Back Home In Salzburg
Hey everyone! I am back in Salzburg and it is beautiful! Salzburg in spring is definitely a different town then it is in the winter (even a light winter like we have had this year). When I came back the city has changed and come alive with activity… and tourists.
Let me tell you about the second half of my spring break last week. Ferrara was an amazing little place to stop at during the break. I am so glad I got to see Riannon after so many years. Hurray high school friends! Also, the city gave me a good feel for the Italian lifestyle, complete with a nap during the middle of the day. If only Austrians and Americans participated in this smart cultural tradition life would be grand. In Ferrara I spent the day walking around the city and then went to a jazz club with Riannon and some of her American friends. The music was not the best but it was enjoyable and I love the building the club was in… it was one of the circular buildings that was part of the medieval wall that still surrounds Ferrara. The city has transformed the wall into a walking/biking path so that you can walk on top of the wall around the entire city.
After Ferrara I met up with Jenny and Rebekah (Salzburg College people) in Venice. I arrived first and got extremely lost on the mainland which led me to walk for about two hours before finding my hostel. I wouldn’t have been lost if it had not been raining because I would have easily seen the road I needed from the bus… but you can’t control the weather. Venice was also very fun. It isn’t a city with many sites so mostly you just walk around the skinny streets looking at the canals and houses. We went on a gondola ride with a family from Tunisia to split the cost and it was very fun. Our gondola driver (is that the right term?) didn’t sing to us but he did shout at every other gondola we passed and he also showed us the major sites like Casanova’s house and gave us a bit of history. We also visited the main square where all the pigeons gather. We decided it was the pigeon mecca and only the good pigeons make it there. I fed the pigeons some crackers and they flew around me and landed on my arms… the pictures of that are hilarious. Also a random pigeon landed on my head long after I had stopped trying to attract the pigeons. We couldn’t decide why that happened but it amused us all.
I stayed in Venice for one day because after that it is all the same. I had to go to Basel, Switzerland after that to go to an art museum for my History of Modern Art term paper. I was not excited to be in Switzerland for several reasons. The people are snobby, the weather was frightfully cold (it snowed!!), and that city of Basel is not beautiful at all. I was not excited to be there but the museum had a great student rate and it was a very good museum. I really enjoyed a lot of the art there and I did get my “research” done so it was a good stop.
Then… I went to Paris! One of the days I was there was freezing cold and rainy but the other two were amazing so overall it was beautiful. We saw all the major sites… Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Moulin Rouge, etc. You can check those pictures out when I get them online. But for now I need to get offline and go do some school work. Just a little bit. Not too much. But enough that I won’t have as much work next week when Alison comes to visit me. =)
For my pictures I will be putting them on Webshots if you don’t look at them on facebook. I will slowly be adding them all to that site over the next week or two.
Have a great week everyone!
