europe on a shoestring

more traveling has been booked. much more.

as an international student i have 3 weeks of vacation at easter, which means the opportunities are endless. endless until i suffer bankruptcy, (at this point that seems increasingly possible). so, on the bill for the easter break are italy and spain. 2 days in venice (by far the city that i am most pumped to explore), 2 days in florence/pisa where an international friend is setting us up for the night, and 3 days in rome...when in rome (anchorman anyone?). after that it will be off to barcelona via plane. the hostel we booked in barcelona looks like the best that could be hoped for. it seems almost like a resort, directly on the beach, complete with swimming pools, bars and restraunts. but of course things might be a bit different than the website pictures and description, so we'll see what happens. during this time i will be travelling with a couple of americans from chicago, it's doubtless that people will mistake me for a yankee while im with these chicago characters, but in hopes to avoid this i've sewn (mom sewed) some canadian flags on backpacks.

the chicagonians(?) will be abandoning me in barcelona to meet families back in london, but since i have no such commitments i plan on sticking around on the mediterranian coast for just a bit longer. which will work out perfectly because shideh will be meeting up with me in barcelona, and from there...maybe france? i havent worked out that part yet.

as i said last time, liverpool was on the schedule. joe(chicago), martina(italy), and silvia(italy) and i trekked the 3 hours by bus up to liverpool. it was a bit of a long day, bus to liverpool at 3am, bus back home at 11pm. 24hours of liverpool, like some sort of endurance test. it was defiantely time well spent, we explored the city, which was not exactly THE most beautiful city, but maybe im getting spoiled with all this european atmosphere. the museums were really good, there was a really funky modern art gallery and the highlight of the trip for all of us was the beatles museum. the museum took us 3 hours to complete and spanned from the birth of john, paul, george and ringo, right up to the present day while explaining nearly everything in between. we then went to a pub to eat and drink, when we were unexpectedly joined at our table by a middle-aged local woman who befriended us. at first it was cool to talk to this woman and ask her questions about her hometown, but when she suddenly burst into tears and started to tell us about her alcohol addiction, abusive husband and shattered dreams, the situation got much much less cool. it continued to become less and less cool for the next hour and a half because we were waiting for food and the bar was packed with nowhere to switch tables and she didn't want to leave because when she asked joe for cigarettes he never refused (i beleive he counted 7 in total). anyway, interesting experience.

writing this has given me some procrastination time, but no more, its time to work.

talk to you later