Italy Pictures

                                                                    our first gelato!

                                                               The view from a bridge in Venice

                                                           Our Gondola ride

                                                            Some people in costumes

                                                                           My favorite costumes!

                                                                      Venice at night

                                                            Nicole and I at a church in Florence

                                                      The view on the way to Michelangelo Piazza

                                                                              View from the top

                                                                            Trevi Fountain

                                                           Fountain by the Vatican

Italy-Venice, Florence, and Rome

Over our "study break" or what we like to call a two week spring break, Nicole, Natalie, Becky, and I went to Italy and Greece.  We started off in Venice during Carnivale and it was definitely interesting. People wore costumes of all sorts from disney characters to renaissance people.  It was weird to say the least, and it seemed as if nobody went to school or work. San Marco Square was literally filled with thousands of people and everyone was just taking pictures of the people dressed up. It was pretty much halloween, so we joined in the festivities and bought masks. (The pretty kind, not scary.) We went on a gondole (as they spell it) ride and it was gorgeous. Of course our guide person just spoke Italian the entire time so we had no clue what he was point out. Florence was our next stop and it was great. It was a little bit like deja vu since I remembered going to a lot of the same places with my family two years ago. We saw Michelangelo's David and it was amazing. It was HUGE, none of us expected it to be so big, it really was incredible and we just do not understand how he sculpted it. Florence was our shortest stop so we didn't really get to do all that much but we still had fun.  Rome was fun for the first couple days, we did basically everything that I had done with my family two years ago so it was a bit repetitive but still great because it is Rome! Becky and I were there for five days and knew the city like the back of our hands.  We definitely became experts navigating the city. We made sure we had gelato every single day which was fantastic, but I am pretty sure none of us will be eating pizza or pasta for a good month at least. On our last day in Rome Becky and I went and saw La Bella e La Bestia aka The Beauty and The Beast.  We consider ourselves cultured because we saw a play/musical in another language, but really now we just want to watch it in english! The entire trip was amazing and we had a lot of fun!

Belgium Pictures

                                                    Some buildings in Grand Place

                      In a museum...the secuirty guy kept following us and was asking if we wanted him to take a picture so we finally said yes hoping he would leave us alone

                                                            The Mannekin Pis

                                                          WAFFLES!

This would be example A of no self control...using the little fork took too much effort and was too slow!

                                                                   The Atomiom I believe

He was all dressed up!

Belgium

One of the last weekends in February I went with Nicole, Natalie, and Becky to Brussels, Belgium. I will never go back it was so BORING! The waffles and chocolate saved our trip! We probably ate way too much of both, but we couldn't help ourselves, we had no self control.  The Grand Place and Mannekin Pis are pretty much all Brussels has to offer.  Nicole and I went on a day tour to Bruge and Ghent.  Ghent was a waste of time, our tour guy had 5 cigarettes in one hour. I think for the day we counted about 13, and those were only the ones we saw...we weren't with him for half the time.  Anyways, I am pretty sure we all got lung cancer from that weekend, EVERYBODY smokes it is absolutely disgusting, they were worse than Ireland which is saying something.  We went to Delirium cafe/pub, which is the pub with the most amounts of beer in the world.  They had over 2000 varieties, 28 on tap. I think we tried two.  Other than that our time in belgium was uneventful and boring, I don't recommend visiting.