Verona

Well, my chill time in Verona has been WONDERFUL. I intentionally chose to stay in a city that is simply cute but without a lot to do so that I could just stay in one place and relax. The past two weeks have definitely taken a lot out of me, so I was grateful for the chance to re-charge my batteries a bit!

On Wednesday I just hopped on a train with my handy dandy Eurail pass and went to the alps for lunch! Walking around Trento was FABULOUS and they had a bunch of discount shops which I perused. I decided to spend a little bit of money to get some leg warmers so that my jeans would be held up and out of the water on the ground AND my ankles and calves would be kept warm in a fashionable way (um EVERYONE here wears leg warmers ... I don't QUITE have the shoes to pull it off, but whatever), a pretty shirt for Valentine's Day, and a coat ... all for LESS THAN 50 EUR!!!! MAJOR SCORE!!! I then walked through a bird park that had a GIANT statue of a duck made of wood!! It was like a Trojan duck!! Where are the Greeks???? After being attacked by pigeons, I decided that it was time to get on the train to Bologna for dinner (it's a 3 hour train ride). I got to Bologna and it was sleeting!!! I wandered around, and almost killed myself sliding into the street on the ice, and found this cute little spaghetteria! I had AMAZING spaghetti bolognese in the place of it's invention!! SOOOO good!!!! Then it was time to catch a train back to sleepy Verona!

On Thursday morning, I met some GREAT girls who were staying in the B&B over breakfast! We decided that we wanted to all do dinner together later in the day, so we met up in the dining room around 7:30 and headed out into the cold Verona evening. Walking around the city with them was a lot of fun!! They're all about my age and teaching English in France, 30 minutes outside of Paris. It was funny, because we all got along really well and just CLICKED, despite the fact that we had only known each other a few hours! I really love it when you just have an instant connection with people! We all had a GREAT night out with EXCELLENT food and wine (which was perfect, because I'm treating it like my "farewell, Italy" dinner as tonight I plan on going to bed SUPER early. It's REALLY tempting to walk around Milan to see all the shops and the beautiful fashionable people ... but I don't think that I really want to torture myself ... PLUS I have to catch a 6am train to Paris tomorrow and I would like to not be COMPLETELY dead when I have to find Justin in Gare du Nord (um, only the largest train station in Europe ... possibly the world ... thank GOODNESS he's a tall man!!). I haven't seen him in 4 months and I am SO beyond words excited to get to spend time with him in Paris and London, two of my favorite cities!! I think that we're going to spend Sunday (i.e Valentine's Day) at Versailles and possibly go to the Eiffel Tower tomorrow night. I'm PETRIFIED of heights, but hopefully it won't be TOO bad at night where all I can really see are the pretty lights. lol We'll see about that ....

Today the plan was to get up at 8, take a shower, clean and pack things up, have breakfast and check out in time to catch an 11am train to Milan. Things have not gone as planned. When the alarm went off at 8 there was NO way that I was getting out of bed, so I reset the alarm for 9. I did, in fact wake up at 9 and went out to the dining room for breakfast and saw my friends from the night before. We exchanged email addresses to find each other on Facebook (ahh social networking ...) and by the time I looked at my watch it was 9:30. Check out is at 10:30 ... whoops. So no time for a shower ... so I through my stuff in the bags and got everything packed up with 15 minutes to spare, went downstairs to find the guy who runs the place ... and he was NO WHERE to be found. Stellar. So now I'm sitting in the dining room with my computer, availing myself of the free wireless internet and water. Unfortunately the milk in the cappuccino machine ran out ... MAJOR bummer. Oh well, looks like I'm going to be sitting around for a while in Verona ... no worries for me! I have my computer, I have internet ... I'm a happy camper!!!

I won't have internet in Milan, but I have my travel journal so I will post an update on Paris and London when I reach Dublin as I think that I will have internet there, at least for the first night!!!