SpRiNg BrEaK 0h NiNe!!!1!

Well, I’ve certainly been the busy one the past couple weeks. Let’s take a little trip down the road that was my life the past few weeks.

It all started right after midterms ended. My lovely parents arrived and it was as joyous as I could have hoped for. It was great seeing them, I obviously missed them loads, but it was more fun to be able to show them around Rome like a true local. I took them to all the tourist hot spots, yet gave them a little taste of the underground Roman life.

After 6 days, they left to tour the rest of Italy while I began my epic spring break trip.

Our plan was to go to the Canary Islands, the island of Tenerife to be exact, for some African sunshine and beaches.

Oddly enough, it was cheaper to fly from Rome.. to Liverpool.. to Tenerifie, so we made a pit stop in the home of The Beatles.

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We arrived around 1pm and our flight was the next morning at 6 am.. so we had around 17 hours to kill and instead of spending them sight seeing, we spent them pretending like we were in America. We ate burgers, had starbucks, went shopping in stores like urban outfitters, and saw a movie (although a british flick, seeing a movie in English was like a dream come true).

Everyone in Liverpool was extremely nice. Right as we got off the plane, the bus man helped us get onto the right bus to the city center and put us on for free because we had to wait so long. He share life stories and we listened. Every time we opened our mouths, people asked where we were from, and when we replied California, our cool points automatically went up like 10 points and everyone wanted to talk to us.

We headed to the airport around 1am to take a nap. There we met fellow early travelers sleeping before their journey. However, one, Charlie Parker, the hippie from England, decided to juggle for us instead.

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We arrived in Tenerifie around 10am and headed to our hotel.. which was more like an apartment complex. It had everything a normal hotel has, front desk, restaurant, pool, etc, however, our room was equipped with a bedroom, balcony, living room, nice bathroom, kitchen, basically, it was nicer than our apartment here in Rome.

Tenerifie is.. well, like the rich man’s Florida.. basically, filled with old foreign people. We were definitely the only Americans, and probably the only 20 something year olds.

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The food was great though. SO CHEAP, a meal wouldn’t cost more than 6 euros and we usually got 3 course meals. So, go economy.

Here too, everyone loved that we were from California. Most of them asked what we were doing all the way over here, most just went “OOOOH, CALIFORNIA GIRLS” (in a Spanish accent of course).

We headed straight to the beach where the sand was white, the sun was hot, and the water was crystal clear and bright blue. We spent most of our time here.

The next day we rented a car after being laughed at by the rental car place for not being able to drive a stick. In fact, his exact words were: “automatic, HAHAHA.”

We embarked on our island road trip, climbing first to the top of Mount Tiede, the volcano and highest point in Europe (apparently). It reminded me of the red woods in Santa Cruz that I miss so much.

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After that, the terrene quickly turned into a desert one. The vast open spaces and tall rocky mountains surrounded us and we explored them like little billy goats.

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Next, it turned into a more greenery scenery (ha), and the mountain lead us down to a small little beach town where we enjoyed lunch.

Then off we were to more mountain towns. It started to rain (dumb rainforest, go figure). The roads were straight up two feet wide and our little trusty steed, big ben, was having a hard time making it up the hills, but the views were certainly worth it.

We ended our journey with a glorious beach sunset.

The rest of our days were spent lounging by the pool or the beach, working on our tans. We got in some extreme water sports though, jet skiing and parasailing but of course.

Oh yeah, there was a parrot show at our hotel.

Sadly, our stay on our tropical island came to an end and we headed back to Liverpool. We got in, starved, and headed to this place called World on a Plate (literally, every kind of food from anywhere you can imagine) where we met Ash and Anthony, a Liverpoolian and a native New Yorker. We became quick friends and they took us around the city. We went with Ash to his band practice at the same school where The Beatles would sit in the courtyard and write most of their songs.

We spent most of the day with them, getting a driving tour of Liverpool, it was actually quite educational. Did you know Liverpool is the cultural capitol of Europe? No? Me either.

We had another 6 am flight where we met a group of Scottish people in kilts and a Scottish boy bought us his country’s version of red bull. It was disgusting but we didn’t have the heart to tell him so, he was so excited for us to try it.

We finally made it home and crashed. Sleep deprivation is not fun.

I will be well rested for the arrival of my sister and cousin tomorrow!

It’s already April. My program ends May 8^th. Where did it go?!?!?! More to come, stay tuned!

* photo credit Melissa Black.