And this is how it began...

An excellent way to start a 2 1/2 week trip. No sleep, sick, hungover. What can I say? The people here know how to party. It was the Christmas dinner with the teachers here in Coria. Many got drunk at the dinner and everyone else at the bar afterward. These people (meaning adults, I don't include myself with that word) can drink and dance the night away as well as any of my college friends! A feat. This is why I love Spain more and more. These people have so much fun! It was a holiday work party where all are friends and it's acceptable (even expected) to get very, very drunk and show up to work at 8am with a wicked hangover the next day. Everyone buys everyone drinks. I drank with the principal, my colleagues, and the mother of the children I tutor; many are older than my parents. At the restaurant there was a group of about 100 people playing bingo while eating dinner, with a microphone announcing letters and numbers. I was annoyed but everyone else just joked about it. It was obnoxious but everyone allowed that if they were that group, they wouldn't worry about the others in the room. How diplomatic? In the US there would have been so many complaints! Anyway, I didn't get home until 8:30 the next morning. Enough time to prepare lunch for the bus and finish packing! And realize that my debit card didn't work in the ATM so I had to take all the cash I had and pay for everything else with my American account. Excellent. Dollars to euros. Así es.

My first impression of Portugal: everyone and their mother will run to offer you help with perfect English if you look the least bit lost. This was my first time in Portugal. Lisbon is an excellent city. We had a bit of a time finding the hostal (it being night, we were all dragging, you know) and the public transportation in that city is quite the most confusing of any city I've visited. We finally found the street, but the small map in the guidebook was not quite sufficient. A boy approached us, offering help (in perfect English), then his dad offered to help, and it turned into a family excursion: father, several sons, and several daughters walking us to the hostel. So nice. The workers at the hostel spoke no English or Spanish, so we did our best to understand their Portuguese (or French, sometimes) and answer in Spanish. With lots of gesticulating and repitition. Anyway, so Lisbon is a beautiful city. Many buildings are decorated with various tiles of different colors and patterns. Tons of hills. We got lost more than a few times in the Jewish part where we were staying. On Christmas Eve, the women at the hostel put out various traditional Portuguese pastries for us to try. It was sweet. I think they felt sorry for us! Christmas day was spent in the Lisbon airport, on a plane, in the Munich airport, on a plane, finally in Venice (in a hostal quite outside the city). It was snowing in Munich (a white Christmas!) and the two seconds we spent outside made me extremely grateful for the not-so-cold but still cold in Italy.

Italy: every other building is a church. I thought Spain had churches... No.

Venice is amazing. It is still the most exquisite city I have ever seen. It's so strange: to be surrounded by water, everywhere, with no cars in the city. We spent the day (the only day) walking through the city and getting lost in various dead-ends and narrow streets.

Florence is wonderful. I had never been before. We did the normal tourist things, like spending four hours in the cold to get into the Uffizi museum. Worth it? Yeah, why not, Botticelli is always worth it! We also saw the David, which was pretty impressive. We took a day trip to Siena (note to everyone: you must validate your ticket BEFORE you get on the train because it costs 5 euro for them to write the date and time on it on the train). Nice cathedral, you know.

So, New Year's Eve. I alternate every year between having an awesome, slighly intoxicated night that I remember and a ridiculous, too-drunk-to-remember-the-countdown-hungover-all-the-nexty-day-was-that-tequila? night. I do remember this year. We start by drinking at the hostal, later buy beer from a street vendor as we wander toward downtown Naples. The man at the hostal had told us there was a concert in Piazza del Plebescito. Well, we realize a bit late that we'd brought the metro map instead of the street map. No problem, just dodge the fireworks every ten feet on the sidewalk, street, wherever. We find the piazza about 20 minutes to midnight. Enough time for more beer, you know. Overwhelming--everyone and their mother was in this piazza. Shortly before the countdown, two Italian guys start talking to us. The Spanish-Italian exchange really doesn't work, but then their friends show up. One "speaks" English (about as well as the children I "teach"). We enjoy their champagne, countdown to the new year together, exchange cheek kisses all around. I determine, by this point, that one of their friends, Silvia, is probably a drag queen instead of woman, but Sydney and I still aren't quite sure. They invite us to a discoteca. Of course we'll come! Oh, we have to go in your car? Well, you have a baby albino bunny (?) so of course getting into a car with strange Italians is fine! (Yeah, I don't really understand about the bunny.) Six of us in a tiny European car. Somehow the driver avoids all the fireworks in the street, I'm sure that can attest to his sobriety... We find ourselves driving definitely outside of Naples, the opposite direction of the hostal.. I silently start to flip my shit, as Silvia assures Sydney that they are good people and we shouldn't worry. Right. As soon as the car stops, Sydney and I are OUT (not to mention I have to pee like nothing else). We tell them we must leave, they laugh and we are out. We wander, I realize I have lost the only (crappy) map we have. Excellent. Finally, we find an elderly couple and try to ask them in Spanish how to get home. They help us find a metro stop that is not closed. Someone at the station finds someone who speaks English. He tells us how to get back. A miracle, really. So! I loved Naples. Less tourists, cheaper than the rest of Italy. We also went to Pompeii, which I thought was going to be one ruined house. Why? Ni idea. It was a whole city (duh!), huge. It was fascinating to finally go to these ruins that we learned about every year in elementary and middle school. It was amazing to see the city partially how it actually was, with the art on the walls. We also went to Sorrento, a little town perched on the coast. The water was beautiful and I wished so much that it was summer so I could swim!

Trying to do Rome in 2 1/2 days after over two weeks of heavy traveling is really just impossible. Perfect weather (well, sunny but COLD) for the entire trip, then rain the last two days. It POURED (Washington poured) the last day, I became absolutely saturated and miserable, and after the sixteenth street vendor tried to sell me an umbrella, I was PISSED and muttering death threats to each who passed, dry, underneath his own cheap umbrella. So, I'm glad I'd been to Rome before because this time was not spectacular. So after the thorough soaking we forewent plans to go out that night, bought several bottles of euro-49 (1.49 euro) wine and discussed political correctness (no, "white" is fine to say) with a Swiss couple. Excellent. I did get to see the St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican museum (how are the Catholics so rich???), the Colosseum the Trevi Fountain, like tourists do.