Lately my life has been one big adventure. A little over a year ago my mom had found this "once in a lifetime" trip to Israel, Egypt, Greece, Croatia, and Italy. A Mediterranean cruise with an LDS tour group...how could we pass it up? So, of course we put our down payment in and saved our tooshies off to pay for the rest of it before July 2010 came around. Travelling the world has always been something I've dreamed of, so I put it on my "bucket list" along with a few others like *riding a camel, *swimming with dolphins, *visiting as many LDS temples as I can, *teaching english around the world, etc... If I had an opportunity, I wasn't going to pass it up! Well, October 4, 2010 finally came around. The idea of going to those places really didn't sink in as reality until the night before when I was packing. Funny thing happened that weekend tho. My dad came into town the week before to visit my sister and I. He was staying up at a condo we set him up at. I had this plan to take him to General Conference in Salt Lake since he's never been. Well, as I was up at the condo with my dad...I woke up super early like 2am Friday morning with a way sharp pain in my stomach. I felt really nausiated and started dry heaving. I tried going back to sleep but the pain stopped me from that. I decided to go back home and have my mom administer some healing oils on my body. That didn't work at all. I tried to ignore it and figured maybe it would just go away. So, I went out running errands with her and every little bump while in the car was magnified. I had finally had enough. I ended up going to the doctor to see what was up with my body. He did some blood work and did a few tests and came to the conclusion it was appendicitis. He immediately sent me to the hospital to have the on call surgeon confirm it. Well, at this point the entire family was notified and came with me to the hospital. I was only there for about an hr and a half and the surgeon was having me prepped for a laproscopic appendectomy. I was terrified. My very first surgery, what if i died? haha. The chances of an individual dying from that type of surgery was extremely low, but nonetheless I was nervous. I was lucky to have my family with me. I asked my father and step-father to give me a blessing. That was all I needed and I knew everything was going to be ok.
I ended up staying the night in the hospital and well, needless to say my plan to take my dad to Salt Lake for General Conference was blown. We did end up watching the first session in my hospital room. Talk about awesome! haha. I learned a great lesson then. While you are busy making plans, God really is laughing because He has a plan of His own set for you and well, He definately knows better! :)
So, after all the riga-ma-roll of having my appendix out, the doctor cleared me for take off to fulfill my dream of being a world traveller. Wahoooo! I immediately went home and tried to start packing. Yeah, it was a bit painful, but I had a lot of help and I was determined to make sure I was ready for the early morning plane ride Monday. We had to be at the airport by 6am. Well, it was a good thing we got there early. My mom forgot to grab my stepdads passport. What a way to start our trip. haha. He had to drive 45 mins back home and another 45 (with good traffic) back without getting caught in rush hour. He made it just in time and we were off!
Our first stop was JFK in New York. After about a delay of an hour we were off to Milan, Italy. A 9hr plane ride. My very first international plane ride. I was ecstatic!
Well, we finally arrived in Milan and I got my passport stamp from Italy. WAHOOO! We headed off to our tour bus and began our incredible journey. We headed to the famous part of Milan - the fashion capital - and I had my first experience in Italy. I had my picture taken with a bunch of pigeons. Yes, its true! I felt like the bag lady in the movie "Home Alone 2: Lost In New York" where she's in the park feeding the pigeons and they are all over her arms and head - yup, that was me. We then ate at this quaint Italian restaurant right on the sidewalk with an incredible view of some church that had beautiful architecture. After Milan, we went to Verona. Thats where the story of Romeo and Juliett take place. I had the chance to see Julietts balcony and the place where Romeo lived. There was also this fantastic coliseum there that the Romans built. Apparently they still have concerts there. I think I may want to go back just to be able to attend a concert there. Words can't even describe how amazing the architecture was. After touring Milan and Verona, we travelled a few hours to Venice. Once there, we had to take a water taxi to our hotel and after we were settle in our rooms, we zonked out.
Day #1: Tour of Venice -
Well, the trip had finally begun. After having a yummy breakfast in Italy, we took our water taxi and started our tour of Venice. We first headed to St. Marks Square. There are A LOT of vendors trying to sell you stuff. Total tourist attraction. But, it was beautiful there. All the buildings and the history behind Venice was breathtaking to see. The streets were paved with bricks and in some places there was a little flooding, but the people were so friendly and it was so cool to be able to walk on the mini bridges built over the water...it was everywhere you went. You saw a lot of Gondola's and just boats everywhere since that is their main form of transportation. Some of the gondola guides were singing and their voices were magical! We had our opportunity to take a gondola ride and it was romantic! The ambiance of Italy is full of enchantment and magic and it was....*sigh* perfect. As I was on my gondola ride, there was a boat passing us by and this Italian man pointed to me with a smile and shouted out "I love you!" with his Italian accent. I was a bit giddy and shy so I just smiled and waved. Well, that didn't work for my gondola guide. He scolded me and told me not to keep my feelings inside. The Italians are very open with their emotions and have no problem expressing that outwardly to you or anyone else. It was definately another learning experience. Sometimes, I wish we could be more open with our feelings in America. It wouldn't make things so awkward and confusing. But, to each his/her own. :) Well, afer the tour we had some free time for shopping and eating lunch, so we had some Italian pizza. Afterall, isn't that a must while in Italy? It was mmm...mm, good! Later that day we boarded our ship and got settled in our staterooms. The ship was huge. I think its capacity is something just barely over 3000 passengers. Pretty incredible. The journey had officially begun now that we were on the ship. I was sooo excited as our first port was in Alexandria, Egypt.
Day #2, Day #3 & Day #4:
Well we were at sea and had a few days until we reached Egypt. Our tour group had an incredible speaker who started his seminars this day. His name is Bruce Porter. He did a lot of reasearch for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and studied extensively in Jerusalem and Egypt. So for the few days of just being out on sea, I went to listen to Brother Porter. I learned so much about the gospel of Jesus Christ and a lot about Egyptians and it was just way cool! There was so much to take in, but his seminars turned out to be my favorite of all the things I experienced.
Day #5:
We reached Alexandria, Egypt bright and early Sunday morning. We had to be ready to leave by 5:30 in the morning. Our bus ride into Alexandria was 3hrs each way to and from Cairo. Lets just say I was ecstatic to be able to get out and stretch my feet and legs by the time we got there. Cairo was quite an experience. First of all there were tons of camels everywhere. Second, the Giza pyramids were HUGE! Our guide told us that the largest pyramid has something like 2.2 million stones - and believe me when i say the stones are not small. Being there was fantastic, but it was still hard to fathom that a few thousand years ago the egyptians were able to build something as fantastic as the pyramids. The vendors there are soooo forward and pushy. They will not leave you alone. You have to be very firm with them and when it comes to bartering, the best thing you can do is to stick to your guns with the price. While I was there, I had anywhere between 10-15 marriage proposals. My parents could have owned a HUGE camel farm had they agreed to accept what the men were offerring them for me to be their wife. haha The largest offer was something around 3000 camel along with a few goats and a couple chickens. I'm glad my parents loved me enough to say no. Had they not, I may have come back with an Egyptian husband. haha. So along with getting to see the pyramids in Cairo, we got to see the Sphynx, the Cairo museum (king tuts exhibit) and went to the Bazaar downtown. We got back to the ship late, but it was an amazing day.
Day #6:
Well this day we had the chance to explore a bit of Alexandria. Egypt is a very dirty place. Everywhere you look there are piles and piles of rubble and trash everywhere. I mean, you would see someone eating a candy bar next to a trash bin, but they would just throw the wrapper onto the ground. Its weird. Traffic is crazy too. The law in Egypt is that whomever is in front has the right of way. So wherever there was a small amount of space, cars would try and creep up to get in the front so they had the right of way. They were constantly using their horns. Plus, people there had no problem walking out in front of a moving vehicle. A lot of us on the bus almost had a few heart attacks. haha. We saw some cool things here though. We went to the catacombs - walked down 99 stairs to get to the bottom. It was way crowded and super hot. We also got to go the the famous library of Alexandria. That was sweet. They have this cool machine that will print out a whole book in like 15-20 minutes so you don't have to check it out...its always available for anyone who needs it.
Day #7:
We ported in Ashdod, Israel this day. ***to be continued... :)
