FLORENCE

Well to say we had a good time in Florence would be the understatement of the year.  We had an absolutely amazing time there this past weekend, I think the only thing that could have made it better would have been to have had an extra day to shop!  We took the train from Garibaldi (our metro station - how convenient!) to Florence and arrived at our hostel at 6.  Our hostel, though without a bar and stage like in Prague, was definitely sufficient - clean, spacious (relatively speaking), and had pretty terrace areas visible from the windows.  We walked around the hostel area before dinner and got 5 euro gelato - yikes, well at least it was delicious!  Then we met up with Mere's friend from school and we all went out to dinner at this place called Gatto e la Volpe.  It was so so good and I actually ended up running into Kelly - a friend of mine from Penn State who's studying in Florence this semester!  Crazy right?!  I got up to go to the bathroom and I heard a "Steph!"  It was so good to see her and crazyyy that we'd end up eating at the same place on the same night.  Our table didn't order family style because we didn't really understand it but we should have - you pay 15 euro and you get all the courses and unlimited wine.  Either way the food was amazing!  There's also a little bar connected to the restaurant so of course we had to have the restaurant's famous "gatto bombs" before we left... I don't remember what was in them but they were so good!  Afterwards we went to a bar and then a club and then headed home.

Gatto bombs

Funny story about our sleeping experience our first night in the hostel.  Soo when we first arrived, our room was very hot so I turned off the heat with the intention of turning it on again later.  I completely forgot to do so, which explains the FROZEN TUNDRA that our room became.  We allll woke up at some point literally shivering because we were so cold; I distinctly remember my teeth chattering and me curling up in a ball to conserve heat.  Most of us caved and put the gross-looking brown blankets over our sheets except for Linds who refused and decided to use her jacket as a blanket instead.  So, 7:45am rolls around and my alarm goes off because I had forgotten to turn it off.  I jump off of my bunk bed to turn it off and it is then that I notice the heater and simultaneously remember that I never turned it back on.  Ahhh, this all makes sense now!  I turn it up full blast and a few hours later, we all wake up complaining about the awful heat situation of the night before.  I confess and am showered with groans and comments such as "you owe me 4 hours of sleep!!" and "I have frozen tears...."  Needless to say, I was banned from being within a five foot radius of the heater for the rest of the trip.

After everyone defrosted and started talking to me again, we went to the Uffizi Museum which was stunning, although I kind of wish I could have seen it after taking my art history class this semester so I would have appreciated the art work more... either way it's obvious that you're looking at some pretty incredible stuff :)  After the uffizi, we wanted to find Piazza Santa Croce, a piazza that our community assistant, Maria, recommended we see.  To our great surprise and utter delight, a chocolate fair was going on in this piazza!  It was all kinds of fabulous and very hard to decide what to get.  We settled on hot chocolate and a chocolate covered waffle on a stick.

Yum :)

After this, our aversion to chocolate set in for a few hours and we set off to walk along the Arno River and find Ponte Vecchio.  I should mention that we probably picked the best day ever to be touring around Florence... the weather was absolutely PERFECT, not a cloud in the sky and it was at least 60 degrees.  I just couldn't get over it!  Unbelievable.  Walking along the river and eventually along the bridge was unreal, I really couldn't believe what I was seeing and experiencing.  All of the sights of Florence were breath-taking but at this point, everything was perfect - we were hitting these places at just the right time, around 3 or 4, when the sun was going down but it was still warm outside.

View of Ponte Vecchio from the Uffizi

Kasia and me on the terrace of the Uffizi

 Random street

 Kasia and me in the Piazza Santa Croce

Me, Anna, Dakota, and Kasia takin a breakkk

Anna, Jen, Linds, Kasia, and me on our way to Ponte Vecchio

Ponte Vecchio padlocks... legend has it that if you and your loved one attach a padlock anywhere on the bridge and throw the key into the river, your love will last forever :)

 Ponte Vecchio

 Finally made it to Ponte Vecchio!  View from the bridge

 Kasia and meee :)

 Shops on Ponte Vecchio

On our way to Piazalle Michelangelo

After we walked along Ponte Vecchio, we headed towards Piazzale Michelangelo, which is a piazza pretty high up where you can see the entire city of Florence.  On our way, we ran into some people we knew from IES who were also in Florence for the weekend so that was cool!  Always fun to see people you know in foreign cities.

Here we are!

We climbed the stairs to the Piazzale and were blown away by the view.  It was a truly amazing sight to behold and we stayed for the sunset which was incredible.  I think it's safe to say that this day (Saturday) was one of my favorite days of all time, I really couldn't ask for more... beautiful weather, beautiful city, and wonderful friends!  I'm pretty sure my mouth hurt so much from smiling and laughing all day...

View from Piazzale Michelangelo

Anna and I!

Anna, Kasia, Linds, Me, Jen

All of us watching the sunset!  Me, Anna, Jen, Kasia, Linds, and Dakota

 As the sun is setting

Crossing over another bridge on the way to dinner

We went to a place called il latini for dinner, recommended to us by a friend, and what an experience this was!  As if my mouth didn't hurt from laughing so much during the day... ok so we had a reservation at 7:30 so we go in and sit down and immediately descend on the bread like vultures.  Much to our surprise, it was the most tasteless bread we have ever eaten.  We decide to douse it in an olive oil concoction when we are given plates, which only moderately improved its taste.  At this point, we are still waiting for two other girls to join us but never mind that, our waiter comes out and says should we start bringing out the appetizers? We say yes?  Even though we have not been given menus/prices/haven't ordered anything/have just had both giant bottles (if you could call them that) of wine opened before us.  After freshly cut prosciutto (which was out of this world!), salami, caprese salad, and these little bread things with a spread on them have been graciously dumped onto our table, we figure it's better to just not ask questions.  The other two girls arrive and we are again scolded for eating too much bread (this also happened the night before when we asked for more bread).  Plates were cleared and out comes i primi piatti, which consisted of various pasta dishes including ravioli, penne with meat sauce, and another kind of pasta that I didn't know but that was absolutely delicious.  Stomachs are now relatively full, but wait there's more!  Plates are cleared and out comes i secondi piatti, also known as a giant plate full of all kinds of different meats accompanied by sides of beans, spinach, and potatoes.  At this point, dinner is turning into a joke... never in my life have I been given so much food in one sitting!  And we ordered nothingg!  We have realized now that this is family style like the night before and we are very curious as to how much this will cost us.  Our curiosity continues to grow as we realize the meal is not yet over.  Out comes vanilla gelato with strawberries on top, biscotti, and sweet wine/after dinner liquor, perfect.  As we are making room in our stomachs for this last course, the waiter comes over with a bottle of champagne and pops it open on our table.  We notice no one else in the restaurant has champagne bottles on their table... hmm.  As the waiter is handing out the champagne, he casually asks the two girls at the end if we like limoncello, to which they reply si! and what do you know, he comes out with shots of limoncello for all.  At this point we are rolling on the floor laughing with how ridiculous this situation is, the food and drinks never ended!!  It was absolutely insane and so incredibly fun, here's a picture of what it looked like.

We finally receive word as to how much this feast will cost us -- 35 euro because we are students, it's normally 50-60 euro he said.  More than we would normally spend on dinner but actually a great deal considering how much we got for it.  And just when we thought we had cleared out the restaurant's kitchen, a manager comes over with two bottles of wine for us to take home.  Hahaha this was just too much, so unexpected!  I guess the unlimited wine at dinner wasn't enough?  Or it was a bribe to get us to leave the restaurant (they explained earlier that they have two sittings, one at 730 and the other at 930).  We rolled ourselves back to our hostel and every single one of us spread out across our beds and fell asleep- definition of a food coma.  We figured we'd take naps or just rest for a bit.  5 hours later annnd we're still fast asleep, clothed in exactly what we were wearing earlier.  We wake up at 9 the next morning and after 11 hours of sleep, we feel great!  It was so so funny, I'm not sure what we were expecting after such a busy day and such a big meal but either way I think we were allll so happy to have finally gotten a good night's sleep :)

We checked out of our hostel, stored our bags at the train station, and made our way to the Academia where we saw Michelangelo's David.  Like I said, I'm no art history major but the David was truly magnificent... I never thought I could stare at a statue for that long in such awe.  We took a break for lunch after and did a little shopping until it was time to board the train back to Milan.  We arrived in Milan around 5 and once we got home, we got ready to go out for some Super Bowl festivities!  We heard they called the Super Bowl the ex-patriot Christmas haha we were just excited to show some American pride and eat burgers :)  The bar we went to had a pre party thing and then actually showed the game, which aired at 12:30am our time.  We stayed for a little and then went back, it was definitely a fun Sunday night out!  

We had our first day of classes today which was longgg.  Classes here are so long, definitely not used to that. We had Italian from 9-10:30 and then I had art history from 1-3 and econ 5-7.  I switched around my classes so now I'm taking Italian, Italian Conversation: Culture and Cuisine of Northern Italy, Photography, Cracking the Code: Leonardo da Vinci, and The Italian Economy.  The Leonardo/art history class seems like it's going to be kind of hard but reallly interesting; I've never taken an art history class before but I'm excited to learn about it and then be able to see the actual paintings we discuss in class.  My econ class was hard, I'm not sure I'll stick with it but we'll see!   Tomorrow I have my cuisine class and photography and for the first time in what feels like forever, I don't have class at 9am!  11am here I come :) 

We want to start planning out more trips but it's tough with how expensive it can be :(  We did do a lot of research about spring break places and for now we have decided to go to the Amalfi Coast and Sicily, which we are so so excited about!  We have 10 days for spring break... the first three we have a cuisine field trip and the next 7 are up to us.  After looking into costs and weather and all that good stuff, we decided Southern Italy would be our best bet and I can't wait to start booking flights and getting things set in stone.  The only thing holding us up is that we aren't sure how much time to spend in the Amalfi Coast vs Sicily but we're going to do more research and see what other people have said.  

We are planning on going to Verona for a day trip this Saturday and then Sunday morning we head to the Alps for our ski trip!!  So many exciting things ahead, I love this life :)