Parents come to Oxford, and off to Italy we go.

I just got back from Genoa and Cinque Terre, Italy last night. It was beautiful and a lot of fun.My parents arrived in Oxford last Sunday. On Monday after my morning class, we went into London. We went through the National Gallery and saw Les Miserables. It was really good. I showed them around Oxford on Tuesday. It was really fun to show them what I've been experiencing all semester. I think they liked being able to picture "my world" here too.

My mom and I in Trafalgar Square in London

Outside the Theatre

Dad outside of one of the pubs that we ate at. JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis used to meet there to discuss their writing.

We left VERY early Wednesday morning for a bus to Stansted Airport. It was a long day of traveling but it was worth it once we got there. Genoa was a lot bigger than we had expected it to be. It was the birthplace of Christopher Columbus and one of Italy's most important harbour cities. It had the world's second largest aquarirum that we went to. It was cool, but as my mom said, we are spoiled by SeaWorld being so near to us in Florida. We also went to a lot of the Palaces and saw lots of paintings. It was neat trying to imagine people living in these huge, grand rooms with ceilings of gold and unbelievable architecture.

Dad and I on top of one of the palaces

There were boats everywhere

We got gelato quite frequently while we were in Italy. Dad barely made the picture.

We spent 2 nights in Genoa, and we had our own little apartment in our hotel-thanks to mom ;).On Friday morning we took a train to Cinque Terre, which took a little more than an hour. We were a bit confused as to what we were doing because everything was in Italian. In fact the whole time that we were in Genoa, we did not run into anyone else who spoke English as their first language. We were using my dad's newly bought Italian phrase book alot. Anyways, people were so kind to us. It was quite obvious that we needed helping because we looked confused a lot. One particular man on the train went out of his way to make sure that we knew how to get to where we needed to go. He kept talking and talking in Italian and I think he thought we could understand him more than we actually could.
We spent our time in Cinque Terre exploring the 5 towns(Monterosso, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarolla, and Riomaggiore) and walking around, eating, and relaxing. When we showed up, our hotel was not re-confirmed so the lady told us that we had no place to stay. God really took care of us because the lady then went on to help us find a different apartment for each night which were owned by friends of hers. They were both nice, but the last night we were there we stayed in an apartment owned by an English lady who was very kind. It was way up on the hill and we were a funny sight dragging our suitcases up the mountain. It had a view of the ocean and it was very cozy.

Monterosso

tiny village of Manarolla

Manarolla

a bridge on one of the hikes in between Manarolla and Corniglia

On the mountain there were figures lit up for Easter. We had a perfect view of them from our apartment and it was really cool that it was up for display for the whole town to see.

I really enjoyed this trip and I know my parents did too. Now I have to work really hard on school work until I leave again on Wednesday for Scotland. HaHa. I am crazy.
Time is going by so fast and I really dreading saying goodbye to Europe.
I miss everyone so much and I hope that all is well. Love you.