My night in crappy iPhone pictures...

Famiglia! Amici!

My parents are here! Virginia and Alena are here! Ian gets here next weekend! So many visitors in so little time. What a happy week. Yesterday we had our art class at the Church is San'Ignazio, which is absolutely huge and gorgeous and free of pickpockets because it's right across the street from a police station. Today my parents are in their swanky resort on the Amalfi Coast, so it's just my roommates and me. Tonight we're going to Dar Poeta, a famous pizza place in Trastevere. Yesterday Alex, my parents and I went to Giolitti, one of the most famous gelaterias in Rome, and I have to say, it wasn't great. It really just tasted like mediocre, fast-melting ice cream. 

Classes are going pretty well. Philosophy is kind of lame, but history, art and Italian are going well. It's nice to start using my tiny Italian vocabulary. Today, for example, I asked for "dieci" (ten) metro tickets at the tobacco shop downstairs. So proud. Better posts to come, I promise. 

Also, there's a chance I might be going to the Roma vs. Lazio soccer match on October 16. Trying not to get my hopes up, but that would be so awesome. 

I was feeling a little Hungary...

... so I went to Budapest! And I've got to be honest, Dublin's status as my favorite European city may be in jeopardy. At the very least, Budapest kicks Rome's ass in just about every imaginable category. Would I care to elaborate on this seemingly outlandish claim? Why, certainly. Let's make a chart.

                                             

Anywho, we got into Budapest late Thursday night, took a shuttle from the airport to the city center, walked to our hostel, and went straight to bed. The next morning we got up and decided to try one of the city's famous restaurants, New York Cafe, for breakfast. The place was incredible. It's attached to this super fancy hotel and had super fancy waiters and super fancy food. Basically, my kind of place. The breakfast was amazing - a frittata with vegetables and paprika and sausage - but the best part had to be the melange. I had never heard of it before, but a melange is similar to a cappuccino, except it's served in a glass and apparently has honey and egg yolk in it. Sounds a little weird, but it is so good. I may have to ask my local Starbucks to incorporate it into their menu. And the best part about breakfast at New York Cafe? Our total bill came out to about 12,000 forints, which comes out to about $14.00 per person. Thank you, Hungarian inflation. 

We left breakfast feeling all bright and cheerful, but our next activity sobered us up real quick. Just a few blocks down from Oktogon Square (yes, that's its name. Try and sort that out in your head, I dare you.) sits the House of Terror. It sounds like a cheesy haunted house, but it's actually the former party headquarters of both the Hungarian Nazis and the Arrow Cross Party, which took power under the Soviets. The museum inside is very modern and impeccably designed. In the atrium you find a raised platform, dripping with motor oil in which a Soviet tank sits in front of a wall of photographs of the people killed in that building. You walk up to the second floor where the exhibit starts and make your way down to the cellars, where the cells and torture chambers were located. It's one thing to read about the atrocities that occurred under the Nazis or communism, but actually walking through the rooms where people were held in solitary confinement in concrete cells and inky darkness is a completely difference experience. On the first floor of the exhibit, I felt this huge weight pressing down on me. It was similar to the pressure changes I feel while scuba diving. By the time we came out of the cellars, all four of us felt physically ill. If you don't believe in ghosts or paranormal activity, try visiting the Terror Háza in Budapest and then get back to me. 

Unsurprisingly, my friends and I were all a little drained when we left the museum, so we napped the afternoon away before heading back out the the Central Market. The market is located in this huge, gorgeous building right on the Danube. We got there only about half an hour before it closed, but we liked it so much that we returned on Saturday morning and shopped for hours. We bought beautiful things, but more importantly, we ate. The street food you find in the market is absolutely to die for. Highlights include goulash (obviously), Hungarian pancakes, and langos. Langos can be eaten either as a meal or a dessert, and it's just fried dough topped with either sour cream and cheese or various sweet things, like cinnamon and sugar or cranberry jam. They are dangerously good. It's like a funnel cake, but bigger and better. We spent the rest of the day Saturday doing a walking tour and then eating more. Food was basically the theme of our weekend. 

Sunday we checked out of our hostel and headed to the baths. Apparently Budapest's big important natural resource is water, and the Turks' bathing customs have stuck around long after the Ottomans left Hungary. I don't really have much to say about this experience. It's basically a bunch of pools of various sizes, indoors and out, with different mixes of water at different temperatures and a whole lot of old European fatties. 

Now pictures. 

Just a pretty street lamp.

Breakfast. 

Iced coffee with strawberry ice cream and whipped cream. Yes.

Various desserts that we couldn't finish because our eyes were bigger than our stomachs.

Line of street food vendors at Central Market. 

View of St. Stephen's Basilica. 

Sundried tomato and cheese panini. Best panini outside of Roma. 

The baths. 

Goulash! Gramma's is better though.

Prague + Munich = Beer

From the Jewish Quarter. (Made me miss my favorite old Jewish roommate.) 

Prague is a magical place. The streets are straight out of a fairy tale and beer is cheaper than water. Visiting that city was totally worth the stress and intense sleep deprivation that came with this weekend. First, though, let me apologize profusely for the lack of posts last week. I promise I'll be good again when I get my computer back next week.

As you've probably figured out, we did end up going on our trip to Prague and Munich. Alex and I agreed that we'd rather make the journey to Florence and go with that group than leave from Rome and spend the weekend camping at Oktoberfest. It was cold and raining in Munich all weekend, so I think we made the right choice, even if it meant sprinting across Rome's Termini Station to catch our train and then getting back at an ungodly hour and having to hail a cab in the middle of a thunderstorm. True story, but what can I say? Rome just loves screwing with me. All I can do is laugh at this point. And blog. At least I never have a shortage of material.

We arrived in Prague Friday morning after a 12-hour bus ride and had just enough time to shower and eat breakfast before we started our walking tour of the city. [Sidebar: I cannot describe how incredible that shower felt. Not only had I been on a bus all night, but our hot water heater in Rome had decided to take the day off on Thursday morning, so I could only wash my hair that morning. I wasn't lying when I said Rome likes messing with me.] Anyway, our hostel was really, really nice. It's called the Czech Inn. (No joke.) The walking tour was a lot of fun and I took some great pictures. Prague really is a fascinating place. It has this beautiful yet cold feel to it, and the buildings are so perfect that you feel like you're on a movie set or at Epcot Center rather than in a real city. The other striking thing is that Prague still feels sort of haunted by its history. You can easily see symbols of communism if you look for them, and it was eerie to walk around in a place that had actually experienced life behind the iron curtain.

After we finished our tour, Alex and I started retracing our steps back to our hostel, got lost (naturally) and decided to just spend the afternoon exploring a bit. We found a little shop with these gorgeous paintings, so we each bought one for 350 crowns, which comes out to about 14 dollars. Czech inflation may suck for them, but I really appreciated having a favorable exchange rate for once. Then Alex dragged me into this huge department store where we shopped a little and then decided to try and find the Pivovarsky Klub, one of the bars Anthony Bourdain visited in his Prague episode of No Reservations. This place was freaking amazing. We drank our Pilsner Urquell and I ate goulash with bacon dumplings. Heavenly. There is no other adjective to describe it. The walls were lined with shelf after shelf of beers from all over the world and they had six special beers on tap. If I ever got the opportunity, I would LOVE to go back there with all my favorite boys (dad, brother, boyfriend, adopted brothers ie Dan and Alex and the Hankies).

Saturday we got up, ate an awesome free breakfast at the hostel, and then went on a short walk with one of our guides from the tour company. He showed us the Lennon Wall, which is probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen. If you've never heard of it, the wall was a place where young Czechs would use graffiti to voice their grievances against the communist regime. Obviously most of it was Beatles-inspired, and now it's the coolest giant piece of evolving modern art. After that, Alex and I broke off to go on our tour of Prague castle, which is the largest medieval castle in Europe. The castle itself wasn't incredibly fascinating, but I'm glad we went if only for our tour guide, Christian. When he introduced himself, he told us he was Swedish, but by the end of the tour we had learned that his father was actually Czech, and only went to Sweden after escaping the communist regime. His family was only allowed to come back because his brother (our tour guide's uncle) had been an informer for the secret police. Absolutely crazy stuff.

Us in front of the Lennon Wall. 

After the tour, we followed our same tour guide back into the city to go on a sort of beer tour, where we were supposed to learn all about Czech beer and how it's made, etc. Basically it was just a bar crawl, and it turned out to be such a great time. At the first stop, I tried what I dubbed to be the Czech version of Sweetwater Blue. It was almost as good. At the next stop, a biergarten, we made friends with Carlos and Alejandro, a couple of Spaniards from Cadiz who kept quizzing us on the current soccer world champions ("SPAIN!"). Also, Alejandro studied abroad in Oklahoma, so his hatred for the University of Texas made us instant amigos. We ended the night at a place called the Iron Curtain, drank some beer called Demon, did work on Czech garlic bread (they actually give you cloves of garlic that you rub on the bread yourself), and then got ripped off by the cab driver, but we made it back to our hostel pretty early and went to bed after an incredible day in an incredible city.

Seriously. Doughnut. Size of my face.

On Sunday, we got up and were on the bus by 8am sharp and on our way to Munich. It was pouring rain and cold, so we literally ran to the biggest and rowdiest tent at Oktoberfest - Hofbrauhaus. I cannot tell you how much fun we had. After wandering around for about ten minutes, Alex, our friend Lauren and I made our way to the middle where a beer maid immediately asked "Beer?". Um, yes please. Ten euros later, I had a huge stein of HB in my hand. Ten minutes after that, the biggest soft pretzel you've ever seen, followed by a doughnut the size of my face. I LOVE OKTOBERFEST. The people were so much fun in that tent. One really great thing that Alex pointed out is how civilized it really was. Yes, people were drinking a lot, but nobody became really belligerent. The German guys were more respectful drunk than Italian men are sober. It was rather refreshing, let me tell you. We ate, we drank, we sang, we socialized with people from all over the world. I'm going back. Someday soon. And with more friends. Who's with me?

Tragedy.

Guys, my computer is broken. It's on its way back to the United States to be fixed. Blog posts for the next few weeks are going to be a lot less exciting, but I'll try my best borrowing Alex's computer.

In other news, our Prague and Oktoberfest trip this weekend has hit a snag. The tour company emailed us today saying we were the only two people from Rome to sign up for the trip, so we should either meet up with group going from Florence (impossible) or switch and do the Oktoberfest camping trip instead. Oh, what a week. And it's only Tuesday. Stay tuned for further details.

The Lost Weekend.

As you've probably figured out, this weekend we got lost. A lot. Saturday night started out well at Mapi, now our favorite restaurant in Trastevere. We ate their awesome pizza, ordered beer on purpose this time, and split the half bottle of limoncello (between 8 people, don't worry) that the owner decided she wanted to give us. And then around 11pm, we made our way to Rome's ice bar. It's a bar. Made out of ice. Sounds crazy cool, right? Well, it is and isn't.

 First, the positive: it actually is entirely made of ice - the walls, the bar, the seats, glasses, everything. The bartender was Irish and had actually heard of North Carolina. We had to wear these giant silver cloaks because it's 23 degrees Fahrenheit inside. They kind of make you feel like a penguin ... for some reason. Now the negative: it's entirely made of ice, so you can only stay for so long. The drinks are all vodka mixed with more vodka, so you have to be super careful. The cover was 15 euros, so you feel the need to stay inside and freeze just to get your money's worth.

Overall, it was an interesting experience and I'm glad we went, even though it took us a good hour and a half to get home because public transportation on the other side of the river stops running after midnight. I thought we were going to have to walk home from the other side of Rome. And I was the only one not wearing heels. Long story short, we walked forever but finally found the number 8 bus which takes us back to Trastevere and I am never going out on the other side of the Tiber again.

Lookin' goofy at Ice Club Roma. 

On Sunday, we went to this place outside of Rome called Castel Gandolfo. Look it up on Wikipedia and it sounds like a great place. It's where the pope has his summer residence and was supposedly voted one of the most beautiful towns in Italy. It's located inside a volcanic crater which has been mostly filled in with a lake. The lake is gorgeous, but not worth what we went through to get there and especially what we went through to leave. To get there, you have to take the H bus to Termini Station and then the subway out to the very last stop, then another bus to Castel Gandolfo. That bus drops you off along the top of the crater and then the real trouble starts. There is no pedestrian path leading down to the lake. So you get to walk along a narrow sidewalk along a curvy road for a good mile or two before you make it to the town, which cannot possibly be one of the prettiest towns in Italy. We swam in the lake, for like ten minutes and were ready to go. In our group of six, the smarter three called a taxi to take them to the top of the hill. The two morons I was with (yes, you Alex and Julie!) decided they'd rather just walk. And surely there had to be a better way to go than the original way we came down, so we started walking in the OPPOSITE direction of where we needed to go. So once again we walked along the side of the twisting road, getting honked at by Italians until, after about four hours, we somehow made it back to the bus stop. Then to another bus stop. Then back to the subway. Then back to Termini Station. Then back to the H bus. Then Trastevere. Then our apartment. Longest. Day. Ever. Thank God our trip next weekend is guided. I can't handle any more adventure for a while. 

     

Night at the Vatican.

It took me forever to find the right shutter speed to take this picture. Night photography is hard. All the other pictures from last night will be on Facebook very soon!

Last night, Alex and I made one of the best decisions we've ever made. We went to the Vatican at night. Alex had heard about their "Vatican museums under the stars" offer in which you purchase your tickets for 19 euros and you get to see almost everything except the basilica (which I'll go back and see another day). The best part of this entire experience was that we didn't have to wait in a single line. Not to get through the doors, not to pass security, not to print our tickets, not even to get into the Sistine Chapel. To give you an idea, some of our friends had tried to visit yesterday morning and gave up when they realized they would have to wait four hours just to get in.

Anyway, the only thing we were a little nervous about was actually getting there, but we almost made it without any problems. A few tips on finding the Vatican if you've stayed on the bus one stop too far:

•  follow the group of Asian schoolgirls and try to blend in. 
• when you lose the Asians, follow the nuns.
• look for attractive blonde men in goofy suits. whatup swiss guard. 
• now you've found the vatican.

Like I said, we breezed right through the metal detectors, exchanged our online vouchers for real tickets, and practically ran up the escalator to the galleries. Then began two hours of long hallways full of incredibly old statues and tapestries, followed by rooms of classic and then modern art, some well lit, others wonderfully dark and creepy. We saw paintings by Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon, and others before we made it to the Sistine Chapel. Oh my God, the Sistine Chapel. I really cannot describe how amazing it is. The figures on the ceiling are so real it's eerie. I felt like at any minute one of those bodies was going to fall down on me. I can't imagine how insanely crowded that place would have been during the day, but at 9 o'clock at night, there was plenty of breathing room. Alex and I even found a place to sit along one of the walls, so we basically just hung out in the Sistine Chapel for a good half hour. Rebel that she is, Alex tried to sneak a picture of the ceiling. She both succeeded and failed. The guard yelled at her but didn't make her delete the picture, and I got a good laugh out of it all.

We got pretty lost on our way home, but at least my Rosetta Stone training taught me to count to ten, so I understood when the old man we asked for directions told us to take bus "quattro, nove, due," and we got home at a reasonable 10:30. 

As for the rest of this weekend, our plans include activities that will be either incredible successes or total failures. Either way, it'll make for entertaining blog posts. So get ready.