Florence

Florence! Beautiful Florence! It's been an amazing three days and I didn't want to leave. Florence is a really beautiful city - it's more grandiose and white than Rome. Luckily the weather held up during the most important times and it was sunny or cloudy all three days during the daytime.

I'm going to try something different for this post, since there's so many photos to share! I'll summarize the days and make a "gallery" for each day. Some photos will have captions with explanations below them. :)

Friday, February 7th: We arrived in Florence around noon. We got to our hotel - Hotel Astoria, which is a 5-minute walk to the Duomo! The rooms were divided by apartment roommates. So I was with Brittany and Dakota. Dakota went to stay with a relative, and Taylor didn't like his roommates too much (who are hard partiers - they're OK guys but just not great roommates due to them staying up late every night) so he stayed with us. Our room had three beds - two beds on the first floor and there's a flight of stairs leading to a giant king bed, or really: two beds pushed together.

After quickly settling in and grabbing lunch near the Duomo, we went off on a guided tour of the city for the rest of the day.

Click here to go to Day 1 Album!

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Saturday, February 8th: In the morning, Brittany, Taylor, Dom, and I went to go inside the Cathedral and The Duomo before we had to go to another "trip" with API. We got a ticket and went underneath the Cathedral to see the crypts of priests who were buried there. Apparently Brunelleschi, a really famous sculptor/painter, is buried there and I didn't know!!! I am so upset that I didn't get to see it. Someday I'll go back again and see it. After seeing the crypt we walked out and entered the side of the Cathedral and we began our 467-step ascent up the Duomo's top! It was painful, sweaty (I'm out of shape!), and really scary once we entered the cupola, but oh man - the view. The view and fresh air was certainly worth it. We climbed to the top of the Duomo before anyone was awake back home in the US - how about that?!

Afterwards we went to the Verrazzano Castle with API where we toured the castle and its wine cellars and did some wine tasting. This castle was the world's first grape growing and wine producing area to be declared as such by an official proclamation.

Click here to go to Day 2 Album! 

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Sunday, February 9th: This day was full of museums before heading back to Rome. First was a guided tour in the Palazzo Vecchio Museum, then I went to the Galleria dell'Accademia where Michelangelo's David stands with Brittany and Christina. I was a little miffed that we weren't allowed to take photos in the Galleria (there was even metal detectors for some reason?). But like any other tourist, I took a few sneaky photos. At the end of this day, we took one last stop just outside Florence at the San Miniato a Monte where you could see all of Florence. Then it's a 4-hour drive back to Rome.

Click here to go to Day 3 Album!

On another note - today (Feb 10th), Taylor and I booked our trip to Athens, Greece from Feb 28th to March 2nd!!! :) We'll be staying at a hostel called Pella Inn and it has all the basic amenities as well as being right in the center of Athens. Hopefully it'll be a good place to stay! If not, well, it's only two nights. We'll also be walking a lot anyway! :)

For those curious, my travel schedule looks like this:

February 21st - 23rd: Tuscany (Arezzo and other towns)
February 28th - March 2nd: Athens, Greece
March 6th - 9th: Interlaken, Switzerland

Brittany and I have been talking about a trip to Venice and Paris (and maybe London as a second leg after Paris). I met a girl named Bianca who invited me to spend spring break with her and her roommates to go to Amsterdam, Paris, London and Berlin as one big trip. Still debating on accepting her invite! :)

Felice Febbraio! It's nearing a month of my stay here.

I had only one class today (2/3) and when I got there, found out class was cancelled! That's the second time that has happened for two separate classes. Turns out my professor posted the notification online two days ago. Professors post their "messages" or class notifications on a school system called MyJCU (Lesley University uses MyLesley, so it's slightly similar). But the problem is that you have to look at it to see if there's a message. There NEEDS to be an email notification system implemented so I'm aware of the class cancellation before walking all the way over to campus!

Rant of the morning: End.

Last week on Jan. 29th, I had a drawing class in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican City! In hindsight, I should've chosen a better vantage point because it's really too much to draw looking at it straight on!

Class that day let out early because it started to rain. Again. 

But it was okay afterwards because I met up with Taylor!!!

It was a great reunion. We hugged for 5 minutes and we couldn't stop laughing in disbelief because for 4-5 months before I came here, we knew we wanted to study in Italy together and finally, there we were! We walked around and I gave him neighborhood tours, tips and such. We walked to the Pantheon (did you know you could go inside? I didn't!) and grabbed dinner together at a nice restaurant nearby.

 

On January 31st, Taylor and I met up again after his orientation activities and made dinner for Brittany who was really sick. We made pasta with wine and sauce and spinach (apparently frozen spinach only come in cube shapes!) Brittany and Taylor got along well! :)

While walking Taylor back to his apartment, we stopped at a nearby teeny bar (reminder: standing coffee bar!) and ended up staying there for over an hour because we talked with the barista/owner named Claudio and a customer named Fabio about a lot of stuff, mostly in Italian and broken English. We talked about the newspaper (only because Taylor mentioned I could read Italian better than speak it) and Claudio made me read and translate it! I barely passed the grade because there's a lot of vocabulary I didn't know. There was an article about ostriches and somehow that led to a conversation about Australia and kangaroo meat. We also talked about religion, philosophy, math (Fabio really liked number theories), and life in general. I had a cappuccino. They had Duff beer there (fictional beer from the Simpsons and apparently it's a thing!), and Claudio gave Taylor and I Duff Beer coasters!

 

February 1st, Taylor and I decided to do a real walking trip despite the drizzle. We went to see the Bocca della Verità, bought a ticket to see private houses and old architecture from the Republic and Imperial Rome on top of the Palantine Hill.

 

(Taylor has a picture of me with my hand inside the Mouth of Truth, but I'll get it on here someday)

From Palatine Hill, we could get inside the Roman Forum! I wish it was a sunny day so it was nicer to see but it was still pretty cool. :)

We stopped to find a place to eat and passed by the cat cemetery/Largo Argentina. There was an unusally large number of cats walking around on the sidewalk. Taylor stopped to pet one and I sat on a bench to watch him. Few seconds later, a cat decided to jump onto my lap and treat it as a seatwarmer. They would NOT budge! I guess they were comfortable, hahaha.

 (Taylor took this photo on his phone- didn't notice it until he posted it on Facebook!)

(Best photo in existence or best photo in existence?)

My cat Africa doesn't even sit on my lap!! I wanna adopt this cat and take them home. (Technically I could......) Maybe I can visit this cat again every once in a while. It'll be easy to identify them because they don't have a tail.

After walking a bit, we found a little restaurant in a little alleyway. This little restaurant was unique! We had lunch really late. You also had to pay downstairs at a cash register. This was similar set-up to a restaurant I went to in Pisa.

Afterwards we walked around more and saw more forums and architecture long gone. Night fell and we made one last stop: the Baths of Caracalla. But it was closed so we vowed to come back another day!

We later ate sushi for dinner at this Japanese sushi/restaurant near my street and it was WILDLY good with honest prices. They even had onigiri!

Yesterday, Sunday February 2nd, Brittany was feeling better and we decided to brave the rain and go to Porta Portese - Rome's flea market! We went there around 8:45 AM. At first it didn't seem much and I wondered, "this is Europe's biggest flea market?" But then we turned a corner, and then there was hundreds and hundreds of white tents flowing down the street and branching off on smaller streets. We got lost two times!

(Don't worry, those are BB/paintball guns)

(Not gonna lie, I nearly got these!!! I love this series)

(Antonio the creepy baby doll)

Brittany went back to the apartment to meet up with her Italian family and I met up with Taylor again. We decided to go inside the Colosseum because our ticket from the Palatine Hill was good for two-days and granted access for us into the Colosseum as well! But the rain got so ridiculous that we had to take a bus back home.

SO SICK OF THE RAAAAAAAIN. Three weeks of rain is pushing it, y'know. This isn't London or the Amazon Rainforest. You should see the Tiber River - it's overflooded and really gross looking. On the news, there are towns in the south where the river broke the surface and flooded the town(s). Here are photos I've taken over the last three days

Afterwards Taylor and I made coffee and relaxed after being cold and miserable all day. All my shoes and my pants were soaked. It was awful. So we used the rest of the evening to plan a trip! February 28th is when Brittany is going to Krakow, Poland for the weekend. I'm not going because Poland isn't on my to-do list.

So Taylor and I decided that from Feb. 27th to March 2nd, we're going to Athens, Greece! It's exciting and nerve-wracking. It took me a while to figure out the best price options but three hours later, I figured out the best round-trip flight, best hostel in the best area for the best budget price, and understand the transportation about how to get from the airport to the hostel. I'm good. (Taylor jokingly gave me an American quarter 'for my services')

This weekend I'm off to Florence! It's an excursion provided by my program and I'll be seeing major monuments and going to the famous leather markets! I'm really excited for it. :)