My Firenze. . .

Well.. my time in Firenze has come to an end. I cant say its sad because I had a fantastic time and great memories that can never be replaced. I was sad to say goodbye to my friends on Thursday when I took off for Paris, and now that I have returned all i have to say goodbye to is Firenze. So i thought i would enlighten you on what my Firenze is about..

My Firenze is..
a town that never sleeps
a town that can never make up her mind on the weather
a town where a beautiful bridge was saved by a Nazi in WW2
a town you can climb over 400 steps inside of a dome to see over the whole city
a town where cats are in a paradise called the Boboli Gardens
a town where you fight for your right to walk on the sidewalk
a town where if you dont finish your plate it means you dont like the food and you wont get dessert
a town where an Indian-Italian man thinks its a sin if you dont take your leftovers home.
a town where i am greeted in my favorite restaurants
a town where the pizza man makes a margherita pizza in the shape of a heart or dances with you
a town where pizza is reasonably priced (anything over 5 euros is expensive).
a town where I can buy my fruit and veggies from a fruittivendolo
a town where I get to walk past historically important art every day
a town where I can walk up the hill to listen to the monks nightly prayers
a town where the river looks similar to the Willamette
a town where dogs poop everywhere.. its like a landfield.
a town where stop signs are mere suggestions.. if there are any.
a town where pedestrians, bicycles, cars, and motorbikes have equal street and sidewalk rites.

These are only a few things about my Firenze that I am sharing with you, for I think everyone should come and visit and decide what makes their Firenze. If you cant get here though, you should figure out what makes your home, your home.

It's getting colder!

Tuscan Hills

Boy oh boy!

The temperature outside is dropping so quickly. There is no understatement when they told us to pack lots of layers in our luggage. I was wearing about six myself, just the other day.

My mom finally arrived on Thursday and it was really good to see her. I keep having to remember that she is not acclimated to the city yet and not to run her off her own feet (the cobblestone can be trecherous).

So Thursday I took her out to dinner at Goldenview and it was very tasty! Its one of the most expensive restaurants on our meal voucher list. Then Friday I met up with her and we went to the Bargello and walked around town, took a visit at the German market and ate some tasty food at Il Teatro (another meal voucher place thats just as tasty as Goldenview).

Saturday morning I took her to a small town called Lucca, and even though it had been downpouring since Thursday night we had sunny weather all day. The purpose of going to Lucca is because the Lucca Digital Photo Fest was going on and they had a ton of exhibitions. There were about 10 locations around Lucca each holding 3-4 exhibits.

To our pleasant surprise, Lucca had lights strung up everywhere as well as some markets going on around town! So after our jaunt to a couple of locations to see the photos we decided to peruse the markets. Even more to our surprise we discovered an ice skating rink and a chocolate festival going on!

boboli gardens, a cats paradise

Sunday we took our time getting ready for the day and decided to take advantage of the sunshine and go to the Boboli Gardens. These are some massive gardens on the Pitti Palace property (once occupied by the Medici's). Unfortunately my mom and i seem to have some bad timing and ended up getting slightly lost while they were closing. This creepy woman came on the loudspeaker and was announcing for people to exit. All of a sudden there were no people in the gardens at all and suddenly i felt my life was threatened. In all reality it wasn't, but it was reminiscent of a scene out of a horror movie (ie Battle Royale)!

Fortunately we made it out safely, and I did happen to find a 25 lb cat in the gardens at he was really cute!

Monday I had signed my mom and i up for wine tours with Todd of tuscantrails.com. He came and taught three classes at my school for us, 2 on wine and 1 on olive oil so I knew it would be a good tour and I was not disappointed. He took us up into the beautiful Chianti hills which were so colorful, lush and gorgeous.
Mom in vineyards in Chianti, swiping at fruit flies
This is the last official week of our trip and I am very sad to be parting ways with my roommates and classmates (and of course, Firenze). Forunately I still have one week left with my mom (she happens to be cooking a house dinner tonight).

ReCAP!

Katie C trying to keep her umbrella under control. The wind won!

Wow!

A lot has happened since Venice, I am sorry for not updating.

November has FLOWN past and I am amazed it's already December! December marks the end of my journey and I am feeling the panic go to see things while I still can.

My mother arrives in Florence on the 4th, which makes it exactly two weeks, exactly fourteen days until I go home.



Home... how I miss you (especially burritos) .



So the first weekend of November was spent in Dublin! I went with 6 other people- Andrew, Katie C, Candace, Shantyel, Amanda, and Alex. Why? Despite the fact that the Irish have the loveliest accents in the world we were going to see the Flogging Molly show (which was the best fun)!





Our weekend was very cold and wet, yet we had the most fun! Friday night we went to the show, Saturday morning we slept in then we went and saw Trinity College, shopped and got dry in a Starbucks and went and saw James Bond after getting our dinner in an Irish equivalent to a Quick E Mart. Sunday we went to Planet Hollywood and walked and saw a Castle, and walked past some other castles, then we went to the Guinness Brewery which was a lot of fun and really interesting. After that we split up as a group and Alex, Katie and I walked to Kilmainham Gaol, which the desk clerk at our hostel was a 5 minute walk from the storehouse (it was actually 45 minutes). Since we were short on time we caught a bus back to O'Connell st. which was being used for a Christmas Tree lighting and ran back to our hostel fighting our way through the masses of crowds. Since O'Connell was blocked it really prohibited us from getting back to the airport! So we asked our hostel people where we could catch the bus, but Amanda had text Katie directions so we followed them. And got lost. So we spent the next 15 minutes running around in the freezing cold trying to find a bus that would go to the airport. Finally we flagged down a random bus and the driver told us to hop on. He was doing all he could to get us to the right bus stop! Sadly, we ended back where we started, literally down the street from the hostel, in which we walked back to the street that started the same journey all over again. Fortuantely we found the right way go to and found our bus stop, in which we were told upon arrival the bus would be late. And it was... 5 minutes... no bus...10 minutes...no bus... 15 minutes... no bus... PANIC! we had 45 minutes to get to the airport so we finally flagged a taxi driver down, named Eugene who was possibly the nicest man ever. After a friendly conversation about politics we arrived at the airport just in time to catch our plane. I also, had apparently caught a cold and was feeling it the minute I sat in my seat.


The next week and weekend I was busy being really, really sick. My throat felt like it was on fire, which in turn made my ears feel like they were on fire, which made it IMPOSSIBLE to sleep! I spent 12 days on antibiotics and felt a lot better just to feel like crap again during thanksgiving.

Our thanksgiving we had 5 days off from school and most of the kids took off to other countries. Katie R, my roommate, and I were the only 2 who stayed home. Wednesday that week we went to Piti Palace to see the Modern Art museum and then we went shopping! Thursday we took off for Bologna, where i went and saw Flogging Molly yet again! I must say they put on a much better show here than in Ireland! Friday we came home and crashed, Saturday we went to the market and cooked and ate all day and had a wonderful thanksgiving with a bunch of foreigners. 5 were from the states, 2 were from Norway and 1 was from Germany. The Norwegians and German had never celebrated a thanksgiving before so they were all very excited!


I'll update more later!

Singing in the Rain- In Venice!

Well I would just like to start by saying Go Obama!

Things are well here in Florence, I spent part of my night at a big election party occupied by mostly Obama supporters. The event was large, with at least a few thousand in attendance through-out the night. It was held between six pm to four am. A modgepodge of events were taking place inside Saschall's, a large concert hall on the outskirts of Florence. There were live bands, two large screens with CNN, booths (mostly supporting Obama), free food, open bar, and people milling about trying to settle in.

.. Pictures and more to come about the election party. Now about Venice..

The five of us, Me, Katie Cook, Shantel, Amanda and Jacie left early Friday morning on the 31st of October, hoping there would be some great happenings in the squares of Venice. When we arrived it was raining and cold and everyone was about with their umbrellas. All the colors made such a lovely introduction to a beautiful city. We found our hostel, luckily, and dropped things off and set out for an adventure. There are so many shops of masks and glass it's mind boggling. The canals are equally mind boggling because there are so many, and each feels unique with it's own special characteristics such as plants hanging from windows or colorful boats lining the narrow passageways.

We returned after great exploration for a rest, a change of clothes and a gathering of moral. Our room was quaint, and our five beds, reminiscent of the 60's with their green burbur covers were side to side taking up two-thirds of the room. The other third was used as walking space to our spacious and clean bathroom. Fortunately Katie Cook decided to do pilates which turned into a comical event of us trying to mimic her on our Orphanage-like beds. A seach through our tourists books lead us to believe there was a Mexican restaurant on the island that would be open for dinner, and we were greatly disappointed when they kept telling us to come back in a half an hour. So we decided to depart that idea and get dinner else where.

We were not really surprised though to find that Venice really had no nightlife, afterall we had been properly warned. On the other hand there were masses of children running amok trying to get treats from every shop open, including the butcher shops! We decided to head back to the hostel for a second dry off and to call it an early night.

The next morning we were greeted by blue skies, sunshine, and two crazy sounding alarms that lasted for five minutes each and did not seem to cause anyone on the island to panic. We were off for the day to have breakfast and to do some serious shopping! We just happened to wander past a location to get on the Gondola's so we decided to go on a 50 minute ride and it was so much fun! The rest of the day was fulfilled by lots of walking, snacking, shopping and visiting the flooded Piazza San Marco which was not flooded the previous day. Fortunately we had a mostly dry day and only a slight amount of rain. We concluded our day by early dinner at a cafeteria then departing around 4:30 to Firenze sweet Firenze!

a happy Gondolier

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend me your Ears

Well, we just got back from Rome!





Rome was a very busy place, and we had a VERY busy weekend! I think we walked a culmination of about 30 miles for the weekend (friday-sunday).





We started our trip on Friday morning, taking the fast train from Florence to Rome. After we dropped our stuff off at MJ Hostel, we went to the Vatican where we had a tour of the Museum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peters Basilica. All of which are essentially connected by walkways, which is amazing! I have never seen so much beautiful art concentrated in an area like that before. To say that I have stood under Michaelangelo's fresco in the Sistine is something I never thought I would find myself saying.



(photo: standing near the Pope-hat fountain)

After that tour we walked all around Rome, finally ending at the Spanish steps (and there are a LOT of steps by the way). From there the group parted ways, and we all had dinner and gelatto and went back to the hostel. This was my first Hostel experience, and it was an interesting one. Our room was up like six flights of stairs and let me tell you that Roman stairs are VERY STEEP. The showers were grimey, but were a necessisty after walking that much! My bed was a sight for sore eyes except that it sloped to one side and that made for an interesting two nights sleep.

-- more pictures and the rest of Rome soon!

Ciao Bella!

Well Hello! Last week was terribly busy! Lets start off by our guided Uffizi tour on Thursday by our wonderful Angela. Angela is a German women, who is fluent in German, English and Italian - and she is probably the most intelligent person I know! She is an Art Historian so she does most of our tours as well as our ILC lectures. I dont know how she stores all this information in her head but she does!

photo: Me in Lucca

Friday we as a group went to Sienna and San Gimignano. Sienna is a rival of Florence, and they were at war with each other for about 300 years. Finally Florence conquered Sienna, but the Sienne's still hate the Florentines. (Really, all towns are rivals- just because). Sienna was a beautiful little city with a unique and fantastic history! Everywhere you went in that town had the smell of good food being cooked and it definitely made your mouth water.

We then went to San Gimignano, and it was another equally lovely peaceful little town. San Gimignano sits on a hilltop, like most of the towns, and it had gorgeous view points of the valleys of Italy. I enjoyed San Gimi a lot better, and it was then when I realised how much I love being here and how much I don't miss the United States. Then I got pooped on by a pigeon and quickly changed my mind! After that though a group of us went to a torture museum which was really a waste of 6 euros because mostly it was just drawings of examples of torture.

photo: me in San Gimi with all the towers behind me

Highlights. . .

Everything is going well here in Florence and I am commencing week three of my stay so I thought I would give you all some highlights.

So far I have visted three other towns, Fiesole- a quiet Etruscan town minutes away from Florence. We also visited Pisa to see the leaning tower and Lucca (right) for a nice afternoon stroll. I have climbed the Duomo here in Florence and I visited the Uffizi and the Boboli Gardens with my museum pass.

I have been sad that there are not very many animals in the center of Florence, especially cats. However when I went to the Boboli gardens on Saturday, I discovered that all the cats in Florence are there and it is quite a haven for them!

Sunday a group of us took a trip to Cinque Terre and what a grand day that was. I was swimming in the Ligurian Sea I realised that was THE highlight of my trip. The day was beautiful, and the sea was as clear as could be - you could see the fish swimming between you as you floated along.

Well, I'll have more pictures and maybe some video up soon, tomorrow if not wednesday!

Ciao