Finally....Pt.2, condensed.

So. I haven’t told about Italy yet.

Well that could possibly take days… and I don’t feel like typing for days when I am planning my next vacation. That’s right, only 8 more days until my next vacation. We get a lot here.

Anyway. So, We started in Geneva, driving Stephen’s car, and headed out towards Lyon and down in the direction of Marseille. Before we got there we spent the night in Orange and then the nest day in Chateau Neuf de Pape, where we found our own little castle… okay, it was a tower. We also spent an afternoon in Avignon and were impressed by it’s oldness. Then we ventured into Marseille…big mistake in a car. I’m pretty sure it was the worst civilly engineered city in the world. We got very lost, but after a few hours found our destination… which was frustratingly close.

The next day we headed outside of Marseille and hiked through the mountains, then continued along the coast. After passing through Nice and Cannes, we pulled off into Monaco, which is the cleanest city I have ever seen. You could basically serve food off of those grounds. And one of their public modes of transport was elevators. It was steep. Anyway we accidentally ended up at the Palace courtyard… which we weren’t sure if we could drive in. We watched the sunset on the other side of Monaco, and continued toward Italy.

Once in Italy we camped on a mountain and woke up to an amazing view of the ocean and the valley with the city in it. That morning we enjoyed the beach and then headed further, past Genova, down towards Cinque Terra. We never got there. But we did find a little village and stayed there for a while, until the rain drove us away. We finally just pulled off into some random town. The next day we headed into Pisa. Once we got there it proceeded to rain buckets full. Almost literally. We were soaked up to the knee, but still felt very touristy. After enjoying a good meal we headed to Livorno, on the coast, where we found a place to stay in the country. It was a nice hotel and it had an amazing view.

Once done with Livorno we decided to follow the sun, so we went to Tuscany instead of our planned Rome. It paid off. Tuscany was gorgeous. First off we stopped in San Gimignano, which is cool and has a lot of towers and is where we meet a nice group of tourists from New Jersey and a nice couple from England. After some gelato there, we headed into the country for the night. The next day we headed into Siena, where we spent the day wandering and people watching. That evening we enjoyed a nice long (it ended up being 5 hours… including prep and discussion afterward) in the countryside.

We awoke the next day in a picturesque little town in the middle of Tuscany and enjoyed it so much we spent almost three days there. After enjoying and soaking up the culture we moved on up towards Florence where we were to meet up with Marvin. That we did and spent the next two days exploring Florence with the ACA Italian students. We also went to a huge election night party and stayed up all night watching results come in. Then we hopped in the car and drove back to Geneva via Chamonix and the really long tunnel under Mont Blanc.

So there you have it my vacation in a nutshell. If you would like to hear more specific stories about any of the places you will have to email me with your request.

Once we got back though we immediately started planning our Thanksgiving. We decorated the Cafeteria and helped make the food, and we put on a play about Thanksgiving for our guests. It all went off surprisingly well, and basically without a hitch. A little stressful for some, but I wasn’t too worried. To be honest though I didn’t miss Thanksgiving too much. I do enjoy getting to see family and you know the whole not having school thing but I think it’s ridiculous how much we gorge ourselves.

Anyway, right now I am trying to plan my Christmas vacation trip and that has been interesting so far. So here’s hoping for good deals and easy booking!

PS. Thanks for all the birthday wishes and thanksgivingy wishes.