Milan/Venice

Hello all! Happy Ash Wednesday! This morning starts the beginning of LENT, my favorite season! I, along with eight other girls, got up this morning and met a few of the seminarians we know in the lobby of the hotel to go to the first Station Church. There is a Station Church for every single day of Lent, so my goal is to go to Mass at that church every morning that I am here in Rome. This morning we went to Saint Sabina, which houses the first image of the crucifixion in the entire world. It was pretty amazing. The Pope has celebrated Ash Wednesday at St. Sabina since like the 500s or something ridiculous like that, but we didn't go to the Pope's Mass. You have to have tickets for that. We went to the English Mass, which is at 7 a.m. every morning. The English speakers are the lucky ones who got the earliest slot for Mass.

Well, this past weekend I headed off to meet Steph in Milan like I told you in my last blog. Unbeknownst to me, there is not very much to do in Milan, but that's alright, because it was still a great trip. I didn't get to see the Last Supper, they were booked for two weeks straight. So, that was a little depressing. I did get to see the Duomo, which is the third largest in the world, behind St. Peter's and one other, it was amazing. Other than that, I just wandered around and hung out with Steph and her roommates. We went to Venice on Saturday for Carnevale! That was really great. We got there and took a boat ride down the Grand Canal and ended up in St. Mark's Square. All of the costumes were outrageous. Steph and I split off from the group and went mask hunting. We both found some pretty cool ones. If you want to check out my photo album from Carnevale click HERE! After we found masks, we took a gondola ride which was unbelievably awesome. The guy wouldn't sing when I asked him to  because he said he only sung at night...I think that was the only disappointing thing about Venice. Overall, it was a great weekend.

I am staying in Rome this weekend, going to hit up several more Station Churches while I am here. My roommates and I have the whole weekend planned out, so I will blog sometime next week about my adventures.

If anyone is coming over for Easter, or knows anyone that is coming for Easter or anytime around such as Good Friday, etc. let me know and I can request tickets for all the Papal events. It's nice having connections in Rome :) Hope all is well at home! Keep me updated with what's going on in everyone's lives!

Ciao for now!

Allie

Milan

Hey everyone! Just wanted to let you know that I am in Milan right now. I made it in earlier today. Right now I am at Steph's apartment. Tomorrow I am going to tour the city while she is in class, and then hang out with her once she gets done. On Saturday we are headed to Venice for Carnevale! We come back late Saturday night, and on Sunday I will get to see more of Milan until I have to head to the airport.

Hope all is well at home, if you are reading this and you didn't know, Carly got an interview for the Lilly, and she has it tonight, so keep her in your prayers!

Ciao for now!

Allie

Budapest

Hey everyone! I just got back from Budapest early early yesterday morning, so I thought I would tell you a little about it.  We left Thursday evening after dinner and landed in Budapest around 11:45 p.m. We grabbed a cab that took us to our hostel.  When the cab pulled up to a dark corner on some random street in Budapest we all got a little worried. He backed up and stopped and told us we were there. We looked around and saw some buildings and stores but nothing that looked like a hostel. He insisted we were in the right place, but we just kind of sat there until he got out and walked us to the right door. He rang the call button, and they buzzed us up. We opened the huge wooden door and it closed behind and we were engulfed in darkness. There were no lights anywhere to be found, so we were kind of frozen in place for a minute or so until we started shuffling forward as a little connected group. We found a creepy spiral staircase and made our way up to the first floor where the sign on the outside said it was located. All of the sudden a long shadow crept across the floor in front of us and a scary looking man appeared and asked us if we were staying at the Goat Hostel. We were, so we followed him and finally made it inside, and it turned out to be a really nice like cozy place. The beds were actually super comfortable and they had internet access and TV and free breakfast, so if anyone is going to Budapest sometime in the future I definitely recommend the Goat Hostel! :)

We got up early the next morning and Steve, a new guy that was working, got us a map and circled everything we should see while we were there. We set out and started site-seeing and went in the extra opposite direction we should have been going to find the market. We ended up seeing a couple cool churches and other things before we found ourselves back on the street where the hostel was. We had gone in a complete circle! We headed in the direction we should have been going in the first place and found the market. It was a pretty cool place, and we all bought some paprika, which Hungary is famous for. We headed off across the Danube river next. There was so much to see in Budapest. We walked miles upon miles all around. We saw St. Stephen's Basilica where St. Stephen's right hand is kept, Parliament, the Fishermen's Bastion, the Chain Bridge, Buda Castle, lots of other churches, and all kinds of stores. We had a nice dinner for Tara's 21st birthday and then got lost going back to the hostel. We eventually found our way and went to bed at a decent hour so that we could have a good part of our last day to see things.

The next day we walked to Hero's Square and found another castle that was having some sort of festival thing. There were food vendors and tons of little booths and even an ice-skating rink. We continued around the festival and got some cotton candy and huge soft pretzels.  We had to make our way back to the hostel to catch a cab back to the airport for our evening flight.  We got the airport and found out that our flight got delayed FOUR hours. So, we had almost six hours to hang out at the airport since we had gotten there a couple hours before our flight was supposed to take off. Finally, at 11:30 we were able to board the plane and fly back to Rome! 

Countdown to Budapest!

Our plan for Budapest departs in nine hours! Frannie, Christina, Tara, and I are really EXCITED! It should be a lot of fun. Not much going on today. I was done with class at 9:30 this morning, and then I went and did laundry. That is always a joy. We went to Campo de'Fiori to look for Roma apparel. We are going to a football (soccer) game on Sunday! It's Roma versus Genoa which should be a pretty great game! Roma is ranked 6th right now, and Genoa is 4th, so we are a little afraid to cheer because apparently games can get a little rowdy. It should be a lot of fun though.

Not much went on this week, another week of classes done. Midterms are quickly approaching, so I will be getting ready for those shortly. I am planning a trip to Milan soon to visit Stephanie Flora. She just got there a few days ago and is settled into her apartment. Hope all is well back at home.

Ciao for now!

Allie