Spring Break!! Rome, Corfu, Athens!

My first impression of Rome was horrible thanks to a cab driver who charged us 30 euros for a five minute taxi ride! I was yelling at him in Spanish which, of course, did us no good since we were in Italy where ITALIAN is the main language. Good grief.

The hotel that we stayed in, though, was really nice and centrally located--literally 10 minutes from the Colosseum. We went on our own walking tour and visited the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, and we walked around until we found a place to eat. Italy was just how I expected it to be: beautifully rustic and quaint. I remember seeing photographs of the cobblestone streets and the light from the lamps that outline silhouettes of couples as they walk around in Trastevere. Rome, at least, is exatly that. There were people doing side-walk art with bright colors.

And the gelato! Oh my goodness, if heaven could be bottled up and mass-produced in edible material, it would be the nutella-flavored gelato I had at this gelateria. The older man who was selling it was so confident: he said that if we didn't like it, we wouldn't have to pay him. I was tempted to just tell him that I disliked it, but how can you hide such bliss? I figured being honest was the way to go: I've been raised to be a good girl.

We left for Corfu the next day and took an overnight cruise to get there. It was the first time I've ever been on a cruise ship and it was definitely an experience. There were four bars/restaurants on the ship, a pool and hot tub (which unfortunately weren't working...dang), cabins and airseats. The partying that was going on within our group of students was absolutely absurd. People were literally drinking every single second of every single day of this entire trip! And they started with this night on the boat. There was also a club on the ship, which we didn't realize until 10:30 rolled around and we started hearing old American pop songs playing very loudly. We went upstairs and sure enough, there was a little dance floor that was bathed in light blue light like something out of a really bad teenage romance movie. There were these five or so really really inebriated Polish guys who were trying to dance with all the girls on our spring break trip. And boy were they drunk! They kept on pulling my hand to dance with them and they kept on doing all these weird outdated moves (I swear, some of them must have been 65-70 years old....). At one point, one of the guys was dancing so hard that he fell to the ground for a second and scared us all half to death because we thought he was going to have a heart attack. I have to admit, I've never had that kind of worry before on a dance floor.
Anyway, the night passed by in a very entertaining fashion and by morning we had arrived to Corfu. We took buses to our hotel which was called the Pink Palace. It is literally this huge bright pink building located right on the water. It had a spectacular view, though being a person who never even wears the color pink, staying at a Barney-level pink hotel called the "Pink Palace" was a little too much at times. The moment we arrived, we changed into our bathing suits and went down by the water. It was too cold to go into the ocean so we lounged by the jacuzzi area. It was so warm and so refreshing to not be in cold rainy weather! We had gyros at the restaurant (you could get two for five euro, such a good deal!) and were fed a three-course meal and danced the night away.
We spent the rest of our time in Corfu doing things that ranged from walking along the beach, sunbathing, swimmming, and best of all: ATVing! We rented ATVs at the hotel and went around the island, up into the mountain area and down into Corfu-town. It was quite possibly my favorite experience from this entire semester! I loved being in control of my own mode of transportation after having been so reliant on public transportation and not only that, it was great to be able to do our own exploring. It was a group of six and we decided to get three two-person ATVs.

After a few hours of riding around, we stopped at a little store and ate ice cream. Later on that night was the Pink Palace toga party where we all wear pink togas (rented at the front desk), danced our butts off, and got to see traditional Greek dances, complete with breaking plates over people's head and drinking Ouzo (this black licorice-flavored hard alcohol....gross...). Altogether, it might have been one of my best days in Europe.

After that we left for Athens. The first day we got there, we got a walking tour of the city, the Acropolis, the Temple of Zeus and the Olympic stadium. It was very warm while we were there too. That night, we had a traditional Greek meal with tzatziki sauce (I swear I'm addicted now), pita bread, lamb, chicken and an unlimited amount of white and red wine. Everyone was ridiculous. I met a couple of nice guys from Germany at the bar that we all went to aftewards: in general, its been an amazing experience meeting people from everywhere. Traveling not only lets you learn about different cultures, but you also meet so many interesting people!
I spent the next day with the tour guides of Euroadventures, where I intern, and we basically spent a good 5 hours eating food. Since they bring so much business to the local restaurants, the owner of a bunch of them invited us over and gave us free food the entire time. He kept on bringing us pita bread, gyros, these delicious roasted onions with cinnamon and tomatoes, ouzo, white wine, etc. I was incredibly full. Then later on that night, they took us to their favorite restaurant in Athens where we literally feasted. Since i've been eating so much dorm food here, I forgot what good food tasted like. It was amazing. I could not have been more content.

We left the following day for Rome again, so we went back on the overnight cruise (which was much more fun this time since we fully took part in the festivities) and once we arrived back in Rome, we went to an amazing meal at this incredibly popular restaurant called Toni's (How many of those do you think there are in italy? I feel like every Italian place in America is called Tony...or Luigi...or Romeo....or Pappa something). Anyway, the food there was very, very good.

All in all, the trip was fabulous, but it was so nice to get back to the comfort of Barcelona and to the people I missed in the city. But what a fantastic spring break. I'll never forget it.