but it was soo cold and windy! I guess we should have known it would be windy on a cruise but I didn't think it would be cold.

For dinner tonight we had our first formal night. it was fun to be able to get all dressed up fancy - it's been awhile. I tried duck for dinner - a cruise is the perfect place to try new food because it's all included in the flat rate you pay up front so if you don't like something you can juts order another dish and not worry about paying more. I didn't like it. At least I can say I tried.

May 15th - Boarding the Cruise Ship

This morning began with a start! Our bus driver arrived 2 hours earlier than we had planned - luckily I had packed the night before. Once we found everyone - this was quite the hassle as some people had ventured into Rome for a last few hours and nobody had cell phones. Once we were on the bus we enjoyed another beautiful drive through the Italian countryside. You would think that I would get tired of these long drives but the view is absolutely exquisite! I could never tire of seeing Tuscany.

We arrived to the cruise ship and after an hour or so of much chaos - we finally boarded the biggest ship I had ever seen. (With the track around the top level, I estimated that it was about a quarter mile all the way around. Woah! I honestly don't know how it floats. I understand the whole buoyancy thing, but really??)

After locating our room and panicking because of the lack of beds (later we discovered that they come out of the ceiling - cool!) Kelsey and I explored the 14 decks of the ship. The weather wasn't quite ideal - there was a slight drizzle as we boarded the ship and a storm coming in by the time we took off. According to the captain the waves were 8 fight from trough to crest. The ship was rocking so much that I honestly couldn't keep my balance - but neither could anybody else. Chandeliers were swaying and everything was vibrating. Luckily I had taken some Dramamine before we even boarded the ship so I wasn't sick, just about to fall asleep the whole day. What a great way to start a cruise!

May 14th - Ancient Roman Forum

Woo! Colosseum today! (to be honest, Kelsey and I accidentally happened upon it yesterday while exploring. Who'd a thunk you could be wandering the streets of Rome and turn down one with the Colosseum just sitting at the other end? ;) We only glanced for a minute but decided not to explore to far with our tour being the next day).

Even after only being in Rome for 2 days, we were confident enough to take the metro all by ourselves today. World travelers already ;) (Rome only has two lines, they can't build anymore because Roman ruins still remain under the city). We came out of the metro station and BAM! there it was. The Colosseum right across the street.  It's weird to think that just right there at the entrance to the metro, surrounded by bustling streets is such a famous and ancient building. I mean, it's almost 2000 years old!

We met up with our tour guide and she gave us a wonderful tour THROUGH the Colosseum. Did you know that the area where the gladiators fought was covered in sand to absorb the blood and make it less slippery. The world for sand in Latin? Arena. That why we used the term arena when referring to a place where sporting events are held. Cool huh?

After the Colosseum we walked through the streets of modern day Rome in order to get to Ancient Rome. I may have mentioned this earlier, but the new city was literally built right on top of the old one which is why the entrances to ancient buildings are about 15 feet lower than the city streets today.

The forum was in more ruin that I anticipated. There were hardly walls standing for most buildings - just remnants of foundations. The reason some buildings still remained was because they were turned into churches and still used even after the fall of Rome. Kelsey and I hiked up the remains of Nero's palace to find a place to take a break and sketch. The gardens on top were beautiful and we had an incredible view of the city.

I love that although Rome is so populated and covered with buildings, there are still beautiful green trees surrounding everything! We were able to sit for a bit and enjoy the beauty of the forum and sketch (we also had quite the time keeping the pesky pigeons away from us that aren't afraid of humans, and apparently aren't afraid of canes).

After a delicious meal from the market (we finally found food besides panini's at a food stand!). We ate in our hotel room and then enjoyed a lovely nap with the windows open as we listened to the birds outside. The weather was perfect. When we woke up we could hear a rooftop concert across the street playing The Beatles. It was lovely :) The temperature had finally cooled down a bit so we headed back to Rome for our last evening. 

 haha they really do park bumper to bumper even with cars as small as smart cars!

Stephani, Kesley and I whipped out our maps and explored the streets and shops on our own. As the sun set we decided to find the Trevi Fountain to see how beautiful it was at night all lit up. After about 30-40 minutes of walking in circles unable to read Italian signs we finally found it.

Rome was so much fun! I loved the three days we've been able to spend here but I can't wait to get on the cruise ship and get off my feet!

May 13th - Vatican City

We started today with a 3 and 1/2 hour tour of Vatican City (the smallest country in the world located right in the middle of Rome - center of the Catholic church).

Our tour guide was phenomenal! She knew so much history and so many interesting facts. I didn't get bored at all. We walked through the entrance and the first thing you see are the beautiful gardens. They were absolutely perfect!

We soon headed into the Sistine Chapel. It's quite the maze of elaborately decorated hallways to make your way to Michelangelo's famous painting.

Each hallway was adorned with tapestries, frescoes, gold inlay, and mosaics. This is just an example of one of the many hallways we walked down. We finally made it to the famous painting in the Sistine Chapel. It's quite amazing. The room was absolutely packed full of people but we had the opportunity to find a seat and just enjoy the painting. Our tour guide did her best to explain quietly to us different interpretations of the paintings, but you're not suppose to talk while in there. This is just another one of those things you have to go see to understand.

After a bit, we were able to make our way out to explore St. Peter's basilica - the largest in the world. It truly is humongous. You don't quite grasp the enormity of the building while you're walking through but this is because the scale is sooo large and the proportion of everything is so exact. It's not until somebody tells you the dimensions of certain objects in the room that you just stand there in awe at how small you are in such a large basilica.

Just to give you an idea of the scale, that canopy in the middle is 9 stories tall! Inside the basilica! The letters in the gold band of the dome are each 6 feet tall! It blew my mind.

I had no idea the famous Pieta statue was in St. Peters. It was actually quite a bit smaller than I anticipated. It also has thick bullet proof glass in front of it so you can't even get very close. In my opinion this distracted from the power and meaning of the statue. But you gotta do what you gotta do when crazy people take a sludge hammer to the statue and almost destroy it. Just like in the statue of David, Michelangelo didn't do exact proportions. It's interesting to note, that n order to portray Mary's sorrow more, he made her quite a bit larger in proportion than Christ's body.

After the tour of the basilica, we were able to head outside and see St. Peter's Square. Oh my goodness it is breathtaking!

There are two rows of columns around the square that are positioned so perfectly that if you stand right in the middle of the square it looks like just one row of columns. It's really quite cool.

There are Swiss guards everywhere dressed in authentic outfits. The criteria for being a Swiss guard are as follows: must have Swiss citizenship, be male, unmarried, trained in Swiss military, between 18 and 30, and at least 5 feet 9. Funny eh?

The second window in on the top floor is the famous window that the Pope waves from when on television. I've never seen him do it but apparently it's a very common thing.

After the tour ended around 2, we had free time for the rest of the evening to head back to Rome and spend the day wandering the shops and exploring. Kelsey, Stephani, and I had quite a bit of fun. We headed back to the hotel, stopped at the local market for lunch (crackers, strawberries and pudding), and fell asleep on Kelsey's bed for a few hours. Those long tours are exhausting! When it had cooled down a bit we headed back into the city for some fun :)

Although we got lost and wandered around in circles for quite some time, we didn't mind in the least :) I'd get lost in Rome any day...

May 12th - Rome!

Entrance to Rome :)

We drove into Rome today. Although the city is perceived as very romantic, it's actually quite dirty and over populated. There was graffiti everywhere (even on overpasses that weren't finished being built), the streets were filthy, it was very noisy, and can you believe 1 million people live here? Let alone all the tourists. As we walked through the crowded streets, it was interesting to contemplate the importance of this city - to think that Christ walked these same streets, kinda. Apparently when they say the new Rome was built on top of the old one, they really mean it. The original streets are actually 15 to 20 feet lower than where you walk today. 

Down there is where the original entrance to this building was. 

One of the first things we were able to see was the...

Pantheon! Incredible!

It's huge! And sooo old! Although it looks pretty grungy, imagine how beautiful white marble is. That's what it's made of, so at one point it was absolutely breathtaking!

Even 2000 years later, this dome is still the largest un-reinforced dome in the world. Would you believe that it is made out of one solid piece of concrete? The Romans were geniuses! Just to give you an idea of how big this dome is, that oculus (opening) at the top is 30 feet in diameter! It's always open, too. So if it's raining, good luck on those marble floors.

Our next stop? The Trevi Fountain! Absolutely beautiful! It's also huge - like everything in Rome. The distance from Jupiter's foot to his knee is 5 feet, just a little shorter than me. So if you picture me standing right by his leg you can kind of get an idea of the enormity of this fountain. Another technique the Roman's used to create the illusion of the fountain being even larger was to place it in a very small square. It barely fits and there are large buildings on every side. 

I can honestly say I've never been in that kind of crowd before. I imagine it was a lot like a concert - but I've never been to one. Just to get down to the front of the fountain you literally had to push and shove, and there were people pressed up against every side of you. Explains why they warned us about pick-pocketing so much.

The tradition at the Trevi Fountain is to throw three coins for three wishes but they must be thrown with your right hand over your left shoulder. The first wish is to return to Rome someday. The second is to find romance. The third is a wish of your choice. It's a pretty good marketing technique I'd say. Wikipedia says they receive 3,000 Euro's a day! But of course stubborn Kyra didn't thrown a single coin in. Like I was going to waste my money in a fountain. So I just pretended ;) hehe

We took a lovely break on the Spanish Steps and had to chance to sketch while we rested. I still need to look up the significance of these steps... 

They extend all the way up to the building in the background. 

 View from where I sat.

There was a couple taking wedding pictures on the Spanish steps :)

Rome is incredible. There is no way you can see everything in just 3 days. There are so many significant buildings that is almost overwhelming. Every street you turn down you run into another ancient Roman building and you just want to know more! 

May 11th - Siena and Pisa

Today we went on an incredible tour of Siena - a still functioning medieval city. It was awesome to see it during the day. Everything was so authentic. You should have seen me ooing and awing over everything. I just wanted to touch every wall, every stone, every door knocker... but the beauty of it? I COULD touch everything. You see, in the States when something ancient is found, all of the sudden there is a one mile perimeter around the place that nobody can touch in order to preserve it, only maybe can you go inside of it, but don't breathe too hard or you might increase the rate of something oxidizing, a glass wall it placed in front of everything, and if you want to touch something, you must be out of your mind. Which is why Italy is so perfect ;) People still live in this city! You can touch everything, go inside of everything, and experience all of it!

This is considered one of the first banks. It managed the money of the pope - hence the pope statue in the front.

Learning some history of Siena.

BEAUTIFUL hand carved/painted ceiling. And this was outside a beautiful building! I can't image what the inside looked like.

Different areas of the city had different animals that represented the area. One of them happened to be a ram. This lovely bronze ram was just randomly placed on some wall. So I decided to join him in his battle stance.

Siena is a city built on three different clay hills (which might explain the escalators in order to get to it). All the roads were made of stone and wind around with buildings on either side. Unlike the narrow alleyways in Venice, the area between these buildings was big enough for a car to fit through but just barely.

Expensive homes in Siena were made of stone while lesser wealthy homes were build of red brick. The goal of the wealthy in the city was to build the highest tower, therefore the entire town consists of different heights of towers which contributed to the medieval style. The town square was incredible! It is sooo large! 

This bell tower was absolutely huge! It was hard to believe it was real but I was standing right there! 

We got to take a break from touring the city and just sit at sketch. It was pretty fun. 

On our way to the Duomo, the Siena Cathedra, we passed this gorgeous Italian vista! The entire city is enclosed in buildings and castle walls so you don't get to see out at all, except this one spot. It was incredible to come around the bend and have this just pop into view.

Castle gates :)

I don't know if I said much about the cathedral in Florence, but apparently Siena and Florence were competing to building the biggest and most beautiful cathedral in the world. (sounds a lot like the competition between the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. Is mankind always trying to be bigger and better?) Well it turns out Siena ran out of room, so they opted to build the most extravagant cathedral in the world; and by golly I think they did it. You wouldn't believe the inside of this building!

The intricate detail on the outside was phenomenal, but the inside...

 These pictures honestly give no representation of how over the top it was. A combination of Islamic, Byzantine, and Gothic detail and architecture make it hard to take everything in. The entire interior was covered in "zebra stripes" the white and black lines you see on every column. Gold detailing was everywhere, mosaics covered every wall, the floor had incredible tiling, and the ceiling was completely gold. 

 This was the ceiling and wall of the smallest room - the library. But every wall in the nave had paintings and incredible color.

The library even had authentic story books like they have at the beginning of Disney princess movies :)

You really will just have to go and see it to understand.

We only got to spend half the day in Siena, which was a little disappointing, but we were soon on a bus headed to PISA! Have I mentioned how much I loved the Italian countryside? They vineyards, the rolling hills, the castle wall popping up everywhere. It's incredible. We drove as they day was ending and the warm Tuscan sun spilled over the hills lighting up the outline of the villas and caressing the edges of the trees and grass - it was breathtaking. 

Pisa was really something. The town seemed pretty ghetto as we walked to the leaning tower but as soon as we got to the city walls around the Square of Miracles (where the leaning tower is) you can see the top of the leaning tower. We came in from the east side and got a wonderful view! I honestly couldn't believe how much it was leaning!

The whole time we were there I kept glancing back at the tower to make sure it wasn't falling over because I was absolutely sure it was going to happen at any moment.

And of course we had to take the classic tourist picture :)

My biggest complaint about the trip so far (not that I have anything to complain about... maybe I should use the world critic...) is the fact that we don't have time to really stop and enjoy any of the sites. I wish we had time to soak everything it for a bit instead of just snap a few pictures and be rushed on to the next tour, but I guess we've got a lot to see that we want to fit into a short trip...

We were able to go on a tour of the baptistery and the cathedral. The way the baptistery was built, it creates perfect acoustics so that when one person stands in the middle of the room and sings it creates perfect harmony and sounds like an entire choir. Look it up on youtube, it's incredible. 

I liked this sign :) I thought it was funny...

Just in case you were planning on touring a cathedral immodestly, plan on wearing one of these fashionable ponchos to cover up :)

After our tour we were encouraged to take a few minutes to sketch. I happened to be sitting next to Yi, one of the students on the trip with us. While we sketched, we talked for a bit when he asked me if I was leaving for my mission when we got back. I took a minute to explain to him a little about what a mission is, who goes, when, and why and it opened up an entire door for a discussion between the two of us. We talked about the church, what he knew, what he had questions about. I found out that the reason he had come to Utah to study (he's originally from China) was because he liked our culture - he felt like the values and standards of the people in Utah reflected, for the most part, the traditions that he follows in China. I learned that he was raised Buddhist, but after living with a Christian family in Utah, he had decided he believed in Christ. That was a good foundation. We had a chance to talk a lot about the church and he loved our standards, the idea of eternal families, and our belief in Christ. Before I had the chance to invite him to church, he asked me what church was like on Sundays and if he could come. I was blown away! We talked for almost an hour - it was incredible. I've never had an experience like that before.