Cheetah Girlz Cheetah Sistas

Hey hey hey, my fellas. As you may have guessed from the title of this blog, I was in Barcelona this weekend. The wonderful city is known for two things and two things only: 1) being the location of the second Cheetah Girls movie and 2) discotecas. I'm going to keep this blog short and sweet because I have about a million and four things to do this week.

Highlights of my weekend:
1. Seeing Lissa. As soon as I saw that blonde beauty in the Sagrada Familia Basilica, I ran over to her, hugged her so tight and I actually started crying because I had missed her so much. It was so nice spending time with her and catching up. I love that little lady.
2. Our hostel. It was honestly awesome. Free coffee all the time, super cute vintage chic decor, awesome desk workers, fantastic free breakfast, great bathrooms. Honestly the whole thing was the cutest.
3. Nightlife.
4. The biggest market I've ever seen with the awesome fruit.

XOXOXOXO

Things Not Found in America

Currently, there is a violent protest in Campo di Fiori and there are SWAT teams in front of our hotel. Yes, you read that correctly. Also, while all of this is happening, everyone else is acting like this is completely normal. My Art History professor looked at us like we ad three heads when we showed genuine signs of concern after hearing a mob screaming outside out classroom building. All she said was, "What? No protests in zee States?" Uh we have protests, lady, but none that involve a SWAT team in front of my place of residence. Anyways, this little occurrence has inspired my thoughts on other things that do not occur in the United States.

1. Over abundance of cats.
There are cats everywhere in this continent. There is a cat that lives in my hotel, there is a cat sanctuary down my street, there was a cat walking around the Paris airport. They're everywhere.
2. Lack of ice.
WHY DOES EUROPE NEVER HAVE ICE?? This never happens in America. Haley ate it the other day and we all thought she was literally going to be in a body cast for six months, and we couldn't even get the poor girl some ice.
3. Gelato
Self explanatory. America does not have and will never have anything as good.
4. Flexible prices.
We are poor college kids, wanna give me this for half off? Ok, thanks. Could you imagine pulling that in America? Doesn't happen.
5. Cheese as a sole food group.
6. Super cheap flights to really cool places.
I'm sure you could get a cheap flight to somewhere but honestly, no one is on skyscanner looking up flights for a fun weekend to Cleveland.
7. Old stuff.
America is like a one sixteenth of a millisecond old compared to Rome.
8. ME
lol. But really, not ready to leave Europe. I just can't.

We'll always have Paris.

Remember last week when I said Capri is the most beautiful place I have ever seen? I take it back. Paris, by far, is the most beautiful place I have ever been to.

I've always been drawn to the Parisian life. Something about a diet full of crepes, macaroons and champagne, a wardrobe full of socially accepted fur and the way you instantly feel prettier when someone says "Bonjour, Madame" really appeals to my Eloise at the Plaza/Blair Waldorf/Beyonce inner diva queen animal spirit. Paris was the one city I REFUSED to leave Europe without visiting. And let me tell you, it lived up to every expectation.

Our flight was at 6:50am, which in my Steve-o conditioned mind meant that we needed to be there at the night before at 7pm. I was not missing this flight for anything. Unfortunately, not many other people were brought up with this obsessive compulsive need to be there with enough time to finish a PhD thesis, so we got there around 5:30am. Not enough of a time cushion for this diva queen. I pushed through lines, ran over children and the elderly, threw elbows and made it to the line for the flight. Once again, I was not missing this flight. Thank goodness, everything was fine and we all made it to Paris in one piece. Whew. When we got to Paris, we ran off the plane, got on a bus, got in a cab and made it to our hotel. After getting settled , we took the town. I was immediately awestruck by how incredibly beautiful the entire city is. I loved every inch of it. We walked around and I just soaked in how ornate and wonderful and fairytale-like every street corner, shop, bakery and restaurant was. It was love at first sight. The whole time I kept thinking to myself how I HAVE to come back with my mom and my sister, and how I HAVE to come back with Ryan and how I HAVE to come back with the girls I was with right then. The gorgeousness of the whole city just made me want to share with everyone. We went to the Eiffel Tower, thought about how blessed we are, and took about 70,862 pictures (even though no picture can capture the way I felt). After that we headed to the Louvre to hang out with our gal Mona Lisa. The Louvre was super cool and one of those places you can't not go to. Lucky for us, it's off season so there was no line, and it was after 6pm so we got in for free! We then met up with Carole's cousin who lives in Paris and we went out to dinner. We had a fab time. Side note, without Carole, Paris wouldn't have been such a success. She's fluent in French and amazing on all accounts.

The next day, Haley and I woke up earlier than the others to go to the Museum Orsay. We got pastries and our first ever French macaroons on the way there (ps. the macaroons ARE as good as they say). Anyways, we got to the museum and once again the line was super short and we got in quickly. Honestly, this was cooler than the Louvre. The first room we walked into had a Picasso. Oh. Okay. Then we walked into two more rooms FULL of Van Gogh paintings. Probably 20 Van Gogh paintings. Just chilling in their permanent collection. We went upstairs to the Impressionism floor and took in the entire floor of Degas, Monet and Pissarro. It was super impressive and awesome to see so many famous paintings. After that, we started walking to the Cathedral of Notre Dame and obviously stopped for a Nutella banana crepe (heaven) on the way. We met the other girls and went into the cathedral. It was so vast, imposing and impressive and different than anything church I have ever seen. We then made our way to the Love Bridge. It was iconic Paris and looked exactly like I thought it would. After Meg and Carole broke their lock while trying to put it on the bridge, we headed for the main shopping street of Paris, Champs Elysees.I looooovvveeeeeeeed it. Loved it. Couldn't love it more. It was already all decorated for Christmas and reminded me of Michigan Avenue on steriods. It was beautiful and magical and I didn't want to leave. There was amazing shopping including the Louis Vuitton flagship store, Cartier, Mercedes Benz and obviously, ten Zara's. There were also little family owned shops on the little side streets. Actually, this is were I spent the last euros I had to my name and bought a fur vest. Yes, I did. The shop owner was the cutest little man and I love my fur vest with everything I have in the deepest depths of my soul. I'm not kidding. After that, we ate a brie and lettuce baguette and shopped around some more. It was so much fun and really made me miss shopping downtown with my friends from home and family. It actually made me want to bring all of them to Paris. We saw the Arch di Trumph and then went back to the Eiffel Tower to see it lite up at night. Oh and we gt macaroons from the most famous macaroon place in Paris. Anyways, back to the Eiffel Tower at night. This vision, my friends, is the most incredibly beautiful sight I have ever laid eyes on. At one point, I mentioned how I'm not sure if the sight of my first born child will measure up the Eiffel Tower at night. Then we climbed all 1400 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We got an amazing view of the city at night and the very top of the tower. I will never forget it. That night for dinner we had fondue and you guessed it, crepes. It was the most wonderful weekend in Europe and I CANNOT wait to go back to Paris. It is by far my favorite city and I already miss it.

Other random things I love about Paris:
1. The metro system. I love everything about it. I love how cheap it is. I love how easy it is. I love how good I am at figuring it out. I love it.
2. Bakeries on every corner. Finished with your box of twenty macaroon? Don't worry. More are just around the corner.
3. The grocery stores have goldfish.
4. You can get six bottles of water for 1 euro.
5. Everyone looks fab. No outfit or print or fur hat is too outlandish or flamboyant for this town. Go bold or go home.
6. You can't possibly fit all of Paris into one trip. You just can't. But I think that's part of why we love it so much. It's this Mary Poppins bag of culture and art and food. You can't possibly do it all so you HAVE to keep going back. It's heartbreaking to leave but part of you is comforted by the fact that because you didn't finish it, you have to go back.
7. The whole city is in love.
8. It's perfectly okay, and even encouraged to be the full blown, out-of-this-world divalicious Queen of the World you are.

Moral of the story: go to Paris. I don't care who you are or what you do or when you go, just go. I truly fell in love with the city and I already cannot wait to go back.

My Week in So-It

Hello, fellow homo sapiens.

This Tuesday, at 7am, the entire SMC Rome Program shuffled on a coach bus to make our way to Southern Italy (So-It as us trendy people call it). We were in for five days of 6am wake up calls, head counts, ancient ruins and beautiful Southern Italy.

Tuesday: We went directly to the ancient ruins of Herculanium and Pompeii. Really cool stuff, but a very long day. By the time we checked into the hotel and got settled, we were on the verge of falling over from exhaustion. After a good dinner of bruschetta, pasta, fish, potatoes, salad and tiramisu, that is exactly what we did.

Wednesday: After a wonderful breakfast of multiples breads, yogurts, fruits, juices and coffees, we set out fr our day on the Amalfi Coast. It was gorgeousssssss. One of the most beautiful places I ahve ever seen. Also, they are famous for their lemons and limoncello. They have lemon everythinggggg. Lemon soap, lemon perfume, lemon chocolate, lemon candy, lemon candles. It was fun to spend some time sampling and shopping around the lemon-laden town.

Thursday: We spent the day in the archaeological museum and ancient ruins of the Magna Grecia town, Paestum.

Friday: CAPRI. Actually probably the most beautiful place I have ever been to ever. We took a bus down to the beach and then had to take another boat to the island of Capri, but it was worth every minute of travel. As soon as we got there, some of us went on a boat tour of the island. It was incredible. It was one of the places you can't quite capture in a picture (however, you can tell by my 48,986 pictures on Facebook, I tried). It was gorgeous. The water was the bluest I have ever seen in my entire life. At one point in the tour, we got out of the boat and got into small rowboats to go int the Blue Grotto. The Blue Grotto is a grotto (obviously) that is lit via reflections of the sun onto the limestone on the bottom of the grotto. The light comes up through the water and creates a neon blue that illuminates the entire grotto. It's gorgeous. However, the entrance to the grotto is so small that everyone has to lay down in the boat to get through the teeny tiny hole in the rock. I won't say it's my favorite moment, but I will say that having the weird rowboat rower lay on me to fit through the hole of the grotto is in my top five. After the tour, we spent the day exploring and taking in the beauty of Capri. I truly hope one day I can go back and spend more time there.

Saturday: Haley and I woke up with bedbug bites. Yes. Bed. Bug. Bites. NOT OK. SO NOT OK. We spent the day in Naples doing ancient stuff and what have you but as soon as we got home we washed all of our stuff and dried it on the highest heat and sprayed everything we had with us with rubbing alcohol. The bugs are gone for sure since we were so aggressive with it but our bodies are still covered in itchy bites that look like chicken pox. Honestly, only us. We spent Saturday night watching a movie on the terrace as the smell of 90% rubbing alcohol left our room. At least we slept in peace knowing the bugs are GONE.


xoxoxxoxox from the infested girl

Arabic Speaking Canadians take Greece

Greetings, earthlings. Princess Keit here. 

This weekend was my first experience traveling outside Italy. What an experience it was. We woke up early Friday morning ready for our glamorous journey to Thessaloniki, Greece. The weirdness started as soon as we got to the airport where they checked our passports and boarding passes actually 17 times. Then we got on a bus that drove us about 100 yards to the plane that was in the middle of the runway. As soon as the bus stopped, everyone started sprinting to the plane. Literally a no-holds sprint. We were all super confused. Someone offered up the possible explanation of the fact that RyanAir doesn’t have assigned seating…? Well neither does Southwest but people don’t sprint to the plane knocking down children and the elderly. Anyways, we get on the plane and they hand us a booklet with pictures of the RyanAir stewardess swimsuit calendar (weird) and price lists to buy a hotdog on the plane. I took a Dramamine and slept the whole flight, until all the sudden we were landing and people were clapping and over the intercom played a “Dodadalo dodadalo do do do doooo” sound after we landed? Then once again everyone started sprinting off the plane. Never seen anything like it. Then we took a cab to our hotel, which was really near the city center, and started exploring Thessaloniki. We were starving so we stopped for gyros. Honestly, heaven in my mouth. Soooooo good. So good. I feel bad for people who haven’t had one.We walked down to the water and walked right along the waterfront and saw the White Tower. The weather couldn’t have been better and the relaxed vibe was just what we needed after a long week of midterms, papers and presentations. At this point, we see a Jamaican themed boat-bar. Yes. A bar. On a boat. Painted as the Jamaican flag. Playing Bob Marley. Honestly best idea we’ve ever had. It took us around for an hour and we enjoyed strawberry daiquiris and a gorrrrrggggggeous view of the city. The water, sunset, city and rum made the experience more than perfect. After freshening up, we headed back out to walk around some more and get dinner. We ended up at this great restaurant near the marina. We all got an appetizer and then got a Greek salad to share. It was amazing. They gave us bread and tzatziki. Then we got sautéed pork in a white wine lemon sauce. Rice stuffed grape leaves. Oven roasted feta with cherry tomatoes. Fried zucchini. Something with fennel that was really good. And Greek salad. And then we got dessert. Some sort of greek sweet thing topped with ice cream. Not entirely sure but it was awesome. It was all awesome, and it was all waaayyyyy cheaper than Rome. It was refreshing to know that we were going to get a good, less expensive because we weren’t in a super touristy town. We loved it. That night we walked around a little bit more until we went to bed in our hotel (which was the Albergo del Sole 2.0 Greek version). We also had an identity crisis when two men asked us where we were from and if we spoke English. They clearly must have heard us speaking English and that’s why they asked us, but we froze. We were warned that some Greeks really don’t like people from the States, so of course I get the bright idea of responding with “Canada.” But it wasn’t like I responded with conviction; it was almost like I was trying to say it low enough for only my friends to hear. I remember hearing myself say it and thinking “why did my voice sound like that?” It was a cross between Cher and Robin Williams saying “Canada” in a low whisper. Well, the men ignored that, so they continued to ask us if we speak English. Again, nothing. We are like statues. We just stared at them. I think we stared for a solid 45 seconds before Carole started ranting to them in Arabic. All we did was stand there, staring and nodding like we understood what Carole was saying. We confused them enough to get them to walk away but we actually couldn’t breathe we were laughing so hard after they left. I don’t know if this story is as funny via blog, but you can imagine how hysterical we thought it was that we just stared at two random men for five minutes and the only solution we could come up with was acting like we were Arabic speaking girls from Canada that can’t understand English. 

The next day we woke up and set out for our Eat and Walk tour. It was probably the best experience I have had in Europe thus far. It was a private tour for just the 5 of us given by a fabulous woman named Magda. Magda speaks four languages. Magda is a psychiatrist. Magda was born in Thessaloniki, went to grade school on an island, went to high school in Thessaloniki, studied all over, lived in Barcelona for a year, lived in Berlin for 6 years, never took a single cooking class in her life, knows the food history of Thessaloniki, and gives Eat and Walk tours to do something for her town. I’m sorry, what? Can I be you, please??? It started with a homemade Greek breakfast in her cooking lab. Cheese and cream filled pastries, a traditional sesame bagel thing and Greek coffee. After she told us some history and we finished eating, she read our fortunes using the lines of dried coffee inside our cups. The craziest thing was how all five of our fortunes could not have been truer. After that, we left the cooking lab and started walking through the streets and markets of Thessaloniki. We met her friend and stopped at a little shop and tasted homemade cheeses- incredible. She walked us through the fish and meat markets (the veggies were a little freaked out by the pig heads but we made it through). She had us try special olives from the region and explained certain techniques and why certain foods were the way they were. We then sat down and tasted more food and a traditional Greek alcohol, ouzo. Then we went to this shop full of homemade jams and marmalades and Greek sweets. After tasting all that, we went to a super trendy and chic restaurant. Not kidding, they brought out a least fifteen different full dishes of food. I have never eaten so much or so well in my entire life. Greek meatballs, Greek salad, a salad with lemon and pomegranate, baked feta, grilled vegetables, eggplant, fried zucchini, more meat dishes, breads, chick pea salad, bean salad, spinach stuffed things, fruit over Greek yogurt and wine. It was all fabulous. The best part about it was that it didn’t feel like we were on a tour. It felt like we had a friend from Thessaloniki who was showing us around. She joked with us, showed us good bars to go to, told us stories and acted like we were her friends. It really was a great experience and I am so glad that I got to enjoy it with people who appreciated it as much as I did. After that we were nearing entering a food coma, so we walked around just a wee bit more before looking at some ancient ruins and churches, watching the sunset, getting a coffee, heading back to the hotel to rest and get ready for the night. That night we were not even close to hungry for dinner so we decided sangria at an outdoor bar would be the perfect end to our day.

Today, we woke up, went on a search for baklava, found baklava, ate baklava and checked out of our hotel. We also got a Starbuck’s, because those don’t exist in Rome and we missed it a lot, ok??? The person taking my order spelled my name K-E-I-T….? I don’t know, it’s Europe. Anyways, we flew back to Rome  and once again was confused by the clapping/landing/RyanAir thing and here I am. It was honestly a perfect weekend and I could not be happier. The even better part- we only have one day of classes this week before we leave for Southern Italy as a program on Tuesday. Pretty cool, huh? I’m sure I will have plenty to say about the millions of tours they will make us go through and the gorgeousness of the Southern Italy coast. 

Until next time,

Xoxo

International Kitty

Ps. Wednesday is our half way point. WHHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE YOU CANT MAKE ME LEAVEEEEEEEEE