The travels of عائشة: 2014

Sooooooo it's practically been one year later and I stopped after Pisa. The trip got pretty hectic after we left Pisa. Even though it was almost one year ago I am going to try to fill you in as much as possible and I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

OH BTW UPDATE: Remember that parking ticket we thought we got while in Pisa for parking in the wrong place? Well we actually did get one. It came in the mail about 11 months later hahahahahahah

Florence Part ?

Soooo after we left Pisa we went back to Florence and did some more sightseeing. While there we had the most AMAZING PIZZA EVER, like ohmygod amazing and banging paninis. After our excursions in Florence we jumped back into the car and drove through the Italian country side (btw it's gorg) and went to Venice.

Venice

Venice is unbelievably scenic and unbelievably humid. I have no idea if it was just me, but I was sweating right through my clothes. If you ever plan a trip to Europe in the summer, I would allocated a good chunck of your budget on buying water to assure you don't die of dehydration and heat stroke. Obviously they are going to rip you off by overpricing their water cause you are a tourist (duh). Quick Tip: Don't automatically convert Euros to Dollars in your head every time you are trying to buy something, it will make you die a little bit on the inside every time. We only allocated one day in Venice because there really isn't much to do there for more than a day. We spent that one day, however, meandering the small canal sidewalks desperately looking for a Venetian mask that didn't cost my first born. They have the most amazing and intricate masks I have ever seen, but after you see the price they don't seem that scintillating any more. All that walking made us super tired so we decided to grab a bite to eat, but one of the most ANNOYING things ever in Italy is that everything closes early. Like closing time for restaurants are like 7pm. It may have just been the restaurants we attempted to go to but it was insane how early the eateries shut down. See now I am Pakistani. When we are back in Pakistan with the family we typically eat dinner late, like really late, I'm talking 11 PM. However, my Americanized-Pakistani family eats around 8 ish. Soooo I don't remember if we ate dinner that day, but I do remember our Gondola ride. It was pretty expensive, as expected, but it is one of those "you have to do it" type things. I'm pretty sure our gondolier was annoyed at how many picture we were taking instead of listening to him talk about the history of Venice and the canals.

Milan

After Venice we drove to Milan, Italy. Out of all the cities we visited in Italy, Milan was my least favorite. It is pretty much all shopping. I mean shopping is great and all, but shopping in Milan is all designer stores like LV and Gucci. Unless you are loaded, you're most likely not going to enjoy Milan as much as you should. Even though I refused to spend any of my precious Euros, we still did walk around and sight see. There is this massive church whose name is slipping my mind, but it will be in one of the pictures. There is this huge mall that is sort of outdoors because there is no door letting you in, just a big arch. One of the cool things about Milan though is that some of the best dressed people reside in there. Every where you look its like a Vouge Italia fashion shoot is going on. We walked around for a bit, visited the "Magnum Pleasure Store" which is pretty much like a froyo place, but with Magnum ice cream bars. According to Google, this store is now closed? I'm not really surprised because it was super expensive for 1 bar with a couple of toppings when you could just go down the street to a convenience store and buy it for like 75% cheaper.

Geneva

After Milan we drove through Italy to Geneva, Switzerland. Switzerland was gorgeous as expected. It was like straight out of a bollywood movie. All I needed to do was find a hot Indian actor to frollick with me on the the snowy Swiss alps while he serenaded me about love or something. The actually city of Geneva was pretty clean and very shopping oriented. The presence of Swiss banks were apparent (may or may not have opened an offshore account to store my $15.00 lol just kidding). Geneva was all designers stores and ,just like in Milan, a good time only came with lots and lots and lots of money. We actually saw some sort of Saudi Sheikh there buying half the store. He walked in and the store employees kicked everyone out so he could have the whole store to himself. We walked around a bit, ate some delicious cherries from a fruit stand and I spent most of my time standing in front of the Celine store lusting after that one bag that every girl wants which btw starts at about $2,700. After some window shopping we went to this huge geyser type thing that is in the middle of the lake that spurts out water that goes super high. You can walk on this narrow concrete path under it and get all wet, but it's really scary. I could only go 1/3 of the way. After our day in Geneva we drove through the Alps, saw Mont Blanc (my dad was so excited cause he loves Mont Blanc pens) and crossed the French border. Our hotel was super shady because there was nobody there except us and 4 other occupied rooms. Not only was the hotel almost empty, it was in the middle of nowhere. By middle of no where I mean it was in a tiny french village in the middle of the Alps that looked really empty. My mom got scared so my dad talked to the owner and he said that the hotel is mostly used in the winter time during skiing and the summer (when we went) was the off season. However, he assured us that there were in fact other people in the Hotel and we weren't alone. The room was pretty small and cozy. It was cute though. The Alps are super scenic and very surreal. After our night in the shady ski hotel we got dressed and started our long drive to Paris where my Mom's uncle lives. We drove through southern France all the way to Paris. The drive really wasn't that bad because we had all these cute little French villages to look at to pass the time.

Paris

During our stay in Paris we mostly spent time sight seeing the typical stuff and hanging out with the family. I'll let the pictures tell this part of the story and I'll include captions if I have any stories to tell about any of the pictures.

Venice