Hellooooooooooooooooooo all! I'm finally back from my vacation and I somewhat feel worse then before I left.....I'm broke, tired, sore, my shoes smell funny, and I have a shit load of laundry to do. Hmmmm hardly relaxing...

I left for Copenhagen Thursday night and stayed in a real hole--actually could have guessed by their slogan which read "We don't have a jaccuzzi, but you can fart in the tub all you want." Anyways getting there was a bit tricky the directions of which bus etc. to take from the airpirt was good, but the driver never told me when to get off, so I missed it and had to walk a million miles back to it with my huge backpack. Copenhagen was a nice city. I met up with Azadeh on Friday with no problems because I went to the bus stop and waited for her so she knew where to get off. We then walked around Copenhagen. It was a very nice day out and we saw some churches and walked a long the Stoget, the shopping street. We checked the buses to Aalborg and ended up missing them...we were thinking of hitchhiking but decided it was probably not a good idea. We went and searched and searched for a hotel for friday night and it was very difficult as everything was booked up, but we ended up finding a really nice hostel for pretty cheap. Saturday, we walked around a lot and saw the changing of the guards and we even posed with one in their funny hat :) and went to the castle a few churches, saw the little mermaid statue, and some monuments etc. We went to Our Lady Savior Church which was a really neat church because the tower that we climbed was outside. We then took a train around the city and there was this creepy guy on it (yes, like in Eurotrip) that was sitting like 6 seats behind...and as I was talking to Azadeh I said "I swear he is getting closer" and she is like "no way he is still way back there." Anyways by the end of the train ride, he was practically in our laps so it was quite creepy, and as he got off the train he was like "Thanks." We also thought this was kind of weird. Thanks for what???? After the train ride, all I could smelll were these roasted almonds and I wanted some so badly. I finally found some and it was also a creepy guy selling them....ewwww his hands were all over them when he scopped them into a bag and he handed them to me and said "They were made with love" ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...... but I still ate them....they were damn good :) Bacteria, we will worry about you later :) There was this English guy performing acts and stuff on the street so we stayed to cheer him on (and were the only ones to do so :)). He was on a unicycle juggling burning torches.

Saturday night, we were not so lucky finding a place to stay everything was booked. We were in the central terminal phoning places and guess who we saw....the creepy train guy again!!!!! He was waving at us and calling us over, but we pretended we didn't hear him:) After being unsuccessful in finding a place to stay, we decided to go to Hard Rock Cafe. We stayed in Hard Rock Cafe for as long as humanly possible. We drank some irish coffees and listened to the musci they got up on the bar and danced to the Grease remix hahahahahaha.... I got gypped in the french fry department and my burger was raw, but I was so hungry that I ate it anyways. Again maybe the bacteria from the almonds counteracted the bacteria from the raw burger. We then went to the airport and I slept on Azadeh's lap next, but the damn floor cleaner was so loud, I had to put in some ear plugs which still did not work. And plus, now, I'm feeling the bacteria.

Rome was the biggest armpit in the world. It smelled like a dirty toilet, people were really rude, and it was really really dirty. Second day there, I got robbed, so I have no identification, or money or anything here now!!!!!! I was so careful too :(. My purse was in front of me the hole time and I had no maps or cameras out, so I did not look like a tourist...besides the fact that I'm white and speak English. Anyways, it happened in the metro, I was pushed and looked down and everything was still zippered, so I thought i was fine. I went out and sat down in line at the Vatican and noticed some threads....HOLY SHIT! They cut the bottom of my purse open with a knife. I remember exactly who it was too--6'2" 200lbs, dark greasy medium length hair, 35ish, in a black fancy suit...I looked at him and saw a paper in his hand (which was probably wrapped around the jack knife) what an asshole. It would have been worth it if I at least got to kick him in the balls. I phoned "emergency" visa card place..and yep it took 5-10 business days for an "emergency" visa...those fuckers.....so I had absolutely no money on me. I phoned mom and told her that Teemu gave me 10 euros, so she was kind of worried....but he put everything on his visa for me which was really nice:) So, now I owe him big. When, we took the metro again I guarded him like a hawk and was suspicious of eveyrone...even the sweet old ladies.

Our hotel the first three nights in Rome was kind of ghetto. There were springs coming out of my bed and 4 species of insects in the washroom. I could not identify them down to species though as I did not have an entomological key with me....but there were some arachnids....which should eat the other three species....another species was really dominant as there were more then one present. They really liked drains and kind of looked millipeedy....only with less pairs of legs...

Anyways, enough with the bugs....Having my wallet stolen sucks ass....after this happened I drank a lot of wine. We did try and make the best of our trip and walked around and saw some churches, monuments, fountains, and cool old buildings. We went to the Colosseum and Palantine one day and saw some fat hairy Romans that were dressed as Gladiators....I wanted to pose with them but then realized that you had to pay to take their picture and they weren't at all good looking, so it was not worth it. Plus I had to really stretch that 10 euros that I had.... There was another crazy cat lady feeding all the stray kitties at the Colosseum. Trisha's furture profession:) The next day we went to the Vatican...I really liked their idea of "security" when we went all the scanners were closed. hmmmmmmmmmm I don't think they had the lunch break at rotating times. I think they must be like Fred Flinstone....Its quitting time!!!! and just all leave their post at the same time. We went to the cathedral and then to the crypt to see some exicitng tombs....There was only one way through it and once we got down there, I thought I was nevrer coming back up. The Pope's tomb was there and everyone was taking their sweet ass time. We then went and sw lots of art and scultures and stuff. We saw the Sistine Chapel. It was pretty nice, but not as awe-inspiring ass I thought it would be. Two naked guys touching fingers seems kind of gay.... We also did this cheesy 3D ride called the Time Elevator. It was on the history of Rome--American style.

We looked at some T-shirts but they were of poor quality and didn't want to pay the full price for them...the salesman was quite rude and proceeded to tell us where the Gucci store was...What a dick.

It was hard to eat well there as they eat at strange times. Most restaurants close at about 3 pm and open back up at 7 or 8 pm....so with only having a small snack for lunch...I'm always so starving...we have to settle for big shitholes.

We then went to get our train ticket to Flurence. Ok, customer service sucks ass. We went to information previously and was told it was around an hour and 20 euros....when we got there the ticket was more like 30 euros and took 2 hours...so we thought he was selling us the wrong one. We wanted him to switch tellers so we could make sure, because this guy did not speak any Englishh, so we did not was to buy the ticket until we were absolutely sure. He would not refund the ticket and said he couldn't, there was a line, and all this shit in Italian which we could not understand. Finally he refunded the ticket after about 10 min. We later realized that we can buy the ticket at these automatic machines, and we bought the same ticket that we originally had but through the machine as there was an English option.

So, we finaly arrived in Flourence. Some lady greeted us at the train station. She was like Are you looking for accomodation? We were like..maybe why??? and she got my sap story about loosing the wallet, so we got a good deal on an apartment. It was a very nice apartment, with our own bathroom and no uninvited guests. We walked around Flournece, saw some churches, monuments, fountains....pretty standard things. We ate at a pretty snazzy place one night. We ordered this steak for two. It was the size of Barney. Anywyas, I wanted it well done, but they only do medium, so we were like oh ok thats fine. It comes to us like 5 cm thick and "Medium" is actually straight from the freezer. It was sooo raw. I hope I don't get worms or something. I had a litre of wine to rise it down with though and some icecream for dessert :). The next night in Flourence we switched rooms to a hotel... It was also pretty nice:) We then left and bought our train ticket (through the automatic teller machine) to Milan. We got to Milan and looked for a hotel. We found onein the Lonely Planet that said Rcok Bottom Rooms, so we were a little bit leary on taking it. We asked to see the room first and it was all rennovated. It was the nicest spot we stayed at...clean, no bugs, it was so new we couldn't figure out how to work the electricity. We had to go and ask the lady... she laughed at us...we had to put our card key in the slot....

In Milan, we walked around yet again saw the standard things, monuments, fountains, churches. We went and looked at a few shops...we went in the Ferrrarri store and realized that I was out of my league when I couldn't even afford an umbrella. I bought a new wallet at a leather store. Oh, and I did not find any shoes in Italy either. My feet are just too big and nothing suits my taste....oh well I will be home soon. It's just I only have one pair of running shoes,that smell really bad...so everyone around me also thinks I should buy a new pair of shoes. Saturday night we flew to Tallinn and stayed in the airport till 7 am and took the bus to the city centre. We did a little bit of shopping and had a snack while we were waiting for the ferry to leave for Helsinki. Well, there was a little misdirection with the time. The ferry actually left at 12:30 pm not 12:45 so we missed that one, and took the next one over 2 1/2 hours later. We were pretty tired. We were laying on a disgusting bar couch for the hole ferry over and it smelled like cigarettes and there was some creepy guy looking at me. Teemu left his jean jacket somewhere so he had a cold walk to the metro when we got in.

So I have been back for a week now, I finally have got through all my laundry and now I have another load to do. It just doesn't stop!!!! This weekend I cooked a turkey dinner for everyone here. It was so hard to find all the stuff, and we invented our own turkey pan with lots of aluminum foil and cut open disposable caserole dishes.... but it was cooked and turned out well, at least I thought it did.

Anyways,

I think that is about it!!!

XOXOOXO
Krissy