PICTURES!!

all my pictures from our Italy trip can be viewed at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/heisfaithful20/Italy2008

Enjoy!!

home again, home again, jiggity-jig

Thought I'd update and let you all know that Erica & I have made it back home safely! I'm typing on a computer, so hopefully no more typos (I just re-read all of my Blackberry posts and noticed all the typos).

I'm finding I miss & don't miss Italy in the smallest things - I already miss speaking Italian & this morning I definitely missed the regular morning capuccinos as I had my mug of Maxwell House. Last night I was ecstatic at having a normal toilet in a normal bathroom (we did encounter a couple of literal holes in the floor in Sardegna). It's also very cold here and I miss the sunny mornings lying on a sunbed in Alghero. As I'm going through my pictures, I miss the many Roman sights and the amazing history we were able to step into.

It's good to be home and keep moving forward - and besides, like I told the Scottish women on the boat trip - we have the Rock Boat to look forward to in January!

I will be sure to keep you all posted with a link to my pictures when I get them all finished & uploaded.

As far as an update from our last post, we spent our last night at the Hotel Nuova Nord in Rome and it is probably the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. It was a shame we only had one night there; I was literally squealing in delight as we walked into the room with hardwood floors, high ceilings, beautiful curtains & bedspreads, comfy beds w/ extra pillows available!, a  marble bathroom w/ a BATHTUB!!! It was great :) Our last meal in Rome was at the Terme di Dioclezione restaurant by our hotel, which was eh, but it is in an ancient Roman structure (which I assume was part of the Baths of Diocletian). Then we were going to have dessert on our hotel's rooftop terrace but the weather was bad (raining) so it was closed. We did spend some time in Piazza della Repubblica taking pictures before it started raining harder. All in all, I am satisfied with all we were able to do & see in Rome, most of it new for me which was great - and there will always be more to see & do (for instance, some of the churches outside of the centro that I haven't visited, the Appian Way, the tour of Crypta Balbi, etc.). Rome is delightful & jam-packed with interesting things for those who enjoy history.

The next morning we met up with Jeff Ammons after breakfast to collect some mail and got to say goodbye to him and then we took a taxi to the airport (the taxi driver was a man hired by the hotel who drives a Mercedes and drives like a MADMAN... I was sure we were going to get in an accident). We got there at 9:00 and got to our gate at about 10:45... the Fiumicino airport is always confusing & there are ALWAYS long lines. Our plane taxied for an hour before taking off, because of bad weather, which was fine with me because the reason our flight in Alghero was delayed for 4 hours was because the plane had been struck by lightning on its previous descent (which we were told during our ascent as we're going through rain, clouds, & plenty of turbulence... both Erica & I were praying for our lives to be spared). So we were on the God-awful plane for 10 and a half hours before arriving in Newark, where it took us another hour to get through American customs (I can't imagine them not wanting us back!). The Border Patrol man, after asking what I do for a living, said I must be doing something good. :)

Anyway, I'm back to working on my pictures while listening to the new Hanson EP ("Take the Walk"). More to come when that's finished!! Thanks for reading :)

waiting, waiting, waiting...

We were supposed to be in Rome 45 minutes ago and we are still at the Alghero airport, where we have been since 10:15 this morning. Our flight was supposed to leave at 1:45, and it is currently 3:30. I am not happy. :(

Leaving Alghero...

I am on page 235 of "Love in the Time of Cholera", we just left the beach, I have accomplished a (minimal, in my opinion) tan, bought souvenirs, and put away my bathing suit and sundress for the last time, and come to the sudden realization that we will be packing tonight.

It's very strange to be ending this trip as it feels like the longest, most focused vacation I've ever been on. I truly left all my worries at home and have done a great job not thinking about work or the spiders in my bedroom. I have truly enjoyed speaking this much Italian and have an eagerness to learn a lot more. It's hard to predict how I will really feel on the plane coming back home... Because on the other hand, I miss my family, plus Cody and Zacchaeus, and my friends and roommate, and I miss (believe it or not) our entertainment culture - Hanson news, the Presidential & VP debates, new movies, "The Hills", etc. I'm also looking forward to settling into a new church home, moving into a 3BR townhouse, starting to plan for Candidate Orientation (yup, I got accepted!), and starting up weekly meetings with my small group girls again (who I miss dearly).

So this is life- we'll be leaving Alghero (and the entire island of Sardegna) tomorrow afternoon and heading back to Rome (which feels like an entirely different world from where we are now), seeing some last-minute sights and eating our very last Italian meal on this trip (so it better be a good one!). Then enduring a grueling 9.5 hour flight home on Saturday before returning to "normalcy", whatever that is...

Giuliano's Island

"I'd like to be the ONLY one marooned on Giuliano's Island."

Haha "But what's his real name?"

"When I woke up there was like a halo around his head."


Our other 2 great inside jokes from this trip are doostbooster and Erica's Chewbacca yawn.

fivity-fivity.

So today was awesome; quite possibly my favorite day of vacation. As I said earlier, today we went on our boat cruise (which was supposed to be a sailing cruise but the boat's mast broke off in a recent hurricane). We traveled around Capo Caccia (which was when we saw the dolphins) and then anchored in a cove where we went swimming and ate lunch. We met a bunch of new friends: 3 women from Scotland, a newlywed couple from London, an engaged couple from France, and an Italian man from Padua. We also had a really hot skipper (yup, Mom) who was Italian (Giuliano) and young. The English couple who ran the boat was very nice and we just had an all-around very pleasant trip.

Tonight's dinner was no exception. We stopped at a store on the way and I bought my idea of the perfect souvenir to hang on my wall (good souvenirs are hard to find around here). Then we tried to find a restaurant that had been mentioned in my Let's Go guide and we found it but it had changed names. I fell in love. It was an inside restaurant with old vaulted ceilings and we had the cutest old man waiter ever. He was really excited tha I speak "un poco Italiano" so we had some nice Italian exchanges and I learned that "to share" is dividere, and that's when he said, "Fivity-fivity" and I was like, "huh?" until I realized he was saying "fifty-fifty" :)

The other fun thing was that there are tons of dogs here, most of them free to go places on their own so they are rarely on leashes. So during our meal we hear a bark at the door and there is this medium-size white dog. One of the restaurant owners goes, "Vieni qua!" (Come here!) and he comes in and then sits and I got to pet him :) Then later I asked the man, "Come si chiama?" (What's his name?) and he said, "Blake". So Blake is a really cute dog. And I liked the waiter so much that Erica got a picture of me with him :)

Although there are some things I miss about home, I will definitely miss some things about Italy when I leave. Sardinian people are so nice.

Palm Trees & Dolphins

My life is complete. Those of you who know me know I love palm trees and dolphins and I've also never been on a boat. Well I am surrounded by palm trees this week and currently on the SS Andrea Jensen where there have been 2 dolphins chasing our boat, swimming in front of us and jumping and looking at us - I love it!

limoncello=no good

Seriously, Italians need to stop thinking they're doing us a favor in giving us free limoncello shots.

Tonight's waiter was all touchy-feely and wanted us to go in the car with him and "Fabrizio" to his discoteque. Then he was like "I bring limoncello for you" and we were like OH CRAP. 'Cause seriously we had already split a bottle of red wine and limoncello makes you feel like absolute, useless mush after drinking it... Anyways, we did to be polite and now here we are, back at our hotel, smashed unintentionally.

Today we ventured across the island to Costa Smerelda, which was gorgeous but lacked the nice (convenient) atmosphere of Alghero. It was picturesque though and we got to see some kids playing & having a blast, so that was fun. I picked up a rock in the water of Spiaggia Bianca to bring home but I left it there :(

Tomorrow we're going to have a RELAXING day in Alghero - our rental car will be gone :)

Hero with a Red Napkin

So we were just eating dinner at this restaurant on Via Lido down the street from our apartment when all of a sudden I'm like, "COCKROACH!", and then I discover that it's just a very large grasshopper (just like at home in my apartment) and I'm about to let it go until the thing JUMPS on me so I stifle a scream and jump out of my chair and knock him off the chair onto the ground. Then this Italian man gets up with his cigarette hanging out of his mouth and his big red napkin and attempts to squash the thing, but it's too fast for him... So he actually somehow gets the grasshopper out of the restaurant (keep in mind our restaurant is right on the beach) and the grasshopper comes hopping back in (probably wing-less from the first blow) so I here his girlfriend go, "Qua!" When the man actually catches him (as in, "put it over there!" as she gestures toward the door) and he goes, "Ritornato sempre!" ("He always comes back!"). So he disappears with the grasshopper in his red napkin towards the front of the restaurant and that was that. Haha I don't know what he did with the grasshopper.

In other news, today we climbed down an oceanside cliff with 654 stairs to Neptune's Grotto (a beautiful 70 million year old cave carved out of the cliff with stalagtites and stalagmites in huge formations). Then we also climbed back up 654 stairs to the top and lived to tell about it!

We also tried to go to Spiaggia della Pelosa and that was a trip and a half. Believe me, when you're attempting to speak a foreign language, even parking can be the royalest pain in the you-know-what. Then as soon as we finally got on the beach, it got overcast and cold. C'e la vita.

We love Alghero. Tomorrow we take our Italian rent-a-car to Costa Smerelda to mingle with the rich and beautiful (sans grasshoppers)...

SEI BIANCA, SEI BIANCA!!

Our car rental guy just practically screamed at us to go get our bikinis because we are too white (see above title). He almost refused to give us our keys til we got our bikinis on haha

He was also wearing a white jumpsuit and he even had an impromptu dance party with us in the car (a Fiat Punto) while showing us how to use the radio. He also kept telling us how beautiful we are and speaking a mixture of English & Italian. Haha on the list of things that would never happen in America...