Florence Festivities

Josh:

The last couple of days I have been in Florence, Italy and it has been so crazy I haven’t had time to write to you. Good news though—I made it to 2013! Also, I have officially gotten all my photos to load to my computer; however, the Internet is really flighty here so I’ll have to wait until I get somewhere with better connection to upload them.

Florence has been so awesome. We’ve really only been here one full day because we went to Pisa yesterday and went to Assisi before we arrived the first day. So, New Years Eve was the only full day in Florence, and I definitely want to come back for longer sometime.

Since I haven’t written in such a long time (really only a few days, but when studying abroad a lot happens in that little number of days), I thought I would just give you a short ‘schedule of events’ and then go more in detail about some of the things I had random thoughts about. Because you know you want to hear my random thoughts J

Schedule of Florencian (made up word) Events:

Italy Day Four:

            --Woke up in Rome at 7:04 when we were supposed to be packed, dressed, and ready to go in the lobby at 7:15! Our alarm hadn’t gone off, so we rushed around like maniacs and made it on time. I think Rome just didn’t want us to leave J

            --A long bus ride to Assisi with GORGEOUS views of Italy and lots of winding roads

            --A gross pizza lunch in Assisi (My second food fail of the trip, at this point I was getting nervous that I would waste all of my Italian meals by choosing the gross food places)

            --A tour of Assisi and St. Frances church—the town was so quaint and adorable. It actually felt like we were in a place where people live for the first time. There were still a ton of tourists there though.

            --Bus ride to Florence (I absolutely napped hardcore on this bus ride. Yay for power naps!)

            --Arrive at a HOSTEL in Florence—not a hotel, a hostel. I think everyone in the group was freaking out a little bit, but it ended up being a really enjoyable experience--more on that and what I thought of Florence later.

            --Renaissance Dinner at Palazzo Borghese Firenze (The most fun dinner we’ve had yet—more on this later, too)

            --Group party at the hostel—most of the study abroad group really bonded this night, which was pretty cool. We definitely feel more like a family now.

            --Sleep!!

Italy Day Five:

            --Tour of both the Duomo and the rest of Florence in the morning. The Duomo is this HUGE church building that is so detailed and beautiful on the outside; however, it was actually pretty plain on the inside.

            --Visit to the Leather Shop. Florence is really famous for both its leather and its stationary, so part of our tour was a stop at this leather shop to see how they made these leather jewelry boxes. It was one of the more interesting stops of the tour and it smelled SO GOOD. I love the smell of leather. Then for the first time really the adults told us we had the entire afternoon off to go explore and hang out, so we started by looking around the leather shop for souvenirs.

            --Lunch at this tiny place by a huge outdoor market. I had this spicy penne (It was called something different, but I forget the elaborate name), and it was one of the better things I have had on the trip. It was so good—I was nervous that I would have another food fail! It would have been really upsetting to have three food fails in a row L The owner of the shop really didn’t like us very much at this lunch place though—normally the Italians don’t mind us tourists—this guy was mad at our Italian-speaking attempts and everything. He even snapped at one girl for saying ‘grazie’ wrong—we were pretty much terrified to say thanks to anyone for the rest of the day.

            --Shopping in the local ‘flower market.’ I actually didn’t see any flowers, so maybe I was confused about the name; however, there were tons of stands with beautiful Italian scarves, leather bags, and a few tourist-y things. Having the afternoon to just hang out and shop at these really cool stands was one of the best parts of the trip thus far.

            --Gelato! Even though I had been told by many, many people to buy gelato in Italy before coming, up to this point I hadn’t had a chance (or enough room in my stomach) to get any. Finally, I went to one of the most famous gelato places in Italy—Vivoli—and had raspberry/chocolate gelato. It tasted exactly like the best raspberries you could imagine.

            --Nap (It was New Years Eve! I had to prepare to stay up late!)

            --Dinner at this fancy place (I forget the name). This was the LONGEST dinner I have ever experienced. Literally. We arrived at around 7:30 and did not finish our dessert until 11:45. I’m pretty sure after the third course of pasta everyone wanted to explode. Personally, eating is one of my favorite things in the world, which meant that the 591093488 courses they served us were perfect to eat. I’m pretty sure I’m still full from that meal. It was a delicious four different pasta courses, several appetizers, several meat dishes, and a dessert trio.  SIDE NOTE: During the dinner a really drunk guy came over to our dinner and tried to sit down at one of the tables. Apparently he said something really rude, and less than a blink later Kostas, our tour director, popped up and talked to him extremely quickly in Italian to get him to back off. I’m pretty sure after that he became the superhero of the group.

            --New Years Eve in a big square. We barely made it out to the square in time to see midnight, but we got there about ten minutes before. Everyone was in a wide circle/clump thing around the square and was throwing fireworks into the middle. It was so loud. Then at midnight people went crazy and were popping champagne, breaking bottles, throwing fireworks and running around like nuts in the smoky square. I actually missed my couch-filled New Years Eve, but I made the most of the craziness. The walk back was a competition to see how many people I could get to say ‘Buon Anno’ (kind of sounds like banana) back when I screamed it at them. Surprisingly, not that many.

            --Party in the Hostel’s ‘Teen Club.’ The hostel had a raging dance session going on, so I went downstairs to people watch and hang out with friends before heading back upstairs to grab some Zs.

            --Sleep, Sleep, Sleep!

Italy Day Six:

            --Wake up at 10:30 (Sleep in day!)

            --Take a bus to a Vineyard in Tuscany (Also beautiful)

            --Lunch/Wine Tasting at the Fattoria Il Pioggio Vineyard. Although I was still pretty full from the dinner the night before, I found a way to eat almost everything at lunch. The food was so fresh and flavorful—we had this vegetable soup (I normally hate vegetable soup) that was so good I’ve been craving it ever since. I also tried all of the food on the table and each of the different wines. We learned a lot about the family’s farm, how to appreciate wine, and the huge difference between freshly grown food and our food back home. Also, the lady who told us about the family, the wine, and the homegrown food was really funny and liked our group a lot.

            --Long bus ride to Pisa.

            --A guided tour of Pisa. It was a lot more elaborate of a town than I had imagined. It was pretty exciting to see the leaning tower after I’ve seen it in pictures (AND ON ARTHUR…go PBS) for forever. The tower is 15,000 TONS of marble. It’s crazy that it stands up as much as it does with that kind of weight. After the tour we had a little bit to roam around the town and see its quaintness, which was nice.

            --Long bus ride home (Lots of  bus time today)

            --Dinner at this Pizzeria off of the Piazza di Independencia (We were craving pizza after Pisa) where I got this focaccia that was delicious. It was this pizza with a top of crust on it, so double the crust basically.

            --Hang out, Pack, Clean, Chill/Watch people play pool in the Teen Club.

            --Go to McDonalds (shhhhh…) with Molly, Kyser, and Haley where we got cheeseburgers and fries. It tasted so good to have something other than pasta. Plus, they had a McFlurry with Nutella mixed in, these delicious seasoned fries called ‘Miami Fries,’ and chocolate doughnuts. McDonalds here don’t give out ketchup often, wouldn’t customize my cheeseburger (no pickles, no onions please? No, no. Cheeseburger), and allow dogs in the restaurant!  Overall, I’m glad we secretly went…don’t tell anyone though J

            --SLEEP!

Today:

            We are supposed to leave the hostel soon, take a five hour bus ride to this port called Ancona where we will leave on a huge ferry, and then take the boat for 24-hours to Greece! I’m not sure if the boat has Wi-Fi or what it will be like at all. I know I will have a blast no matter what though! If it has Wi-Fi, I will post this then. If not, I will have to wait until we get to Delphi. We will see…

A few more follow up notes:

Going back to the whole hostel thing! I was worried we would have to share rooms with strangers, sleep on the terrible floor/fungus infested beds, and that it would just be overall a bad experience. However, it was actually really nice, clean, and everyone was friendly. It was called PLUSflorence, and was definitely geared toward younger folks. I stayed in a room with five other girls from the group, and we had two bunk beds and two regular beds. Plus, the mattresses were actually comfy even though I wished I had my own pillow. Sharing a bathroom between six girls even ended up working out! The basement of the hostel had what the group deemed the ‘Teen Club’ because it had pool, a wii, a dance floor, and a bunch of booths everywhere. At night, everyone would hang out in the ‘Teen Club’, which ended up being a great bonding experience.

The one night we went to that Renaissance restaurant I had mentioned, and it was seriously the most fun dinner in all of Italy. We walked into this old castle where the workers were all dressed in costumes and walked into the main dining hall where the set up was pretty fancy. They had a  ‘welcome drink’ for us when we came in, harp music playing, dancers and different dances, and several games that we played throughout the night. They got several people to participate in the games, which was absolutely hilarious. I’m not sure how much we paid to go there, but I would definitely recommend it for anyone who comes to Italy.

Alright, that was the trip to Florence/Assisi/Tuscany/Pisa! I can’t wait to come back and hang out in these towns for longer because they are really so adorable. I’d love to bring you and the rest of the family back because I think you would love it. I really think you will love Greece though, Josh. You know, with all of the Greek mythology stuff that happens there. I can’t wait to tell you what happens there, too.

Love,

Maddie