10.12.09

My second Regina Spektor concert. =)

Sept 12, 2009

Regina Spektor at the Chicago Theatre!!

Last month my friend Josh and I drove about 32 hours in one weekend to see Regina Spektor and hang out in Chicago for a day. It was great!

Rome was a lot of fun- so much to see and do; one day was definitely not enough.  We had one full day to see as much as we could.  Here is what we saw:

30 September 2009

It is about midnight now and I finally got an internet connection here in our hotel room in Rome!  I’ll have to put the past few days worth of photos up all together.  We’ve been busy.  The last 3 nights we were in Alberobello which is a pretty little village filled with these funny little huts called trulli.  Trulli is the plural for trullo.  There wasn’t any working internet there.  There was a huge festival going on in Alberobello while we were there.  It was completely unexpected and ended up being a lot of fun.  The streets were closed off and there was just a big outdoor market with lights that lit up the main piazza in the village.  Yesterday we took a day trip to Martina Franca and Locorotondo.  Both were really nice, small towns.  Really beautiful.  It was nice meandering around the quiet streets.  Today we got up early and caught a train from Alberobello to Bari, and then Bari to Rome- 8 hours total on the train.  We arrived into Rome around 6:30pm, walked around the Piazza Novana and got dinner.  Rome is very hectic compared to the last 2 weeks of smaller cities and villages we’ve seen.

Pictures from Alberobello, Martina Franca, and Locorotondo:

26 September 2009

Now it is about 1:30am and I am uploading the rest of my pics from today.  Dori and I took the local FSE train today to Otranto.  Otranto is a little beach town on the Adriatic Coast about 40km from Lecce.    It was really nice! And now I can say I put my feet in the Adriatic Sea!  It was really quiet there today because it’s a little off season for the beach. The weather was great though. It was around 80 degrees today and mostly sunny. =)

Tomorrow morning at 11:00 we are taking a bus from Lecce to Alberobello where we will stay for the next three nights.  I really like travel days so I’m excited for tomorrow.  Whenever I’m walking through a city with my backpack on it really makes me want to go on a backpacking trip!  I just really like the adventure of not really knowing what to expect of a new place.

I think the bus ride tomorrow is about 3 hours.  In Aberobello there are these interesting little stone (I think) huts called trulli’s and I guess we are staying in one while we are there!  Not sure about internet in a trulli…but I will try my best to post some pics tomorrow night.

26 September 2009

It’s almost 11pm and we just got in from dinner, our last night in Lecce.  Tonight the streets were filled with young people just walking around with friends.  It was really different than the last few days we’ve been in Lecce.  For the most part its been a very quiet little city.  Lecce is definitely my favorite city so far on this trip.  It really is the perfect combination of a lively city and a quaint, cute village.

Happy 16 Meredith! =)

23Sept09

Matera, Italy

Tomorrow we go to Lecce. I’ll update again when we get there!

We are now in Matera, Italy and it is so cool! The food is great here and these Sassi caves are really interesting.  Up until the 1950s people lived within these caves.  They were finally forced to move out by the Italian government because of a spread of malaria throughout the villages.  It has been known as the shame of Italy because of how horrible the conditions were here for so long.  People in the South of Italy say that God forgot about them, and there is also a book called “Jesus Christ stopped in Eboli” explaining how the people here feel they were forgotton for so long.  Mel Gibson chose Matera, Italy as the location for Passion of the Christ.  I haven’t seen that movie, but I’d really like to see it now.  I guess he thought Matera looked very close to what he imagined Jerusalum to be.  Now Matera is a tourist attraction, but there aren’t that many tourists here because it is really difficult to get to.  It sounds like the train system down here isn’t the most reliable, which is why we took a cab from Maratea.  It’s really neat here!  A woman that was born here in Matera gave us a private tour of the Sassi caves, which is where the people lived in pretty aweful conditions for so long.  Our hotel is actually in a renovated cave and it’s really neat!  Since the inhabitants evacuated in the 1950’s, a lot of renovations have been made to the caves, and a lot has still been left untouched as well.  Tomorrow we have another full day and night here!

20 Sept 2009

Maratea, Italy

Today is our third day in Italy and I’m really excited that the internet connection is really good right now.  It’s 10:30pm here and the hotel is quiet.  The service isn’t very good in our room because it’s kind of down in a basement so I’m sitting here at the reception desk with a couple of really nice Italian guys that work at the hotel.  They don’t speak a word of English but that’s ok.

We arrived into Rome at about 8 in the morning, and after some confusion which included Dori not getting her luggage, and us missing a couple trains, we started on our way about 4 hours south of Rome.  Maratea is really beautiful, very quiet and quaint.  It seems to be a very popular place for weddings; we came across several wedding celebrations during the past few days.  The weather is really nice here so far, a little rainy off and on but mostly in the 70’s and partly sunny/partly cloudy.  I think its a lot like New England in September.  I was expecting it to be really hot because of how far south we are, but it’s really nice weather.  Each night we had live marching band music that filled the town as we ate dinner.  It was cool.

As we walk around the quiet town we notice the same familiar faces.  Just after three days, we ate at most of the restaurants in Maratea and walked through most of its streets.  Tomorrow we are going to Matera (it’s confusing how close the name is to Maratea which is where I am now) which is about a 3 hour cab ride from here.  It is north east of where we are now, so we are heading to the other side of the boot of Italy.  It’s a little difficult to get to so we decided a cab would be the best mode of transportation instead of taking trains and buses that would take up most of our day tomorrow.

Maratea is not very touristy and most of the people here speak no English at all.  Even the people that work at our hotel know very little.  It’s interesting to be in an area that is made up of mostly local people that don’t really have a need to speak English.  We are all wishing we knew more Italian so we could communicate better.  I liked being in France where I could say a few phrases and try to make a conversation.   I feel better about being there if I can attempt their language. In Italian I can barely say hello!

So far my favorite meal was a homemade pasta with wild mushrooms.  I love eating vegetarian here.  I’ve had no trouble at all so far.