Milan

I went to Milan with Laila and Avanti the same weekend I was in Verona. We took a very early train into Milan, and had the train station hold our luggage because Avanti and I were going to fly back to Rome late that night. The first thing we did in Milan was visit the Cathedral of Santa Maria. It’s the 2^nd largest catholic cathedral in the worl, and it was stunning with it’s off white stone carved architecture. We climbed to the top of this cathedral and got one of the best views of Milan. I quickly realized that this city was more industrialized and had a lot more taller and modern buildings then other cities I had visited. After the cathedral, we had lunch at a generic pizza chain restaurant and the pizza was not the best I’ve had. We walked around Milan a little bit, examining various monuments and statues before dedicating the rest of the day looking at high-end designer shops. Being the fashion capitol of the world, I expected top of the line stores, where my mouth would drop because the products and the stores would look so amazing. Well, let’s just say I was disappointed. It was really fun visiting my favorite designers – Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci, etc but I was envious at the hundreds of people I saw carrying shopping bags from those stores. Buying something there was not exactly in the budget….but, I did find myself a red trench coat from MANGO for spring. It was on sale, and I was so sick of taking pictures in my purple coat so I was very satisfied with my purchase. The only other thing to do in Milan was to see the famous painting by Leonardo Da Vinci – the last supper. Except, Sunday was the once day where the museum was not open. The last thing on our agenda was to check out these so called designer outlets that were located a little out of the city. We took three separate trains to get there, only to realize it was a small department store that had random designer things on sale. In other words, it couldn’t even compete with Nordstrom rack. So, that was the end of Milan. I’m glad I took a day to tour the city and see what people call the fashion world – but I wasn’t entirely impressed. 

Verona

For the second week in March, I decided to travel to Verona – the town depicted in Romeo & Juliet. I went to see my friend Laila, and our friend Avanti that flew in for Spring Break. I had the genius idea to hop on my train and then call my friend Laila and tell her to pick me up at the train station, instead of calling her beforehand and giving her the details.…….Two minutes into the train ride, I realized that I had forgotten my phone. This was my first trip alone, I did not have her phone number, I did not remember any phone number, my phone had no internet, and I was going to get into Verona at 10pm with no map or Italian skills. (Both which I’ve decided to ignore in an attempt to just have fun and treat this semester as a vacation). So, I hopped off the train and went to the McDonald’s in the train station – which claimed it had wifi. The goal was to get on facebook (from my iphone – which I never forget).and message Laila – or ask one of my roommates to call her from my phone left at home to call Laila and tell her to COME AND CLAIM ME. Nobody spoke English, and I apparently needed my Italian phone to connect. This man attempted to help me for 30 minutes as I sat there debating to get a hotel for the night, before Laila rushed in. If you know me, very often do I show excitement – this was one of those times. Somehow she had communicated with my roommates and figured out I had left my phone at home. I spent the next two nights in her apartment, which was big and really cute. The next day she had class, so I was left alone to explore Verona for 4 hours on my own. I walked to Piazza Bra, which was lined with designer shops and nice restaurants that overlooked the beautiful arena. The arena is a mini colosseum basically. I also went to Piazza Erbe and looked at the tent shops. Afterwards, Laila and I made a delicious homemade Italian dinner – complete with store bought chocolate bread. We made plans for the next day and for our day trip to Milan. On Saturday, we were walking past castel vecchio (bridge to a famous castle) when I saw a lovely sign that Romeo and Juliet was being filmed. Upon investigation, Laila and I discovered that Ed Westwick – CHUCK EFFING BASS was there playing the role of Tybalt. I told Laila we would be spending the whole day there waiting for him to come out – seeing him would be the highlight of my study abroad experience – and I got very lucky! After pondering around the area for 45 minutes, we saw him come out all dressed in medieval attire with long hair. Not going to lie, it took me a while to recognize him – but my friend Laila finally convinced me it was him. We tried to get autographs since there was not a huge crowd, but we couldn’t get through security. Nonetheless, I was VERY content J. Afterwards, we went to Juliet’s House and I went inside and took pictures on her famous balcony. The house contained a ton of furniture and costumes from the original movies, as well as several paintings of Romeo and Juliet compiled by artists throughout the year. I did not write a letter to Juliet wishing for a long lost lover, but I did rub her breasts on a statue to get good luck in finding a lover in the nearby future. Afterwards, we went and picked up our friend Avanti from the train station and went back home to freshen up. We choose a very authentic Italian place for dinner, and I was nervous to go because I knew the vegetarian options would be limited. I got a glass of red wine from the Veneto region, an appetizer that was squash baked with sweet cheese, and a pasta dish that tasted like smoked leaves. It was not the best meal I had ever had, but it was a good experience. As the 3 of us were walking home, we encountered one of the best things ever. There was a carneval festival happening in one of the main piazzas in Verona! It was really, really amazing, for a small town like Verona. There were dozens of large floats playing fun music, hundreds of dancers going around in a parade, musicians and magicians walking around doing tricks and throwing prizes and confetti at people and more. I “got confettied” about 5 times without expecting it – and I actually enjoyed it without being concerned about how I would get it off my coat and out of my hair. At one point, two of the performers came over to pick me up and pour confetti all over my hair. We stood around, took pictures and blew bubbles for a while before trekking our way back to Laila’s apartment. We were so happy to randomly run into the festival, because it was a great ending to my time in Verona. 

Budapest

I was super pumped for this trip, because Budapest has many Turkish baths and I heard that everything in the city would be cheaper. The Turkish baths were outdoor and indoor baths that are naturally heated, and many of them are medicinal baths with natural minerals that help your body relax and improve skin. (Not like I ever knew this before the trip). We flew in late Thursday night and flew our late Sunday evening, so it was the perfect amount of time. The weather was finally getting warmer, but we still needed coats and boots! I went with five of my other friends and we stayed at a Best Western on the Pest side – Buda and Pest are divided by the Danube river. The day began with a cappuccino, chocolate pastry and a bottle of water – which to my shock came out to be only $3.50. (Twice as cheap as anything in Rome). We did a free walking tour of Budapest that lasted about two hours. The tour guide was extremely wise and told us great stories about the locations. We visited the main square, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the US embassy, a monument attributed to soviet soldiers that had died in WWII, and the parliament building. The parliament building was really big and beautiful – and apparently one of the 100 wonders of the world and one of the largest in Europe. We really wanted to come back and tour the inside on Saturday, but unfortunately all the tickets for the tours were sold out and you couldn’t wander in and look around without a guide. After this tour, we found a place called the Hummus Bar and I was SOOO excited to have falafel and hummus! Since this was the day of Unofficial, we wanted to start drinking in the early afternoon. We went barhopping around Budapest, and ended up at the number 2 best rated bar by Lonely Planet - Szimpla Kert. It wasn’t elegant with lots of drink options like you would expect. Instead, it was a ruins pub that was three  stories big with falls full of graffiti and old artistic looking junk everywhere. I actually really liked it and had a lot of fun there that night. Towards the end of the night, I came across guys from a bachelor party who were flying in from Capetown, it was a lot of fun talking with them and telling them inappropriate things. We ended up joining their bachelor party until the next bar – at which point we decided it was late and time to go home. The next day we woke up and went to the large market hall to check out Hungarian spices, foods and other bakery treats. It was a really big indoor market, and I picked up postcards and some desserts here. Next, we went inside Saint Stephen’s Cathedral and saw his preserved hand in one of the back rooms from 1058. It was pretty cool but kind of weird. Everyone wanted to visit a famous underground cave, so we spent the rest of the afternoon taking a tour inside one. I had never been in a cave before so it was an interesting experience. We also went up Fisherman’s bastion and the Buda Castle which were up on a hill. We got panoramic views of Budapest, watched the sun go down, and enjoyed freshly baked cinnamon bread. In the evening, we walked across the famous chain bridge and went to a typical Hungarian restaurant. Hungary is known for meat dishes, so I knew I wouldn’t find much to eat – I actually ate a dish that had fried cheese with rice and tarter sauce….not the best. Our agenda for the night was to visit the number 1 rated bar in the world – called A38, which was a bar/club on a big boat. It was really cool to be on a club in a boat, but it was not what we expected. We ended the night by returning to Szimpla Kert. Our last day in Budapest was planned to be very relaxing. We went to the Szechenyi Baths, one of the best known baths in all of Budapest that had over 2 dozen different types of baths indoors and outdoors. The outdoors ones were mostly hot water – warmed naturally by spring water. It was really nice going into this enormous hot tub because the weather outside was cold. I also tried several of the indoor baths – ones that had natural minerals or were medicinal. It was an interesting experience, because I was not going into pools or water that had any chlorine. I ended my trip to Budapest with an hour long massage – that was half the price of what it would be in the states. 

Naples

On the last weekend of February, we were scheduled to go to a cheese farm for the entire day, so I did not travel out of Italy. But, I did take a day trip to Naples on Saturday. This trip began rough – on Thursday I had attempted my first “outdoor running” experience, and on Friday afternoon I had hiked up some steep hills to get to the cheese farm. On Friday night it was one of my friend’s birthday, so we were out at a club until 2am. So, waking up at 8am and taking a 3 hour train into Naples was not ideal. Every muscle from my waist down was aching from my two days of rough physical activity. (haha J ) I traveled to Naples only with my one roommate and her boyfriend because everyone else was feeling “too sick” and decided they would see Naples another time. The first thing we did when we left the train station was search for the ever famous pizzeria – Da Michele. Naples is where pizza was first created, so it is home to some of the best tasting pizza in the world. The pizzeria Da Michele is the one that Julia Roberts eats at in Eat, Pray & Love (and obvi same one from the book). The outside of this pizzeria was extremely crowded, and we went and got a number to wait to eat inside. After an hour and a half later and a big misunderstanding, we quickly came to realize that it would be about 3 more hours before we could actually sit down and eat. I was pretty frustrated, so I decided to take the pizza as “take away” (as they call it in Italy) and eat it on the side of the street like a homeless person. The streets of Naples are much dirtier than any streets I’ve seen before, and there are no benches. I didn’t care, I quickly gobbled up the pizza. It was sooo soooo good. I ate it so fast that I felt a little sick afterwards, but I continued two blocks before I decided I needed some gelato. We walked around Naples for a couple hours, but it was very dirty, kind of shady, and not very beautiful. Walking down the mall area was nice – that is where I saw a Michael Jackson impersonator. He not only danced like MJ, but he legit looked like him. Sketch. But this one of my favorite things that happened in Naples. Because there was nothing else really special about it. We walked into this piazza del Plebiscito, which was beautiful in architecture – especially at night. It was one of the few places that did not have massive amounts of graffiti everywhere. Afterwards we walked around Castel Nuovo, trying to kill time before our 8:30 train ride home. We got in a bus to head back to the train station and witnessed a dangerous “domestic” fight. A 200 pound woman and a skinny man were literally clawing each other, pulling out each other’s hairs and pulling off things like coats and shoes. As scary as it was, I was more concerned about the fact that we were taking the bus without buying a bus ticket and if the police came to end this fight, we would all be checked. Typical of me, I know. We decided to get off the bus and took a cab back to the train station. I knew I would be hungry so I decided to get McDonald’s at the train station. They had a hard time understanding “a burger without meat but with all the veggies”. This fiasco ended with me yelling at about 3 people until my order was right. Finally, we hopped on the bus to make it back to Rome.

Super cool that I ate at the famous pizzeria, but Naples will never see me ever again. Also, for some reason there were SO MANY INDIAN people in Naples – Rome has like none…..except for the hundreds of single, weird Indian men that are street vendors and gawk at me because there is no other Indian girl in the city of Rome. 

Vienna - Austria

I didn’t really know much about Vienna-Austria, but I fell in love with this city after spending just three days there. Let me tell you that a lot of this blog and my pictures for Vienna consist of PASTRIES – since Austria is known for them. (Or I just really have a sweet tooth). The trip started with me being the only person out of 8 to check a suitcase in. FINALLY we were going to travel on an airline that didn’t have restrictions where I could only bring a backpack unless I wanted to pay like $40. The short plane ride also gave us a snack – “toasted wheat bread with cottage cheese and slices of tomato”. One bite and I was done. We got into Vienna at about 11pm, but we were all kind of hungry. We walked around and found an open restaurant. I ordered a mushroom and potato soup and an apple strudel. While I really was enjoying the soup, I quickly realized it had some kind of meat in it – oops. I “returned” the soup and demanded I don’t pay for it….which I didn’t. The apple strudel is really well known in Vienna, and it was really good. It was warm and came with vanilla ice cream.

We began the next morning with BAGELS. Everyone was excited for this because Italy has no bagels and is not big on breakfast. I got a bagel with egg and cheese, which was extremely satisfying. Next, we ventured into the city part of Vienna and came across the Stephansdom. It was an intricate gothic church that basically towers over Vienna. We climbed over 300 stairs to get to the top of one of the church’s tower, and got to see a great view of Vienna. Although, it was nothing comparable to the duoma view in Florence. Afterwards, we walked around and visited a few more churches and random monuments. Vienna has two big palaces, one of them being Hofsburg. We walked around the area of the palace, which was really pretty and we made plans to come back the next day to tour the inside of it. We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping around in Vienna – there was a forever 21 store, which was really exciting since I haven’t visited one in over a month. I only bought a necklace because nothing seemed super appealing. For dinner we went to a restaurant called Figl-Muller, which was suggested in guidebooks to have the best wiener schnitzels. (This is fried veal). I obviously was not eating any since I don’t eat meat, but all my friends were super excited to try it. It looked really good, but I was content with the potato salad and greens that I ordered for dinner. Afterwards, we stopped at a chain bakery store called Aida for some dessert. Aida is decorated in cheesy pink and white colors, but it had some great pastries! I decided to buy two since I had only had a light dinner. I got a fruit tarte looking dessert and a sacher torte. The sacher torte is a dry chocolate cake with chocolate frosting mixed in with jam. It is apparently considered “the classiest chocolate cake in the world”. Both of the pastries were good, but not the best that I have ever had. (Starting to become a pastry snob).

That night we wanted to go out so we headed to the nearest DESPAR (name for grocery stores throughout Italy and some of Europe). I picked up 3 different Austrian beers to try, and they were all pretty good. Italy doesn’t require you to be of a certain age or have an ID, so we all headed out to a bar without any identification only to get to the bar and realize that they weren’t going to let us in. I was pretty mad and made the usual snobby comments to the bouncer, but we had no choice but to trek back to the hotel. Apparently, Austria works more like the US. We made a pit stop at McDonald’s for some snacks and  “emergency” bathroom usage. (We’ll just leave it at that).

The next day we woke up and decided to hit up the Naschmarket for “brunch”. It is a very famous market in Vienna that has dozens and dozens of food and flea market type of stands. The first thing I did was buy a pastry – a poppyseed glazed roll…which was really good! This market also had several small shops, restaurants and other street vendors. I was shocked to see that there were Indian products everywhere. I was so happy when I saw some of the stands selling falafel. How I had missed spicy food that was NOT Italian. The market also handed out tons of small free samples of things like dried fruit, olives, vegetables, meats, etc.

After brunch we headed to the Belvedere Palace – which was absolutely gorgeous. We spent a lot of time taking pictures here. I really wanted to tour the inside, but came to learn that it consisted mostly of paintings and we wouldn’t get to see any of the personal things like bedrooms and such. Afterwards we walked back to the Hofburg Palace and took a tour of the inside. We viewed the living apartments of Emperor Francis Joseph and his wife Empress Elizabeth. They had most of the original furniture and many things such as the empress’s jewels, letters, and clothes preserved in show cases. We did a walking audio tour, and it was really interesting to learn about the Empress Elizabeth’s life, including her tragic death that occurred when she was killed at a young age. While the furniture looked very royal, I was surprised to see that the rooms were all much smaller then I would have anticipated. We also viewed hundreds of pieces of gold, silver and bronze silver wear that was used by the rich people in Vienna, or given as gifts to famous Austrian government officials. After touring the palace, we did some souvenir shopping for postcards and chocolate. Austria is home of Mozart – and there are these famous chocolate candies called Mozartballs that EVERYONE was obsessed with. I did not find them as tasteful as the others did, so I stuck to just trying one and saving my calories for the pastries.

For dinner, me and a couple other girls went to a pub called 15/16 for veggie burgers and it was FANTASTIC. Afterwards, we walked to the Rathaus – which is a really pretty towns hall building that has a gigantic ice rink in front of it. The building literally looks like a palace and is even prettier during the night. There were also food vendors, drink vendors and people playing musical instruments around the area. We spent a few hours just hanging out here, people watching, and drinking hot wine with cinnamon. It was one of those “happy moments” where you realize how much you love your life.

The next day we had a late afternoon flight back to Rome so there was not time to do too much. There was a Marilyn Monroe exhibition close to our hotel, and I really wanted to go in and explore but nobody else wanted to so I gave up on it. Some day!!!! The day began with a visit to Aida for some good pastries. Vienna is known for plum pancakes, but since I never got a chance to try those I decided to get the next best thing – a plum turnover. It was really good, and one of my favorite pastries from Vienna! Afterwards, we walked to the Hunderwasser House and Museum. Hundertwasser was an artist famous for his abstract art. His house was kind of cool to see, but not worth the walk over. As we started to head back to the hotel, we saw Vienna’s amusement park which is home to the world’s oldest working Ferris Wheel. It was about to rain, and everyone knows how much I hate rain. Me and a few other girls quickly hailed a taxi and went back to our hotel.

Before heading to the airport, we decided to do lunch in the bagel shop again. I got a bagel and some tea – I’m really starting to become a tea person these days (YAY LESLIE). We were kind of running late to the airport – and some of the girls were really stressed and freaking out about missing the flight. Somehow I’ve become a calm and laid back person on this trip, and the only thing that’s really freaked me out or made me upset is sleeping in the hostels for my first two travels. Even with my checked bag, unorganized purse full of travel documents, and new leather boots that are hard to zip and unzip – I was the first one to get through all of security and be checked in. We made our flight perfectly fine, and I even had time to buy a really good chocolate candy bar before boarding the plane back to Rome.

Yes, I realize that all these sweets are not doing good things for my body.