sleeping on the deck of a ship...

day something....

Venice was amazing and polluted. It was just how I pictured it... boats everywhere and singing gondola drivers.. every form of transportation is via water. We even took a boat/bus. As we walked around Venice later that night someone made the comment that it looked like rain...moments later it poured and hailed...we sought shelter in this small cafe where we felt obligated to buy something. Wine. As we sipped our wine I looked at the menu which was ALL Italian and only saw prices like 45euro...I thought for sure we bought a 50 dollar glass of wine! luckily 3euro was right in our budget.

After Venice we hopped a ferry that would make a 34hour journey to Greece. We got "deck" tickets (the cheapest) and when it says deck it means you live on the deck! I have never experienced such a strange practice. People were literally sleeping on the deck, inside the doorways, in the hallways, under tables and a select few had rooms. I was lucky to find a fold out pool chair and curled up on that and froze the whole night while the guy in the neighboring pool chair snored haha. Kyla and Stephen slept by the railing of the ship. We looked homeless and it was awesome! We were awaken by the most spectacular sun rise over the Greek mountains... it was worth it

We arrived in Athens at 2 in the morning, no map, few euros, and no plan. A big burly man, probably in his late 40's with a Russian accent asked us if we knew where we were going and told us he was going to a 1 star hotel and we should follow him. He was sent from God for sure. He led us and another guy through crack corner, in dark allies, and past some drug dealers to the safety of the hotel. We would have not made it anywhere without him. This has happened a lot to us...we have no plan and have no idea where to go but somehow someone always comes to our rescue...we have never even asked...I haven't worried this whole trip...

The next day we booked a hostel online and jumped on a ferry to the Greek island of Santorini...the boat ride was so funny....ask Kyla...
We arrived on the island at 8 am and the view took my breath away. It is a rocky island with tiny rounded white buildings and the most beautiful view of the Aegean Sea... its like a Mediterranean paradise. We got off at a tiny remote port with nothing but a mountain infront of us.. we had no idea how to get the hostel and for a brief second I thought we were going to have to lug our 20 pound bags over the mountain.. Just as I began to prepare my legs for the hike, a small man stepped in front of us and held up a hand written sign..it said "Kyla Salem" It was the owner of the Hostel and he drove us over the mountain to the other side of the island to our room!!!! We were taken care of again... God is good.

We laid on the black beaches (from the volcano) and swam in the clear sea.... all the while Kyla turning a golden brown and stephen and I resembling lobsters...

today we rented ATV's and are driving them all over the island...People are wonderful here...

first 20 minutes on atvs:
-kyla hits gas instead of brakes, we hit sidewalk instead of road
-stephen forgets you have to turn the key to turn it on and leads us down a one-way
-I stop in the middle of the road cause there is sunscreen in my eye (not reccomended)
- stephen's helmet looks like an astronaut ha.

my atm card doesnt work in Greece....sweet


life is good

from Tuscany to Venice

The first moment I laid eyes on the Tuscan country side we were on a train to Siena... I remember almost losing my breathe it was so beautiful. It was one of those moments in my life where all thingsa around me were still and I sat there with only one thought "I am in Italy...it is magnificant".
We sat on a train and realized we werent sure it was the right one... after a few moments of discussion a bubbley young Irish woman jumped in our conversation and offered her help. She was teaching English in Rome and looked up our trains for us... she was really fun to talk to and very helpful. Two stops into our train ride a plump, older, Italian woman sat right next to me and we immediatley started to converse. She was a charming old woman who spoke with such compassion of her country. She spoke to me for a good hour about old Italia and men she had loved in here life, and her husband of 50 years and their guesthouse in the heart of Tuscany. God placed both those women in our path...without them we would have been lost.

She gave me her phone number and told me we could stay in her loft.... I promised myself I would come back to Italy someday and call her.....


Fast forward a day or two:
In Siena we were befriended by the Italian workers at the camp. They told us to walk down the "white road" for a really good view. It turns our the "white road" was in reality a gravel road it wasnt a little walk down it... instead it was a 5k treck up the hills of it.... at the top, however, words cannot describe what I saw. Never ending hills and vinyards being lit by a golden, setting sun. It was worth every second of it.
On the way back from the "white road" we saw some cats just sitting by the side of the road... I went to pet one but they gave me the stink eye so I quickly decided to keep walking.
We arrived back at the sight only to find out that the beer Stephen was drinking was in fact NON-alcoholic and the "white road" was known for wild boars.....

Ah...Siena

We arrivedin Siena friday and spent agood half hour riding the escalators trying to find the bus station (one escalator wounded both stephen and I). We hopped on a bus we thought would take us to our hostel only to be kicked off of it 2 minutes later for not having tickets... LESSON 367: LEARN FROM LESSN ONE AND BUY ALL TICKETS
We followed Stephen to a hostel/camp site where he knew there were no rooms available but didnt tell us BUT God prevailed once again and the workers gave us a free site anda dusty tent that was in the corner (it had been left by some Canadians). It happened to be freezing that night so while Kyla and Stephen were asleepI got the bright idea to take out my emergancy space blanket... well as I crinkled it open those two woke up and we all started to argue about being loud and being cold. Seconds later we heard someone yelling at us in Italian so we dropped everything and pretended we were asleep. The space bag laid there all night, half uncrinkled, and we slept cold.
The next day a lodge openned up and we stayed in beds for the other two nights. and by beds I mean we had beds and stephen slept on the floor haha.
Siena is such a beautiful, quaint town... just like a fairy tale


more to come I am getting kicked off again:)

Well we didnt have enough euros to blog for a few days so I will put some of our experiences in bullet points (you can thank nursing school for this skill)

- After the Vatican we were going to take a train to Siena but the ticket machines went hay-wire and we stayed an extra night and went back to our hostel even though we told the manager "we promise we are leaving for real" on our way there a man stopped us from Kenya and ask us if he looked like Obama... he didnt but I told him he did from the side cause I didnt want him to mug us

- we got to go to our favorite market and bread shop one more day!

-we used a beday (spelling) for the first time.... awesome, a little startling though

- I am getting kicked off the internet by the guy who owns the hostel so I will have to cut this short

- they have a lot of picture signs here in Italy for everything... one of my favorites is a picture at the train station of a man with one leg shorter than the other, circled with a line through it... I can only assume that means no peg-legs..

- the key boards here are strange : ùèò£§

So much has happened! We will update some more tomorrow....

Pooped in the Vatican... DAY 3

So today we got some fruit from the market (stephen got an orange but it was really a grapefruit) and hopped a bus to the Vatican... where we sat on the bus right by the Vatican for ten minutes before some nice old people from America (one reminded me of grandma Lois) told us we were right by it hahaha

the Sistine Chapel is the most amazing thing I have seen thus far! We spent a good 45minutes looking at and I thought my neck was gonna fall off but it was worth it.

Side note: God has been taking care of us a lot... in weird ways. Yesterday at the Colossium Kylas batteries to her camera ran out and i randomly found some in some bricks of the wall. Then today I got into the Sistine Chapel for half price because the guy thought I was really young.. even when I told him I was 23, he just winked and said "no you 18." score.

we are taking a train to Siena tonight... get there at 5am

oh yeah LESSON FOUR (i think): DONT PUT BREADSTICKS ON A CLOSE LINE AND PUSH THEM OVER TO THE NEIGHBORS WINDOW... they just eat them and never say thank you

ps. i saw a cat.... they look the same here.

WHEN IN ROME: We just ate gellato with the Obama kids...

We made it! but not before a few mishaps on the way... five minutes into our trip Kyla and I got lost on the Chicago transit.. it turns out the colors of the lines represent something different. Our nine hour flight went smoothly. We got some free beer and watched a bunch of movies.. I tried to sleep until this big fat man was standing in the isle, talking loudly in a different language, and stepping on my toes! So after only a couple hours of sleep we arrived in Rome.. at 8 in the morning. We hopped a train that Stephen told us we didnt have to pay for... but we ended up paying double. LESSON ONE: BUY ALL TICKETS
It is more beautiful than I imagined and even more beautiful than I could ever describe in words. Day two we have seen so much like the Colosseum, the Trivi Fountain, the Panthenon, so much more. We had awesome pasta (i have no idea the name of it) at a little cafe not far from our hostel and bought fresh fruit at the local market for breakfast. We stopped for drinks at a small shop and I got yelled at in Italian for putting my feet on the seat. LESSON TWO: NO FEET ON SEAT...they dont like that...
Today we walked for over an hour trying to find "the best gellato place" according to Stephen, who simultaneously got us lost atlleast five times, each time saying "its just around this corner I swear" We finally found it and just as we finished them the Obama girls strolled out followed by secret service and a lot of photographers... I think we might be in some pics... look at People Magazine lol.
Did I mention its 100 degrees in our Hostel... it is.

Side note: we bought three hot dogs for 1 euro each thinking they were something else...they were really hot dogs... we are dumb LESSON THREE: WHEN IT SAYS HOT DOGS, THEY REALLY MEAN HOT DOGS


Ps. I rolled out my sheet thingy on my bed and there was a sock in it hahaha... thanks Luke.

We are going up north tomorrow after the Vatican...more to come!

Rome in 2 days and counting....

We are two days away and trying to cram almost a month's worth of stuff into one backpack has deemed itself to be harder than expected...

It turns out you can't bring numchucks, brass nuckles, and snow globes on the plane... which was 3 out the of the 22 things I wanted to bring so that freed up some space... last time I tried on my backpack I rolled over and couldn't get up, kinda like a turtle ha REPACK!

WE CANT WAIT TO BE THERE!

more to come....