alone in the flat and in a bloggy mood :)

Good morning!  It's currently 11:00 on Thursday a.m. and I am so happy this morning...everything is sort of going my way right now.  Classes are shockingly easy compared to the ND equivalents I would be taking...probably means I'm in for a bitch of a senior year, but that's fine and it is totally worth it to be here.  I'm starting to figure things out around here and this place is really starting to feel like "home," which is so weird because up until now it's kind of felt like a very odd vacation.

The primary reason I'm so happy?  Last night a group of us started preliminary planning for our SPRING BREAK, and all I can say is that it is going to be absolutely, unbelievably epic.  Thanks to a series of weird and fortunate coincidences, we started off with one plan (which, yes, would have been awesome) and ended up with a totally different, totally awesome plan.  Peter, one of the three guys in our group of six, happens to have a former teacher with a villa in Tuscany (here's where you pause, breathe in, breathe out and read that sentence again.  A VILLA.  In TUSCANY.), which we would be able to get for one of the weekends of our break.  We'll be starting our travels there, flying into Pisa, Italy (as in, Leaning Tower of!) and traveling to Lucca, the location of our villa for the weekend.  From Lucca we can conveniently day-trip to Florence (about an hour), Pisa (about 1/2 an hour) and Cinque Terre, not to mention the gorgeous Tuscan countryside...we're in the heart of Chianti Country and does that ever sound good!

After several days in Tuscany, we were looking into going to Nice, France (near Cannes, Monaco, etc), but then we discovered that it is pretty much impossible to get anywhere from Nice for a reasonable price...so we started frantic-searching for somewhere to go from Pisa.  I'll admit there were more than a few moments of panic, and my stress level came somewhere near going through the roof, but with the help of a little 1.50 pound wine and some ingenuity on RyanAir, I happened on a flight from Pisa to Barcelona, Spain...for only 22 euro per person!!  (For those of you unfamiliar with the costs/intricacies of flying around Europe: it CAN be done cheaply, but Barcelona has...until now...seemed to be one of those places that are impossible to get to for a reasonable price.)  I immediately started freaking out; it seemed too good to be true but fortunately it WAS true, and we will be spending the next three days of our spring break on the beautiful streets and beaches of Barcelona!!  I can't wait to see the place, everybody I've talked to has said it's beautiful.

After the three days in Barcelona, we will be finishing up our journey in what I personally think is the best most wonderful amazing possible way imaginable...with four days in........

PARIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I found us flights from Barcelona to Paris for 10 euro apiece.  I seriously almost had a heart attack with excitement.  One thing that I had been really worried about was seeing everything I want to see in Paris with only a weekend to do it.  Now it seems like that will be totally possible...four complete days in the city I've been obsessed with seeing for...hmm, I don't know, most of my adolescent and young-adult LIFE?!  I can't wait to sit down and spend some quality time with Google planning this leg of the trip!

As I said, though, this is all preliminary, and needs way better/more thorough planning.  Thankfully, I think we've got a really solid travel group with pretty similar interests and desires re: how we want to spend our time in these amazing cities, so I have a feeling that once we can sit down and really hammer out details, everything will come together beautifully.  :)  I am honest-to-goodness SO excited and thrilled about this that I can hardly articulate it.  The best part is that it's looking like we will be able to do this trip so cheaply from the standpoint of traveling and living arrangements that I will be able to add a weekend trip somewhere I wanted to go but didn't think was fiscally possible, so I'm really excited to start looking into travel to Prague, Germany, or Austria.  This spring break brings the list of places I will be going to:

-Pisa, Italy
-Florence, Italy
-Tuscany/Cinque Terre, Italy
-Venice, Italy
-Rome, Italy
-Paris, France
-Barcelona, Spain

And that's only over Spring Break and Easter!! :)  I definitely want to make it to somewhere like Prague or Germany or Austria to get a taste of somewhere NOT Romance-Language-speaking, Westerny, etc.  Aaah.  Life is molto bene, très bien, muy bueno, VERY good.

I do have to leave for class in about half an hour though, so I am going to go make myself a sandwich and some carrots and a banana or something for a quick lunch before leaving the flats.  Have a lovely day (once you all wake up, haha!) and remember to mind the gap.  :)