I is old. :(

My birthday went better than expected. And by better than expected I mean that when I got here I figured it would be lame and I would be sitting in my room not caring. This sounds a lot more pathetic in writing than it really is, oops. But I don't usually make a big deal out of my birthday anyway, and the only reason people care about their 21st is that they get to drink, but I've been able to drink since I got here. So there.

ANYWAY. My friend Carolyn from VCU is studying in Milan, Italy, right now. We were thinking of going somewhere else the weekend of the 28th, but that fell through. So instead I went to visit her. I took a fantastic 4-hour train ride from Chambéry to Milan and got there Friday afternoon. After dumping my stuff at her apartment we went to the Duomo, which is a massive, massive cathedral. (Which, like every other epic tourist thing I go to see, was covered in scaffolding.) Took some pictures. Got gellato. (Mmmmm!)

Oh right. And in Milan, Carnavale lasts a week. So small children, their parents, and crazy teenagers were running around in costumes. Vendors sell bags of confetti to be thrown at people, and of course there's the silly string. We were lucky enough not to get sprayed with it, but we came close. The entire thing would have been cute if it weren't mildly obnoxious.

Back to the apartment to wait for a guy who was supposed to fix their internet but never showed up. Boo. In the meantime, we had pizza. Italian pizza. So good. I got a veggie pizza of some kind; I think it had onions, eggplant, and zucchini? I think that was the first time I'd had eggplant too. I'm trying all kinds of fantastic things over here. Around midnight we left to go to a club called Le Banque. And I have to say, it bothers me to no end that it's le banque. "Banque" is the French word for bank, but it's feminine. Bank is also feminine in Italian. So where did they get this name from?

Anyway. Le Banque. Pretty cool place. They had decorations up for Carnavale. But it was fashion week in Milan and Friday night was apparently model night. Lots of people came in through the VIP door looking a lot better than we did. Oops. So we spent most of the night just people watching since it was wayyy too crowded to dance. But it was okay because it was free to get in that night. (Drinks were 12 euro each, so we passed on that option as well. Yeesh!) Got home at 5:30 in the morning. Faaantastic.

Slept for a while. Birthday meal? We went to McDonald's for lunch. Classy. =D It was really good though. I got a bacon cheeseburger with some kind of weird sauce on it and it was yummy. We also got curly fries and chicken nuggets. Made of real white meat chicken, not whatever American McDonald's try to pretend is chicken. Soooo goood. Wandered around shopping with Carolyn and her roommate Melitta. I broke down and got a tshirt I'd almost bought the day before. Whatever, it was my birthday, right? And it's cute. Maybe not worth 13 euro, but still cute. =P

For dinner, went with Carolyn, Melitta, their roommate Dana, and Dana's friend Kate for apertivo (sp?). Basically, we went to this bar/restaurant(?), paid 7 euro for a drink, and got an awesome buffet included. Yaaaaay Italian pasta! It was yummeh. And my first "official" drink was a delicious strawberry daquiri. Nom nom nom. I'd had virgin ones before, so I figured I needed to try the real thing. After dinner we hung out on the street some because it was wayyy too early to go back to Le Banque. You can drink on the streets there/here. It's weird just seeing people walking or standing around with a beer in hand.

Back to Le Banque. More hanging around and people watching. Attempted dancing but there were too many people, and Italians are creepy. So we went back and sat down and were lame. And by lame I mean we had fun. Got back to the apartment at 630 this time. Slept. Got kebabs for lunch because in Italy, like France, everything closes on Sundays. Except kebab places! I hadn't noticed this before since I gave up going out on Sundays, but I noticed when I got back that hey, all the kebab places are open. Whee!

So ended my fantastic (and fantastically exhausting) birthday weekend. Well, it actually ended with a 4-hour train ride back to Chambéry. On a packed train. Sitting opposite a family with 3 kids. That was not so fantastic.

So now I'm 21. And I feel like I'd only just gotten used to saying I was 20. I feel no different and I remember the entire weekend. Clearly I did something wrong somewhere. But yeah. So the only thing I have to show for being older is an expired driver's license. Oops. Well, and I have a lot of white hair, but that's nothing new, sadly.

Huzzah!

PHOTOS.