I spent the past week on the most amazing vacation of my life! I went to Italy, starting in Venice and then going to Florence, where I took day trips to Siena and Arezzo. It was absolutely incredible and beautiful. I will never, ever be able to order take-out pizza or eat at Olive Garden again in my life!
First was Venice. I had an absolutely beautiful flight on which I could see the Alps as the sun was setting right out my window. Of course, beautiful sunset flight meant that the hour long water taxi to the hotel was spent in darkness, which is too bad because we went around the entire island and I'm sure it would have been beautiful. For dinner, I ate an incredible pasta dish with tomato sauce and tried a glass of their house wine called Chianti. It's delicious - I'm no wine connoisseur, so don't ask me to compare France and Italy or anything like that, but Italian wine is definitely worth trying =) Dessert was a bit more interesting. On the menu was a "Dessert of Venice" so of course I tried that one, despite having absolutely no idea what I'd ordered. It ended up being a plate of cookies typical to the Venice area surrounding a glass of a sweet white wine called Fragolino. This wine was amazing! I tried to find it in stores everywhere after trying it, but all I could find was red, bubbly wine called Fragolino, while the wine I drank at the restaurant was white and still. So I did some Google research: turns out this wine is illegal to sell! You can only sell it if you hand make it, so I'm assuming that's what the restaurant owner did haha. So much for bringing a bottle home...however, to all my American followers, the reason it's illegal is because the grape is an American grape. So maybe you guys will have luck if you want to try it one night - I have no clue if it's sold in the states or not seeing as how I've never bought wine in the states, but if you want to try a sweet wine for dessert, I'd highly recommend it =)
Anyways, back to Venice! Venice is the most beautiful city: no cars, just tons of bridges across the canals. Everyone owns a boat like we own a car, and you walk just about everywhere. It's wonderful. Friday, I went to St, Mark's Square, of course, and toured the Doge's Palace and St. Mark's Basilica. Both structures were incredible. It is always amazing to me to see the incredible detail in the buildings - even along the ceilings and floors. No inch of the building is left undecorated. Of course, after all this touring I was starving! So I went to a pizzeria and ordered a calzone. It was the most incredible thing I've ever eaten in my life (this far...haha that saying will probably reappear multiple times during this marathon of a blog entry)! Drenched in olive oil, the calzone was nice and thick and packed with cheese, mushrooms, and meat! It was amazing! And of course, for dessert some chocolate gelato was necessary. I walked down quite a ways to avoid the tourist gelato bars and found a nice place with cheaper gelato. At the time, my little naive self thought the gelato was amazing, however there was more gelato to be tasted, and soon I would realize how much better gelato gets =)
Saturday was also spent in Venice. I went to the Galleria dell'Accademia, which is the largest art museum in Italy, and saw "Madonna con bambino" (Madonna and Child) about 100 times haha. But it was a very nice museum with lots of nice paintings. I tricked the admissions lady into thinking I was a French citizen, because EU citizens got discounted tickets. So I just walked up, showed her my French student ID and asked for a discounted ticket =) It turned out she let me in for free with a promise to come back and pay her before leaving because she didn't have change, and I couldn't very well pull out my American credit card after claiming to be French haha (credit cards in Europe have chips instead of the magnetic strips, so it's pretty obvious when you swipe instead of insert the card into the bottom of the machine that your card isn't European). I wonder if she would have done that if I'd "been American." After I finished touring the museum, I stalked a few Italian people in hopes of finding a grocery store...and succeeded! =) Keeping the location in mind, I went back near the Galleria dell'Accademia to try a different pizzeria for lunch. Yes, I did spend the entire week eating nothing but pizza, pasta, and gelato (fruit for breakfast though!!), so judge all you want haha. My pants still fit, so all is good =) This pizzeria was even better than the first! I had a huge mushroom pizza and of course devoured the entire thing. Then for dessert, since I was in Italy, I decided to try a cappuccino despite not really liking coffee. It was not bad, for coffee. Worth a try, but not something I need to order every day haha. After lunch, I walked around the city a bit and somehow wound up back in St. Mark's Square, which means I got lost somewhere haha. I did make it to the Rialto Bridge and bought a cannoli at a little bakery down one of the streets leading to the bridge =) After all my wandering, I went back to the grocery store, picked up some food for a picnic, and ate alongside the Grand Canal. It was a beautiful picnic with the sun setting in the background. And of course, more gelato for dessert! Today's flavor of choice was Nutella - it was very yummy!
Sadly, that was the end of Venice, so I woke up early Sunday morning and caught a train to Florence. Florence was also breathtakingly beautiful! Different from Venice in that people actually drive, which is horrifying. Seriously, I almost died so many times. Cars don't stop. They just go and expect you to jump out of the way. Somehow I survived my way down to yet another pizzeria to compare Florence pizza to Venice pizza =) I ordered another calzone, which of course was amazing. It was completely different - very thin crust instead of super doughy, but still drenched in olive oil and absolutely delicious. I also ordered a dessert calzone that was filled with Nutella and mascarpone and stuffed myself to capacity =) Gosh, I loved the food of Italy...all Italian restaurants in the states are ruined for me haha. Even the "good" ones. Anyway, once I found the little bed and breakfast and got checked in I just wandered the streets of the open market. I'd saved my money to buy a nice leather purse in Florence (Florence is known for leather goods), which was perfect because my purse ripped on the plane! Funny story actually, I was afraid I'd been pickpocketed in St. Mark's Square (the most pickpocketed area pretty much ever) because I grabbed my purse and stuck my finger through the side. Luckily, all was still inside my purse, and I'm fairly certain I wasn't pickpocketed but it ripped on the plane. Guess I'll never know for sure though haha...all I know is that my passport and all my money is safe with me =) Anyways, back to the market of Florence, so anyone who has ever shopped with me ever knows that I'm a HORRIBLE shopper. I take forever to make up my mind and have to look at literally every single purse before deciding and purchasing one, particularly when I set a nice budget for myself instead of the typical $20 for a Walmart purse. So I started scoping them out while walking off my 2 lunch calzones haha. Dinner was very minimal - I got some bread and meat and made a little sandwich. But, of course, no day in Italy would be complete without some gelato, which of course was delicious as always!!
Monday the real touring of Florence began. I woke up early and tried to find a tourist office to get a map of the city, but no luck haha! The tourist office in the train station was closed for construction, and no one could tell me where another one was located! So I stayed in the area close to the hotel, afraid of getting lost. Luckily, the one museum I was super excited to see was close to the hotel, so of course I went there. It was...THE GALILEO GALILEI MUSEUM!!! It was incredible!!! A museum dedicated to chemistry and physics!!! And, for the non-science people out there, the museum is very well put together, with little tv screens in all the rooms that tell you a bit of the history and science behind what you're looking at. It was pretty awesome - I'll even admit that the physics rooms were awesome haha. It was cool to look at the machines that were used to discover all of those formulas I had to learn last semester and last year...despite the fact that multiple times before a physics exam I would claim that I absolutely hated everyone who used those original machines and thus discovered all the stuff I was being forced to learn haha =) Of course, the chemistry rooms were the best, as they should be! Quotes from the duke of the time about how he "recognized the importance of chemistry" - see, even he knew that chemistry is the way to go! I highly recommend this museum to anyone who visits Florence - it's well worth the cost and is a very, very nice museum. My friend, who is a French and Economics person (not a science nerd like me haha), said she liked it too, so even if you're not crazy for chemistry or physics it's still worth a visit :)
After the museum I walked to the Vecchio bridge, which is kind of like the Rialto bridge in Venice but much more expensive shops haha - lots of gold and jewelry. So of course nothing but window shopping for me haha! I did find a Disney store though and got to listen to Tangled in Italian!! =) Of course, by this time it had been quite some time since my last amazing Italian meal, so I found a nice little bakery and ordered a sandwich and a cannoli :) This cannoli was more like American cannolis, but way more delicious haha. The first cannoli I ate was small, about the length of my finger, and simple: chocolate cream inside puff pastry. This cannoli was huge and similar to the ones you can get in American Italian restaurants...except it was even more amazing and wonderful than anything you could ever get in the states!! I had a picnic in a square outside a museum (the museum was closed - it was the Museum of Architecture). However, a cannoli is not gelato, and I was afraid I was going to go into gelato withdrawal, so after a nice walk around pretty much the entire historic center of Florence and another round of scoping out the market for my perfect purse, I stopped for a chocolate scoop before returning to the hotel and calling it a night :)
Last day in Florence :( First, I walked up to Piazza Michelangelo, which is on top of a huge hill. My friend made a Rocky comparison as we were climbing up...being the pop culture genius that I am, I had no idea what she was talking about, but we took "Rocky photos" anyways haha. The view from the top of the hill was way worth the climb! You could see literally all of Florence! It was beautiful. We found an American family and asked them to take our pictures doing our school's sign (one of us held our arms up in an O and the other in a U haha). We're hoping we get a picture on the OU Study Abroad website =) Then, we decided to get a little crazy and practice "leaping pictures!" We jumped off the ledges and took pictures mid-flight haha. Now we're ready for Leap Day (which would be spent in Siena) - we can take leaping pictures!!! Haha...good thing I wasn't traveling with my parents...they'd probably kill me for leaping off of those ledges of death - because if you look at the pictures, what you can't see is that behind me is a 50 foot drop down to a windy street of death. But no one died, so all is good haha =) After all of this jumping and death-defying though, I was pretty hungry haha. So I went to this nice pasta restaurant and asked the waitress what she recommended. Boy, does she have good taste haha! I got a mushroom and truffle pasta (the Italians really like their truffle haha) that was to die for. Seriously, it was amazing! It was super rich though, so I decided I needed to walk and tour a bit before getting my daily dose of gelato haha. I went to a sculpture museum called Bargello Museum that was very nice. I took quite a bit of contraband photos when the guards weren't paying attention =) Something really cool was that I found enamels made in Limoges in the museum! Woohoo for Limoges! Don't worry, I snuck some pictures of them haha. It was a very nice museum. And, it's right around the corner from the best gelato shop in Florence!! The shop has neon lights and is impossible to miss. I ordered a dark chocolate scoop and a "cookies" scoop...and my life was changed (or so I thought...haha Arezzo was still to come!). It was so good, I went back after dinner for round two and got dark chocolate again with tiramisu as the second scoop. And my clothes do still fit after all of this eating haha =) After gelato, I finally went back to the market to purchase my purse. After all of my looking for a black purse to replace my ripped one, I fell in love with a cream-colored purse. And thanks to my horrible indecisiveness, the shop owner dropped the price almost 50% for me since I kept debating whether or not I wanted to buy it! Woohoo! Thanks to the great deal, I was able to get a wallet to match haha =) Happy days!
Wednesday was Leap Day!! I went to Siena, which is a medieval city with lots of nice, 45 degree hills to climb haha. It's very beautiful, just like the entire Tuscany region. I wandered around for a bit trying to find a map or a tourist office and found a nice big square (all cities have squares...lots of them haha) with a clock that had the date on it. Looks like I found my "leaping pictures" background haha! Trying to do split leaps in jeans is difficult...try it after 5 years of no gymnastics and well, it's kind of depressing to look at the picture. I like to think that if I hadn't been wearing jeans my leap would have been a little prettier =) Haha oh well...I tried. I also took cool leaping pictures off the steps of the cathedral, so they have a pretty background haha. Anyways, back to things serious people do when on vacation...I bought an all-access pass (it was pretty cheap and everything was worth seeing here) and went through the cathedral, museum, crypt, baptistery, and got to climb up to the top of the building and take pictures of the entire city! I got super lucky - the entire trip, I had beautiful postcard weather, so my pictures came out really well! Climbing up to get them was quite horrifying on these little narrow spiral staircases of death - I tried to make as much noise as possible so anyone at the bottom would know someone is coming down and would wait until I made it down to start climbing up haha =) But the view was worth the horrifying climb. Of course, all this touring made me pretty hungry...pasta time!! I found a little local trattoria (small restaurant) with homemade pasta, homemade wine, and delicious pie. The pasta was so good, I ordered a second dish before dessert! Haha, maybe that's why the climb felt so claustrophobic...(lunch was in between the cathedral and the museum, and the climb was part of the museum). This restaurant was so amazingly delicious - if anyone ever goes to Siena, seriously, you have to go to Locanda Garibaldi - I can message you the address haha, I took their business card =)
That was pretty much it for Siena - touring took the entire day and I caught a bus back to Florence where I immediately fell asleep in order to wake up early the next morning for Arezzo! Arezzo is not often on a tourist's list of cities to visit in Italy. I wanted to visit because OU has a program in Arezzo, so I went to visit my fellow Sooners =) It was an incredible visit, and I can't thank them enough for taking me around the town! Arezzo is a small, medieval town kind of like Siena, and just as beautiful. The duomo is very nice and free, which is always a plus haha. Then, after the Sooners finished their classes they took us to a pizzeria where I had yet another amazing pizza. I'm now in the habit of eating an entire pizza instead of just a slice or two for a meal haha. Not that it will matter in 3 months when I'm forced to return to the US, because Papa John's will never compare! Anyways, after pizza they took us to their favorite coffee shop where I tried a Caramel Macchiato that was incredibly amazing! Way better than a cappuccino, probably because you couldn't really taste the coffee haha. And then, prepare yourselves, I ate the gelato that tops all other gelatos for the best gelato ever. It changed my life. I had "Cremina," which is basically heaven in ice cream form - chocolate with Nutella mixed with a white flavor that was either mild vanilla or white chocolate or something else incredibly amazingly delicious, and Hazelnut. Oh my gosh. Can't even put into words how delicious it was. I savored it as we walked to the ampitheatre to see the ruins. They were nice, but obviously they were ruins, so the entire seating area was just gone. It was still pretty though, and you could sit on little steps leading down to the ruins and eat gelato while looking at an amazing view =) It was very nice hanging out with fellow Sooners - their program is very different from ours! It's literally like OU picked itself up and plopped down in the middle of Italy, as opposed to my program where I'm actually at a different university. It's pretty cool - I've decided that I'm going to do summer in Arezzo instead of coming home haha =) I wish....
Anyways, Friday was my last day in Italy. I woke up early to go to Mass with my Catholic friend, which was pretty cool. I'd never been to Mass before, so it's pretty awesome that my first Mass was in an epic duomo in Catholic Country! After Mass, we went to the food market and met a really nice shop vendor who told us about the little bottles of wine we were looking at (yes, we were wine shopping at 8:00 in the morning haha...but hey, we had a plane to catch! What were we supposed to do?). He also offered us a taste of some cookies that Italians dunk in the dessert wine (could it be that we found the illusive Fragolino??). So we bought a couple little bottles from him, and I am super excited to try the white "dessert wine liquor" in hopes that it's the Fragolino I had on the very first night =) Other than that, Friday really sucked haha. The flight was delayed, the airport was an absolute disaster, the flight itself was horrifying on an itty-bitty plane that I was sure was going to crash into the Alps, the train was late, which meant I missed the bus back to my dorm and had an hour walk at 10:30 at night...but I made it back safe and sound =) Note to anyone who is inspired to visit Italy after reading this entry: NEVER fly into or out of Florence airport!!! It's too tiny!!! It can't handle lots of passengers, so it can only take your checked bags 30 minutes before your flight takes off, which means security gets super backed up with everyone frantically dropping off their bags and running through security to make the flight. It's crazy haha! Now I know why the Arezzo Sooners said they always fly from Pisa =)
Well, there you have it: one amazing week in Italy. Now it's back to reality...sort of haha. Back to the first level of vacation. Seriously, it's like vacation-inception: first level of vacation is Limoges, then vacation within a vacation to Italy, then vacation within a vacation within a vacation for all the day trips to Arezzo and Siena....how deep can I go??? =)
