i fell a little behind on updating here - all that running around doesn’t leave as much time for blogging as you’d think. weird, huh?

ok, so last time i posted, i’d just left turkey and was heading for mykonos…WHICH WAS AWESOME. i really loved it a lot…it was my 2nd-favorite stop, i think. (my first was monaco, for the record. *wants to go back immediately!*) anyway, mykonos was beautiful and just…exactly my kind of place. i think it must totally suck to be there if you’re drunk tho, because like ALL of the houses are white and square and have blue doors. you’d never find your house. srsly. but it’s amazing and i wanted to stay there for weeks. the water is so blue i wanted to die. in a good way.

mykonos looks like this:

(not my photo.)

after mykonos, our next stop was in athens. the city itself, honestly: eh. it looked like…a city. however, i got to fulfill a lifelong wish and climb to the acropolis and see the parthenon! it’s pretty epic. we looked at a lot of ruins on this trip (like, a LOT) and i was pretty over it (they all start to blend together after a while), but the climb (100+ steps) was worth it. the view alone was unreal. i took a billion pictures, which i’ll post when i get home. :D

i’m in venice right now (last day of the trip, woe) so i’m going to get off the internet and go do something fun, but i wanted to try and get a little bit caught up.

ciao ciao!

xo

mostly this is copied and pasted from an email to my boyfriend, i won’t lie.

today we went to turkey. the port was in kusadasi (that’s koo-shah-dah-see) and it was awesome!!!! we visited the basilica of saint john, the home of the virgin mary (like her actual house where she lived; tomorrow is assumption day and like 15k people will go there) and the ruins of ephesus.

it was all really interesting and turkey is surprisingly (to me anyway) beautiful, and the people are nice. pushy salesmen, but really nice. our tour guide was clearly very determined to provide good PR for the country as a whole…he talked a few different times throughout the course of the tour about how much of turkey is muslim, but not THOSE kind of muslims. (he didn’t put it in those exact words, but he made it very clear that they’re not a country of fundamentalists; he kept using the term “modern muslim.”) my mom bought a carpet and it’s gorgeous and i’m jealous! there was a really beautiful one i wanted to get for the bedroom, but it was $900 and i just don’t have that kind of cash. (i probably could’ve bargained down a little, but not enough, sigh!)

i drank some turkish wine today and enjoyed it immensely. whenever you go into a store to look at carpets, they offer you drinks. they’re big on hospitality. i felt very welcome. XD

i also met a turkish kitty today! she was very skinny. :( my mom and i gave her water and she was pretty stoked about it. i wanted to take her home with me but somehow i didn’t think that would be allowed.

mykonos tomorrow! i’m going out at the ass-crack of dawn to take a ride out to delos, a small island off mykonos which is allegedly the birthplace of apollo. afterwards, my mom and i are going to meet up for lunch and shopping. :D

[oh, and yesterday we went to santorini. it was beautiful, but we took a bus tour and it wound up being a little boring. don’t take a bus tour. also, i wanted to take a donkey up the stairs to the village because i thought it would be the most hilarious thing ever, but i didn’t do it. slightly faily, but turkey made up for it.

so yeah. turkey = awesome. who knew?]

so i lied in my last post. yesterday wasn’t a sea day.

oops.

luckily, we figured that out in time to not miss our excursion. we visited capri (really gorgeous), sorrento (touristy but cute enough) and the ruins of pompei, which were definitely interesting, although ruins-wise i’m still a roman forum girl. (what a nerdy sentence, wow.)

today, however, WAS a sea day! i got a pedicure and a haircut.

see? (you’ll just have to take my word on the pedi.)

also, i got a hot stones massage and OMGYUM. i no longer see the point of a normal massage. it was glorious. *______*

greetings from livorno, aka the port city nearest florence. today was fun and fairly low-key. we spent the day in firenze and did some shopping (i bought new sunglasses!) and visited the basilica di santa croce, which is lovely.

tomorrow’s a day at sea. on the agenda: a massage and a pedicure. yum.

day 1 of the cruise is (more or less) complete!

monaco is unreal! i took a million pics which i’ll post when i can. my camera cord and charger are still packed somewhere in the new apartment, so i’ve been co-opting my mom’s camera, but she didn’t bring her cord, so the pics are all trapped on the camera for now. woe!

we missed our morning excursion so i could go see the doctor on the ship (the medical center is only open a few hours a day; it’s dumb) and it turns out i have strep throat. adorable, right? heh. it’s wretched but they gave me penicillin and codeine for the pain (yum), so i’m doing ok.

ANYWAY. as i said we skipped our outing this morning, but then this afternoon we took a ride to nice, which is about 45 mins away from monaco. omg, it was so gorgeous and just perfect. i said this on twitter, but new life goal: summers in the south of france. i want to go back there and just spend, like, a week (or a month, whatevs) hanging on the beach and drinking in the million outdoor cafes and whatnot. and hanging out on my yacht. because everyone here has a yacht, i’m pretty sure. in any event: love! or i guess i should say: j’adore!

here’s a pretty picture of nice that i didn’t take, lol:

florence tomorrow! the accademia (where the david is) is closed ‘cause it’s monday, but i’ve been there before (i think twice, actually), so no big deal. we’re going to try and check out one of the other museums, and my mom wants to try and replace an earring she lost, and we’re going to go by the chapel where, like, galileo and machiavelli and (i think) michelangelo are buried. good times!

also, i passed a place in nice called beau rivage, which made me giggle, because david cook played at a casino of the same name, oui? then i felt ridiculous for knowing that and/or caring. but that’s a whole other blog. ;)

more soon! au revoir for now!

xo

just set this up so i can use it to check in while traveling. hopefully i’ll be able to keep up at least a little bit on twitter but this should be good for when i want to post longer updates and recaps.

stay tuned. or, y’know, don’t. :)