When in Rome

Yes, I have been waiting this entire trip to say that.

We've made it to "the eternal city" (well, we made it again since Whitney and I were technically here before we went to Paris) and were reunited with Susie Q, also known as Susan or Mom or life giver, among others.

The plan is for us to spend the night here, move Whitney into school tomorrow and then take the train to Naples/Capri until Friday when we will be back in Rome (and will then have to come back to America).

We had some of our characteristics travel shenanagins throughout the day, but we got through them with an unending supply of Lizzie McGuire quotes and movie references.

After we'd gotten situated -- and after my mom had become best friends with the hotel manager, Fabrizio -- we set out in our neighborhood, Trastevere. One thing need to note before I can continue is that my dad's barber, Gene Franco, is from Italy and gave us lots of recommendations of what to eat, see, do, etc. and visiting Trastevere was one of them, so check! (Gene Franco shall be a recurring theme in this post, sorry not sorry).

While my mom says that she has followed my blog "religiously" these past two weeks, she doesn't seem to understand that stopping everywhere we see food is not frowned upon but actually encouraged on this trip, so navigating the next week might be more difficult than actually navigating through Rome.

After walking around for a while, we eventually decided to really hunt for some dinner; since my blog is really a food blog and I just pretend that I do other stuff, here is the low down on our first meal in Rome:

First of all, my mom's Italian is bad. Really bad. Watching her try to communicate with anyone while Whitney also tries to use the half dozen phrases she's learned is kind of painful -- at one point, our waiter brought two fish to our table, and these were real fish, like Nemo fish, as in they still had scales and eyeballs and I'm still not sure why that happened!

Following Gene Franco's advice, my mom ordered carciofi alla guida, which is an artichoke thing, and linguini cacio and pepe, which is a pasta thing. Whitney decided to ask our waiter's advice (in first-grade level Italian obviously) and got what she described as "linguini of the sea," which was linguini cooked in tin foil with all sorts of little sea critters. I got fettucine alfredo with shrimp, except I don't think there was actually any shrimp in it. With or without shrimp, it was still delicious. Whitney dubbed it our best meal yet.

One awkward thing about dinner -- other than my mother and sister -- is that I've never managed to figure out how to effectively twirl pasta around a fork and Whitney says that this means that I look like I'm in pain when I try to eat, so I'll be working on this before I leave.

Another awkward thing for me -- and this is all the time, not just at dinner and not just in Europe -- is that both Whitney and my mom feel the need to tell absolutely everyone they meet their life story. Whitney has spent our whole trip telling anyone who looked our way about the American University in Rome, her art history class, how she only has class four days a week from 8:30-11:30 and everything in between... After dinner, Susan was telling (or trying/failing to tell) our waiter about Gene Franco and all sorts of other things that I don't even care about so they must have been totally lost on our waiter with his questionable English skills.

After dinner, I hoped the awkwardness would end, but we still had time to embarrass ourselves on the walk home, where Whitney and my mom told me that I was stupid for liking Benjamin Franklin because Thomas Jefferson was "better looking" and wrote the Declaration of Independence. Their (incorrect) opinions remained unchanged even after I said that the only reason Benjamin Franklin didn't write the Declaration of Independence was because his colleagues were worried that he would hide dirty jokes in it. We also got gelato.

I'm not sure about the WIFI situation in Capri, so that might make blogging a little difficult in the upcoming days. In Rome, we have to pay for the internet but I couldn't get it to work on Susan's computer tonight so I used Whitney's, which will be with her and not me in the hotel when we get back to Rome. That means that this is the last absolutely-assured post for the near-future, although I'm sure it will not be the last. Peace and love until then. Ciao!

The Great Pizza Marathon of 2014

Whitney and I finally figured out why we've been carbo-loading for the past two days! It was to prepare for the Great Pizza Marathon of 2014 that took place tonight.

After the rainstorm that sent us indoors had passed, Whitney and I were looking for something to do. Whitney had had gelatto before dinner, but the rain had meant that I couldn't get any afterwards, so we decided to go out and hunt for some dessert.

Well, we went out for gelatto and came back with pizza. A lot of pizza.

I've had pizza twice in the past two days and again for dinner tonight, but I still didn't think it was enough, so we went looking for other pizza places to try. We walked from our hostel to San Marco and back looking for the best specimens of take away (our stipulations were that a slice needed to cost less than three euros, be take away and only plain cheese) to try.

Mid-hunt

We returned to our hostel (with only a few bug bites to speak of) and the real fun began. It was a Pizza Marathon, not a Pizza Sprint, so naturally we took our time eating an insane amount of pizza (not).

Like all good things, this needed to be snapchatted

So, I've had five different varieties of pizza in 3 days and am I complaining? If you really need to ask me that, you need to go and reevaluate your life choices because you can't seriously be thinking that. My favorite was actually the pizza I had for dinner tonight which was not technically a part of the Marathon, but pizza is heaven in eight slices and this was all really good pizza.

I know three things to be true at this point: I like Italy, I love Venice and pizza is good.

Goodnight, everyone. I will see you when I wake up from my pizza-coma.

Well, the sky has decided to open up here in Venice tonight and we are experiencing severe thunderstorms. Updates will be given if necessary.

I have directions, I had directions, but you lost them!

Don't worry about the title of this post, it makes about as much sense as the day we had, but I thought that made it a fitting title.

So, we're bad tourists and have this habit of just wandering around and not seeing what we're really supposed to see (actually, I think that this makes us great adventurers, but other people might not agree with our travel planning/philosophy) and that was our plan for today. Our first (and our only designated) destination was Campo Santa Margherita, which was just supposed to be a fun little area that we thought would be a nice way to start our day.

Note: We'd originally planned on going to visit the Galleria dell'Academia because that is the home of Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man until we realized that they don't actually display it there, they just have it. Since that is totally lame and we are totally broke, we decided to walk by the Galleria, but not go in. Campo Santa Margherita, it was!

We got directions, but we also have a nasty habit of ignoring directions, so we got lost. I'd been told that I needed to get lost in Venice and we haven't had any trouble with that, but today, we got really lost. We ended up somewhere that had cars! I kid you not and Venice doesn't have cars! I still don't know where we were. We couldn't even find a sign to tell us where we were at that point, but we knew it was not where we wanted to be.

Wherever this place was, however, had signs directing people towards San Marco and we had a map and a general idea of where that was in relation to where we wanted to go, so we set off following those signs. This would also be the part of the day where I took out my iPod and used the compass app to guide us (southeast). Yup. Whitney thought that the compass was archaic, but I told her that we couldn't follow the North Star at 10am, so the compass was our best option. With a combination of map/sign reading, helpful landmarks and my compass, we finally made it to our destination. It only took us an hour and 20 minutes.

Victory!

I think we were a little disappointed when we got there; the book had made it sound like a lot of hustle and bustle and it was neither. The highlight of our excursion there was getting to see "The House of the Moor." Apparently researchers have found that Shakespeare's Othello was based on Cristoforo Moro, the son of a noble family who was sent to govern the island of Cyrpus in 1508 -- where this research was back in March when I was teaching Othello to a bunch of uninterested tenth graders, I'll never know. It was just a house, we couldn't go in or anything; they didn't even have a sign so all we have to rely on is that the information in the book is accurate, but I will be telling my classes about this if I ever teach Othello again.

Well class, Othello wrote Othello... long story

We decided that we would go back to Rialto Market because it would give us an opportunity to find some lunch (and because we apparently wanted to walk about as far away from where we were as possible without actually leaving Venice). The signage from Campo Santa Margherita to Rialto was a lot better than the non-signage we'd encountered in our first excursion of the day, but I took the iPod out again anyways. During this walk, we also found the famous bridge Ponte dei Pugni, which was the fighting bridge in ye olden Venice. It was where the clans (or gangs) used to meet up to scuffle. The bridge has footprints on it to mark the starting positions but apparently most fights just ended up with everyone falling into the canal.

Of course the hottest part of the day was when we were lost, because things had cooled down significantly by the time we got to Rialto. We found lunch there and then went to look at the gondola ferry (because a real gondola ride costs 80 euros for 50 minutes and we're not about that). It's a ferry, so we knew it wouldn't take us far but we figured we would ask just so we could say we did it if it worked out. When Whit asked the guy where the ferry went, he smoothly replied with "my house." He did not get our money.

We putzed around for a while and found some street performers, at least, we assume that's what they were. We saw them taking bows in the middle of a square with a whole bunch of people applauding them, but then they just turned on some more music and danced around and did about as well as would I do (which is to say badly and like you're participating in an exorcism).

Then it was time for our usual midday break, but before my feet could truly rest (and before I could blog), Whitney got a message from a Pfeiffer Lady Laxer who is also in Venice, so we were back out on the streets. Chalane, Whit's friend, has also been in Paris when we were there but we hadn't been able to connect then, so this was a priority.

Go Falcons!

And now I get to have my real rest time before dinner, which is looking like it is going to be pizza and Bellinis! (All we've had here is carbs and alcohol...haters gunna hate).

Also, tonight in America, Susan is boarding a plane to Rome! And tomorrow, we are going to meet her there!

Whitney hasn't really succeeded in making me "insta-famous" yet, but I was told that this photo was Facebook profile picture worthy and that I needed to put it on my blog.

Whitney also wanted me to note that one of her pictures from Berlin got 57 likes, which is her personal record and that she has upped her instagram game since she's gotten to Europe.

Winnie and I ate more pasta for dinner. Sew many carbs. Send help.

Libreria Acqua Alta

Thanks to a little website called Buzzfeed, I was able to take the book crawl to its third country! This afternoon, we visited Libreria Acqua Alta, which translates to "library of high water." It is a bit of a literary jungle, because they have books everywhere -- piled in gondolas, wedged into the corners, stacked up to the ceiling, etc. It was worth the visit because I don't think I'll ever see another store like this one again...

You can literally stand in the canal at this "fire exit."

First of all, there were cats. They were happily sunbathing outside, doing cat stuff and being all around adorable.

The best bookstores come with cats

And then they had this insanity going on inside:

Although this isn't even a fraction of it all...

And then you went outside and got this:

Don't forget the stairway of books that led up to a stunning view of the canal:

Mhm. That's a thing.

Please add this to the growing list of reasons why we are never leaving here.

Much Like

We started our day with an early trip to Piazza San Marco and beat the crowds. The first thing Whitney said was that it made her want to sing The Light in the Piazza but she only knew four words (while it kept her quiet today, it did not stop her from singing Les Mis in France... just saying).

Starting the day right!

We'd been told to wait to go to Basilica San Marco, which is probably the most well-known landmark in Venice, until later in the day when the sun would really shine into the building, so we went to Doge's Palace. In case you're still wondering, we are not mature travelers and should not have been let loose on Europe because we made a lot of jokes about the doge meme while we were there.

Much like.

We had no idea what a doge was, but apparently they were important and needed a lot of stuff. We later learned that they were highly-elected officials. I think our favorite part was the prison and "the Bridge of Sighs" that led up to it. Casanova was actually held in the prison there after being accused of being a magician but we couldn't find his old cell and were very disappointed... You would think that they would have it labeled if they were going to make a big deal about it, but no.

After that, we took about four steps across the square and rode up to the top of the Campanile, which is a lighthouse/watch tower thing, for some sweet views of Venice.

We were grateful to avoid stairs for this view.

We then took another four steps across the square and visited the Museo Correr, which had all sorts of things but was once apparently the residence of Princess Sissi. We do not know who she was (we will be investigating later today) but the word "princess" caught Whitney's attention and our ticket to Doge's Palace also allowed us to go there as well.

We scurried off for lunch after that, choosing to leave San Marco, hoping that we would be able to get away from the touristy places and their expensive menus. We found a little place a few roads away and got our introduction to pasta in Italy. Did we pick the best restaurant in the world? No. Were we disappointed? Also no. I got carbonara (it is like the one thing I can cook and I'm convinced that Italy is going to put my dish to shame so much that I'll never make it again, although that did not happen after this lunch) and Whitney got something that had lots of cheese (her favorite).

We wandered some more after that, stopping and somehow managing to take exactly the same photo that is on the cover of our tour guide.

Their picture

My picture

We walked backed to Basilica San Marco and waited our turn. We knew that we had to dress modestly and were hoping that we'd achieved this, but apparently God hates looking down at shoulders so we had to buy ourselves some before we could go in for a euro a piece. The Basilica is perfect. Whitney and I are still in shock from it all. The Byzantines had their stuff together because the gold mosaics were insane.

We did our good deed for the day after we left -- while they have a place for you to throw out your shawls, we decided to walk out with ours and then scoured the line for women who had exposed shoulders or shorts and who weren't carrying any type of shawl or jacket of their own. At first we thought that we might have been the only two tourists who were stupid enough to not bring any extra clothing with them, but we eventually found two nice ladies right at the end of the line!

We wondered to the Rialto Bridge and Market. The Bridge here is the really famous one and is probably the one you've seen in any photograph of Venice ever. We caught the tail end (pun intended) of their fish and vegetable markets that were closing up for the day. You could buy a whole octopus there like it wasn't a big deal. Why yes, I'll take eight tentacles, my wife and I are having guests over later tonight.

After that, we succeeded in getting lost, then found again on our way back to the hostel for a mid-afternoon rest bit and some good, old-fashioned blogging.

One of the girls in our dorm is from Easton, PA and is about to start studying abroad in Rome tomorrow. Small world.

I'm in a Romantic Relationship with Venice

We aren't exclusive yet, but it's getting serious. Whitney and I are in love with this city -- and all we've seen of it so far was just now at night and earlier this afternoon when we were carrying our luggage through the hoards of people, trying not to get run over as we were blinded by our own sweat.

We went out to dinner tonight then walked around for a little bit and it was glorious. I got pizza and Whit got bruschetta and then we made Miss Ungermeyer* proud and got ourselves some gelatto! I also got a drink called a spritz, which my guide book said was a must-have in Venice and for the record, my alcohol cost less than my pizza. I kid you not, pizza costs more than alcohol (at least mine tonight did anyways but I hope that's the norm here).

*If you don't understand the Miss Ungermeyer comment, please educate yourself immediately.

Like Urinetown, Only Different

I have waited five years to make my Dever Players proud. I rocked my Urinetown shirt in Venice tonight!

Urinetown The Musical: Like Venice... Only different

And yes, Mom and Dad, Urinetown really was five years ago...

We are in Venice, people!

After some drama-llama finding the hostel and getting checked in, it is time to greet our new city!

I'm not sure what's weirder...

The fact that several 18 year olds asked if our parents were cool with the two of us traveling together after we'd told them how old we were or a guy asking us how we planned on spending our romantic weekend in Venice together.

Ok, young people who just graduated from high school... I'm 22 and I've graduated from college, I don't think that my parents really have much of say anymore (no offense, Mom and Dad because I do appreciate your love, support and advice). I would say that the thrill of being able to walk into a bar and legally order a drink wore off on me before you'd gone to prom. My sister is almost 21 as well! What do you mean, "are our parents ok with this?"

I get that some people don't think that Whitney and I look related, but I don't think that the next logical conclusion is that we're lovers! Like you're strange, never speak again.

East Side Gallery

Although we are leaving in a few hours, we still had one final mission in Berlin. We had been told that after we'd done the main tourist attractions, we needed to visit the East Side Gallery, a 1.3km "monument to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the peaceful resolution of boundaries and conventions between companies and people." So we woke up super early, took the S-Bahn (or the U-Bahn, I don't really understand which one is which) and headed over.

I can't really describe it, so here are some pictures:

Whitney said (and this is a direct quote) "I'm glad we got up early to do this."

Our Day in the Fatherland

We are only in Berlin for roughly 47 hours -- not even two full days, so this was our one and only day to fit in all of the sights and sounds of Germany!

Having had success with the hop on/hop off bus in Paris, we decided that this would be the best/most efficient way for us to see everything we had on our list and boy, were we wrong! Before I continue, you can all rest easy knowing that Whitney and I have now seen everything we wanted to (we'll be taking a little excursion tomorrow morning before we depart, but it will be to see something that wasn't included in our original itinerary) and that we are happily sitting in our hostel's lounge getting ready for dinner and the US/Germany football game, but I would not take the bus if I was coming back.

First of all, the stop closest to us was a square called Alexanderplatz (or just "Alex" if you're a Berliner). My tour book describes this area as "desolate" and it was... so why is a tourism company taking people here?! Every hop on/hop off bus we saw made this same stop, but still! Desolate.

While the upper deck of the bus we'd taken in Paris didn't have windows, this one did, which prevented a lot of picture taking, but the bus prevented actual tourism. It skipped two stops -- these were also the first two stops Whitney and I had planned on visiting, go figure -- without any explanation and would stay at stops for 20 minutes! Finally, Whitney and I went down and asked why we'd skipped those stops and were told that it was a FIFA thing and that we should have gotten off at the stop before; we would have been happy to do this IF WE HAD KNOWN. At this point, we swapped buses, choosing to ride with the same company (not that we had a choice after spending our money on this tour), but a different driver because ours was incompetent.

We ended up getting off at the next stop anyways -- not because we wanted to see anything there, but because we saw that the bank we could use without getting any international ATM fees was right across the street. After further depleting our already sad bank accounts, we ended up visiting what we were told was Berlin's equivalent of Harrod's: Kaufhaus des Westens, affectionately referred to by the natives as KaDeWe. We'd been told that we had to visit their sixth floor -- the food market -- so that was where we went. Whit immediately found a pastry to try, but I didn't buy anything German; instead I bought something South African! Last year in SA, I had a hard cider called Savannah Dry but they don't sell it in the States, so when I saw it here, I obviously had to buy a few bottles! Duh, no brainer. This was a brilliant idea except that it meant carrying around several glass bottles for the rest of the day. Oops.

It'll be worth it later tonight though.

We got bockwurst and currywurst for lunch so we've officially done the sausage thing.

We returned to our bus at this point and went on to Checkpoint Charlie -- one of the best known border crossing between East and West Berlin -- and realized once again that we are not mature enough to be world travelers because we made a lot of Spongebob jokes...

East? I thought you said Weest.

After that, we circled back around and got off at Alexanderplatz again so we could drop off our bottles at the hostel. It was at this point that we bought strawberries from a strawberry shaped stand.

You should know by now that I don't joke about food.

After that, we returned to the bus so we could get off at the "correct spot" for the destinations we'd missed before -- The Reichstag building and the Brandenburg Gate, which were both lovely. Our main problem with the Brandenburg Gate was that it was covered in scaffolding as it has been temporarily converted into a viewing area for FIFA fans, so we didn't really get to see it in all of its glory. We decided that it would be safer to watch the game from our hostel tonight as we don't really want to be the two American girls in a sea of German soccer fans as the two countries face off. We were so "scared" of this scenario that we jokingly pretended to be Australian and Canadian as we were leaving and the Germans were congregating.

We walked back to our hostel from there because we weren't interested in taking another trip around the city on the bus and after such a full day, we're both a little dead to the world, but I'm sure we'll rally in time for the game!

Our hostel in Berlin only has wireless in the bar and lounge, as opposed to our other hostels where we could get on the internet in our rooms, so that's where we spent the evening and where I am blogging from now.

Having positioned ourselves at a table next to an outlet put us in the prime position to meet other travelers and we spent the last couple of hours with a pair of drunk American guys. These guys were so drunk, in fact, that they were actually flirting with me and Whitney and not just Whitney like most guys normally do.  We got to hear all about their travels (they're "two months deep" into their three month stay-cation) and sever al anecdotes  including how one of them was mugged in Budapest and had his iPhone stolen and how he had to replace it with a Hungarian smart phone (4). They thought it was very cool that we were siblings, traveling together and they were environmental science majors.

Eventually someone suggested fooseball and I was forced to participate. Whitney says that fooseball is "her game";  my game is reading books. Things got a little weird when the guys realized that I was as tall as them. That's my life.

We went hardcore German with our dinner tonight. I know that sounds a little dumb to say, but it took us like two days in France to find legitimate French food, so this is a victory. Whit ordered a beer, Berlin-style meatballs and sauerkraut but what I didn't even think about until the menu was right in front of me was that I had been anticipating this dinner my entire life. It was time for schnitzel in Germany.

Now, schnitzel has been a Jaffe family staple since forever but this was different -- it was legit. (Sorry, Dad, I know you're totally German and that your cooking is also legitimate, but I just ate the meaning of life!). Perfection.

Welcome to Germany

Where it is raining.

We have officially reached Berlin! We just checked into our hostel and unlike our last two stays, we're staying in a dorm this time. We've got bunk beds! There is also a kitchen but considering we will be here for less than 48 hours, I don't think we'll have the opportunity to use it.

Speaking of food, the hunt for dinner is now on.

Heading Out of Town

We took a cab to the airport this morning and learned a lot of new Dutch vocabulary words although I don't think I'll be using them in any civilized conversations any time soon.

Our flight is set to take off in an hour so now we're just chilling on neon green couches, looking up traditional German foods and staring at the slide that the have casually set up in the middle of thie terminal/wondering how inappropriate it would be for us to go use it.

Our Trip to the Red Light District

After full days of tourist activities, Whitney and I have been too exhausted/uninterested to really indulge in Amsterdam's notorious nightlife but we decided that we couldn't leave the city without at least setting out and hitting the streets in the evening. Since we're practically staying in the Red Light District, this meant throwing sweatshirts on and walking a block away from our hostel.

We didn't go to the Red Light District to oogle the prostitutes or harass them like so many other people there, we just wanted to see what it was about so we took a lazy stroll, walking up and down, back and forth and really whichever way that suited our fancy.

Now you aren't allowed to take pictures of the prostitutes and they're very strict about this but Whitney wanted a picture of a side street and all of its red lights, so without any women of the night in sight, she pulled out her phone and started to take a picture. This is when some young twenty something guy runs around in front of us. Our first thought was that he was going to tell Whit to put her camera away but instead he asks us if we're American. We say yes and he says "girls here don't dress like that in the sweatshirts like University Girls." Whitney and I try not to be creeped out as this guy continues "Yeah, they don't wear the hot pants either," referring to our jean shorts. We smile and nod because we are just not interested in what this guy is offering and then he says "it's cute like you're leaving your boyfriend's apartment the day after." Ok, crazy, that's definitely the way to get a girl to go home with you... 

We got away as quickly as we could but if you haven't gotten to the moral of this story yet, it is that in a street full of prostitutes, someone tried to proposition us. Like are you kidding me?! How does stuff like this happen to me?

In a side note, on our walk we found a McDonald's and the only real difference on the menu between the American and Dutch is that they have donuts.

The Anne Frank House

I needed to do a separate post to cover the Anne Frank House because it was an all-encompassing, emotional experience and I didn't want to cloud my retelling of it with my remarks on the rest of my day and my usual amounts of sarcasm and sass. I did a similarly straightforward post when I visited Robben Island/Nelson Mandela's prison cell last year. With that being said, some humor might accidentally find its way into this post, I won't make any promises like that. Another thing about this post is that there won't be any pictures; photos are not allowed in the museum, but I don't think I would have wanted to take any even if they were.

Since DeSales did The Diary of Anne Frank back in March, a good part of the past year of my life has been spent talking about it and making the occasional inappropriate joke about it, so when I woke up this morning, there was definitely the nervous anticipation of actually being there and seeing the things that she wrote about.

When you get in line, you are able to pick up a guide that lays out the museum/house and its history for you. The first thing that struck me was that the cover read "Anne Frank House: A museum with a story." I guess that all museums have a "story" but this museum is the story because this is where Anne Frank lived and what wrote about.

I'll skip over describing my time in line, mostly because I mentioned it in my last post, but also because it is absolutely inconsequential to the overall experience I had there today.

I'll give you a general layout of the museum:
You start out in the welcome center before traveling through the warehouse that was beneath the annex, up the stairs to the office space, through the movable bookcase, then into the actual hiding space before exiting back into the museum where you are able to see some more artifacts, including Anne's diary and pages of loose leaf paper, and exhibitions.

We paused in the warehouse and offices to watch a few informative videos and interviews, but moved through them rather quickly. The office space included scale replicas of what the Annex had looked like when they were hiding there -- after they had been betrayed, the Annex was emptied of all of its remaining contents and when it was turned into a museum, Otto Frank insisted that it remain empty to symbolize the void left behind by the millions of people who were deported and never returned.

We came to the moveable bookcase next. This was something that a lot of people seemed to rush by, but it was one of the things I had been the most interested in seeing, because that bookcase made all the difference. For 25 months, it was all that separated them and the rest of the world, it was so small and yet so large. The original books remained, although they weren't exactly books, more like magazine boxes. And then it was up into the Annex...

I don't think that there has ever been more to see in a collection of empty rooms; just the smallest fraction of the time they'd spent there remained and yet it all needed to be seen. I could describe each room for you, but you can go online and read about that/look at pictures, and I would like to write about what the things you can't ever know until you're actually there.

Whitney and I were both surprised by how large it actually was. It still wasn't much, but we'd expected more cramped quarters -- although 25 months without leaving will undoubtedly make a space even more claustrophobic than it naturally is. It was also really cold up there and the floors creaked with every step, so you could start to get the tiniest sliver of a sense of what it must have been like to actually live there.

You couldn't go up the ladder into Peter van Pels' room in the attic (something that The Fault in our Stars movie gets wrong... plus the whole idea of making out in the Anne Frank House) but they have it set up so that you can actually look into a mirror and see the room. You can see the window where Anne and Peter would get their glimpse of freedom and it was just so crazy because that was all they really had.

After that, we moved on through the exhibits. Although we saw pages that Anne Frank had written, her famous red-checkered diary wasn't actually on display today.

Before we exited, we were able to go through the exhibition space, which where the temporary exhibitions live. The exhibition on display today was a film of different people, mostly authors and actors, but also politicians, friends of the Franks and visitors to the museum described what Anne Frank meant to them. They had walls enclosing the normally open space, and after they played a clip, the quote would be projected onto one of the walls, so you were just surrounded by the epic-ness and just how many people Anne Frank has reached. And yes, John Green was included in this exhibition, reading a portion of The Fault in Our Stars but not the make out portion.

While each one of the clips was interesting, several stood out to me:
The first came from author, Nathan Englander, who wrote a story called "The Anne Frank Game." He described growing up with his sister and said "We would really wonder as Jewish kids in suburbia, who would hide us, if a second holocaust came." This concept isn't foreign to me -- it's a little too close to home, in fact -- but we were in this room and suddenly, what felt like a private thought was revealed to be a universal feeling.

The next was from Nelson Mandela, who said "Some of us read Anne Frank's diary on Robben Island and derived much encouragement from it." When I visited Robben Island last year, I was able to speak with a former prisoner and I heard about how much the prisoners there valued knowledge and books and the immense effort it took for them to obtain them, so the idea that this was one of the books that they chose to read was incredible.

The last clip in the movie was Emma Thompson reading and she simply said "All her would-haves are our opportunities."

Day Two(lips)

We started today off with a trip to the Anne Frank House -- a trip that merits its own blog post -- and left our hostel at 8. The thought process behind this was the same one that said, get to the Eiffel Tower super early so you don't have to wait until dinner time to see it and that is what we did.

I'm going to skip over the details of the actual Anne Frank House for now, because they belong in their own sarcasm-free post. For now, just know that our wait in line wouldn't have been bad except for the fact that we were standing behind a group of girls speaking aggressively in Spanish and in front of a family of four who clearly planned on seeing all of Amsterdam in one day and spent the entire hour we were standing there complaining loudly about the wait and trying to line jump us.

After the Anne Frank House, we took a few minutes to reflect quietly and visited the Homomonument. No, I am not making the name up, I even took a photograph of the sign so that you would all believe me.

Told you.

This monument was the first memorial in the world to the gay men and women who lost their lives during World War II and a tribute to those who are still being oppressed today.

Next, we went to The Pancake Bakery and finally got to eat some pancakes -- ok, technically, it was only a singular pancake, but it was the size of my face! We were boring and got plain pancakes instead of some of the crazy flavors they had, which include chicken, ice cream, chili, cheese and more.

We crossed the street/canal and visited the Amsterdam Tulip Museum, where we learned the history of tulips, which is about as interesting as it sounds. There were also no real tulips to be seen, which was disappointing. The most exciting thing that happened there was when I started calling it the "two-lips museum" and Whitney found a bunch of spinning stools and decided to experiment with her center of gravity.

We're mature adults.

After that, we were back to the Cat Boat. Whitney said that we needed to go back because she loves both cats and house boats and wanted to see the two together (she apparently does not remember calling me stupid when I first told her that Amsterdam has a floating cat shelter, but she did). When we first got there, they still weren't open, it was a "cat-astrophe." We weren't even 100% sure that we would be allowed to go in since we can't easily bring a cat home with us. *Please not that I did not say "couldn't" because we seriously considered it while we waited -- Whitney coined the term "trans-cat-inental" and I said that I just wanted a cat that spoke Dutch.

Cat Boat

The Cat Boat itself was pretty cool. Some of the cats were permanent residents that roamed freely, while others were up for adoption and they were sectioned off. They had a sign up with a drawing of one of the cats that said "Don't pet me. I scratch," but that cat looked almost exactly the same as the majority of the other cats there, who were mostly black and white, so I'm not sure the sign was of much use. There were different beds and toys everywhere and the cats clearly knew that they ran the place (don't all cats, though?). The cats could stay inside or climb out onto the enclosed deck. It was heaven and everything that a boat full of cats should be.

The cats were all very interested in the passing family of ducks.

We are now taking some a bit of time at our hostel to recharge before we head out for some activities to celebrate out last night here and then on to Berlin in the morning!

Our Official Photo

We got our official photo from yesterday's game!

The sky is still awake, so I am still awake so we have to play!

But seriously, it's 10:30 and I'm exhausted.

#So Dutch

Before I give you the low down on today's events, Whitney said that the goal of today was to "catch the flavor of Amsterdam," and I would say that is something we did successfully. I would also say that we walked at least five miles today if not more and that my feet are tired.

Amsterdam doesn't really sleep. We did, but ambient street noise flooded into our room all night plus Whitney and I both thought we were going crazy because we heard music ALL night. It turned out to be the people across the hall from us, who had not only been at it all night, but had their door open as well (we discovered this at 8:30 am, by the way). Another major event that took place before we'd truly started our day was us blowing the fuse in our room; stupid Americans over here, sorry not sorry.

When we took the streets at about 8:35 (post hallway and dead lights situations), they were empty. We wanted to get an early start to our day and were thinking breakfast and a canal tour, but not only were there no people to be seen, nothing was open! The trash in the street was piled high as well, it was really scary in a way. Back to the no food situation, we almost starved! The first canal tours of the day don't leave until 9 and since we'd been planning a stop, we were there super duper early, which led us to walk around until we did finally find some place to eat and then it was back to the docks for the 100 Highlights Canal Tour.

Did we actually see 100 Highlights? I'm not sure. We really wanted to see Amsterdam by canal and this was our best bet (ok, research pretty much says that it was our only bet, but that isn't the point). Being on the water was a lovely way to start the day, the boat was bad for taking pictures, but we got off to a good start.

After our tour, we realized that Amsterdam would be really easy to navigate...if we actually knew where we wanted to go; since we didn't have any particular sights that we wanted to see today, we didn't have any destinations to navigate towards, so we ran back to the hostel for a bit to regroup.

Our selected destinations included Amsterdam's Cat Boat and Tulip Market, so we moseyed that way. You know what I said about nothing opening? Yeah, the cat boat -- a floating animal shelter for Amsterdam's stray kitties -- was closed. They didn't open until 1! And we were there at 12:25... So after all we had done to hunt it down, we just turned around and went to the Tulip Market. The Tulip Market was quite a successful stop for us, although relatively uneventful... They sell flowers there, not much else, ya know?

We had waffles as our lunch/afternoon snack. That, like french fries on the side of the street, is a thing here. Pancakes are also a thing, but we have yet to have those. I got my waffle with ice cream and Whitney got hers with nutella and banana and these totally annihilated the crepes we had in France.

Better than any crepe with ice cream could have been

We visited the Vincent Van Gogh Museum to kill some time in the afternoon. The dude was like the king of the selfie. I mean, seeing his art up close was unreal, but seriously. "But first, let me paint a selfie."

Now, with those things being said and done, the real mission for today was to find the perfect souvenirs. While we had avoided any/all souvenir shops in Paris like the plague, if it was orange, then we were looking for it because we needed to get prepped for the world cup! This hunt also led to the eventual coining of our own hashtag #SoDutch which we proceeded to use to describe anything we did for the rest of the day.

We knew from the start that the main event of the day was going to be watching the Netherlands play Chile in the FIFA World Cup in The Museumplein -- where all of Amsterdam was planning on being -- so those orange clothes were a must. Why is everything in Amsterdam orange? I don't know, but I've come to the conclusion that it's either orange or phallic here.

I had a harder time finding the perfect shade of traffic cone to wear today, but eventually Whitney and I both had some Amsterdam swag to wear at the game. I looked like a pumpkin.

Is this the Dutch version of Americana?

Now, am I a soccer fan? No. Am I a FIFA fan? Casually. But when you have the opportunity to go watch a major sporting event/celebration like this for free, you take it, because we can come back to Amsterdam, but we won't have another 2014 World Cup.

We got to The Museumplein at 4:30. The game did not start until 6. They took "a free official photo" of us when we arrived and that should be online by tomorrow, so I'm excited to see how that turned out. In the time before the game started, we were able to get a really great introduction to Dutch pop music and radio, which is kind of similar to American pop music in that you go this is really stupid...and now I'll be singing it for the rest of my life. We were also able to grab some Heineken (#SoDutch).

Since they were speaking in Dutch and I had no idea what they were saying, I decided that I would just go ahead and cheer whenever the people around me did...which made it exactly like every other major sporting event I've ever gone to.

So, have I mentioned the Dutch obsession with orange yet? Because I really don't think I will ever be able to properly describe it. The amount of orange at this thing was enough to make Tropicana look pale. Thousands of people. Wearing orange. It was a very vibrant experience.

Sew oranje.

Completely worn out from all of the walking and game day excitement, Whitney and I decided to leave at half time -- quite the challenging endeavor -- when the score was 0-0. On our walk home, we passed all sorts of restaurants and bars that were playing the game and we were able to hear the celebrating when Amsterdam scored their first goal. When we got back to the bar at our hostel, they were playing the Australia/Spain game for some inexplicable reason, but the Netherlands won the game 2-0, which was #SoDutch.

Out into Amsterdam

After my last post, we set out for food and shopping. Is anyone actually surprised by that at this point?

We stopped and got french fries at one of the many roadside options, because getting food on the side of the road and on the go is sort of a thing. They came in a little cone and we got to eat them with a tiny fork. (I think my blog is starting to just look like a record of everything I've eaten on my trip, but I am not sorry for that). I really wonder how the people in Amsterdam manage to stay fit and thin considering that you can find somewhere to smoke pot every ten steps and find somewhere to eat every five.

I went with ketchup instead of the traditional mayo

With food in hand, we continued on to Nieuwmarkt, which is an open square that has been a bustling market since the 15th century. Whitney would have bought everything she saw if I hadn't been there to stop her.

We continued to mosey along, not too worried about sight-seeing today since we know that tomorrow will be totally full. We are basically in the Red Light District, so we're going to investigate that some more later, but we did see a few prostitutes in the windows.

Across the street from the prostitutes was Oude Kerk, the oldest building in Amsterdam. It's name directly translates to "old church" and it was established in 1306. We went in and received a little guide/map of the church, which was jam packed with information and absolutely impossible to fold back up when you were finished.

So much map

The church has about 12,000 graves and 2,500 graves stones (that we were walking on). They also has a website, gravenopinternet.nl, that I'm sure my father will now go look up. Rembrandt's wife is among one of the people buried there apparently. The church also had four organs and I would like to marry the most elaborate one if possible because it was perfect. Whitney said that that's creepy, but I don't really care.

"Marry me, Rebecca!" "No." -Catbug

First Impressions

We had a three hour train ride to reach our destination. We made a few stops in Belgium along the way, but it was rather uneventful as Whitney slept and I alternated between sleeping, reading and staring out the window.

Now, we are in Amsterdam! We had planned on walking to our hostel because it was only about 7 minutes according to MapQuest, but when we looked around, we decided against it and tried to get a cab. The cab driver told us that it was too close to bother, however. He pointed over his shoulder and said "see that church?" -- we did, because it was a giant friggin' church -- walk that way.

Those directions weren't entirely correct, because after walking to the church, we were lost. We finally got some police officers to give us directions and then we were able to find our way.

Is Amsterdam different than Paris? Hell yes. As far as I can tell, everything within at least three blocks of where we're staying smells like weed. There are more bicycles, less street signs and well, canals, duh.

While we were walking to our hostel, some brilliant young man came to the correct conclusion that we were just arriving in the city (two girls carrying suitcases, I wonder where they're going?!) and invited us to his pub crawl; it's like a party bus that walks you around to the best clubs and you get free shots. He told us that to find where the thing started, we just needed to walk straight until we found the "giant monument that looks like a dildo." I kid you not, that is what we said. He asked us if this seemed like our thing? It seems like Whitney's, not mine, although she is pretty determined to get me to participate. We shall see (although we probably won't blog about it...).

Now, we're sitting in our hostel -- we got twin beds this time -- taking a breather before we decide what we're doing with the rest of our day here.

Look at all the space we don't have! Love it.

Last Morning in Paris

We had packed up most of our stuff last night, so we just did a final sweep this morning before we checked out. Since we within walking distance of our train station and set to depart at 10:25, we headed down the street in search of our last Parisian meal. We found it at the same cafe where we had experienced the escargot mix up. I also learned this morning that the cafe's name is La Maison Blanche, aka The White House. How American.

Crepes and hot chocolate were the last of our food to dos in France. My mom has been talking about hot chocolate in France for about as long as I've been dreaming of going there. Never mind that it's June, we had to get some. I haven't been a crepe fan since a scarring incident in middle school (then again, what experience in middle school didn't scar me for life? but I wasn't going to leave without having tried one. I wanted to get one with ice cream but it was too early in the day, so I got it with plain sugar.

The hot chocolate came out first. Hot? Check. Chocolate? Double check. It was like chocolate gold. I felt like the chocolate gods were looking down on me and saying "hello, Thomson, would you like to start your day with a smile?" My sincerest thanks, Paris, you've outdone yourself.

Next was the crepe. I'm still not a crepe fan but it was good enough to relieve some of my middle school PTSD.

We sat outside for a while, feeling extremely French, and then it was time to walk across the street to find our train to Amsterdam... which is where I am now. Check out my next post for more information on that!

We just found a thong on our window sill. Where did it come from?!

While Whitney was at the bar downstairs and I was having some time to myself, she met a girl from Kazakhstan; they are now Facebook friends and following each other on Instagram. This is the life.

Whitney's wallet was almost lifted. I saved the day. I deserve a medal or something.

Lost in Paris

Today is, sadly, our last full day in Paris. We will have just enough time for breakfast tomorrow and then it will be a train to Amsterdam. One great thing about the swap in hostels is that we are literally 10 feet away from the train station we need to be at tomorrow, which means an extra half hour of sleep in the morning!

We actually slept in this morning. We planned a lazy day in Paris, we had a few sites we still wanted to see but we were just going to go wherever the wind blew us and get lost. I know that there are people who would think that is a stupid idea and would have crammed this day full of more sites and sounds, but this is our trip and not theirs, so they can do what they like when they come to Paris.

Before we got on the Metro (because we have mastered the Paris subway system), we stopped at La Poste (the post office) to buy some stamps. You had to buy them from a machine...and in French, so it obviously took us a few tries to get it right. Hopefully my post cards make it home.

We spent the majority of our day in the Latin Quarter (which, I needed to explain to Whitney was not because it was Latin as in Latino but because it was where Paris' first college was located and they originally only spoke Latin there).

I took the book crawl international today! Whitney placated me by allowing a trip to Shakespeare and Company, a bookstore that was frequented and beloved by Mr. Ernest Hemingway and described as "a wonderland of books" by Henry Miller.

Books are cool

Does my nerdiness show if I say that this has definitely been one of the things I have loved the most about my stay here? It wasn't just a book store, it was more like half store/half museum. They had a selection of new books, used books and first editions that you were encouraged to pick up, look at and touch. Up on the second floor, they had a piano that you were invited to play (I didn't, because that is never a good idea), they also had a bunch of old typewriters and nooks where people left messages for the customers who would come after them. They do a lot of readings and workshops there, although I was obviously unable to attend one... for now. One the first floor, they had a hole in the floor that was for people to drop donations into to "Feed the starving writers," I was nearly in tears. The whole place was a bit of a shrine to Hemingway, and I mean, why not? To top it all off, I made a new friend, because up on the second floor, they had a cat! What is more Hemingway than that? Actually, a polydactyl cat would be more Hemingway than this deaf cat was, but still!

Kitty!

Also, yes, I did buy a book. And yes, it was by Hemingway. I also bought a tote bag!

After that, we went back and found the market we had visited on Monday because Whitney needed to feed her scarf obsession. While we were there, I fed myself, having found a baker (with his tray, like always) and bought myself another croissant. She's shopping, I'm eating, what else is new?

We got lost some more in our search for the Jardin du Luxemborg, but eventually we found it. The Jardin du Luxembord is the second largest public garden in France and is actually where the French Senate is located today (it was originally built by Marie de' Medici). When we first got there, a bunch of people dressed in Victorian garb were dancing a gazebo. It was equal parts strange and endearing -- apparently they were preparing for a later performance. We walked further out into the park and found the large "basin," where people were playing with tiny sailboats. We decided to rent one, which became known as the Star Ship, because it had a star on it's sail. Our ship was a fighter, because we basically managed to hit every other ship in the water and the statue in the middle, but she made it back in one piece! We called it "The little ship that could."

There she is.

After we were done there, we planned on going to Le Procope, which is the oldest cafe in Paris and was a favorite of Voltaire and Balzac [insert Princess Diaries and Music Man references here] but it was a little steep for us so we kept on moving. We eventually chose Cafe de Paris for lunch (mostly because the menus were in English) and were not disappointed. We ordered a Coke to share even though they're pricey here because it came in a glass bottle and it all felt very fancy. I got escargot again -- just six this time -- because even though snails are ugly, they are delicious. Whitney got French onion soup (which I stole some of) and almost cried because it was to die for.

That was where we reached the end of what we had planned to do for the day, so we flipped open our guide book and decided we would go to the Bastille. This was a let down; the book didn't tell us that the Bastille was just a giant pillar and a traffic circle! Yes, it was a shiny pillar, but the most interesting thing about being there was witnessing a minor car accident. Whitney said that we'd gone to storm the Bastille and it got scared, so it ran away and left a column there instead. Victor Hugo's house was only a few blocks away, so we went there. We didn't go in because we weren't that interested in it, but the whole thing led to Whitney stomping through the streets of Paris singing "One Day More" -- more like the six words she knows of it -- for about a half an hour.

After that, we decided to head for the hostel to blog and regroup for tonight and tomorrow.

One thing that I didn't blog about the past two days is that there is a special place in Hell for people who graffiti churches. Both the dome at Sacre-Coeur and the towers at Notre-Dame had been graffiti-ed. It's a church, are you really so desperate for attention that you need to scribble or even carve your name into it?God can see what you're doing! You're practically up his nose when you're in those places, so you should just cut the crap. With that being said, today I saw a cool bit of art that had been sprayed onto the side of a building that I wanted to share with you.

Souhait vous étiez ici.

Jesus Doing the YMCA

The Vitruvian Man is on the back of some 1€ coins (they've got all sorts of different things and I don't know why, but so far, this is the only one that I care about) and all I can think of now is when Mr. Billy Peterson couldn't remember it's name so he described it as "the picture of Jesus doing the YMCA."

I also just found out that the Vitruvian Man is apparently in a museum in Venice, so now I must convince Whitney that another museum needs to be added to our tour.

I got tan lines from my capris on Thursday and from my dress today. I must go hang the shame curtains.

France is currently playing Switzerland in the FIFA World Cup. Whitney went downstairs to watch in the bar (we've switched for our alone time in the room, I was not left to rot in the lounge) but the crazy thing is that we know that the French are congregated somewhere out there in Paris watching it because we can hear cheering and screaming from our window. We know that when we're in Amsterdam on Monday, the Netherlands will be playing and that they have a huge area set up for fans, so we're planning on going to that, but tonight I'll be taking it easy and keeping score from my bedroom by listening to the shouting.

Also, we just found out that when we're in Berlin, Germany will be playing the US. This could get weird.

The Fat Americans

Tonight at dinner, we had a bit of a mis-translation that ended up in our singular half order of escargot becoming two full orders. Am I complaining? No, I'm not. Was it more than I should have eaten? Absolutely... especially when you consider that it was supposed to be an appetizer and that I had an entree coming. But what a friggin' awesome mistake to make; we wanted escargot in France and we got a lot of escargot in France. If you could see my face right now, you would see a happy one.

Now Whitney and I are having some "alone time," AKA please get away from me, I need some peace and quiet and I've been no more than 100 yards away from you since Tuesday time. I am sitting in the empty lounge downstairs with her laptop while she is in the room, supposedly organizing her things and eventually, we will switch. Or I will stay down here until the end of time, who knows?

Hope You're Doing Swell!

Today was the second full day in Paris. Last night, Whitney told me that I had to pick my best outfit for today since it was the day I'd been waiting for "since I was three months old"; we were going to the Eiffel Tower. I ended up going with my graduation dress since a) it has stripes, which seems very French, b) it's pink and c) in Whitney's world, these events are of equal value.

We woke up really early and took the Metro to the Trocadero Station. Yup, we went on the subway, I will say that it wasn't too challenging and that is was a smoother ride than the T, although it smelt just as bad. This dropped us off pretty much at the Eiffel Tower around 8:15. I'm pretty sure that we'd actually woken up before France because no one was there. It was awesome.

EMPTY

One of the greatest parts about our walk to the Eiffel Tower was Whitney claiming that I'm ruining her attempts to make me "insta-famous" by being bad at looking natural. I'm bad at posing for candids... I still don't think that she understands the concept of a candid photo...

The Eiffel Tower doesn't actually open until 9, so we had a while to wait when we got into line at 8:30 (and no, we were not the first people there). I told Whitney that we were going to take the elevator and that we didn't need to climb the 1,710 stairs like she wanted to. Since we were there so early, it didn't take us too long to get to the top. It was cold at the top... It was actually cold everywhere since the sun wasn't really out yet and Whitney and I had both dressed for the weather we expected would come later in the day, so as I said, I'm been waiting my entire life to become a popsicle. Neither words nor sarcasm can properly describe the top of the Eiffel Tower; after having been there, I completely understand why people propose to each other there, because why wouldn't you want to say "I love you" at the top of the world?

This would be an actual candid photo of me.

Whitney also thought it would be a really great place for a prom-posal. On the way down, we stopped on the second level and got some breakfast. Croissants on the Eiffel Tower, no big deal, right?

After that, we walked to the Champs Elysees for some shopping. While we had been planning on going there anyways, Whitney was on a mission to find some new shoes because hers were not suited for a full day of walking. She eventually found a pair and bought a shirt -- that I picked out -- as well.

I hadn't originally planned on writing about where we went to lunch, since it was a bit embarrassing, but the whole thing was so ridiculous that leaving it out would leave my blog incomplete. We went to McDonald's. Yup, that is why I had planned on not writing about it because it's McDonald's and why would we go there when we're in Paris? We just wanted to grab something fast but ended up with the worst McDonald's experience of our existence. McDonald's in Paris is really different. The first difference, I would say is that while our McCafe is just a coffee drink, they actually have a separate cafe where they serve muffins and things (we checked out another McDonald's to verify that it was not specific to the Champs Elysees) but they also had self-order kiosks. Their menu was also quite different. It was ungodly crowded, so the idea of it being "fast food" went out the window. We ended up ordering from an employee who was just walking around the restaurant with a little pin pad -- she gave us a piece of paper with a number that we were supposed to bring to the register to confirm our order and get our food. Before we got to the register, however, a visibly pregnant woman asked if she could step in front of us because she was pregnant and really needed to eat. Like really? You're starving and you want to give your unborn baby McDonald's? Eventually we got our (cold) food and ate outside as quickly as we could just to be done with the whole ordeal. We decided that it was more traumatic than the Aussie Burger experience of 2002.

At the end of the Champs Elysees is the Arc de Triomphe. Can I just say that I want a giant arch built to recognize me and my accomplishments? Yes, I know that Napoleon was crazy, but I totally deserve something that awesome.

Look how tiny Whitney is!

We unanimously decided not to go to the top because, having seen the Arc de Triomphe from the top of the Eiffel Tower, we didn't want to spend the money for the view.

Next, we headed to the Hotel des Invalides. This was originally a hospital for soldiers, but today is a comprehensive museum for France's military history. We were mostly interested in it because it now contains Napoleon's tomb.

So fancy.

We may or may not have taken a selfie with Napoleon, I'm not at liberty to say (plus it's on Whitney's cell phone and not my camera, so I can't post it here anyways). Whitney wanted to know if they ever open up the tomb to check up on Napoleon, dust him off and ask him how he's doing -- "hey Napoleon, hope you're doing swell!" We also agreed that we would be ok with being sick if it meant we could stay there.

Having done all of this by 3, we decided to be ambitious and get back on the Metro and head to Sacre-Coeur. The ride was uneventful, except for the fact that I realized that my deodorant was doing a great job and that other people weren't quite as lucky.

Sacre-Coeur was a hike to say the least. After marching up a hill from the Metro station, we had to climb 228 stairs just to get to the church! (Yes, I counted). We went in and heard the nunnies singing, which led me to think about just how much my best friend, Sister John Marie, would cherish this whole experience. It also led me to think about what happens to a tone-deaf nun.

Going into the basilica is free, but Whitney and I wanted to take the tour of the crypt and the dome, so we went looking for that. Only we could get lost looking for something attached to the building we were already in. We ended up walking down a side street, the into a different church, back around through a market and finally up some more stairs to get back to where we started, although neither of us are complaining about that detour as it was totally charming and because getting lost has been part of our goal all along. This time, we were able to find the entrance. We started with the crypt, which was not what we were expecting. Chuck's experience with the crypts in Ukraine seems to have been much better than ours. We didn't have any idea what we were looking at and for the most part, it didn't look like anything. I'm sure that's sacrilegious, but since we aren't Catholic, so I think that God should just be happy that we showed up.

Next came the dome...which was another 300 steps (at least... we're debating if it was 300 total or 300 up then 300 down, which seems a lot more likely). Once again, these were spiral stone steps, but I did not fall today. It was worth it.

Ta dah!

The walk down was very dramatic. It included walking down and then up and then down again and I almost hit my head because I was too tall for the downward staircase. After that, we had to walk back down the 228 stairs we'd initially climbed to get back to the Metro station and have since returned to our hostel, where I sit blogging and plotting activities for tonight and tomorrow.