22 June 2009

EUROPE!!!!

Okay, my overall rating on a scale of one to ten is 9.5. I deduct the point five points purely for my dad being pick pocketed in Paris - otherwise, it was totally awesome!!!!!
I'm not really sure how I should organize this... I guess I'll start with some things I found interesting about Europe.
Okay...
- The people in Rome in their suits and dresses on motorcycles and Vespas. You have not really had a good laugh until you have seen a man in an Armani suit on a Harley Davidson Sportster.

- Oh, I laugh just thinking about this one. We went to the Piazza de Spagna/ Spanish Steps (I was the only one who actually CLIMBED the Spanish Steps :P) and got gelato at this place around the corner, and there was this dark chocolate ice cream called VIAGRA... I am not even kidding. And I mean, you would think that everyone would find this unappealing in an ice cream, but apparently not, because EVERYONE got that flavor... well, I guess that's MY family for you.

- Purple is apparently THE color in Rome, because all the clothing stores and street vendors have ALL purple stuff on display... I kept thinking of Hannah (Goins - as if that needed specification) and her hundred-day purple thing.

- I don't think I saw a SINGLE three-row car the entire time I was in Europe... and Smart Cars are like, the car to have. I think the ratio of Smart Cars to all other cars was about equivalent to the ratio of SUVs to all other cars here... they're THAT popular.. plus, in all the parallel parking areas all over the cities, the Smart Cars park sideways, like, perpendicular to the sidewalk rather than PARALLEL, entirely defeating the purpose of PARALLEL parking.

- The tour guides, man. The tour guides were AMAZING. Illyria, the tour guide we had for the Colosseum, the Vatican, and the Roman forum, was probably my favorite. She was REALLY enthusiastic about Roman history and wanted everyone else to be as excited about it as she was. And, you know, listening her say "Seeeenatore" about fifty times wasn't all that boring, either. Oh, and there was this other tour guide we had on the top of Mt. Vesuvius... You couldn't understand anything he said except "160 kilometres level up", but he was pretty funny with his Louis Vuitton purse, designer sunglasses, Ferrari baseball cap and beer belly.

- St. Peter's Basilica. I thought that it was mostly going to be the Sistine Chapel that I liked in the Vatican, but it turned out that having it described by Illyria was better than actually being in it, because it was really crowded and loud, and everyone's flashes were going off, but St. Peter's Basilica was really something to see. It's so... I don't know... magnificent, astonishing, breath-taking, amazing, incredible, impressive, can you tell I'm using Microsoft synonym generator. But really. My mom said she got TEARY when she walked through the doors. (Not that it's all that difficult to make my mother teary, but still)

Wow. Have you noticed a pattern? All of these things were in Rome. Whatever, I LOVED Rome.