I did a bit of price searching on the web and I bought a ticket to Paris
!! A friend of my mom's put me in touch with some people she knew
and I ended up having a place to stay in Paris and in Luzern.
I spent about four days in Paris after arriving... and managed to see most
of the tourist attractions, including the Louvre, Musee de Orsay, Marmot,
and of course the Eiffel tower.
After leaving Paris, I went to Luzern, Switzerland. It was absolutely beautiful!!
I 
loved it there. Spent a day out on the lake and a day up on mount Pilatus
and I was lucky enough to stay with Nils and Andrea Stolznecher at the
PilatusBlick Hotel.
Up until this point, I had
been pretty much taken care of... now it was time to venture out on my
own a bit more. And that is exactly what I did -- I got into Venezia (a.k.a.
Venice) at about 10 pm, all the hostels were full, there were tons of 
people in the streets, and I all I wanted to do was sit down with a piece
of pizza and a beer. As I was wandering the streets wondering what to do
next, I overheard another backpacker asking for information (in English!!)
on places to stay... so I went up to him to ask him what his situation
was, and we ended up sharing a hotel room to cut down on costs! He ended
up being a really nice guy from Brasil (his English wasn't as good as I
had at first hoped) and we went around the town together the next day.
Now maybe I can come up with an excuse to go to Brasil one day!
I only stayed in Venice for
one day and then I went to a town about an hour inland from there by train
called Vicenza, 
where
my brother's friend Jury lives. Jury and his family took great care of
me and I got the pleasure of hanging out with a group of cool people around
my age at the local bars... it really made me want to learn Italian!! It
is a beautiful language. Jury also took me to a couple of the nearby towns,
Verona and Bassano... it was all very beautiful, and so much history everywhere
I went! Most of the buildings were older than my country! Before I left,
Jury called a hostel in Rome that he had stayed in once and I made a reservation...
I thought. Well, when I got there they told me that they don't take reservations
and that they had no room for me, but they referred me to a different place.
As it turned out, the receptionist at the Hotel Il Costello was from Hawaii
and she used to work at the same Internet Cafe that I worked at!! This
really is a small world! Rome was quite overwhelming, I will definitely
have to go back there to do it right. As it was, I walked a lot, met some
great people, and drank a lot of beer at night.
After Rome, I went to Firenze (Florence... why don't we just call it what
they do?!) -- a much smaller town than Rome, so not quite as overwhelming,
but there were sooo many people there! Again I had the trouble of all the
hostels being full, that's what happens when you travel during peak times.
This time, I didn't have the energy to find someone to share a room with...
I just wanted to get a place and put my stuff down as soon as possible.
There was a guy at the station advertising his hotel, so I took him up
on an offer for a single room... it was more than I 
wanted
to pay, but not really that bad (60,000 lira per night, or somewhere around
$30-35). I met two more cool people who were also staying in my hotel --
both americans who had been travelling together since they met in Greece.
I really enjoyed Florence... we went to the top of the Duomo cathedral,
wandered through the street vendors, saw the statue of David (amazing!!),
and I happened to run into a few more people from Hawaii. As I was leaving
my hotel I ran into a guy that had just been turned away from the hostel
nearby... he was from Australia and I ended up giving him advice on what
to do and where to stay in Florence -- I talked him and another girl, that
we had both just met, to share a room in the hotel that I had just checked
out of. It was really neat to be able to give advice in a foreign country!
My
trip was winding down now... I went back to Vicenza and stayed with Jury
for a few more days, then I took a night train back to Paris, where I stayed
for another day and a half before I flew out. After getting back
to Hawaii, I only had three days to unpack and repack again, then I got
on another plane and went to Oregon -- this time for work. I got on the
research vessel Atlantis in Astoria and we spent the next 18 days a few
hundred miles off the coast collecting samples around the hydrothermal
venting systems on the Juan de Fuca Ridge. My advisor (Dr. Jim Cowen) had
16 dives scheduled in the deep sea research vessel Alvin... and I was fortunate
enough 
to
get to go on one of them!! The interior of the sub is only six feet in
diameter, to be shared by three people, and there is no toilet, so it is
a good thing that I am not claustrophobic! I went down in an area on the
Endeavour Ridge where there were active high temperature vents and many
exotic organisms to be seen. I saw the infamous 
tubeworms,
black smokers, tons of limpets, and a bunch of spider crabs... in fact
these crabs were so bold, that one of them ended up in our basket and came
up to the surface with us!
It was a fun cruise, but that wasn't quite enough... I ended up staying on land in Oregon with one of the scientists that I had met on the ship (Steve Giovannoni, OSU) and then I got on another ship (R/V Ron Brown) in Newport! This time I was out for 16 days and there were no sub dives so we spent the whole time doing CTD/rosette casts and tows... now I have tons of samples to run in the lab!
