Ciao Bella!

Hello wonderful readers!  It took me a few days to recover from an amazing weekend in Italy before I could make some time to blog.  I have to say that if I was not a Spanish minor, I definitely would have chosen to study abroad in Italy instead!  It was that great!

So Friday morning, Jenn, Autumn, and I left for Florence.  This wasn’t easy as it may sounds.  First we had to take the city bus to the AVE (fast rail train) station.  We took the AVE (which only takes a half hour to get to Madrid!).  We arrived in Madrid with about 2 hours to find our way to the aiport which is outside of town.  We found the metro and luckily found a sign to tell us exactly which route to take to get us there the quickest!  We arrived at the airport at about 11:30.  This gave us an hour and a half to get to our terminal.  I still can’t believe we got to the airport in one piece!! 

We had to fly for 2 hours to Rome first, then take a connecting 35 minute flight to Florence.  We got there around 7 p.m. and were greeted by two familiar faces.  Amy and Caitlin are SNC students who are studying abroad there and are very good friends with Autumn and Jenn.  It was so nice to see smiling faces waiting for us J

We took a bus and then walked a ways to get to the girls apartment.  The town was beautiful at night!  We stopped on the way for a quick dinner.  I have never had more delicious food in my whole entire life.  We ate at the Istanbul Kabob Shop.  It was absolutely to die for!  A tortilla wrap with chicken, lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, a spicy sauce, and a ranch like sauce.  It was so good I even took a picture of it!  We got to the apartment and were greeted by the girls roommates; Laurie Ann, Sara, Tracey, Morgaine, and Leah.  It was fun to just hang out for a while in a place where I wasn’t with a host family.  It felt just like being at school again, but in a foreign country instead J 

We decided we were going to go out that night to a bar/dance club called TWICE.  We got all dressed up and were super excited to go out.  In Europe people don’t typically go out until 12 or 12:30, so we showed up at TWICE at 12:30.  The music started off ok, but gradually got worse, so we called it an early night and went back to the apartment. 

Saturday we got up around 9:30 and started our day.  There was a German Fest going on in the Plaza Santa Croce.  Our breakfast consisted of delicious deep fried donut pretzels.  We walked around German Fest and made our way to the open market nearby.  There were tons of vendors selling soccer apparel, leather jackets and purses, souvenir type things, and also scarves.  I did splurge and buy a few of those for myself J  We then walked to the Duomo.  This is the largest cathedral in Florence.  I did find out that every city in Italy has a Duomo, which just means it’s the biggest cathedral there.  We didn’t go inside because the amount of tourists was ridiculous, but I got some pretty awesome pictures of the outside.  We were also going to walk to the Academia, where the sculpture “David” is but we decided we didn’t want to wait in those lines either and were perfectly content seeing the fake David which was nearby and spending time with the girls.  We had lunch at a little pizza place which was awesome.  I miss Italian food in Spain!  And for dinner we went back to German fest for a brat and french fries.  Waynizzle and Dad…my brat was definitely missing the secret sauce though J   We then went back to the apartment and were greeted with a little surprise.  Billy (another SNC study abroad student who is studying in Rome) showed up with 2 of his roommates.  We decided that we couldn’t waste a perfectly good night in Italy so we walked to the Ponte Veccio which is a bunch of cute shops on a bridge overlooking the river.  We had some gelato and hung out on the steps of the cathedral then went back to the apartment.  We played KEMPS which is the best card game ever!  I can’t wait to show you all how to play it when I get home.  Then we decided to go out to TWICE again in hopes of some better music.  We were in luck!  I had so much fun dancing with everyone that we stayed out until 3:30.  We went back to the apartment and then stayed up for another hour and a half because we had to take a taxi back to the airport at 5:15 a.m.  I will never fly out before 7:15 again. That was way too early for me!

 We had a long day of traveling back to Toledo and I was very happy to take a nap in my own bed and catch up on some homework.  I was exhausted, but already wishing I could be back in Florence with the girls having a ton of fun!!  This next weekend I will be staying in Toledo and catching up on sleep.  I’m going to do some shopping around town and then on Sunday we might go to Madrid for the open market, the Reina Sofia, and a BULL FIGHT!  I’m pretty excited. 

Thanks for the emails and letters J  I love them!

 

Ciao Bella,

Amy