I’m calling this Summer of World Travels, the sequel, although it is just a mini-sequel to last summer. I am not travelling nearly as much this summer as I did last, but the bit I am travelling is to new parts of the world so I thought the title fit.

The first thing I did this summer, technically, was move home. It took two full days and the help of a few friends to completely move out of my apartment and pack everything up for the journey across Texas.

I then spent two weeks at home helping with the graduation madness. My sister graduated from high school this year. With a track and field team banquet, several friends’ graduation parties, the actual graduation and a grand finale of her own graduation party, we were kept pretty busy just by all the activities that come with the completion of a diploma, not to mention the all-too-rare visit from some of our family on our dad’s side. While it was busy, it was a whirlwind of fun as well.

I got to catch up with dear friend/mentor/former journalism adviser and phoned my Waco buddies before we jetted off across the Pond for Italy.

A little context for this: a trip to Italy was Tara’s graduation present from my parents. When I graduated high school, I got a trip to London and Paris. I ended up loving my trip so much that I studied abroad in England last summer (see blogs below) and may want to live there someday.

We spent most of our nine days in grand ol’ Italia with a classic tour of Rome. We saw the Forum, the Colusseum, several churches including St. Peter’s at the Vatican, the Trevii Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Sistine chapel, the pope’s blessing, museums, etc.

We spent about three days in Venice. Activities there included St. Mark’s Basilica and square, the Doge’s palace, an art museum, a glass factory and much shopping. We found some fun gifts for our friends here (though I won’t give away any surprises, haha) and a few special things for ourselves, but our main loss of Euro tended to be towards food. More on that later.

We left Venice and took a train to Milan where we stayed the night before flying out in the morning. Tara and I got our own room, which was cool, and the whole hotel had a very mod feel (Novotel). Besides that, nothing super exciting there.

 Ciao!                                                                                                                                             

Jenna