Sorry for my absence!

The past couple of weeks have been crazy busy! My family arrived in Siena and then the next weekend we went to Venice together. I was amazing! Unfortunately, we were there during high tide so in the morning there was about 3 feet of water everywhere. Thank god our hotel had spare rain boots for us! We had a great couple of days there before I headed back to Siena and they went to Florence to fly home. Luckly, they flew home via Atlanta and not New York so they missed the Sandy craziness.

The week after my family left, I had midterms. Some went better than others but I believed I did well all around! From November 1st to 6th, I was on fall break! It was so great to have some days off to travel all over. I traveled with my roommate Sara to Brussels and Genoa. On the 1st, we took a flight from Pisa to Brussels. It was a long day of traveling so when we finally got to our hostel, we were so happy! Our first night there was very chill and that’s exactly the way we wanted it. On Friday morning, we got up to explore the city. Brussels is very neat and has so much to see! Sara and I bought red double-decker bus passes so we could see all the major sites in the side. Here are a few of the sites we saw on the rides:

A random street we saw.

The little boy peeing statue!

The Atomium!

Sara at the beer museum! This piece of equipment was used for fermination.

Between the stops, we found plenty of time to consume as many waffles and fries as possible! They are so amazing! Also, the amount of chocolate shops there is ridiculous. We turned down one street, and there were four in a row! I didn’t really know what to do with myself!

Later on that evening, two of the girls in our program showed up and we all went out for dinner and drinks. Dinner was fantastic! We all tried different Belgium beers and cuisine. Sara got a huge bucket of mussels, Hayley got a traditional broccoli soup, and I had the calamari (not a so traditional Belgium meal but it was still really good!) From there, we went to a bar called Delirium which had over 2,000 beers! It was really difficult to pick one! I can’t remember the different names but we all really enjoyed them!

The next day, Saturday, Sara and I flew to Genoa for the 2nd part of our trip. Genoa has a huge sea port area and was very large. Here is the view from the plane:

Our hotel was really great and we were right outside of the city center. We explored the area around our hotel and then had dinner at this nice little restaurant near the main road. The food was really yummy!

Sunday, we went to the aquarium and spent about 2 hours there! We both felt like little kids again! The place was huge and we got to see all kinds of animals. We had another fantastic lunch afterwards and then went up in this interesting contraption so we could get a 360 degree view of the city. It was pretty neat!

We returned to Siena on Monday afternoon! Since then, we’ve been relaxing and getting ready for our classes to start again. What is pretty neat is that I have class for 2 days and then I’m off to Rome. It seems like I never actually stay in one place for too long but I am perfectly okay with that!