My likes and dislikes of the trip so far (Elliot)

This post will sum up my likes and dislikes of our trip so far:

First I will start with India.  The things that I liked about India are that when we were there, it was pretty much minute of luxury after minute of luxury.  Here’s the entry to one of the hotels where we stayed:

Another thing I liked was that we were well handled the whole entire time. What I mean by “well handled” is there was always a person with us, and a car always waiting for us in case we wanted to go home. What I didn’t like was that everything was so dirty and to know that, if someone with a job made one mistake, they might be fired, and probably not be able to help their own family.

What I liked about Nepal was that the trek was super fun, and the camps that we stayed at were really nice.

The one thing I didn’t like was Kathmandu. It was just super dirty.  Here is a view from along the river.  Can you believe that’s even a river?

The things that I liked about Greece were that it was nice to just walk around and not to do what everybody told us to do, and have a break from having a butler. I didn’t dislike anything, which is a pretty high praise coming from me.  Instead, it was just beautiful.

In Italy, it’s been much better than I thought it would be because, again, the only thing I didn’t like was one city, out of the more than a dozen Italian towns and urban areas we’ve visited. That city was Rome. There was just something I didn’t like about it everywhere. I mean that, in one block, there would be an overflowing dumpster, and then, on the next, a bunch of cigarettes in a pile. But then, we went to Tuscany, and had the bike trip.  That made Italy look up a lot more.

And then, my cousin Mary came to join us for 8 days.

Above is a picture of Mary in Serano, a beautiful town perched on a cliff.

And above, there is a picture of us with Mary in Florence.

Having Mary with us was great because she injected new energy.  Further, because she was straight from Yale, she brought deep knowledge of history.  Even better, she had just taken a class about the Parthenon so we talked about that. Did you know that archeologists are trying to remake wooden tools because our modern ones can’t fix the parts of the Parthenon that got blown up? She also brought many jokes with her. One of them that I memorized is this: There are two muffins in the oven. One says, “whew, it’s getting hot in here!” The other one says, “ah! A talking muffin!” She also brought this awesome card game called Flux, and she let us keep it until we see her again. It’s really hard to play and teach because some cards change the rules!

Now, we are in Orvieto, and it probably is the best place so far on the entire trip.  We’ve had an apartment here for three weeks, and each day has been great.

Something I like about Orvieto is that it is not dirty like Delhi, or Kathmandu, and there is a tennis club that we’ve been playing at, and I’ve learned a lot and really improved my game. The tennis club is really nice. I like it because there are only two courts so it is never really very busy, which is awesome. Another thing I like is there is an English-speaking pro that teaches private lessons, and he is really good at the basics.  He’s taught me all of them, so now, I’ve got the basics down! What we like to do is reserve one court, and also get a lesson so we can do Canadian doubles, and have one person doing a lesson, and then reserve the court for thirty minutes longer so the person doing a lesson doesn’t have to do only a lesson and has time to do doubles.

A couple days ago, last Saturday, to be exact, there was a procession that had mostly women, and on Sunday, one with mostly men. They were both really cool. They were really long, too. We saw the first one while just walking around, and then the second one from the balcony on our apartment. When we saw it from our balcony, it was really cool because we could just get up, put some clothes on, and watch the procession go by. In the first one, we saw mostly peasants, flag bearers, and a couple people with swords, and nobles. Then in the second procession, it was a lot of crossbowmen, people with swords, archers, and other people from the army, and then some nobles, and some flag bearers. We’re pretty sure that it was supposed to be a religious thing, or for Republica Day, but we’re not totally sure. Republica Day is celebrated all throughout Italy, and celebrates the day when Italy became a republic. The other thing that it could have been celebrating, though, is that it could have been for a relic from the church in Orvieto. The church is called the Duomo.

Yesterday, we had a pretty busy day. At about nine or ten, Mom and I decided to go on a walk, which was called walk around the rock. It was called that because you basically walk around the rock that most of Orvieto is on. Here are the wild flowers that grow all along the path.

 

 

Then, we went to a little seafood/Italian place, and I got a Margherita pizza, and it was really good. Then, we went to tennis, and I got a lesson. After that, we came home, and started cooking the ravioli, bruschetta, and meatballs that we had for dinner. It was really good. Then, we got gelato, and then went to sleep. Tomorrow we leave to visit Pompeii, which I think will be spooky, but also fun.

I know school is out which is a relief for all the readers at fifteen and under out there. It’s also a relief for me, because I had to do homeschooling, which was annoying especially when I wanted to take a dip in the pool. In a couple days, we leave to go to Japan, and then a month later, to Indonesia for a month, and then Hawaii for a week. Then, we come back home to Palo Alto!