Spring Break

Salve!

So this year's spring break definitely turned out to be an awesome one. In the beginning I had no idea where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do for spring break so I had a lot of trouble deciding. I kind of had a plan later on in the semester on what I wanted to do but I hadn't booked any flights until it was too late, so they ended up being a little too expensive.

A really neat row of houses along a canal.

I was a little worried that I wasn't going to have a very good break since I hadn't booked anything but in the end it turned out to be a lot of fun. Me and my roommate ended up finding some decent flights to Amsterdam so we decided that we were going to spend a few days there and then head back to Torino for the 150th anniversary of Italy. So, on our first day of spring break we flew out to Amsterdam which was actually my first time in a plane since I got here haha. When we got to Amsterdam we were pretty blown away. It was wayyy different from Torino and holy crap there were a lot of bikes! I've never seen so many bikes in my entire life and I could not believe it. Once we got there, we headed to the hostel and checked out the city. Ansterdam is definitely a unique place to say the least haha and I definitely saw some things that I can't really describe on the blog (most of these things being in the red light district of course). But it was nice to relax in one place for a few days instead of constantly be traveling around everywhere for spring break. One of the funnest things we did was rent bikes and ride around the city. It was a lot of fun, and it was pretty easy since they have bike paths everywhere. I heard that bike paths are all over the country so you can get just about anywhere on a bike. The city had some awesome architecture that was a lot different from a lot of the places I had been to so it was really nice to see that. Just about everything is made out of brick and a lot of the houses were connected to each other like town houses. There was also a number of canals that go throughout the city so it even reminded me a little of Venice, and that provided for some really good scenery.

The main shopping center!

We ended up riding our bikes to the Van Gogh Museum to check out some artwork and that was really neat. From there, we headed to the Ann Frank House. There was a bit of a line going into the Ann Frank House so we didn't end up going inside but being on the outside was still really cool. After that, we turned in the bikes and got some dinner. I would say the thing that I ate the most while we were there was the fries. They had some pretty amazing fries you can get and then choose from about 30 different kinds of sauce. All of the sauces I had were, of course, awesome. Each night we would meet up with another group of people we knew from the program who were also staying there and we would go out to check out some of the pubs, bars, etc. They all turned out to be pretty cool and I had a really good time while I was there. After we got back from Amsterdam we spent the rest of our spring break in Torino for the 150th anniversary of Italy. It was really cool to celebrate this in Torino because it was actually the first capital of Italy back in 1861 which also made the event pretty special. The night before the big day, we headed out to the biggest piazza in the city and they had a huge stage set up playing live music and it was PACKED. There were thousands of people crowding around for the firework show that was about to take place. I got a really good spot and when the fireworks started I was blown away. It was a really cool show and it went on for awhile. It reminded me of back home when we celebrate 4th of July. It was just really cool to see so many people out and celebrating the unification of their country, definitely a cool cultural experience for sure.

A unified Italy.

The next day, we went downtown again and checked out all of the stuff going on for the celebration. Every piazza was filled with people and there were a bunch of street performers putting on shows, live music, booths, etc. It was nice to see everyone out having a good time on this national holiday and I really enjoyed it. This took place on the same day as St. Patrick's day in Ireland so we did a little celebrating for that as well. That last weekend I finally got my first taste of an Italian "disco." Some friends and I went and we had a really good time. They played a lot of good music, including a bunch of music from the States! (It's really popular over here). We were there until 5:30am and people were still dancing when we left! It was crazy but I had a really good time. Other than that, we just relaxed most of the time in Torino and overall I had an awesome spring break. Until my next trip,

Arrivederci!