this summer i am attending a study abroad program called semeser at sea. We will visist 7 countries including Greece, Italy, Morocco, Spain, Turkey, Croatia, and Portugal. I am taking 3 classes and will be living on a cruise ship.
I cant remember everything in my last post so im sorry if I repeat myself. I know I posted about Rome so I will continue from there. After Rome we went on to Florence, which I absolutely fell in love with! Rome was beautiful but Florence felt more homey and is somewhere I would want to live. When we arrived we headed to our hostel to put our bags down and discovered a very nice room. The bathroom was shared between all the rooms and the shower had the toilet in it. How strange!! Then we went to the oldest bridge in Florence and the castle and gardens where the Medici family lived. The next morning we headed to the leather market (not so good for the budget) and then took a bus to a winery. We had the cutest tour guide and met some other people from the states who knew what semester at sea was! We took a tour of the beautiful grounds and then got to taste the wine. We tried three wines, olive oil on bread, and a vinaigrette dressing with cheese. Yummy!!! I really wanted to bring some olive oil home but they were running low so you couldn’t but any. (sorry mom and grandma) That evening we took a train and headed ot the port hwere the ship was. When we got off the train we stopped at a pizza place and met up with some other SAS students. We had to be back on the ship at 9pm so we headed to the bus stop around 7:45. It was supposed to come every 10 minutes so my 8:15 we decided to just walk to the ship. It didn’t look far at all, but ended up being around three miles (yikes!) We made it to the ship RIGHT before 9 and there was some running involved. I slept great that night and the next morning we went to the Amalfe coast. The bus ride there was quite scary!! More than one time I thought we were going straight over the mountain. But we had the most gorgeous views and it was so neat to see towns built into mountain sides. The beach had rocks instead of sand, but Amalfe was a very cute town and had pizza and gelato which is all I need. We reunited with our group (9 of us girls)that night and the next day we went to Capri. We rented a boat with a tour guide and he took us around to all the caves and we swam and tanned and climbed all day. I was able to put my underwater camera to good use and got some very neat pictures. It was a very relaxing day and Rachael and I took the tram up to central Capri before heading home. On our final day we went to Pompeii and climbed Mt. Vesuvius. It was nice to be in tennis shoes and athletic shorts and ot be sweating from physical exertion instead of just sweating because its hot. The way up Mt. Vesuvius our legs were burning and the way down we were sliding everywhere on the gravel! Pompeii was cool but I wish we could have stayed for longer. We ran out of time so we didn’t get too much out of the experience. Italy was indescribable. It was more than I ever imagined it would be and I will definitely be returning!
We have had two days on the boat and I have had a test on both days. (so much coffee has been consumed to stay up and study) Yesterday I saw dolphins jumping and saw a whale which was awesome. Lunch was delicious today ( a nice change), and tomorrow we will be in Croatia!
