Italia

To be fair to each place that I visited in Italy, I decided to break this post up into sections for each city.
The views expressed in this blog post are solely the opinions of Beau Doin' it Big, and in no way reflect the views of BeauMoney enterprises or its parent company Big Meech inc.

ROME
Rome happened to be the first city that I had the chance to experience in Italy. I don't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I can't convey the overwhelming feeling of being in Rome, or try to do the city justice- but I will at least try to show my impressions of the city in my limited time there.

Overwhelming is probably be the first word I would use to describe Rome. Right in front of "magnificent" and "clusterfuck". This sense of being overwhelmed mainly came from the combination of the history of the city, the sheer amount of people, and the speed/urgency everywhere. Naturally, all of the famous spots were incredible to see. Particularly the Colosseum, though allowing yourself to think about its history while inside is definitely chilling. However, this blog to me is more about expressing my opinions and my reactions to the things that I have seen, rather than just provide you with a summary of famous sites that you can hear about from anyone who has been there.
I wish I could have a more definitive stance on how I felt about Rome, but to be honest the whole experience there left me pretty confused. There were moments in which I felt that Rome was the greatest place I have ever been, and there were moments as well when I just wanted to be somewhere else.
The main thing about Rome (and many of the other places I visited in Italy) that frustrated me was the amount of tourists. Not only the amount of tourists, but also that literally everything was 100 percent geared towards tourists. While this makes it easier for the traveler who does not speak Italian and wants to conveniently see the historic sites, I couldn't help but regret the fact that I was spending two weeks in Italy without really seeing anything of Italian culture. It seemed near impossible in Rome, for example, to find a single place to eat that wasn't just serving half assed versions of Italian food for tourists to overpay for. Luckily(or not, for convenience sake), our hostel was about 40 minutes outside of Rome, which allowed us to try some great pizza in a suburban place serving real Italians. This subject requires a brief pause in the action. The pizza. SO good. Having braced myself so much(and rightfully so) for the omnipresent tourist food, I must have seemed like Mr. Obvious when, genuinely surprised, I realized that Pizza in Italy was like, really good. But really, who knew?
Overall the thing that will stick with me about Rome is the feeling i got from being there. For better or worse, the city had a feeling so different from that of any other city that I have been. That overwhelming feeling seemed like a summation of all the great positives and negatives of the city and maybe that is the reason why the "feel" of Rome was the most magical part-and also the most difficult to describe.

Florence
Totally different from Rome, with some similarities. Unfortunately, given that we were traveling during the weeks when all of Europe is also traveling, Florence was just as packed with tourists as Rome. American English and Chinese were heard as much, or more than Italian. Side note: I was really surprised to see the number of American families traveling in Italy. Maybe it's because the extent of my family vacations is one trip to Florida and several to Virginia and New York. But honestly, I had no idea so many families came all the way to Europe for vacation. I guess I was born into the wrong family.
Anyway, Florence was, in my opinion a city of more beauty than Rome. In fact, if you could somehow get rid of all of the tourists (deportation to a cruise ship for eternity?) it would be the most beautiful, peaceful city to walk around and pass the days simply enjoying the city's art. However, it's not like that, and the city is characterized by waiting in enormous lines to see any famous art or historical sites. It's funny that when touring other cities of the world, suddenly everyone becomes a humble appreciator of the arts. I think probably at this point many people stand in two hour lines for famous pieces of artwork just to say that they have been there/seen that so that when speaking with people in the future, the conversation counterpart will be assured of their worldliness and their appreciation of fine culture.
Ok, enough hating. While staying in Florence, we took a day trip To Pisa which was essentially a nice small town with an inclined tower. That's about all I really have to say about Pisa. While I liked the town, I think you can ascertain that the impression it left on me was less than profound. Next, train to "The city of water".

Venice
First thing is first, Venice is a place that from the first time seeing it on TV, I wanted to go. Something about it always intrigued me, and I am sure I am far from the only one with this feeling. Being there, honestly was pretty freaking special. Crossing the bridge into the city and catching the first glimpse of the daily functioning of this city of water really was amazing. Venice's beauty and uniqueness really was incredible and will stick with me for a while. I do have to admit that I was disappointed with the actual content of Venice. For all intents and purposes the city Venice was a tourist shopping island. Having this great expectation of the city and imagination of what it was actually like, it was a real disappointment to find that every street was filled with shop after shop selling the famous "murano glass" of Venice and nothing else. As my traveling companions felt the need to go into what seemed like almost every shop, it really got old quickly and left me longing for the different Venice, the one of my imagination.
That being said, the city was still beautiful and I am glad that I had the opportunity to experience it. From Venice, we caught a flight to Palermo, in northern Sicily.

Palermo
Palermo was a welcome change in that for the first time in the trip, I found myself away from hoards of tourists, and was actually able to catch a glimpse of real Italians living their lives normally. We were only able to spend one full day in Sicily, and we took a relaxed pace as a break from all of the running around that we had been doing the entire trip up to this point. The mountains in Sicily stood out the most to me. I really like the look of huge, old mountains in the backdrop of the Sea. In Sicily, this effect was stunning and is probably what I will remember most. From Sicily we took an overnight ferry to Naples. Never again. I woke up in the middle of the night with the ship violently rocking back and forth which kept me up for four hours feeling like I was going to barf. Not to mention that the average age on the boat was just short of dead. Nightmare.

Naples
Naples I really liked. Something about it, i don't even really know. The city just had a definite personality. I felt like if I were Italian, I would be from Naples. I can see how the city gets knocked for being dirty(it really is) and for being less safe and more crime ridden. But you know, I really felt like its inhabitants had a distinct personality that I didn't get when I was in the other Italian cities. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to Pompeii, though I did see it from a distance. Damn time constraints. Worth noting was definitely the pizza, as Naples is the home of pizza (i think). The style of pizza was more classic than in Rome, though I think Rome still ties Naples for me for having the best pizza.

From this trip I took away a slightly better knowledge of the world, and a view of some of its most incredible sites. Yes, it was disappointing to not experience Italian culture, but you can't have everything. A funny thing in Italy for me was seeing similarities to South Philadelphia and New York Italians in the people and in the food. In many places I found myself seeing people who would not have looked out of place at a Flyers game or eating a Cheesesteak or Roast Pork Sandwich in South Philly. In regards to the food, the style of pizza in Venice was identical to the pizza common in the northeast (ny, philadelphia). Also the bread in Sicily was extremely similar to the sesame seed bread so common among Philadelphia "Italians" (see A Cut Above).

In the end, I am glad to be back in Spain, a country that I have much more of a place for in my heart, even though I did very much enjoy Italy. Only three more weeks here until I fly back to the states- where did the semester go? I will be following this post up very shortly with pictures from Italy which I hope you will all enjoy. That's all for today, hasta luego, ciao.

Andalucia/Burgos

Hey everybody. "Blogging"about my impressions of Andalucia(southern spain) and of my program's trip to Burgos. A little delayed but I've been pretty busy.

Anyway, Andalucia definitely made a great impression on me. Unfortunately, my extremely cheap flight was not the most convenient so I ended up spending about as much time in transit as I did actually enjoying myself but its all good. What I appreciated the most about Andalucia was its stark contrast with the Basque Country. Probably about the US equivalent of going from Idaho to Southern California. As much as I love living in the Basque Country, this was a welcome change and gave me more knowledge of Spain.

This is definitely the Spain I thought about when envisioning Spain before coming here. One of the cooler moments was walking down a cramped street in the old part of Granada and hearing a man with guitar playing beautiful flamenco music. Also notable, we came across a hippie/gypsy band doing their rendition of "smack my bitch up". no joke. 

To me, the main difference between Andalucia and the Basque Country was the ambience and the attitude of the people. Despite the abundance of tourists, I still got a feel for the locals to some extent. My  impression was that they were more friendly and more open than the Basques. Granada definitely seemed to have a warmer feel than Bilbao, which could best be sensed by simply walking down the main streets. That being said, I still prefer Bilbao as a place to study with its absence of tourists and its unique feel. 

Shit man, I really don't feel like writing any more. This post is pretty weak and doesn't really capture how i felt in Granada. I guess it just wasn't meant to be. Well, I'll put some pictures and I'll see you guys on here after spring break. 

Cumpleaños de Pilar

Alright, I felt like posting while this was still fresh in my mind- I am feeling pretty damn tired so hopefully I can still put together something nice.

I'm not sure if I have written anything about this yet, but my host dad's sister Pilar has been living with us because she hurt her arm a while back. I could elaborate but i'll just say that she is extremely nice, if a little bit depressing.

Anyway, Pilar's birthday was this weekend, so today we had a little celebration. I wanted to blog about this because it was just so damn pleasant and it was a new cultural experience.

For Pilar's birthday, we had another USAC student Premyer over our house because he stayed with my host parents last semester. So the five of us had a little birthday celebration that turned out to be the most fun 80th birthday party i've been to.

The celebration consisted of a special lunch, with a ton of food, and with the living room decked out in my parents' nicest tablecloths, glasses, plates, etc. Naturally I'm about to talk about the food. To begin, Rosa made roasted shrimp-SO good, and so much better when cooked whole in the shell. Next we had some croquettas(fried balls of bechamel sauce with ham) and calamari. After this, some awesome chorizo and then white asparagus. To finish this part of the meal was merluza en salsa, I think this fish is called "hake" in english but i had never heard of/ eaten it in the states. This fish was good. really fucking good. Just a really simple plate of fresh local ingredients. I wanted to mop the pan she used to cook it in with an entire baguette. After a good deal of shmoozing, we ended the meal with a strawberry tart. During all of this, the alcohol was flowing like I had never seen in my host parents house. We had a bottle of wine from La Rioja that I bought, a botton of Pacharán(a Basque sweet liqueur that tastes a little like licorice(to me at least)), and champagne to toast to Pilar. This definitely loosened everyone up and made for a fun ass time with my cooky ass host parents. After the meal, like the chulo padrino mafioso he is, Higinio pulled out some cigars for us to cap off the celebration. Needless to say it was a really fun time.

From this experience, I really enjoyed seeing how another culture celebrates events such as birthdays. It was nice to just relax, eat, drink, and talk as a family for a good four and a half hours of the afternoon. I feel like my host parents definitely conveyed the sense of it being a special day more than I normally feel during birthdays in the states. The whole thing just seemed simpler, but more rich. I have to say, at the risk of sounded like a lame old head, I preferred this kind of celebration to going out to a restaurant or going out, drinking too much, and ultimately behaving like a moron only because it is your birthday. While eating at a restaurant can be a special way to celebrate a birthday, I feel like the atmosphere can not match the warmth of a nice meal at home with the family. To get a little personal, I think what I really loved about it was just being part of a loving family and sharing a celebration like this without any fights or forced friendliness. I haven't thought about it much, but there really is a void in my childhood in this area of real family moments, as sad as it is to say.

OK, I'm going to bed. Goodnight everybody, I'll be writing about my trip to Andalucia hopefully sometime later this week. Hasta luego.