DAY FIVE
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| A Panorama from the Piazzale Michelangelo of Firenze! |
After a late, but awesome night out on town, we all treated ourselves to sleeping in since we don't have class on Fridays! We woke up to Danielle cooking us up fresh crepes that she learned how to make in her cooking class this week! They were delicious and she is already an Italian cuisine pro. She made us each two crepes, one with Nutella and one with eggs and salami. Yumm! If it smells Italian and it looks Italian, it must be Italian, and let me tell you... we scream Italian! We are starting to get into a groove here in Firenze, going to "our" local places and cooking together in our apartment! It's finally starting to hit me... I'm in Italy!
After breakfast, we left the apartment for the Piazzale Michelangelo on the other side of the Arno. We took a short hike up to the top where there were some incredible views from the terrace. Of course I turned all photographer on the group and insisted that we take one million photos in every angle and from every viewpoint: jumping pictures, symbol pictures, group pictures, and some artsy ones of course! I like to have variety in my collection. The walk up to the Piazzale wasn't tough, but at the very top was a beautiful church called the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte, with an even more beautiful cemetery in the back. There seems to be a sufficient supply of doors that both go to nowhere and doors that must not have been intended for humans...
We walked along for a while, soaking up the view and the warm Italian sun!
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| Classic. |
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| For me? |
By the time we reached the bottom of the hill, we were already starving due to our nonstop "carborous" eating over the past week. We just can't seem to get enough of the food and so we set out on a journey to find a pizza place to continue on our starchy path. We settled on a small, hip restaurant back on our side of the Arno that served these fried calzones called Panzarotto. I know how it sounds, but it is EXACTLY how it sounds. It was tomato sauce and cheese all wrapped up in breading and fried to perfection. Despite my better judgement, I ate one and was presently surprised by how amazing it was. So different than anything I have tried... surprising considering how everything in the US is fried on fried on fried! We will start a new trend when we return and we will make millions!!
When we were finished with lunch, it started raining and we had to run through the streets until we reached the apartment. Of course the second we got inside the rain stopped... per usual. We didn't stay in long because we decided to go out and book our next journey to Chianti for horseback riding, wine tasting, and swimming with Tarah and Savannah's parents. Horses are kind of an interesting and slightly scary animal to me because they are so large and have a mind completely their own. Every time my family goes horseback riding, my dad always seems to get the strangest horses; ones that randomly take off in an attempt to buck him off over a fence or those that move so incredibly slow that he is forced into conversation with it--sweet talking and petting the horse, trying to coax him into picking up speed. I don't think I could ever forget that horse... his name was Pinto. Anyway, I am anxious to see how this horse experience turns out because I have not ridden horses since I was a freshman in high school!
Not having a facebook here in Italy has actually turned out to be a good thing! I rarely think about it at all and enjoy the freedom of just constantly reminding myself that I am in ITALY! It is fun sometimes just to separate yourself from the outside world and just live in the present. LIFE IS GOOD. I don't feel disconnected, I feel alive. I have time to sit back and actually smell the roses!
Let me tell you something about Europe... if there is the opportunity for nothing to get done, they jump on that. Today, Danielle, Christina, Tarah, and Savannah wanted to send post cards to some friends and family, so we headed toward to the ufficio postale. Aside from sending the letters, they needed to buy stamps, so we pulled the numbers (like you do at the grocery store while waiting for cold cuts) and waited our turn in line. Thirty minutes later and the number had gone up by two people... only eight to go! How is it possible that a culture can be so passive? In the US if an attendant gets up to take a lunch break with no other workers on duty, well... lets just say that would NEVER happen because people in line would through a fit! These Italian attendants just come and go as they please and the public just seems to go along with it, except this one old man, who was not having it. I originally sat down next to him, but he got up and started pacing the room in irritation at how long he had been waiting to send off a simple package. Forty-five minutes later, Tarah's number got called and forty-six minutes later we left the post office. Forty-five minutes of waiting and it took less than one minute to send 15 letters. Next time we will be going to a tabaccheria and sending them off through a mailbox... ain't nobody got time for that!
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| Our feelings on waiting in line for 45 minutes.... |
Waiting and waiting in a post office left us practically lifeless, so we of course had to get some vanilla cappuccinos from this amazing caffe on Corso! It was one of the best coffees I think I have ever tasted and it woke me up right away! I will definitely be retuning there! After we spent way too much time in Lush smelling all the homemade cosmetics, we returned back to the apartment to cook our very own Italian meal! We made two types of pastas (in Italy you can't just say pasta... you have to include what type of pasta it is, such as penne or tortellini, and what type of sauce goes with it), prosciutto and cheese tortellini and these super curly ones and our very own tomato sauce filled with peppers, onions, and garlic! We also cooked up some garlic bread and tasted some wine on the side! Overall it was a great evening just hanging out with the roommates! Today was the first time we actually cooked our own meals since we just figured out how to work the stove (they have gas valves here... novel idea).
We may or may not watch the "Lizzie Maguire Movie" in honor of our life here in Firenze! Growing up on Lizzie Maguire and following in her footsteps might not actually be a bad thing because it seems like she is one of the only celebrities of our time that actually turned out okay... i.e. Lindsay Lohan and now Amanda Bynes. "Hey now, hey now, this is what dream are made of!" That will be my motto of the night; my new adventures here in Italy are literally "what dream are made of."
After breakfast, we left the apartment for the Piazzale Michelangelo on the other side of the Arno. We took a short hike up to the top where there were some incredible views from the terrace. Of course I turned all photographer on the group and insisted that we take one million photos in every angle and from every viewpoint: jumping pictures, symbol pictures, group pictures, and some artsy ones of course! I like to have variety in my collection. The walk up to the Piazzale wasn't tough, but at the very top was a beautiful church called the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte, with an even more beautiful cemetery in the back. There seems to be a sufficient supply of doors that both go to nowhere and doors that must not have been intended for humans... 
When we were finished with lunch, it started raining and we had to run through the streets until we reached the apartment. Of course the second we got inside the rain stopped... per usual. We didn't stay in long because we decided to go out and book our next journey to Chianti for horseback riding, wine tasting, and swimming with Tarah and Savannah's parents. Horses are kind of an interesting and slightly scary animal to me because they are so large and have a mind completely their own. Every time my family goes horseback riding, my dad always seems to get the strangest horses; ones that randomly take off in an attempt to buck him off over a fence or those that move so incredibly slow that he is forced into conversation with it--sweet talking and petting the horse, trying to coax him into picking up speed. I don't think I could ever forget that horse... his name was Pinto. Anyway, I am anxious to see how this horse experience turns out because I have not ridden horses since I was a freshman in high school!
Not having a facebook here in Italy has actually turned out to be a good thing! I rarely think about it at all and enjoy the freedom of just constantly reminding myself that I am in ITALY! It is fun sometimes just to separate yourself from the outside world and just live in the present. LIFE IS GOOD. I don't feel disconnected, I feel alive. I have time to sit back and actually smell the roses!
Let me tell you something about Europe... if there is the opportunity for nothing to get done, they jump on that. Today, Danielle, Christina, Tarah, and Savannah wanted to send post cards to some friends and family, so we headed toward to the ufficio postale. Aside from sending the letters, they needed to buy stamps, so we pulled the numbers (like you do at the grocery store while waiting for cold cuts) and waited our turn in line. Thirty minutes later and the number had gone up by two people... only eight to go! How is it possible that a culture can be so passive? In the US if an attendant gets up to take a lunch break with no other workers on duty, well... lets just say that would NEVER happen because people in line would through a fit! These Italian attendants just come and go as they please and the public just seems to go along with it, except this one old man, who was not having it. I originally sat down next to him, but he got up and started pacing the room in irritation at how long he had been waiting to send off a simple package. Forty-five minutes later, Tarah's number got called and forty-six minutes later we left the post office. Forty-five minutes of waiting and it took less than one minute to send 15 letters. Next time we will be going to a tabaccheria and sending them off through a mailbox... ain't nobody got time for that!
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