Trento, Venice, Venice, Venezia!!!!! and on to Firenze (Florence)

Yesterday was a pretty hectic 48 hrs. I say 48 hrs, because we had gotten about 10-11 hours of sleep over the past three days.... so I should prob say its been a crazy 72 hours. Its all been such a blur I don't really know where to start. Our schedule the past couple of days has been @ Luigi's house monday we went to bed at 2 am and woke up at 7 am. went to cinque terre all day. Tuesday at luigi's slept from 2 am to 5 am and went off to trento (no me gusta, non me piache, I didn't like it... very much) we got there around 10. The hostel was closed for remodeling. I had a feeling that Rook's member friends were going to fail us again... they pretty much did. So I told him we should get on the internet and find a place ourselves instead of waiting to hear back from his friends. As i suspected no one really wanted to let us sleep at their houses and we eneded up sleeping on the floor at marco's house (very cool guy, ex boxer for Italy who was supposed to go to the olympics). As it turns out we spent all day in the freezing cold and we seemed confused about what we wanted to do, either way Rook and I were outta sync and it wasn't the funnest day. It felt like a day on a mission where you are fueding (sp) with your companion and keep talk to a minimum... it wasn't really like that or bad at all.

It was just that nothing was working out for us so it kinda felt like I was back on the mission with teaching appointments being forgotten and just a lot of walking around and not really getting anything done. That pretty much sums up trento. Not a lot of doing, just lots of walking and crankiness/pent up frustration. We got there at 10, rode up a tram (that was cool) went to get some info at the bus station and ran into a member from the area, Rook actually went to his wedding like 7 years ago. Crazy! Walked around, got a piadina (kinda like a hot pocket, but way better) went to the city center, went through the church, went to a museum and thought it was a museum for king trident/neptune (to our defense it said "museo Diosa tridentino") which turned out to be the trento museum, tridentino was the latin way to say trento... so it was just the trento museum. Once you've been through 15 museums, they all kinda seem the same. This one was cool cuz it had a bunch of pope robes and the preist walking stick things... a gold jewel encrusted pope hat, and in the basement it was the original floor and entrance to the city of trento. After that we went around looking for food. Everythign was closed, so we got a sandwich at a bar. Then we went and used the internet... ran into some dominicans and colombians. The museum guy was a german who grew up in argentina and lived in italy, so I got to use my spanish quite a bit. The colombian girl thought I was puerto rican (I aked her if she was looking for a fight) Then dominican said no to me being puerto rican and said "I was just thinking that I was listening to a dominican" (como que me suena a lo mio... in english this sounds like mine or my people)

Then Marco came and picked us up. We went around calling people to see if we could stay with them. Picked up the italian equivilant of buster from arrested deveolpment, just think of a huge overbite, really awkward, and buttons up every button on his coat so he doesn't look comfortable in his clothes... who burnt his tounge so bad it looked like it would fall off (yet had no idea what he burned it on... go figure). Marco said we could stay with him. Rook said no no no no. So we went to an all you can eat place. They had penne pesto, margherita pizza, french fries, salad and thats about it. It wasn't very good... It wasn't bad at all. Just nothing like the pizza and pasta I've had other places in italy. It was pretty awkward at dinner so I just flirted with the waitress, pretty girl with messed up teeth. She was from yugoslavia or something, so she had that I'm hot but I'll also kill you look, ha! We ended up going to the missionaries house and getting an old mattress that they had laying around. Then things got interesting. We went out to marco's house after everything fell through. We had to sneak in. He lives in a loft he made in his parents garage. We slept on the floor with his 4 cats that for some reason all wanted to sleep on my crotch and were walking on and over me all night long. It was kinda nice, they kept me warm. We slept on the floor with the old matress and a couple of shair coushins, not too comfy, but not too bad. Marco is a big time snorer... 'nuff said. We couldn't use the bathroom at marco's house, since his parents aren't fans of the mormons. We had run out of clean clothes that day... so we couldn't shower, couldn't shave, couldn't use the bathroom, couldn't do anything (had to pee outside where it was freezing). It sucked but it was actually cozy and a lot of fun. Its humbling to live in those circumstances and to still enjoy life. Goes to show you that money aint a thang! Trento reminded me of russia... I think I would hate russia equally as much as trento. It just seemed nothing went right for us, but we laughed it off and enjoyed it/made the best out of it. We went to bed at 2 am again and woke up at 5:30 to catch a 6:30 train to venice.

This is Trento (didn't take many pictures there, most are on Rook's Camera):

At a restaurant in Venice, not amazing but pretty good:

On our Gondola Ride in Venice:

A dog dressed up for Carnevale (like mardi Gras) in Venice:

Rook and I with Roberto our Gondoleer (very informative, realy nice guy. I think he looks like Bob Spees)

More on Venice and Florence later. Our laundry is done...its time to see some sights!!!!!!! Love you guys.

Venice!!!!

Here are a couple of more pictures:

Verona at Guilietta's balcony:

Venice:
Cinque Terre:

Milano:

With Quasimotto outside of Notre Dame:

Milano, Cinque Terre and Trento

So after taking Luigi Tavola on his kind offer to stay at his house, We awoke to a kind old man in a wife beater whitey tighties and bathrobe (haha) saying time to get up in broken English. I looked up and kinda smacked my head into my pillow (it was 7:00 am) I heard him say to Rook "your brother sure can sleep" I thought tha was funny since we had all woken up at the same time. I sat at the breakfast table with luigi while rook was in the shower and it was the single most awkward breakfast with an 80 something year old man I have ever had. He doesn't speak english and I am just beginning to understand 90% of conversations not bad for a week in italy :) I sat and had an old man serve me hot milk and biscotti, he then made me eat half a yogurt and an orange (I had to split the yogurt with Rook since there was only one). This was seriously creepy. We thought this dude was going to kill us at frist. An old hermit crab of an art history professor in milan, just let us stay in his den that was filled from floor to ceiling with books and art. He had a couple of huge paintings from the 1500's it was pretty cool. It doesn't help that Rook and I have seen every movie known to man that deals with unsuspecting american backpackers getting lured into innocent looking homes and are then killed slash mutilated and have their organs sold on the black market... YIKES! Anyways he turned out to be a great friend and more reliable than almost all of Rook's friends in italy (more on that later).

So we went to cinque terre and went around three beatiful port towns that are in walking distance of each other. I loved it, Rook loved it, the girls from australia we meet loved it, Rick steev's loves it (the guy from the tour italy dvd's dad gave us) Had a slice of pizza we got pesto pizza and margherita... Way good! Then we went and bought some fruit in the last city, I think it was riomaggiore (not sure) and were off to catch a train up to trento. Well that was the original plan and I told Rook it would be stupid to be on trains from 8:00 am till 11:00 pm and only get to be in cinque terre for one hour. Good thing he agreed and we decided to head back to luigi's for the night and see more of milano, which is a way cool city (it really reminds me of santo domingo) and got some pizza at a dope restaurant that had live music, got another margherita pizza (my fav so far, super classic, simple and delicious) I have noticed that at the nice restaurants, the service is amazing, the guy picked up my plate the second I had taken my last bite. So we got back to luigi's at 1:00 am (the old man is a night owl and a half) got some stuff ready and went to bed at 2:00 only to wake up at 5:00 am to head up to trento.

We slept on the first train to verona. I convinced rook to spend a couple of hours there because I wanted to see romeo and guiliettas balcony and touch her breast (don't worry its for good luck). We wrote our names on the wall which is customary and pretty fun. We weren't sure if romeo and juliet was a true story so we did some fact finding and it was. We found juliet's balcony and we found romeo's house. took some pictues in the verona arena, it looks like a small coloseum. After that we got on a train to trento. Took a tram ride up the mountain to sardagna and bought another converter plug to charge our stuff (turned out to be good since we think rook left the other one at luigi's this morning). We then went to the duomo church and looked around, went to the trento museum, saw some cool things including the ruins of the original city that were buried about 12 feet under where the town is now. We then walked around the whole town looking for something to eat and a hostel. We didn't find either. Everything was closed from like 2:00-7:00 for dinner (I think is stupid) which Rook said its like that in Italy. If it is, I haven't noticed and that pissed me off royaly... I really wanted some gnocchi. We ended up getting some panini's at a bar.

I started to get antsy and frustrated with the day and how lame trento was. I wanted to be able to meet Rook's friends from the city (he served here for 3 months) but it seems they have all moved away or work somewhere else. I told him we should figure out where we are staying since we have been abandoned the past two nights... he said everything would be fine. I said lets doubel check...yada yada yada... It turns out we didn't have anything concrete. I checked for hostels online and the only hostel in trento is closed for remodeling... I really am not liking this town by now. So we step into an internet cafe and wouldn't you know it a couple of dominicans work there which makes me really happy since I can talk to someone and figure things out instead of understanding stuff and asking Rook to make sure I got things right. Which I did :) I got us a nice hotel in florence for 3 days and we are still waiting on one of Rook's friends for here. Hopefully that works out, or I will ask the italian government to do nuclear testing here like Andrea mazzolari's dad said he has been asking them to do in Napoli for a decade (I have a feeling that I am going to absolutely love Napoli). So that brings us to now. We are having a blast. Today has been a little hectic but fun. We have been at each other a little, but we are not letting our fatigue and crankiness get the best of us. Our bodies hurt, we are exhausted, but we are brothers... we're happy and we're singig and we're colored... dah dah dah dah... gimmie a hig five... Derek signing out till next time. We love you all, thanks for the comments. It's nice to get some feedback. I am putting up a couple of pics... hopefully it works.

Done with Paris... Next stop Milano, Italia

Like I was saying on saturday, we went to the big church on the hill by our hotel in the red light district of paris (lots of hookers, lots of sex shops... yikes) it was a fun and interesting two days in paris. At first rook and I hated paris, thought it was dirty, busy, nasty, and confusing. After we got some food in us and a little rest we really started to enjoy it. We started up conversations with people we met on subways, in museums, at tourist locations, etc. Once we learned how to get around everything was great. We always ate on the street, since we didnàt have time for anyting else. We had crepes, paninis, ham and cheese sandwiches, and hot dogs. My favorite thing was the french hot dog. It was two weiners on a baguette with baked cheese on top YUMMY. Rook's fav. was the ham, cheese, and egg crepe (my second favorite). Here are some pictures: ( sorry but the internet cafe wonùt let me upload any of my pictures :(

Sacre Coeur

Gargoyle on top of Notre Dame

Notre Dame (Yes we hiked up the entire tower... it was quite the huff [mom you wouldn't make it hahaha, jk] )

We went an saw the eifell tower again and got our valentine's day hugs/french kisses (on the cheek) from real frenchies!

After the eifell tower we were running late and didn't want to miss our flight to milano so we went to the arche de triomphe and took a couple of pics then off to the airport.

We got into milano at 10:00 at night and two off Rook's old mission companions picked us up (manuele elia and andre mazzolare). They were really loud, very funny, extremely nice, and super excited to see Rook. It was great to see how happy Rook was to be back in Italy and to be with his old mission friends. I was suprised how well I could follow their conversations without knowing any italian. Andrea and Manuele are both married to great girls and have callings in the lake como ward. The church is amazing even in Italy and the chapel is the house of deceased pope. It was beautiful. Here is the center of Como, we walked around, looked at shops and ate gelato ( I had Lake como cream, hazelnut, and pistaccio. Rook had pineapple, strawberry, and cinnamin... again amazingly delicious stuff)

Beautiful lake como:
After getting on a train to Milano, we took a subway to milano centrale and when we walked out of the subway we stumbled upon this little building (duomo di milano... its where the painting of the last supper is)
another picture of the duomo

we were looking for stuff to do till Rook's friend came to pick us up. We meet a nice history professor in the shops at milano centrale. He ended up offering to let us stay with him if things didn't work out (which they didn't) so we took him up on the offer to save some money and to have another story to tell! So we walked to the castella di milano, which is a hughe castle in the middle of milan.
My time is up. Love you all. Enjoy america!

Paris Update

We arrived yesterday at 9:50 am local time in Paris, wandered around the airport for about an hour and realized that we don't speak a lick of french and the people who speak english here are not very good at it. They can say hello, but when you ask for directions they really can't explain how to get any where. aggggh.

so after an hour we got on a train with some italians from Rome and Rook got to brush up on his Italian while I got to brush up on my I'm new in the country and trying ti understand everything while at the same time trying to fake not looking stupid! It wasn't that hard.... I'm pretty good at faking it. So we took a train and then hoped on the subway to get to our hotel (if you can call in that) which is right down the street from the moulin rouge.

We got to our hotel at 1:00, took some pictures of the moulin rouge, took a shower and went out for the day. We got an open tour bus pass thta takes you to all of the cool things to see on a bus route. The only problem is there arent many busses and they only go till 6:00pm.... BTW it was freezing when we got into paris and it looked like it had just snowed. The tour is called L'open toure... its called that because it is a double decker bus with no roof on the top level. It was really cold and I was pressed against the window hating life.

I could not sleep on the plane, no matter how hard I tried. Rook on the other hand was able to sleep like a baby.

We went to the Louvre and walked aroundfor 4 hours. We saw tons of cool sculptures and huge paintings, I mean huge like 40' x 60' (thats feet)! Since I didn't sleep on the plane and we hadn't eaten since about 6:00 am I was literally falling asleep while walking and needless to say a little cranky. We finally got some food in the louvre and I pepped back up and got in a better mood, but about 30 mins later I was falling asleep again.

After we were done with the Louvre and had figured out the subway system out of necessity, (thanks to the crappy bustour), stoppedby the eiffel tower to snap some night fotos, we were headed back home to go to a show and we saw a juggling/ventriloquist act that was amazing and funny. But this time it was Rook falling asleep and me trying to keep him awake. We sat with two couples from greece, one guy was from israel. After the show we sat and talked with some nice girls that are studying abroad south of paris. One american, One Canadian, and one Australian.

SATURDAY

We woke up around 8:30, ate our breakfast, and headed off to the sacre coeur church up at the top of a hill. Got ambushed by a group of africans from senegal and gabon. They are just like the haitains in the D.R. Always trying to sell you stuff. They are hard to turn down and tell you its a tradition to buy their bracelets. Mine was very nice so I gave him euro and a half (he asked for 20 euros) for a little string bracelet he made. Rook's on the other hand wasn't very nice and keept asking for more money. After we were done seeing the church and the crypt, we saw rooks meanie and he asked for more money and said "don't be cheap like the chinese" we laughed and reminded him he told usit was free... I called him a liar and said he was lucky to get anything, then all of his friends laughed and high fived me and said California the best! italians the best! (for some reason they could tell we are italian)!

We are off to Notre dame, the eifell tower again, le arche de triumph and anything else we see of the way! Love you all. I'd post some picture but this computer sucks and doesn't have a slot for my memory card. TTYL.

Derek (and Rook)

Packing and then off to the airport

Today Feb 12th 2009 is the day Rook and I start our adventure! We depart from SLC at 1:55PM and arrive in Paris at 9:50AM.

This is the Hotel we will be staying at while in Paris:
We will be about 250 yards away from this place... I dunno if anyone has heard of it :)