home sweet...Dundrum?

A sense of relief and of actually how tired i really am swept over me as i stepped off the bus in Dundrum around 3 pm this afternoon. It has been a LONG and fast 6 days.
I can't believe i went to Italy (i've said that like...89 times)



so this is me on the way to Belfast, to catch at 3 hour bus to Dublin, to wait 3 hours in the airport, to get a on a 3 hour plane flight to Pisa.  very excited.
  HI PISA!!! This is our traveling group (Carrie split off after Pisa (top left). Luke, Elizabeth, Emily and me.
So we fly into Pisa at...ah around 12:30 am and have directions to where our 'couchsurfing' guy (Steffano) is playing chess (where he usually plays chess until about 1:30 in some dark alley in the middle of Pisa). So we find him. YAY! After finding him (it's about 1 am) he gives us directions (to walk) to the LEANING TOWER OF PISA! so we walk all through this beautiful city of Pisa to the tower.
we're walking and talking and OHP there it is! it really is leaning...a lot more than i thought it would be. and of course since it's 1 am we are the only ones around. 
  that's us going 'mwah' to Italy. it was cold and a bit rainy, we had been travelling since 1 pm that day (so about 12 hours) and the first thing we do when we get to Italy was hold up the tower...good day.
so Steffano comes and picks us up and brings us to his new house, where he has one bed and one couch and there are 5 of us and him...AND it's 2 in the morning. so we managed and it was fun getting like 2 hours of sleep (none of us could actually sleep well) and we woke up and caught a bus to the train station to Rome!
AH Roma...amazing place. We got to Rome after a long train ride around 1:30 and had to find our hostel (which was SO awesome and fun) and find the Colosseum to meet up for our 3 hour walking tour. we have not eaten since we left Belfast mind you, so we decided to drop our stuff off at the hostel and grab something to eat on our way to the Colosseum.
I found this place called "Euro Pizza"
O...M...G...the best cheap Italian pizza in all of Rome AND right around the corner from our hostel.
So we take this amazing tour led by Valentina, a TRUE Roman (as she said many times). we walked ALL over Rome, told us amazing information about everything we saw AND she also really liked us 4 ;)
  us and Valentina...our wonderful tour guide of Ancient Rome
 i'm goin back to Rome cause i threw a coin into the Trevie Fountain.
We had a great time in Rome...WALKED probably about 25 miles those two days...literally.
I met some great friends at the hostel
  
ate some amazing pizza
went to Saint Peter's Basilica and climbed to the top...like about 743 stairs

 us on step 534 thinking...did we really just pay 5 euros to do this at 8 in the morning?
saw St. Peter's Basilica where Peter was the first head of the Church and his name was on the main list of Pope's...it was pretty sureal
  spanish steps

Rome was amazing and i couldn't love it more.
We hoped a train to Florence


Florence was calm and beautiful and a place i'd love to visit again. It was chilled and SO much fun!


i'm completely exhuasted and have a few more stories: so i'll give you a break and upload some more tomorrow! yay for Fall Break 2007