Fall break

So I know that fall break should be the thing I talk about for a long time and write a really long entry about, but I just don't really feel like it. So sorry if you're disappointed; if you really want to hear about it, you can email me or facebook me or skype me or whatever. So here's a relatively short/undetailed entry about fall break.

I loved Rome. I was excited about being there as soon as we touched down. On the cab ride from the airport we drove through an aqueduct and I got excited about it, because I apparently do get that geeked out about history. But that is nothing to my reaction to driving by the Colosseum. I'm pretty sure I bruised Candy Dream because I hit him out of excitement and trying to not be incredibly loud about it, as there were other people in this van/cab.
Things I saw, in order or just about:

• Spanish Steps
• Keats-Shelley House (they had hand written letters from both of them and a hand written memorial poem Oscar Wilde wrote about Keats!!)
• Trevi Fountain (which is absolutely beautiful, no matter how touristy it may be)
• The Vatican Museum- including the Sistine Chapel. (The Vatican Museum is absolutely huge and spectacular and I got really distracted by a statue of Lacoon. I also saw School of Athens by Rafael, which I really liked seeing in person. The Sistine Chapel is really different than I expected, but it is still one of the most magnificent things ever created by man.)
• St. Peter's Basilica. (THE PIETA IS UNBELIEVABLE! Seriously, it's so beautiful; I'm not sure how so many beautiful things could come from the mind of one man, so thanks Michelangelo. As much as I don't dig Catholicism, it has been the inspiration for some absolutely beautiful things. St. Peter's Basilica as a church is beautiful in itself as well. We got in there as a mass was happening, which was sort of cool)
• The Colosseum (I pretty much freaked out the entire time. I mean, it's the Colosseum for crying out loud- one of the most recognized symbols of Rome. The place where gladiators fought!)
• The Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill (I walked along the Via Sacra. I actually got to touch history. I stood in the places of Caesars. It was on the Palatine Hill, looking at the remains of the Roman Forum that I almost cried. I was so happy. I was on the foundation of the foundation of so much of Western Civilization looking at echoes that still were stunning. I was in love with Rome at this point.)
• The Pantheon

I ate pizza at a cafe in Rome and walked down the street eating a canolli. We had a symposium over a bottle of house wine at this little basement restaurant and ate plates of pasta in Italy. It was pretty spectacular.

Amsterdam was amazing as well. That city is gorgeous, but it doesn't boast the same sort of big name tourist sites that Rome does. But here's what we saw in Amsterdam:

• Coffee shops (no, seriously, they're everywhere. It isn't a myth that marijuana is legal in Amsterdam. And half the coffee shops just looked so very stereotypical, with the neon lights and the trance music blaring from it and the couches filling it.)
• The Van Gogh Museum (but no Starry Night. Some of that artwork is intense. The sheer amount of knowledge Van Gogh must have had about color is insane to think about. There is also a Monet piece in there, so I've seen one of those now too).
• The Red Light District (no hookers in red-lit windows though. We just saw the doors to brothels, which we knew because of the body guards and the blacked out doors and the names of the places)
  
• The House of Bols Bartending Museum (WE GOT A STUDENT DISCOUNT! But not one at the Van Gogh Museum... Yeah, I didn't get it either. Bols is apparently one of the oldest distilleries in the world. They have like 36 different flavors of liqueur and we got to try 2 each.)
• The Vodka Museum (which was LAME! I did learn some stuff about vodka though- it takes 6 month to distill not-shitty vodka and vodka is generally 40% alcohol, or at least that was how it was meant to be made.)
• A bunch of street performers- break dancers mostly.
  
• a shit ton of Bicycles! (The Dutch do not play games about their bikes, man, they ride those things everywhere!)
  
• Lots of canals
• Lots of really pretty blond Dutch men. I approved of them.
  
• A carnival. (We wandered into a Dutch carnival!)

That's pretty much what I got for Amsterdam.

Fall break was absolutely spectacular. I'm pretty sure I won't get to experience a week quite as cool for a long time, if ever again. Life is pretty fantastic.