Italy with my parents was a lot of food and wine and site seeing, and nice little bed and breakfast hotels. I loved Venice and Siena, Florence not as much. The small towns between Siena and Rome were all on top of hills, and took like 20 seconds to go through. I was just trying to figure out what it would be like to grow up in one of those places.

Rome is a big, busy city but it was just crazy to me that you can walk around past McDonalds and subway stations and suddenly run into something huge and ancient. We walked through a lot of ancient Rome our first night there, and you just turn a corner and are suddenly standing in front of the Pantheon. I'm not all that interested in seeing all the historical sites on this trip, but in Rome they're amazing because everything they did was soooooooooo big.

We went to St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, which was amazing for the same reason, it's so huge and everything is made out of gold, bronze, or marble. I tried to remember a prayer or two from high school because I figured if there's anywhere I should say a lil prayer, that's the place lol :) . I went in the Colosseum, which is a lot smaller and more ruined inside than I thought it would be actually.

Now I'm in Athens and have met up with my cousin. It's my first place where there's really no hope of understanding anything written or spoken. We are staying really close to the Acropolis and right near it there is a big rock/hill/viewpoint place where you can see out over all of Athens. It took me a longg time to find some food but eventually I figured that out and ate dinner up there between two groups of high schoolers battling whose cell phone could play the better/louder American rap song. From the streets you can just barely see parts of the Parthenon above the sides of the whole Acropolis, and from the higher floors of our hotel you can see it really well, all lit up at night. Good thing too because I got pretty lost wandering around these little hill streets down from the Acropolis, with lots of deadends and torn-down or tin shacks between tiny houses, but you can always get somewhere where you can see the Acropolis so you can't get that lost.

Tomorrow is the island Paros, but we have kind of no idea how to get there.