Wow, I have a lot to talk about: Paris, Barcelona, and Arletta's visit. But first, extremely exciting news. I just got my room assignment for this summer in Garfield. Room 116. It's the nicest double in the entire building and I'm living in it as a single, so I'll have an extra bed and lots of space. Since it looks like I have two windows, I think I'm going to bring my air conditioner from home and put it in one of them. Yay!

Also, I talked to Mrs. Pacheco today! She, her son, Giancarlo, and Giancarlo's fiancée are going to come to Bologna next Saturday and we're going to have dinner together.

OK, now Paris:

I got to the airport on Friday, May 2 a little after 2 PM. I had to wait an hour for Arletta to arrive, which I spent waiting in the wrong spot because TWO different information workers told me it was the correct spot (why on earth would there be two different Terminal 2Es for arrivals? That seems ridiculous.). In the end, I found her okay and we took the train to the station near our hotel.

Now, before I continue, I need to inform you of some back-story. The night before Arletta informed me that while I was in Calabria, she received an email from Hotel Kuntz that said, "Credit card not work. We cancell your reservation." More back-story: Three weeks before Arletta's wallet was stolen with her credit-card stolen, so she had it canceled. Since the 25 euro deposit that she put down for our room was done way back in early March and since we were paying the rest in cash upon arrival, she didn't even think there would be a problem. Well, there was. She of course freaked out. She went to go see if she could re-reserve our room at Hotel Kuntz, but they only had rooms for Saturday and Sunday night, not Friday night. She quickly booked the room for Saturday and Sunday night, and then went to work looking for a room for Friday night, figuring it wouldn't be a big deal (albeit annoying) to just change hotels on Saturday. Well nowhere in Paris had a room for Friday night. She looked and looked and found nothing. Then, miraculously, a friend of ours (who we were also meeting in Paris, but wasn't staying with us) started looking too and found a budget hotel 1 km from Hotel Kuntz that had a 3-person room for 30 euro. The hotel was called (in translation), "Hotel before the train station."

So needless to say, we were not expecting much. We were very pleasantly, surprised however. Our room was very clean, had comfortable beds, was on the fifth floor, and had a balcony (which I always feel the intense desire to spit off of and watch the spit hit the ground). After settling down for a bit, Arletta and I decided to walk around the area. After walking for like five minutes, we turned to our right and BOOM! there was Sacré-Cœur in the distance. I went to take a picture of it, because I'm a picture-fiend, only to realize that I had left my camera battery charging in our hotel room. So we headed back and ran right into Anna, the miracle-worker that found our hotel for us. After I picked up my camera battery, we returned to Sacré-Cœur, took lots of pictures, and went inside. On the way up to the basilica, Arletta warned us that there would be men that would start making a bracelet around your arm and then demand money if you weren't careful. This was indeed the case, so when a man with a bracelet approached me, I firmly said no and kept on walking. Well, on the way down the same man said "Hey you, you better watch it." and then called Anna, "Sexy Boom Boom," which of course became her nickname for the rest of the trip.

We then took the metro to the center of Paris and got off at the Louvre. We walked around the gardens a bit, saw the Eiffel Tower from afar, and then began our search for a place to eat. We settled on this place that turned out to be an excellent choice. I had duck with this red-berry sauce, mashed potatoes, and salad. It was quite delicious.

Our friend Brian wasn't getting into the metro station by our hotel until 11, so we decided to walk towards the Eiffel Tower. Again, as we were walking, it suddenly appeared on our right. Then, 20 seconds later, it started to sparkle(!!!), which it does for 10 minutes on the hour. Captivated, we just sat and watched it until it stopped and then made our way to the metro station to get Brian. Once Brian settled in our room, we went back out to walk around a bit more. We decided to get crepes, which was a wonderful idea. Mine was with nutella and banana.

We then decided to call it a night, but first told Anna we would walk her back to her hostel since she wasn't exactly sure how to get there on foot (she took the metro earlier). It should have taken less than 15 minutes, but it most definitely took us over an hour, which was extremely annoying. When we finally got back to our room, we stayed up until 4:30 talking and then went to sleep.

We woke up early the next day and after breakfast, checked out, met Anna, and headed over to Hotel Kuntz. After taking several pictures of the enormous HOTEL KUNTZ outside the building, we went inside, where we were told it was too early to check in (even though we told them we were coming early and they said it was okay), but allowed us to store our bags in the storage room. We then headed out to the Louvre, which was amazing. Can I just say that I must have accidentally paid attention in art history class, because I recognized a lot of the paintings from class. After the Louvre, we ate lunch. I got a wonderful croque madame, which was this sandwich with ham, cheese and egg. And Alretta and I split an order of escargot, which I really enjoyed. We then went to the Orsay. It closed much sooner than we thought, so we didn't get to see the big vagina painting that Arletta promised we would see and we also missed the Manets, some Monets, and the Renoirs.

We then went back and checked into Hotel Kuntz. Again, pleasantly surprised. Kuntz was cheap and clean. Who would have thought it possible?

We then spent some time at the Eiffel Tower, but instead of going up it, we decided to do dinner. I had steak and French fries (just fries in Paris), which was enjoyable. For dessert I had a crepe with nutella. At the restaurant, the two guys at the table next to us were the most stereotypically French men, ever. They kept calling out to the bartender, Susanne and shamelessly flirting. Arletta and Brian told me afterwards that the following exchange went on between one of the men and the waiter:

French man: "Bring me a piece of pie with a mountain of whipped cream on it. Tell her I want to eat her cream."

Waiter: "Whose? Susanne's or your wife's?"

French man: (rolls eyes) "Susanne's."

We then went back to the Eiffel Tower with three bottles of wine and totally drank sketchily on the lawn in front of the tower and watched it sparkle. We most certainly weren't the only ones. At one point, we had some corkscrew troubles and had to go to the nearest shady group and ask to borrow theirs. After each consuming 3/4 of a bottle, I was of course fine, Brian was fine, Arletta was very happy, Anna was trashed. At one point, a very sketchy man came over and asked us if we wanted to buy more wine, to which we replied no. When he knelt down to negotiate prices a cop came and took him away. It was really sad because he was definitely an immigrant trying to make some money. I hope he wasn't deported!

The next day we did a lot of walking around Paris. We had a small breakfast of a baguette and jam and then for lunch had crepes. I had a ham, cheese, and egg crepe in one hand and a nutella one in the other. Very exciting. We then saw Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, and Napoleon's tomb and then met Brian's friend, Nina, who is studying Paris and went back to the Eiffel Tower to go up it. We took the elevator, which was really enjoyable. We were up there while the sun was setting, which was really beautiful. After a dinner of steak with fried egg on it, fries, a cheese platter, and wonderful crème brûlée, we headed back to the hotel. Next day, Arletta and I woke up early, went back to the airport, and parted - she to St. Andrews, me to Bologna.

I was in Bologna for a day and a half before leaving for Barcelona. The day before our Barcelona trip just happened to be Ilaria's birthday, so Marc, Francesca, and I took her out to dinner. We had also made her a cake and blew up balloons, which Francesca put out in the dinning room while we were at the restaurant. Ilaria was very surprised by the cake and I think really enjoyed her day.

Now Barcelona. Let me tell you about the series of disasters we had before we even got to the airport. Marc, our friend, Irene, and I were flying out of Milan and our flight wasn't until 7 PM, so we decided we'd go early, see a bit of Milan, and then head to the airport. We agreed to go on the 9:44 train from Bologna to Milan. Now, since I had just been in Paris, I still had to sign up for my exams by going to the professors' offices and writing my name down. Since I'm such a last minute packer, I went to bed at like 6:15 and then had to wake up at 8:15 to run around Bologna before leaving for Milan. I signed up for my Italian lit exam, no problem and then headed over to the linguistics department to sign up for my filologia romanza exam. The stupid building was extremely far away. After a half hour walk and four flights of stairs, the exam wasn't there. What a waste of time. And it was time I didn't have to waste, because I was now running very late. I raced down the stairs and jumped on the bus headed to the train station. Irene calls me and I tell her to buy my ticket and that I'd be there soon. Getting there takes twice as long as usual because we of course stopped at every red light along the way. The bus pulls in front of the station at exactly 9:44. I sprint to the door and at the height of my panic, see Marc and Irene calmly talking. I run to them and shout a hurried "Let's go!" only to find out the train is 10 minutes late. Whew. So we're standing there in front of the track waiting for the train and I light-heartedly mention that I hope I packed everything since I had packed so hurriedly. Marc asks me if I brought my toothbrush. I say yes. He says, "Then you're good. My mom's a dental hygienist, so I always feel that as long as I pack my toothbrush, I'll be fine." I do a little haha and then joking say to Marc: "Oh, and did you remember your passport?" "No." Silence. A good 20 seconds of it. I then go, "Wait, you remembered your passport, right?" He says: "No. Why, do I need it?" I exclaim: "Yes! You're leaving the country!" He says: "But, it's still the European Union. When I went from Belgium to Italy, they didn't check anything." Irene and I managed to convince him that he did in fact need his passport, so we then try to switch our train tickets to the 10:46 one. The random man at the brief questions desk told us that in order to switch it we'd need to go to the ticket desk and exchange them before the train arrives in Bologna. We managed to exchange the tickets perhaps 5 seconds before the train pulls in and Marc sprints back to our apartment to get his passport. Irene then turns to me and goes, "I think I forgot my toothbrush." End scene.

After getting back from Irene's apartment and eating a cream-filled croissant, we met up with Marc at the waiting room and soon were on our way to Milan. Our train was on time, but would randomly stop for long periods of time and announce that there would be a delay due to "technical difficulties." We ended up getting to Milan about 45 minutes later than expected, so our day in Milan turned into eating quickly, racing to the cathedral (which was one of the most beautiful cathedrals I've ever seen) and then running back to the train station to catch a bus to the airport.

We get to Barcelona with no further troubles a little before 9 PM. Now, before I describe to you the rest of the night, I want you to know that I acknowledge that a lot of the aggravation that followed was my own dumb fault for not speaking my mind and allowing a certain someone to take advantage of my niceness. I'm still going to complain quite a bit. I don't expect sympathy, but please don't yell at me.

First: Marc was an add-on to this trip. When he found out that we were going and found cheap flights, he decided to come. But instead of staying in the hostel I was staying, where he could get a single room for 30 euro a night and would be walking distance to where Irene was staying with her friend, Marc decided to pay 23 euro a night to stay in an eight-person hostel very far from us with seven strangers. As it turns out, my room was small, but very clean with a comfortable bed. Marc's was in a very sketchy, smelly part of town and apparently was very dirty.
Second: Marc is the most unprepared person ever. He HAD a map of Barcelona for a week before he left. You'd think he'd look up where his hostel was. No. He said it was near this square, so we separated from Irene (the plan was for he and I to go to his hostel for him to check-in, then go to mine together, and then meet Irene at her friend's because her friend had made dinner for us) and took this bus there. It wasn't as close as I would have hoped. We walked a bit through the sketchy streets and then finally found Marc's hostel. After his check-in, we took the metro to near my place. While we were walking, Irene called me and told me that her friend, Miguel (who I met in Bologna), who was staying in the same dormitory as the friend she was staying with offered to allow me to stay in his room since his roommate was traveling. Me. Not Marc. I told her that my hostel probably wouldn't let me cancel that night, but that I'd see about the next two. So we head towards my hostel, but get a little lost. The problem was my hostel gave me the following directions from three blocks from the metro stop: "Stay right on Rue de Roselli. We're near a bank and across from a park." Well, by "near a bank" they meant no we're not, "stay right" definitely meant turn right, and "across from a park" meant "kind of near a small patch of dirt with three trees." But we finally did find it and I went and had the awkward conversation with the woman about canceling - more about that woman in a little bit. She said it was too late to cancel for the following night, but that I could cancel the last night. I do and save myself 30 euro.

So now we're off to Irene's friend's (her name is Alejandra) dormitory. It's almost midnight by now and I am extremely exhausted (remember, less than 2 hours of sleep) so while we're walking I say something along the lines of "Ugh, and we still have to walk back after this." Marc, whose hostel is gross and very far away because of his own stupidness, then goes, "Yeah, I might just crash with Irene's friend." Wait. First, that was not offered to you. Second, that means you're saying, "Nico, I'm going to stay in the bed you were offered while you walk home alone." I say nothing. Dinner was really impressive and involved fresh grapes, rice, chicken, mixed vegetables, this egg and potato thing, and flan. 2 AM came before we knew it. We are told that it's probably too late to walk and that taxis are really expensive at night, so Miguel invites Marc and me to stay with him. I wanted to just take the taxi back, anyway, but Marc immediately accepted, so I felt obligated to stay. So the extra bed was made into two beds by putting the mattress on the floor to use as one bed and using the hard board on the bed frame as the other. Guess who slept on the hard board. See, what happened was when Marc came out of the bathroom from changing, I went to go do the same when he said "How are we dividing the beds?" I told him we'd talk about in a second, after I've changed. But when I came out he was already on the comfy mattress. So grossly exhausted, I went to bed on that terribly hard surface and got four awful hours of sleep, even though I had a perfectly good room that I payed for not too far away. While laying there uncomfortably, I vowed to sleep in the comfortable bed I payed for the following night and to make Marc sleep on the hard board the next night.

When I woke up I headed back to my hostel to shower and change. My bathroom was so tiny that the toilet didn't fit right. It's side was against one wall while it's front and back were wedged between two other walls, so you had to pee from the side because there was no room anywhere else. It's a good thing I didn't have to poop!

Despite extreme exhaustion, the day was pretty wonderful (Though I almost lost it when Marc complained about how little sleep he got. When that was mentioned I made sure to say that I needed to sleep in my hostel that night because I needed to check out in the morning.). We met up at the Sangrada Familia, which is this awesome Gaudi modern church that was started in the 1800s but still isn't finished. They say it's supposed to be done in 2012, but we'll see. We got to go all the way to the top, which was really cool. We then walked around Park Güell, which had more Gaudi architecture that we referred to as Candyland because it totally looked like Candy Castle. We then met up with Alejandra and her friend Lisa for lunch. We went to this place that was terribly crowded, but was absolutely wonderful. I got a delicious sausage sandwich (I don't even usually like sausage) and a glass of champagne for 2.10! Even though it was kind of chilly, we then went to the beach, which was very enjoyable. I climbed this rope pyramid, which was so much fun. We then went down the Rambla, which is the most famous street in Barcelona and then went to this market, where I bought this awesome fruit that I had never seen before that I think was imported from Brazil. We then went to a few famous squares and to the cathedral, which was sadly under construction and covered up with build boards. The inside was really nice, though. We then went back to the market and got fresh fruit smoothies that were 2 for a euro after 7:30 PM. We then did dinner, which was this lamb filled fried pita bowl thingy, which was quite tasty. Irene needed to run back to the dormitory to call the Brown Office because there was a problem with her financial aid, so we then planned to meet again at 11 PM to eat a bit more and get a drink or something, which was good because it would have given me time to go back to my hostel and lay down for an hour. Somehow it was changed to 10 PM, which gave Marc time to get an hour of sleep since we were close to his hostel, but would have given me just enough time to get to my hostel, put on a sweatshirt, and leave again. I knew before I even got back to my hostel that there was no way I was going back out. It turned out that Irene couldn't go either because she was still on the phone with the Brown Office, so we decided just to call it an early night, which was wonderful. For the first time in like forever, I went to bed at 10 PM and slept the whole night until 9. It was wonderful.

Now back to that hostel woman. As soon as I saw her, I could have sworn I had seen her before, but had no idea where. I thought perhaps Mathcamp, but really wasn't sure. It bothered me the entire day so before I went to sleep I went to go ask what time check-in was and awkwardly told her she looked familiar and asked if she had ever been to the states. She said she had when she was 8 and that unless I had been to Holland, it was unlikely that we met. I'm still convinced, though that I've seen her, a duplicate, or a close relative before.

The next day Barcelona experienced the worst weather it's like ever had, which meant non-stop rain all day. After getting a little lost at the Arc de Triumf metro stop, I finally got to the dormitory with all my stuff and we headed out, not letting the weather stop us from seeing absolutely everything. First we went to Tibidabo, which has this really nice church way up on a hill. I just found out from wikitravel (I was looking for the spelling of Tibidabo) that "this is a place where according to some legends, the Devil seduced Jesus Christ offering him whole world in exchange for his worship." We then saw Gaudi's Three Houses (yes, there is LOTS of Gaudi in Barcelona, but it's all really cool). We then got lunch and had paella, one of the most famous traditional dishes. I got the seafood paella and it was delicious. It had shrimp and muscles and clams and squid. All really exciting. We then went back to that market to get more smoothies. I got two. They were really enjoyable. We then went through this nice park on our way up to this castle. I really really had to pee, but the bathrooms were closed! Since we were the only ones there, I just peed outside the bathrooms on the dirt. So I definitely urinated on a castle. How cool is that? On our way down from the castle we stopped in the Barcelona stadium. Apparently the original Dream Team played there, which is pretty cool. Next, we went to this fountain that between 7 and 9 was supposed to light up and play different music (including Disney songs). Sadly, this happened to be a day that they decided to change the schedule. The woman we asked said that it was supposed to start at 9, but she wasn't sure if it would. We decided not to wait. Instead we went back to the dormitory to get Miguel because we wanted to take him and Alejandra out to dinner. We went to this place with really good tapas, which are basically pick-food appetizers. We ordered like a million different ones and a bottle of wine and made a meal of it. There were things like potatoes with this really good sauce on them, mini-sausages, and pieces of bread with tomatoes rubbed on them (simple, but really good). We then went to a very sketchy bar that was insanely crowded to get sangria. Get this: we were carded at the door! The drinking age in Spain is like 2, why on earth were we carded? Actually, it's 18, but still. So the first time I've been carded in my life was in Europe. How strange. The five of us went through three pitchers of sangria, which was one of the tastiest drinks I've ever had in my life. We played this drinking game at the table which involved flipping a two euro coin into an empty cup. If you touched the glass, the person to your right had to take a sip. If you made it, the person to your right had to finish his/her glass. I was pretty good, so poor Irene had to chug a few glasses. Oops. Lucky for me, Marc was to my left and failed to make it in a single time. He wasn't so lucky since Miguel was to his left and made it in about every other time. The game changed a little when we switched the rule to you can choose who to drink (that's where some people had their revenge on me). Still, I only had about 6 glasses, which isn't much. Marc got drunk which was extremely funny for me because he was trying really hard not to appear it (he'd also never been drunk before). He peed 5 times while we were there.

Since we were far from the dormitory, we took two taxis. I was in a taxi with Irene and Alejandra, who were both pretty tipsy. When Irene went to pay the cabdriver, she forgot there was a glass window separating the front and back seat and tried to put her hand through it. The cabdriver made fun of her TWICE by banging his hand into the window when giving the change back. Before going back to the dorm, we stopped by this churro stand and got two orders of regular churros and one order of chocolate covered churros. Both were very good. Marc peed (yet again) behind the stand and then ordered a cream filled fried donut thing. We then went back to the dormitory and hung out in Miguel's room talking and listening to music. Marc fell asleep on Miguel's bed at around 4:30. The girls left to go to sleep at around 5:30. When Marc woke up I pretended to already be sleeping on the mattress on the floor. He mumbled, "Do you want me to take this one, then?" to which I made a grunty noise of affirmation. Success! (I know, I know, I still failed to speak up for myself, but at least I accomplished my two goals.)

The next day, Marc was not doing too great. He looked very tired (which made me feel bad) and he said he had eaten too much churro and for the first time ever said he wasn't hungry. The rest of us had hotdogs. We went the market and bought bread, ham, and cheese to make sandwiches for the trip, the first of which I ate at the Barcelona airport. Since it felt like such an American day, I decided that today would be the day that I would try a McDonald's in Italy (My uncle in Calabria told me to because he said the meat was better in Italy and he wanted to know what I thought). Sadly, I was not impressed by Milan's Big Macs. Oh well. It didn't even fill me for long. When we got back to Bologna around midnight, I had to eat the second of my sandwiches.

Arletta arrived two nights later. I don't have too much to say about the trip. It was really nice having her here. I climbed the tower for the fourth time and went back to San Luca. The weather was incredible. We also pretended to be rich and went to the area of Bologna with all the big name stores. We even went into a Fendi store so Arletta could look at a bag there (that she would of course never buy). Only 2,350 euro. Practically a steal.

I will say one more thing about her visit: Francesca REALLY made me mad. On the day Arletta was arriving, she wasn't getting in until like 10 PM. I figured she'd be really hungry so I made us dinner, a calabrese-like zitti with fresh mozzarella, soppressata, and egg. I made a lot and since we had also eaten some of the Camembert cheese Arletta had smuggled in, we could only eat half of it. I put plastic wrap over it and figured if we didn't eat it while she was here, I'd eat it the day she left. Well, last night Arletta wasn't feeling well (she's lactose intolerant, but we still decided to go to this nutelleria where we had nutella and marscapone crepes and a nutella milkshake - Vincent, you would LOVE this place), so we decided she would eat an egg and I would just warm up the pasta. By the time were were hungry though, she was feeling better and agreed to have some of the pasta. Well, when I went to go get it, it was gone. I asked Francesca where it went and she said "It was really old." I was like, "I made it two nights ago." She repeated that it was really old. I explained to her that she had just eaten our dinner. Instead of apologizing she was like "Can we make you something?" I said no and walked out. The thing is, if she had done that to just me, I'd be mad, but would have been fine. But it was really embarrassing to have to tell Arletta, "Actually, she decided to eat our food without asking. Sorry." She apologized today, though, so whatever.

Oh, random thing of the day: a woman buzzed our door today and when I answered the phone thingy she said she was an American who had done the Brown in Bologna program 10 years ago and was wondering if she could come up and see the apartment with her husband and child (4 month old). It was really interesting to talk to her, but also kind of awkward.

Alright, time for bed. Lots of studying to do tomorrow. First exam Tuesday. Definitely starting to get nervous. Perhaps I should have actually done some work while I was here.