Family Vacation! (With the Medveds)

First, a bit of business. I have reached the limits of a free Flickr account and rather than upgrade to a pretty account, as pretty as they are, I'm switching to my dormant Picasa account. Shockingly, I encountered a fair amount of problems uploading the web albums and had to resurrect my troubleshooting skills. Who knew there was any flaw in Google at all?

So now I'm in the process of organizing albums from past trips. Here's Sardinia and the Amalfi Coast in pictures and from a while back, Amsterdam, Paris, and Gtown's Spring Break in London.

Now onto the Amalfi coast vacation. Much like Sardinia, this trip offered an experience that differed from the typical student travel that I've been doing and will be doing for the rest of break. There weren't really museums to visit, although we did visit the Archaeological Museum in Naples. Never before have I been surrounded by so many phallic images. Penis pendants on necklaces, penis earings, flying penis statues WITH penises, penis wall adornments, and of course erotic frescos and statues, all from Pompei. Naples was the only real city we went to on the trip, and I think we were all glad that it was a brief visit. Besides for the garbage on the streets, check out this TIME photo gallery to get the full and shocking picture, I was a little taken aback by the traffic. Never before have I heard sustained honking and beeping for such a duration of time. It was a fun experience though.

Naples was only one day out of ten, but it's hard to recap where I've been. Most of the towns on the Amalfi coast are very small and vertical with windy roads connecting them and they tend to blend in my mind unless I have a certain restaurant or villa to distinguish one from the other. We stayed in two villas in a town called Positano, supposedly the most vertical town in the world? In Italy? Facts are fuzzy. Right outside our door (literally) was a hike to Ciello (I think), an extremely small town directly above us. 2000 steps later, we were there and having lunch in a small trattoria where we could see the three famous rocks of Capris. Ok, I won't go through everything and everywhere I went, but highlights include Pompei, the small hike up and around Mt. Vesuvius, the stair hike, and the drive around the island of Capri. Food and gelatto were another major highlight. I was constantly well fed, tummy well-stocked with local seafood, pastas, tomatoes, and mozzarella.

The Medved's know how to vacation and have a good time, and I was lucky enough to be along for the ride. I've got to say, I haven't laughed that hard on a daily basis since I've been back at Georgetown and that was a good feeling to have again. It was also nice to be around "family" again; they weren't mine but I felt adopted for the time being.

So now... I rest for a week and sort out my business. In good news, I will be back in DC by June 16th and semi-employed. Alright. A picture says a thousand words, so check 'em out. Hope to talk to everyone while I'm back in London.

Sardinia (and more) Recap

Hello loyal readers (aka immediate family, select Gtown friends, and facebook stalkers)!

I'm back from my week in Sardinia and following a 15-hour sleep, I'm ready to discuss. Let me start with the week leading up to Sardinia, which was a bit of an adventure in itself. Only four days after the hospital visit, I took the Eurostar to Paris with Jared. I know what you're thinking. Questionable decisions in the wake of sickness. BUT Jared and I had already bought tickets weeks earlier and I was feeling okay to eat, so there was no sense in wasting our tickets. We hopped the yellow tour bus for convenient site-seeing and hit up Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Monmarte, Musee D'Orsay, and the Arc de Triumphe. We did drive-bys of the Champs Elysee (walked it a little), the Paris Opera House, the Louvre, and lots of things that I would butcher the pronunciation of. We witnessed a fun little scuffle between what I think was a gypsy and a French couple. Unfortunately, the only word I could understand was "Fuck" but fisticuffs nearly erupted. There was wrist-grabbing and fist-shaking and purse-pulling and money-thrusting... all you can really ask for as a spectator. Our French breakfast was top notch. Bread with more bread and coffee. Mmmm.

We met up with a Gtown friend, fellow D6-er Reed, who's studying in Science Po for the semester. We went to dinner with him... and then we missed our Eurostar back home, the last one leaving for London that night. After running through the streets of Paris to find a cab and rushing to the platform, I was a little flustered and disheartened. But my sad face plus Jared's earned some French sympathy and they did some magic with our tickets so that we wouldn't have to pay for new ones the next morning. We made the most of the unexpected night in Paris, catching the Eiffel Tower as it sparkled and squeezing another crepe into our bellies. But... I will say that I was completely exhausted the next morning arriving to London at 8AM. Whew.

Onto Sardinia. I don't necessarily know what to say about it, because the anecdotes come as naturally when the setting is nature versus cities. But it has definitely been my favorite trip of this year abroad. The other cities have been good, but it was nice to not have any sites that I was obligated to see, etc. Also, the whole trip was kind of arranged for me and I didn't have much thinking to do. I got in the car when I was told and followed the leader when we hiked to climbs. Other flatmates did the cooking (whew) and I tried not to be a bum with cleaning and other helpful activities.

I think I'll let the pictures speak for themselves (I'm the climber in the picture above). I did 5 days of climbing with 1 rest day, but some days I literally sat around the whole time and climbed only 1 route. One day we had to hike uphill for an hour and a half... and I huffed and puffed the whole way up but it was good for me. I was away from the internet for the longest time in a while and it was refreshing, for the most part, to have other things to do and think about. It softened the blow of the Hoyas loss to Davidson in the Tourney, because my heart wasn't in it for the whole thing.

I just enjoyed hanging out and eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner with people again. It felt good to have that kind of community feeling again compared to the daily isolation of life at LSE. The group that came on the trip was really international. In my flat alone, there were two Norwegians, a Polish girl, and a French girl. Other climbers were Finnish, Colombian, American, Canadian, German, Belgian, Chinese, and British. You definitely don't get this in the states, as "international" as Georgetown is.

Alright, so enjoy these pictures if you feel like looking. They're not in order somehow... but you'll get the idea. Also, if you can't recognize me from behind, I'm always wearing khaki or grey trousers with a brown-ish chalk bag and yellow shoes; my helmet is blue. Next stop: Positano, Italy. Ciao for now.

Sardinia Pictures