Morning Flights aren't our thing.....

Hola!!

Were staring backwards with this blog because we were just so excited about the events that happened today (Ash Wednesday).

We decided to walk through St. Peters Square on our way home from school because its Ash Wednesday and what better way to celebrate it then being by the Vatican! While walking through the square with ashes sprinkled in our hair (they do it a little differently here) we noticed nuns running over to the side gates... blending in with the locals, we followed. Standing curiously in a crowd of nuns and priests there were police surrounding us everywhere... all of a sudden the Pope drove right past where we were standing and waved DIRECTLY at us! All the nuns around us were screaming and clapping - so we obviously had to join in.

Now moving onto our interesting escapades in Spain.....

Before the trip even began Betsy and Jessie arrived in Rome late Wednesday night from Florence. Packing took over 4 hours, naturally, because we had a lot of catching up to do. With 3 hours of sleep, we awoke at 3am (as sara calls it "THAT WAS THE WORST") and began our adventure.

We somehow snuck our overly packed, huge backpacks onto the plane and slept the whole way on classy Ryan Air. (Something hilarious about the airline was when we landed we had a nice wake up call of a Spanish Horn and everyone cheering... keep in mind its only 8am)

pda is everywhere!!!!!

Arrived at our Hostel only to realize that all 5 of us were in 5 different CO-ED rooms (Betsy had the worst of it- with discovering a new culture of smells). Guess we forgot to plan that one out. Sully and Beth met us at the hostel and we began our tour of Madrid.

Plaza Mayor, Plaza de Sol, Cava Baja, el Catedral, Palacio Real, and Plaza de Oriente ( Thank you sully for listing these on your blog- we had no idea where we even were). We of course did some shopping and then found ourselves at the famous churros place called Chocolateria San Gines.

By this point we were all so incredibly tired that we had to nap, but the problem was, non of us wanted to go to our separate rooms with strangers so conveniently we (sara and maggie) cuddled in bed together - but Sara had the flu so it didn't make things too comfortable. That night we had champagne for Katie Sullivans 21st birthday and danced the night away at a local bar!!

The next day in Madrid was full of more shopping, playing in the park with local 5 year olds, and eating doner kebab.

OF COURSE we planned an early morning flight to Barcelona and wondered around with starbucks in hand (side-note: when we saw the starbucks sign, we thought we were dreamingg) We went to see some of Gaudi's designs and then went to La Sagrada Familia - a huge church which was started in the 1800's and is still not done! Went to an amazing dinner till 1am, doing dinner like the Spaniards, and went to bed early for our flight home to Rome. It was so sad to say goodbye to all the girls- but was an amazing Birthday weekend with Best Friends!!!!!

We knew things were going too smoothly...

We took a bus in the morning to the same small airport that we flew into (its about a hour outside of Barcelona). We get to that airport about 2 hours before take off and couldn't find the check in desk- we then go to a tourist info booth and the guy looks at our tickets and said"ohhh girls, you are at the wrong airport"

I wish someone would have taken a picture of our faces at the moment he said this.

He said to take a 145 euro cab to the other airport a hour away, but you might not make it...

So we test our luck and sprint out the airport. Run into a can yelling "rapido por favor!"

The cab driver was literally going 150 km/hr down the interstate in Spain. It was so scary! We pull up a hour later with about 20 mins to spare, cut everyone in line, get our ticket, cut the security line and barely made it to the plane.

Now we know why our moms always tell us to travel with a little extra cash and a LOT of time to spare.

funny how everything works out..

We leave for Prague tomorrow. Cannot wait to see what kind of trouble we get into there!

love always!

Switzerland!!

Hello Hello Hello!

Here is our picture from wine tasting! It was really interesting and fun! We now know the difference between our .87 euro cent box of wine and nice 75 euro bottle wine... unfortunately were sticking to the boxed wine and saving money for shopping and traveling!

We started to write this blog and had a minor setback... The POWER WENT OUT. We all started screaming and couldn't see anything (Sara and I head-butted each-other naturally). Thankfully we found a flashlight and trying to flick some switches... nothing worked.

We decided to go knock on our neighbors door. A whole Italian family walked over to help us. This super cute Grandma walked us down to the basement and showed us what to do.

Thankfully the power went on and we went to realize that the oven, shower, blow dryer, and all lights were on in the apartment. Typical Americans....

Our past weekend we went to Interlaken, Switzerland (or Intertaken as Maggie called it)!

It was so amazing to leave busy and crazy Rome for a few days. To get there, we took an 11 hour, overnight bus ride. We got the whole row to ourselves and watched movies and slept the majority of the way. We arrived Interlaken at 8 am and moved into our hostel (Balmers-http://www.balmers.com/). It was our first experience at a hostel, and overall it went well. There was the local bar in the basement, so of course that was a plus!

We spent Friday walking around in this snow-packed adorable town...window shopping, passing goats in the road, and taking pictures of mountains everywhere. We wondered for hours and found ourselves at a local cafe drinking coffee and hot chocolate, while eating delicious pastries!

Friday night we spontaneously, signed up for "night sledding" on the swiss alps! We arrived at a mysterious gondola after a 45 minute vertical drive up the mountain. Sara didn't do too well with the heights but we survived to the top. It was one of the more terrifying, yet thrilling experiences of our lives. We went very fast down the mountain, with no room to veer too close to the edge. At the end we got to have a traditional Swiss fondue meal in a cute cottage hidden in the mountains.

Saturday we woke up early to get ready to take another long ride up the mountain to learn how to snow board. It was white out conditions and "maybe the worst weather in weeks." Great. Perfect weather to learn this new skill of ours. We had an instructor to ourselves that was very helpful. I think he found it very humorous watching us learn on the bunny slopes. There is a great video of Sara to show you what we mean....

We stopped to take a break for lunch while snowboarding. We got chicken nuggets and french fries: an awesome change from pasta!!!! At the end of lunch we were lucky enough to see the sun come out for 10 minutes! The mountains were SO beautiful. We had no idea they were even there! It was such a surreal moment to be snowboarding on swiss alps.

Sunday we were surprisingly not too sore. We let ourselves sleep in a little then decided we were craving American food. So, what better place to go than Hooters?? We are proud to say that our first time going to a Hooters was in Switzerland.

sara's snowboarding

Maggie's snowboarding

Hope all is well. Ciao Bella!!