BTW, the title means Hello Friends in Italian because that's where I went! Hello, how is everyone? As you know now, I'm back from my 2 and a half week trip to Italy, and now I want to tell you all about it. Warning, I tend to ramble sometimes and talk too much, so this could get long and slightly boring, but only because I want you guys to feel like you were there with me. I also have pictures to show you guys of Italy, so I'll post them up maybe in this post. Ok, here we go, a detailed description of my trip, day by day. Don't worry, the first couple of days aren't that interesting.

Day 1- June 23rd: Even though this day doesn't technically count because that is when our flight left in the evening. Our flight was supposed to be at 8pm, but it got delayed to 11:30pm, 3 and a half hours, which sucks. So, we finally got on and started our 8 hour trip. BTW, my mom, dad, sister and my mom's mom came with us for the trip, just so you know

Day 2-June 24th: Ok, so now, we arrive in Rome, Italy, about 1:30 their time, if I remember correctly, so it would be 7:30 Eastern Time (I'll be referring to Italy time from now on). So, one of our relatives, Guitano, comes to pick us up and we drve 1 and a half hours south to where our relatives live, in a town called Sora. When we arrived, we were practically attacked by my Nonna's (my mom's mom) sister and brother in law. Of course, an hour after we arrived, all of our relatives came over to say hello for about 3 hours or so. Now, everyone in our family that lives in Sora speak Italian, except for Guitano, my mom's cousin, and my mom's other cousin Frank, and his daughter Eleanora, so when everyone else speaks, we have no clue what they are saying, so we just smile and nod. After that, we had a huge dinner.

Now, let me tell you, our family is very old fashioned, they get up early, don't eat breakfast, I don't think they eat lunch, and they have a huge dinner, which consists of chicken or lamb, beans with disgusting beet sauce on it, bread, and more vegetables. Honestly, our family's cooking sucks. The chicken tastes like, I'm sorry for this description, but it tastes like the chicken had just been killed and skinned then cooked then put on our plate. I wouldn't be surprised, since my Nonna's sister and her brother in law, also known as my Zia and Zio, live on the side of a mountain, and they have rabbits, bunnies, chickens and roosters in their backyard.

Of course, I only had some bread, since the other food tastes gross. After that, we kind of chilled, just unpacked and then after that, we went to bed at, like, 10pm, again, Italy time.

Day 3- June 25th: Ok, so my Zia and Zio, as I mentioned, has chickens and roosters in their backyard, and there's this stupid rooster that crows every single morning at 4 freaking am in the morning! Unfortunately, their house does not have screens, and their windows are the old fashioned windows with the little gaps through the wood. To top it all off, my sister and I are closest to where the rooster lives, so we naturally wake up at 4am. Also, because trucks rumble down the mountain, and that's very VERY loud, louder than if you live right beside a highway, yeah, louder than that. Also, my family, as I said, very oldfashioned, so they get up at 4am. Of course, my sister and I fall back asleep and wake up at 8am, luckily. There's no food for breakfast in the house, so we don't eat anything. Our second cousin Julia comes over for the whole day. She can speak a little bit of English, but not much, so we attempt to talk to each other.

Now, another thing about my Zia and Zio. They like to take naps at 2pm-4pm. Now, then we have to be quiet, and there's nothing to do, cause the nearest town is 20 minutes walking, so we just sat around, talked, went to go see the baby bunnies that had just been born. Finally, they woke up, Frank and his family came to visit, we had dinner then my family and Julia's family went out for gelato, or icecream as we call it.

Day 4- June 26th: This is similar to day 3. We woke up around 8am, no breakfast, then this time we went to town to this market thing where we shopped around a bit before going back for a little bit of lunch. After that, Julia came over again and we watched TV, then afterwards we had dinner then went to church on a mountain. Yes, a church. It was all in Italian and I had no clue what they were talking about, but it finally ended an hour later where we came back then we watched the Eurocup between Spain and Russia I believe, well it was Spain and somebody. Then we said goodbye to everyone then we went to sleep. So overall, this day was boring and uneventful

Day 5- June 27th: Finally, the very last day of staying at my Zia's and Zio's. I can finally eat again! We wake up earlier than usual, because we're leaving at 11am to go to the cruise ports to go on our cruise, Carnival Freedom. Unfortunately, that day, I have a sore throat, and a cough. So, Guitano takes me and my mom at 10:30 to his children's doctor. We just walk on in, no appointment neccesary which is cool, and I get this antibiotic. Did you know, in Italy, you don't have to buy prescription drugs up to a certain age, because the government pays for it?

Anyways, finally, we arrive back at the house then it's time to say goodbye. We finally arrive at the port at 2:00pm or so, because the port's a long way away. We get on the boat. We're on the 8th deck, just below the Lido deck, or pool and food deck. I slept in my parents room and my sis and Nonna shared a room. Of course, you have to do a boatdrill before you left, so we did. 1 freaking hour to get to the 'Muster Station', wait till everyone got there, then the Cruise Director Todd explaining about the boatdrill, what to do when it happened, what boat we go to, ect.... then repeating it in Russian and Spanish! Because the majority was Russian, English and Spanish speaking people.

Oh, did I eat that night? Oh yes, I ate a lot at the buffet, I was starving, like my parents! And the boat started going to our first port!

Day 6-June 28th-Naples, Italy: Our first port of call was Naples, which is down south. Now, I'm sure you've heard of Capri, right? If not, it's an island off the coast of Naples, famous people go there. Well, we didn't go there, it was too busy. Instead, we went on a taxi tour to the Amalfi Coast, Sorrento and Pompeii. Now, this taxi driver was so nice. He stopped a few times for breaks to eat and stretch our legs, and he showed us a lot. Now, the Amalfi Drive is the way to get to the Amalfi Coast, and it was beautiful! Now, I'm not going to post the picture I took for this, most likely cause it sucks, but here's a nice picture of it

That's very similar to what it looks like. The water's a bit bluer, but it is absolutely gorgeous. Now, along the way, we met these super nice people doing the same taxi tour as us, from our cruise ship. Gina and Pasquale, I apologize if I spelt that name wrong, and their 15 year old daughter Juliana, and their 13 year old daughter Alessandra. We became close friends with them throughout the whole cruise.

Now, after this, we went to Sorrento, Pompeii, which is a ruin that is being rebuilt after a volcanic eruption destroyed the whole city within minutes. After this, we went back to the ship, had a good meal, and actually, we started talking to the table next to ours. Ok, you see, on Carnival, before you arrive, you have to choose what time you want to eat, at either 6pm or 8:15pm for dinner. You choose then you are given a table number and that's where you eat for the whole cruise, unless you want to eat in the buffet. So, the table next to ours had a Chinese family. A husband and wife, whose names I forget but they were cool and non traditional, and their two sons, Jeffery, whose 20, and Alex, whose 16. They were really nice. So, after dinner, while my mom and Nonna were shopping for jewelery, we played cards with them. Afterwards my sis met up with Juliana. Sadly, I got seperated from my sister, and had no clue where to meet them.

Day 7- June 29th- Sea Day: Now, a sea day is obviously, a day out at sea. We didn't do much. Me and my sister hung out by the pool, where we met up with Juliana again. Me and Juliana went down the water slide, which was fun, afterwards going into the pool. The rest of the day was swimming and tanning. After dinner, Alex, Jeff, my sis and I played cards then went to go see the main show in the lounge. It was a dance type show and was fantastic. After that, we went to this teen club with Juliana and we met some people there, like this guy Phillip, and Dustin.

Ok guys, that's all I'll give you now, most likely cause I have to go right now. But I'll post the next part later.