Ciao Bella

ROME. I LOVE ROME. I went for 4 days on my post high school graduation eurotrip with my 8 best friends and I instantly fell in love with the city then and knew I needed to return. We flew from Prague on Tuesday morning and settled into our apartment near the Termini station before we headed out to Piazza Navona (one of my favorite piazzas) for dinner. We happily wined and dined ourselves into food comas and neglected our original plan of going out after and instead walked around towards Campo Di'Fiori and stumbled upon a hookah bar. You can take the girl out of the mediterranean, but you can't take the mediterranean out of the girl (a reference to my Israeli roots). After filling our hookah needs, we got our first gelato of the season and headed on home.

whining and wining

first gelato bliss

i mean..

The next morning we made breakfast in our apartment - Dan cooked us bullets or toad in a pond or what are they called it's an egg cracked into a piece of bread and then fried in a pan. It was delicious. And not Italian at all. We took the tram from our apartment to the Termini station and then the metro from there to the Colosseum. We were able to take a few pictures before it started to downpour so we decided to seek out gelato to kill the time. And that we did.

Elyssa, Carly, Dan and me at the Colosseum!

We were getting overwhelmed by the amount of tourists at the Colosseum so we hopped on the metro and went to another equally touristy location: the Spanish Steps. It was on and off raining so we quickly walked up one side and then quickly walked down the other side to get the full experience.

spick and spanish

We then headed over to the Trevi Fountain and quickly threw our coins into the fountain before we actually got downpoured on. Like pouring rain downpour.

We ran out of the rain as fast as our little legs could carry us and we dried off and ate pasta and wine and then set out in the newfound sun for an afternoon of more gelato and shopping. We spent a long time in a leather goods store getting presents for people and just touching all the soft bags. Then I had gelato number two of the day from San Crispino - happiness expressed below.

great pistachio and chocolate combo

We walked with our gelato and picked up some more touristy souvenirs to bring back home with us and wound up at a shoe store near Via Del Corso and each of us got a pair of shoes that we wore out that night. We headed to the Pantheon and sat on the fountain just taking in the scene. I somehow managed to capture this very scenic picture of a bride and groom on my iphone and here it is in color and black and white I couldn't decide which one I liked better:

i should charge for these pics

not a bad view

We relaxed on the steps and then walked back to the apartment (mostly because we didn't know where to pick up the tram going away from the Termini station) and had our own bruschetta and mozzarella and wine of course. We were a little slow in getting ourselves ready so by the time we headed out to dinner it was already 10 pm. But the food at Dar Poeta in Trastevere was phenomenal. We shared pizzas and got pitchers of the house red wine and made sure to save room for the nutella ricotta calzone (name drop: Claudia) for dessert. I think I had died and gone to heaven. It was so delicious and there was no chance we were going out drinking after eating all that food. So we decided to walk off a little bit of dinner and I brought everyone to the apartment I had stayed in on my high school eurotrip and got really nostalgic. And I obviously got another gelato before we headed home.

Carly, Allie, Elyssa, and me with my gelato

the view from where we were sitting in the above picture

The next day we cooked breakfast again and set out to the Roman Forum, where we mistakenly waited on line for nearly an hour - didn't realize we were on the line for people waiting to buy tickets and we had already paid when we bought the tickets the day before for the Colosseum. Anyway we worked on our tans so it was fine and we watched a boy get pooped on by a pigeon - really entertaining. We explored the forum and then headed to the Vittorio Emanuelle monument (another favorite landmark of mine) before continuing up to Piazza Navona for lunch at Cul De Sac.

it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood 

this is the memorial for any and all dead soldiers

more moscato please

caprese and charcuterie

Since we were full from lunch we walked around Piazza Navona before heading to Frigidarium for gelato, a place where they are smart enough to dip your gelato in hard chocolate shell (white or dark). I realized I had been to this gelato place when I came after high school and it made me really happy for some reason. I mean I could live in Piazza Navona and be eternally happy.

I own Navona

me and Carly

Dan the man

We then headed up towards the Villa Borghese and the gardens and while Carly, Elyssa, and Dan got cappuccino I wandered the streets up towards the Spanish Steps again, bought a couple scarves for myself and actually stumbled upon a celebrity sighting. I saw a crowd of Italians with their cameras ready and pointing at a pharmacy so I stopped and thought even if I don't know who it is I want to see who everyone is waiting for. So I hear someone say "Alan BALDWIN??" and I thought "ALEC BALDWIN!?!" So I stayed and snapped some up close pics of the celeb. I am a huge fan of 30 Rock and love his character on the show so I was actually really excited that I happened to run into him (well ya know, not really run into him. ok)

the Italians swooned when he kissed his fiance

Here are some more pics from my hour of wandering:

the pup that perches

a lil limoncello 

spanish steps in their prime

sup pinocchio

lady liberty does piazza del popolo

We all met up in Piazza Del Popolo and headed back to the apartment to prepare for our final dinner at Ditirambo. Ok amazing food. I apologize that this post in particular has turned into a food blog but that's what the trip mainly focused on. And I don't regret any of it. We finished up our four days of touring with complementary limoncello at dinner, a perfectly sweet way to end my spring break. I had a wonderful two weeks with my friends traveling around and exploring different countries and cultures that I only dreamed of visiting. Before I left for Copenhagen I jotted down a tentative spring break plan and it was so enjoyable seeing this idea come to its fruition. [side note Nicki thinks I should be an english major because I have a good vocabulary so that word was just for you weirdo]. I had promised a friend I would have 8 gelatos a day.. well I only had 5 over the course of 3 days but I think I did enough damage for one short trip. I decided on this trip that I need to not only explore the entirety of Italy but I also really want to live in Rome at some point. And that is all for spring break. I kind of stopped re-reading these posts and I also didn't upload a lot of pictures that I had taken and edited from my iphone on other ones but we'll see if I feel ambitious enough to go back in and edit what's already been posted.
Ok rambling ends now. Next post is about my PARENTS' visit to Copenhagen!

ciao roma

Haha Praha

PRAGUE. Great times in Prague. Carly, Nicki, and I took a 5 hour train from Vienna and while they slept I read my Top 10 book and prepared for Prague. It was unfortunately really rainy when we got there so we just went to the hostel, went to lunch, and hung out in a mall for a little bit. Carly and I went to a Passover seder at the Prague Chabad and that was a very interesting experience. There were almost 30 tables filled with 15 or so people (can't do the math on that one) and it was complete chaos. We didn't know when to eat what, we couldn't hear over the crying babies, and there was a table of drunk Israeli guys singing for the whole time without fail...it was an experience, and thankfully they were generous with the wine. Saturday we went on a walking tour around the city and had lunch in Old Town Square.

tourist trap

We walked down the Charles Bridge and then we walked back across the bridge and back to our hostel to meet up with Dan and Elyssa, our Rochester friends who are studying in London this semester.

Dan, Elyssa, Carly, and me

Me, Carly, Dan and Elyssa had dinner in Old Town Square then got ready for a pub crawl. It was really fun and funny and random and when we met a Danish couple, Nicki and I just screamed Danish words at them like "sommetider" (sometimes) and "gulerødder" (carrots). Why they kept talking to us, we will never know. The pub crawl ended up at Karlovy Lazne, a 5 story club, but we were so tired that we just did a run-through and went home to break passover and got pizza. 

the club

The next day we went back across the Charles Bridge and up to the church at the top of the hill, where we stopped to take pictures and record a video for Rochester's Relay for Life - we were all on the executive board of Colleges Against Cancer together last year so we made the video to show our support for this year's Relay. Then it started to snow on us and as we walked towards Old Town Square the snow didn't let up so we sought solace in the Starbucks and took advantage of its free wifi so I could instagram some picz. 

snow happy

We then walked back across Charles Bridge to see the lock bridge and the John Lennon wall - super artsy indeed.

We walked back across Charles Bridge and to Old Town Square for some more snacks - at this point we had tried one of everything - and headed back to rest up.

fried dough with cheese on top

The next day, Monday, we went to Terezin, the concentration camp north of Prague, and had a tour there. It was really sad so I don't really want to elaborate on it. We then came back, had lunch at Old Town Square, and then saw the 5 Synagogues and a cemetery in the Jewish Quarter. We started to get loopy around synagogue number 3 so we decided to head back to the hostel and rest before going out for our last night in Prague. Our tour guide had told us that Czechs drink beer by the meter - so we decided it was our duty as tourists to drink a meter of beer at dinner - it started out as an individual effort but then it became a collective task. After dinner we decided to go to a casino and Elyssa won 1250 Czech Koruna, so like 55 bucks, playing blackjack. It was random.


Overall, Prague was awesome. It was so great to be reunited with Rochester friends and eating good salty, meaty food and drinking good beers. It was really great and despite all the climate changes I had a blast. Definitely going back to Prague at some point. I mean how can you resist a zebra party boat in front of an old church and palace? Answer: you can't.

Vienna Vidi Vici

Part two of my spring break adventures brought us to Vienna, Austria. We took a train from Budapest to Vienna on Wednesday morning and after arriving and settling in our hostel, we set out for lunch and sight seeing. The weather was so nice and warm and I even got a bit of a sunburn from walking around. We walked down the main street, Mariahilfer Straße, and thought we had been transported back to New York City. There were so many shopping stores and small cafes and gelato stands it was nice being back in the hustle and bustle of a city street. We wound up at the Museums Quartier and explored around central Vienna, stopping at the Easter Markets, and eventually winding up at the Jewish Museum, where we learned about Hollywood and how Jews pretty much started the business.

the hills are alive

I prefer cadbury creme eggs

he was actually collecting money for this

We then wandered around some more and relaxed in a park in the sun for a little before figuring out dinner.

what we thought we looked like

what we actually looked like

After dinner we hung out at the hostel and called it an early night, as we were tired from traveling in the morning. The next day we went on a free walking tour given by our hostel and went to Naschmarket for lunch. Naschmarket is a long stretch of restaurants (mostly sushi) and other stands selling dried fruits and nuts, fresh fish and meats and vegetables, others selling scarves and other things.. it was really cool and we each bought like 5 pounds of dried fruits and nuts. We took our food and sat in another park and decided to head back to the hostel for a siesta. We had schnitzel for dinner and then went to see a concert of Mozart music and opera singers and dancers. It was interesting.

happy campers

We left at intermission and headed back to the hostel so we could relax before waking up early the following morning to take a train to Prague. So yeah Vienna was kind of boring, but it was nice to have some down time before heading to........Prague!

Buddha Pesks

SPRING BREAK. Where to even begin. In order to keep you intrigued I have decided to write 4 posts, each one focusing on a different city I visited. This first one is all about good old Budapest. I will start: Carly, one of my best friends from Rochester who's studying abroad in Tel Aviv, Israel came up to Copenhagen Thursday, March 29 to stay with me and explore Cope before we departed with the one and only, Nicki, for Budapest on Sunday, April 1. We flew to Budapest and while Nicki and Carly slept on the plane I mentally readied myself for the trip (who am I kidding, I listened to my ipod and zoned out). We arrived in Hungary and met up with another friend, Michelle, who had taken a different flight from Cope before we set out on the train into the city center. We arrived at Carpe Noctem, the number one party hostel and our place of residence for the next three nights, and dropped off our bags before hitting the town. And by that I mean we got a lunch recommendation and then hit the town. We walked up all the stairs in St. Stephen's Basilica and saw the different parts of the city - Buda (the West) and Pest (the East).

this is what we climbed up

Me, Michelle, Nicki with Pest in the forgeround and Buda on the hill in the background

After having a mild asthma attack from climbing up all the stairs, we had the pleasure of climbing down all the stairs - which was equally as nerve-wracking as going up for someone with a slight fear of heights (aka me). The image of asian tourists and segwe tourists greeted us once we returned to flat land - rewarding, to say the least.

afternoon delight indeed

We passed the tourists and wandered over to the Danube river in the deceiving sunlight (it was freezing) and encountered a collection of adult and children shoes on the street facing the water. These shoes represented the many Jews that were brought to the river, stripped of all their valuables, and shot from behind by Nazis during the Holocaust. A heavy start to our spring break.

We visited Parliament and headed back towards the hostel, with a pit stop to pick up snacks, so we could prepare for the night - which we were told was jager train night. Didn't know what we were getting ourselves in to. We got a 500 jager bomb train.

Sunday night in Budapest

After the jager train, we all went down to the elusive "rave cave". Rave cave it was not and I was so disappointed that there was no rave that I sat in the corner sulking (exaggeration) but we left shortly after.

Yadda yadda we went home and woke up the next morning to continue exploring. In the morning we visited the Jewish synagogue and cemetery and learned that 800,000 Jews used to live in Budapest before World War II, then 600,000 of them were killed during the Holocaust and now only 5,000 Jews live there today (maybe my stats are wrong, it was difficult to understand our tour guide's thick accent). We saw a beautiful Holocaust memorial in the garden of the synagogue - a silver tree with a different name of a Hungarian Jew who had died during the war was etched onto each leaf.

hey this temple looks a lot like my temple

We walked around the Jewish Quarter and made our way over to the thermal baths for a quick dip. Since Carly and I forgot our bathing suits we tanned upstairs while Nicki and Michelle actually went into the baths.

i don't know who the freaks with their hands up are

We headed back to the city and I got a 14 dollar haircut and Carly fell down the stairs in a fur store. It was all good fun. After sitting in the park and watching/judging a young couple who were feeding pigeons we grabbed a quick dinner, and went out again to a karaoke place and really wowed the crowd with our good voices.

The next day we took the funicular up the hill to Buda and walked around the church and the palace up there - we sat around mostly and basked in the sun and it was really relaxing.

view from the funicular (Pest across the river)

Michelle left us to continue her spring break in Rome so when we dropped her off at the train station, we bought our train tickets to Vienna for the next morning and decided to walk around the nearby mall. We discovered a movie theater and decided we would see The Hunger Games in Hungary - The Hungary Games, if you will. Problem: Carly hadn't finished the first book yet. Solution: Nicki and I had a lovely dinner date while we forced Carly to finish the book. The movie was good but not great - I can analyze it with you in person if you wish to hear my thoughts.

Although we were only in Budapest for three nights, I definitely got a good feeling for the city and was really pleasantly surprised by how navigable it was and how much history there was. Positives: the Hungarian Forint is a much nicer currency than the Danish Krone aka really cheap. Negatives: the Danes are very fashionable and we are very spoiled living in Copenhagen - eastern europe ehhhh not the easiest on the eyes.

Tuesday, April 3 we headed off to VIENNA!! (see next post for more details)