Europe Trip Day Two: Traveling to Milan, Italy!

My cousins wake up at around 5:30am every morning in Switzerland (I know crazy), they are not normal. But since I am not normal either I woke up around 6am. Jet lag is also a factor in me getting up so early since my brain is not used to the time change yet, which can be really annoying. I was wide awake and ready to start the day... well sort of. I was still quite groggy from the previous day but I wasn't going to let that stop me. After breakfast my cousins and I continued with the previous day activity: playing with the snakes. I don't know what it is but I just found these snakes really interesting and fun. So at 9am in the morning my cousins and I were playing with some snakes.

Us with both of the snakes in hand

Mom said make a funny face so I did....

Hands of snakes!

Me holding two snakes with my cousin

Well hello there snakey! :)

At about 10:30am we had to depart for the train station since my mom and I were going to Italy with my grandpa for a couple of days. My cousins were sad that I was spending most of my time in Europe away from them but I promised that we would have the best day together when I get back from Italy.

At the train station!

When we said goodbye to the cousins and my aunt, my grandpa, mom and I hopped onto a train for about 45 minutes and then another one that was about two or three hours long. While on the train we had yummy yogurt drinks, cheese, dried meat, crackers and cheese spread (my mom and I call it grandpa catering since we always get some type of food from grandpa while on the trains, and usually the food is really good!)

Us on the train with yummy food! :)

I have been to Milan, Italy once before and I thought it was really pretty and interesting. Milan is the shopping center of Italy with tons of clothes shops on every corner. Also it is home to a huge Catholic Cathedral in the middle of Milan. It is a gothic style cathedral and huge! It took them about 500 years to complete the building of this monster. Last time I was there we went to the very top of the cathedral and we could see everything in Milan and it was amazing.

The Cathedral and its plaza!

Big archway leading into an outdoor mall

This day we just wondered around Milan and went into this huge shopping center called Rinascente. It was so expensive and had all the pricey brands like Gucci, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, etc. One shirt was over 200 Euros! We didn't buy anything in this shopping center but it was really cool to look at. At the top was a little cafe overlooking the Cathedral plaza, and we bought some food.

Delicious smoothies

Gelato!!! :) so good..

Macaroons!! They are the best things EVER!

After all this deliciousness we left the plaza and walked around this old marketplace that was really cool. I also found a really cool well that had Latin on the top of it but I had forgotten what some verbs were in Latin so I had a hard time translating it. This is also the place that we found a cute restaurant for dinner. We stayed at the place for more then two hours just eating and talking about all the things we saw that day. And in Italy the drinking age is 16 so I had a couple sips of wine with my dinner. The dinner was delicious and I love Italian food! It is so good.

Empty marketplace!

Me vs. Well

Outdoor dinning!

The square right behind the marketplace!

Salad with shrimp, oranges, avocado, and balsamic!

Tomatos with Mozzarella!

My dinner! Spaghetti Carbonara!

After dinner it was around 10pm so we walked around a little talking about what time we would get up to explore more of Milan. We eventually decided that 8am would be the right time to get breakfast. Then we walked to our hotel and went to sleep after the long day! :) Hopefully Day Three will be up soon!

Have a FANTASTIC day!

Europe Trip Day One: Jet Lag... And a Lake!

About 2 weeks ago I left Boise for Zurich, Switzerland to see my grandpa, aunt, and cousins for a week. Now I'm finally getting around to blog about each day individually since there was so much things that we saw and did during that 10 day trip. I never would have been able to say as much as I would like to if I only did this in one blog post so here we go! :)

15 and a half hours of travel time it takes to get from Boise, Idaho to Zurich, Switzerland, which isn't so bad since some of the other times we have travelled to Europe it was about 20 hours. But when you are flying for so long when you reach your destination all you want to do is sleep, this is what I really wanted to do. Switzerland is also 8 hours ahead of Boise so my sleep schedule was really thrown off balance. We landed in Switzerland around 11a.m. (which is about 3 a.m. Boise time) on a Sunday morning and as you can imagine I was beyond tired. I can't sleep on planes since they are so uncomfortable and noisy so I was awake for more than 24 hours. When my mom and I arrived in Switzerland we had a very nice welcome from our relatives who I haven't seen for about half a year (they came to Idaho for Christmas).

Lovely welcome sign they made for us!

We all fit into my aunt's car! It was very cozy! :)

After we piled into my aunt's car we drove to their house, which it is a little cottage outside of Zurich and it really reminds me of a fairy tale cottage. When we got there we settled in (I was sleeping in a room with my two littler cousins) and the cousins were ready to hang out with me. I tried my best to wake myself up enough to play with them for the whole rest of the day. First we played with their corn snakes that they have had for awhile now since I remember playing with them four or five years ago when my family and I went to Switzerland for Christmas.

SNAKES! :)

They are very comfortable with their snakes

I realized how much I like snakes! Which is a lot!

After that we all had the great idea to go a swim in the Lake Zurich, which is this big lake right in the middle of Zurich (hence the name). We went to a beach right on the edge of the lake and it was packed full of people. It was a gorgeous day outside so I can see why everyone wanted to be at the beach. The only bad thing was the water was FREEZING cold since it was all mostly glacier water. I am not used to being in freezing cold lake water so it was a long process before I would actually swim around in it. After awhile the water was perfect and it felt so nice to swim after the long plane ride. (lots of pictures!!)

Me adapting to the water...

This is Gina my grandpa's dog! She is so adorable!

My cousins trying to convince my to dunk my head under water...

Pose for a picture

Started to play a game

We decided we wanted to catch a boat

Boat wait for us!!

The boat left us... :'(

We found a place where we could touch the floor! It was slimy

After swimming!

Look at the beautifully messed up hair!

Walking back home for dinner!

My cousins and I took showers when we got back to rinse the lake water from our bodies (I wanted to shower since I feel gross from the plane ride). When that was done I fiddled around on their baby grand piano for a little bit while my cousins listened and then they played their songs too. They have gotten really good at playing piano and I was really impressed and proud of how well they were doing.

Us messing around on the piano!

At one point during this time we played chopsticks!

While the kids are entertained, the adults talk about life!

Dinner was delicious, we had lamb chops (I have never had these before and they were cooked perfectly), tortellinis, green peas, and a salad.

Yummy lamb chops! :)

Also random side note.. my aunt is really talented in the art of braiding. She has been braiding all three of my cousins' hair for forever since they have such long hair. They were looking on youtube at different braiding tutorials and asking their mom if she could braid their hair. And this was the product of her work:

And this was after all the other braids that they did!

After all this excitement at 8am my cousins and I went to bed (it was their bedtime and I was so jet lagged that I wanted to go to sleep). It was a good first day in Switzerland! Tomorrow or the next day I will have Day Two up hopefully! 

Have a WONDERFUL day!

National FCCLA Conference in Nashville, Tennessee!

My FCCLA group that I love! Minus our wonderful advisor who was taking the picture!

I have been so busy with the past two weeks with trips that this has been the only time that I can finally post things about my trips! Well two weeks ago I went with my FCCLA group to Nashville for the National FCCLA Conference and it was so much fun! We were all in different competitions and five of us got gold (including me) and three of us got silver. I was very proud of how well we did with the competitions but there was so much more that I enjoyed then the competing aspect. The Gaylord Opryland Hotel (where we stayed) was huge! It had its own rain forest and mini village inside it... and of course my group and I managed to get lost on more than a few occasions. Also downtown Nashville has a lot of bars (which I wasn't so surprised) and most of them had live bands playing in them. It really made me feel like I was in the Music City.

Downtown Nashville!

Ok... Now to start from the beginning! Day 1 was full of traveling with these people which was quite crazy and really fun! I have never been on a trip with friends before and never realized how much fun going on a trip can be.

These two crazy people (Nicole and Ashley) were my travel buddies!

Boise to Tennessee! (we were slightly bored)

When we got to the hotel that we were going to stay at for the night we were completely exhausted and pretty much went to sleep (after a lot of talking.. we are girls after all). The next morning we arrived at the Opryland hotel and put our luggage away in a room and we were off to see the Grand Ole Opry.

I was very happy! :)

On the outside the Opry looks really normal and brick... sort of boring to the eye. But when you get inside then you know it is definitely a concert house for country music. Now me not being a really big country fan found the house interesting. During the tour I realized how much this concert house means to some and it is quite amazing. The tour was really well done and I would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of country music or someone who finds it some what interesting.

Don't it look fancy!

Downtown Nashville, Music City, it is called and I completely agree. When walking downtown one of the days in Nashville I could hear country music being played constantly in all the bars. It wasn't the cheap stereos blasting but real live country music. I thought this was really cool and got me into the country music mood. While in downtown we saw some pretty cool sites.

This was the Country Music Hall of Fame

This was a really cool building that was all fancy and wavy!

They kept on leaving me since I was taking too many pictures!

This was a train station but is now a hotel! I really wanted to go inside it!

Close up word picture! :) Everybody needs one of these!

Elvis was everywhere in Nashville, which is weird since he isn't a country singer...

Nashville is a pretty cool and relaxed place to be and I would write more about it but I don't know what else to say... so with that said MORE RANDOM PICTURES! :)

Big guitar! and the Grand Ole Opry in the background!

All of our feet on the old Opry stage

Ooh look at those beautiful faces!

Really good aquarium restaurant we went to one of the nights!

And we are walking... We did a lot of walking.

Mother of Records!

Naked people statue fighting over a circle.. no big deal! :)

Well that is all for now! My future blog posts won't be as random as this one, I just had a lot of pictures that I wanted to show! I hope everyone is having a LOVELY day!

Ta Ta for now!

I thought this picture was cool :)