My one and a half week of school vacation started in the picturesque, bicycle-driven city of Amsterdam in The Netherlands. I stayed with my friend, Jessica, who is an au pair (nanny) for a Dutch family.
In one weekend, we managed to take a boat tour, visit
Anne Frank's house and museum, walk down the
Red Light District, take pictures with the large
"I amsterdam" letters and eat the infamous Dutch pancakes and
stroop waffles.
It was great seeing Jessica across the world (not just in our usual sunny Arizona setting) and meeting some of her friends!
On my last day with Jess, I took
le train from Amsterdam to Brussels, Belgium and met my friend, Mayra. We then took a one-hour bus to the
Brussels South Charleroi Airport and our adventure began then--we slept at
l'aéroport overnight.
Next stop: Milan, Italy.
When we arrived at
Orio al Serio International Airport (Bergamo, Italy), we took yet another bus to Milan
gare centrale. I did not check the weather before arriving, and of course, it was raining... I bought two umbrellas from the many
vendeurs outside the train station, and he tried to give me a deal of 8 for two (and ended up keeping my 10 euro bill). If you could keep up with that... I got swindled.
The next two days in Milan were beautiful, but rainy! Mayra and I got our first taste of Italian ice-cream, gelato. We visited the Milan Cathedral,
Duomo di Milano, and next to it the
célèbre tourist shopping plaza,
Piazza Duomo, with all the brand-name stores. We even watched "Buried" with Ryan Reynolds in Italian! That was a new experience: you have assigned seating in the theatre (letter and number).
Out next stop: Rome, Italy and The Vatican.
Again, we spent
la nuit at the airport and left for Rome at 6am. There to pick us up was my friend Ikram's uncle, Federico, who hosted us for four days. He is Italian-Somali and has a house in the outskirts of Rome.
I had never met Federico (and neither has Ikram for that matter because she was in vacation when he visited her family in Arizona last summer haha), but I had talked to him through Facebook a few weeks before our visit. I tried speaking Italian to him (thanks to my first language course this September), and we communicated very well.
He was so nice throughout the whole trip-- taking three days off work to be our guide through the streets of Rome:
The Colosseum, the
Pantheon, the
Trevi Fountain, the
Mouth of Truth, restaurant outings, nightclub and salsa-dancing.
We spent half a day in
The Vatican with so much beautiful architecture and history to take in
St. Peter's Basilica and the
Castle Saint Angelo. We saw the popes' tombs, including that of John Paul II.
By the end of the trip, Mayra and I learned various Italian words and phrases and made a new friend- Hassan. He is one of Federico's Moroccan friends who does martial arts and plays soccer. He went out with us to eat dinner two nights, dancing and walking down the Trevi fountain by night (where he gave Mayra red roses). Talk about Rome being the city of
l'amour? Aww :)
We went back to Milan for our last night before heading to Brussels and eventually back to Lille. Here, we spent the night with one of my friends, Paola. We went out to an Italian restaurant, Zio Pesce, with Paola and her friends: Paola, Eduardo and Aldo. It was a fun night with great conversation in which we exchanged our American/Italian views on the culture, language, economy, government...
I want to thank Jessica, Federico and Paola for hosting us the days that I was on vacation! Mayra thank you as well for being a pleasant traveling buddy :) I am very thankful to have such great friends as you. Thank you! Grazie! Merci!
All Saint's Day or La Toussaint, falls on November 1 each year. It is a national holiday in many countries including, the United States and Western Europe, that commemorates all saints in the Roman Catholic Church.
