Trifter

During the trip we visited the countries of Malta, Sicily, Italy, and France. We first stopped at Malta where we lived with a family for a week. My host family ended up being fairly wealthy and their day to day activities were similar to ours, but they lived in a stone house with no air conditioning which I noticed right away because the temperature was in the hundreds. During our stay in Malta, we took a ferry ride to see the Blue Lagoon on Camino Island. There we were able to swim in the world famous Blue Lagoon. We also were able to take a boat ride and investigate the sea caves of the island. We learned that most of the people that live on Malta are vegetarians because the island is too small to raise animals and it is very expensive to ship meat from another country to Malta.

After Malta, we traveled by boat to Sicily. While in Sicily, we went atop Mt. Etna with a guide. Mt. Etna is an active volcano where we saw a dried lava flow from the previous eruption. The guide stuck his hand into the side of one of the craters and pulled out some rocks which were still hot from the previous eruption. What impressed me the most about Sicily was the food.  Each restaurant had their very own pasta dishes, each better than the one before.

After exploring Sicily, we visited Italy. Italy was one of the best parts of the trip. Everyday we savored what I thought was the best food in the world. We also explored many amazing sites like Pompeii, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the statue of David, and the Coliseum.  In Pompeii I was interested in seeing the actual people that were encased in ash during the volcanic eruption hundreds of years ago. They were preserved in the position of what they were doing when the volcano erupted.  At the Coliseum I was interested to see the section that had been damaged by an earthquake that happened near the end of the Roman Empire.  Mussolini tried to repair it but stopped to focus on WWII.  During each exploration, we had wonderful tour guides to describe what we were seeing and expanded upon things that most people did not know which made what we were seeing even more interesting.

After visiting Italy, we went to the last country on our trip, France. In France we saw some of the most famous places in the world like the Versailles, the Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower. The palaces we saw, like Versailles, are like nothing I’ve ever seen in America and are just incredible. To see a palace that had such importance in history and to be in the place where WWI ended was amazing to me. At the Louvre I saw artwork of which I had only seen in pictures or read about such as the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and The Virgin of the Rocks.  Now I was standing right in front of them. We also went up the Eiffel Tower and saw all of Paris. What impressed me was that there were no sky scrapers in such a big city.  Because of this, we were able to see for miles.  The last experience we had was watching the soccer World Cup finals while we ate dinner at the Hard Rock Café in Paris.  That year France was in the finals playing against Italy.  France won and I saw how the French people celebrate winning what would be similar to our Super Bowl.

This trip had such a big impact on me and my understanding of life in other parts of the world.  I think the biggest impact this adventure had on me was that I came to realize how different the United States is from these European countries because our country is so much younger.  I was amazed that, in Europe, there are ancient ruins in among city buildings right in the downtown areas.  Before my trip, I thought these ruins were in fields somewhere removed from the cities.  The buildings in which people actually lived seemed much older than some of the oldest historic buildings in America that no one would think of living in this country.  I got the impression that most people live in the cities in old long connected buildings rather than living in the suburbs like we do, in a house with a yard and driveway.  I marvel to think that the Europeans were able to build structures like the Coliseum and Versailles without the materials and technology we have today.  I am thankful that these buildings are still around today to be appreciated instead of being demolished to make way for new construction.  This trip really awakened in me a curiosity about history, and life in other countries.