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So let's begin with Halloween. The French really don't celebrate it, and being really far from home, you tend to grasp on to anything that reminds you of home. So we decided that since there were no haunted houses to go to, we would go to the Catacombs. Definitely a really creepy thing to do - especially on Halloween. They are basically tunnels that run all under Paris but there is only a section open to the public. People say that there are secret entrances all over the city that secret societies sneak through to have meetings down in the tunnels. And there are "cataflics" that are cops who patrol the restricted sections of the tunnels. Anyway, we go down to the catacombs. Pretty much your dark, dank, (is that a word?) earthy-smelling tunnels. Until you reach the "cemetarium". Yes. There are thousands of human bones stacked in piles that line the walls. Not just bones, but skulls, too. And to add to this lovely display of human remains, whoever stacked these piles of bones decided to make patterns out of the bones and skulls. How nice. There was a sign at the entrance that literally said "Not for children or those who are of a nervous disposition". I laughed when I read that. Until I saw the bones...
Wednesday after class was the start of our Fall Break. So I left Wednesday afternoon for Italy! After 12 hours of traveling, missing a bus and two trains, getting elbowed and yelled at by a mentally unhinged germa-phobe Italian man, we arrived in the quaint town of Riomaggiore - part of Cinque Terre (aka overlooking the Mediterranean Sea). We arrived at 2am and at this point were happy to be alive. The next day we woke up to the waves crashing onto the rocks and the sunning shining down on us. I even got a sunburn! (I guess it doesn't take much..) It's probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. The sky was the bluest blue and you could see right through the aqua water. We hiked through 3 of the 5 towns and stopped for gelato on the way. Gelato=amazing=treating ourselves to it as many times as possible. We were walking around this one town and passed this man fishing while his wife was sewing. I noticed the man had caught something so I called to Rachelle (my friend who I went with) to stop and see what he caught. It was squirming around a lot...but not like a fish. It was a squid! This man reeled it in, grabbed it with his bare hands and turned it inside out and some other crazy stuff so he could take it home and cook it for dinner. The tentacles kept sticking to him and when he put it on the ground it tried to get back to the water so he pulled it off the ground and "squelch" one of it's legs didn't quite make it off the ground..and the leg was still moving! So the man picks up the lone tentacle and shoves the squid into a plastic bag and continues to fish. The bag kept squirming...I couldn't believe what I had seen. Walking back through the three towns to our hotel, we got to walk along the ocean path right as the sun was setting. It was the perfect moment. After a couple days walking around and relaxing on the Italian coast, we took a train back to MIlan. (For the first time we caught the correct train in time). It was quite a difference going from a small sea-side town that shuts down at 9pm to a big city where people don't eat until around that time. We went into Prada and were admiring these gorgeous purses, when this woman approaches us actually thinking we are potential buyers (ha) and shows us what "just came in this morning in patent leather". I ooh-ed and ah-ed acting like I do this all the time before casually making an exit. It was great. We saw the Il Duomo cathedral - it's in my pictures and is so detailed it's hard to describe. It was built in the 1300s and took 5 centuries to finish the outside of it which includes a variety of architectural designs all combined into one. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside but you have to lean your head almost all the way back to see the ceilings. I felt so tiny standing inside. Then we walked and saw the Palace, the Arch of Peace, the museum where Da Vinci's "Last Supper" is (we only saw the outside of the museum since apparently you have to make an appointment 3 weeks in advance to see the painting) a couple gardens and basically wandered around the streets of Milan. Four different men tried to hand me bird feed as I was trying to take pictures. I don't know about you but I would prefer not to have bird food shoved in my face by random men thank you very much. The other Italian non-bird feeding men weren't as "aggressive" as I had always heard they were. They definitely look at you, unlike the French, but that was it. Italy is full of stray cats. And I've decided that little kids speaking foreign languages is the cutest thing ever. Oh, random, but, unlike Paris and America for that matter, water and bread are not free. Neither is sitting. They charge you a "sitting fee" in the restaurants. And you would think it would be really easy to look at people and say "oh they're definitely Italian" but it really wasn't...you would see someone and think they were Dutch or something but they'd start speaking Italian. In Paris you can definitely pick out who is French because there is a look to them but it's not that way with Italians. I love traveling but it's nice to come back to Paris and consider it my "home" away from home.
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