Lucca and Milan

so I haven't updated in awhile but the past few days have been quite eventful. Since Wednesday was the start of my weekend, Nick, Lauren, Stella and I decided to go out. At first we were all tired and a little weary, but about 5 minutes into our walk, we could already tell it was going to be a great night. We're on our way to a disco and we see this huge crowd forming outside of this back door, all like waving pieces of paper and CD's in someones face. Turns out its an Italian celebrity named MANGO (pronounced mongo)that everyone was going crazy over. So we took a picture of him, and continued on our way.

Shortly after we ran into these 4, 40 year old tourists who were just looking to have a good time. They were looking for the disco, TWICE, and we were like nahhh don't go there (cause its terrible). So they're like, "well where are you going?" and we tell them 21, and they're like "ohhh wow, thats twice our age!" But, disregarding their age, they came with us. The people at the door thought it was so cute that we were "bringing our parents out". So these people were definitely the oldest ones in there by far. One of them was on his two week leave from Iraq, so I'm guessing that his wife and friends met him in Italy for vacation so it would be easier for him. Anyways, they were dancing like fools, and everyone was staring, but it didn't matter because it was great for a laugh. On the walk home we pass a police car, and our feet really hurt so we asked them for a ride home. HAHA they were like SURE, but proceeded to tell us that if anything happened, we had to jump out of the car, and if anyone asked, we were lost and didnt know how to get home. So they dropped us off at the end of our street, took a picture with us, and were on their way.

Thursday was a day of homework. Friday, Lauren and I got up somewhat early and went to the trainstation to meet Nick in hopes of going to Verona, where the Romeo and Juliet platform is. The train times were too late, and we wanted to be able to spend enough time there to see everything and not have to rush. So we picked a random place, and decided on Lucca. The train ride there was interesting seeing as there was a man sitting my himself, making farting noises with his mouth for his own entertainment, and then laughing at himself. When we got there, we were a little concerned because it just seemed like a quiet, dead town, with nothing to see. We were wrong. A few left turns and we were brought into the most BEAUTIFUL picture we have ever seen. It was more country-ish, and just amazing. We ate lunch in a cute little pizzaria, and then decided to rent bikes. It was only 2.50 for an hour. Lauren and I thought it would be a good idea to get one of those 2 people bikes. It wasn't. We got on and stuggled for about 5 minutes to even get it going, and after nearly falling twice, or steering straight into traffic while Nick was laughing at us, we brought back the bike, and each got our own.

After Friday, I realized that the expression "it's like riding a bike" doesn't make sense, because you can TOTALLY forget how to ride a bike. It took me soooo long to get used to it. I was jerking all over the place and having a really hard time balancing and slowing down when I needed to. But despire that, the bike trail was beautiful and made a complete circle around Lucca and we were able to do two laps. Such a pretty place, and no tourists. The underestimated places seem to have the most hidden treasures.

We did not go out Friday night seeing as we had to wake up extremely early the next morning to meet for our Milan train at 6:45. I slept the entire train ride there. I have to say, I wasn't impressed with Milan. I mean the Cathedral was beautiful because its one of the only Gothic style churches in Italy, but I wasn't that fond of the city itself. It reminded me a lot of NYC, and I felt like everything I saw there I could have seen at home. People were rude everywhere we went and we had TERRIBLE seats for the ballet. What i saw of the dancers were beautiful, and the opera house was insanely gorgeous, but it's not something that I ever need to do again. It was some sort of carnivale in Milan that day, and there were kids EVERYWHERE in every sort of costume you could imagine. Confetti and silly string everywhere, and absolute chaos. Stella, Lauren and I got sprayed with sillystring towards the end of the day, and were not happy about it.


My favorite part of the day though was when, these people ran up to us on the street and grabbed our hands, and put corn in it and raised our hands up in the air, and had pigeons swarm around and eat out of our hands. I at one point had 3 pigeons perched on my air, eating out of my hand. After that they of course tried to get money out of us, but our trip leader yelled at them in Italian and they left us alone. Then people would come up to us, tie a string bracelet on our hands and be like "ok now give me money." HAHAHA, NO! So we all have a bracelet, and needless to say, they did not get any money.