Day 1 Venice: Well really this story should begin the night before when we arrived at the hostel. A funny Italian man gave us a map and showed us where to visit the next day. He also marked the location of the hostel and a separate dot for where we were staying. We attributed this separate dot to a mistranslation or something, but no, he meant that we were staying in a different building. So he gave us umbrellas, lit up a cigarette, and began the trip to our room. Ask we walked through a damp, dark alley our hostel man assured us that “Venice is the safest city in the world, you do not need to be scared in alleys.” Noted.
Finally we reached the room and noticed that there were no towels. We asked if we needed to rent them or something, and he said “well if you give me some euros I can get someone to go out and get them from the market but you’re only here for one night…just use your sheets.” The next morning you would have thought there was a toga party as we were all wrapped up in long white sheets. I also accidentally walked in a Brazilian guy peeing in the bathroom as all of his friends tried to warn me. That is also how I met a group of 10 Brazilian exchange students studying in England, aka our neighbors.
And now we start the real Venice. We met Theresa’s friend at the Bridge of Sighs and went to go grab lunch. We got paninis at small lunch place filled with old Italian men drinking wine and beer at 11am. Then we got the best gelato of our entire trip (so good that I remember I ate caramel and dark chocolate). We then went to some famous Cathedral but after seeing the obscenely long line outside to get in we immediately decided prosecco was much more important.
I don’t really remember much of what we did for the rest of the day, but I do know we want back to the lunch café for a giant mozzarella stick. We also sat by the water for a while and drank bellinis and ate crackers in the shape of ducks, fish, and suns (we proceeded to play with those for a little while).
MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF THE DAY: so instead of taxi cars, people in Venice use taxi boats. While we’re waiting, Theresa and I film our rendition of “The Wonderful Thing about Tiggers” and assign Winnie the Pooh characters to everyone in Team Paris. As we have officially become “those” Americans, we get just a little more touristy when Sirus from Gossip Girl (aka Wallace Shawn) gets on our boat. I played it totally cool…okay that’s a lie I totally freaked out and debated going to talk to him about the Princess Bride and how Clueless changed my life. Anyway, at one point I swear he was like 5 feet away and I tried to make intellectual comments about old buildings while seriously freaking out about his connection to everyone’s favorite housemaid, Dorota. We got a few paparazzi pictures and then stopped staring at him and started staring at the sunset on the water in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
We then ate dinner on the water- a really really windy, slightly uncomfortable dinner-and caught the train to Cinque Terre.
The train ride to Cinque Terre- yes it deserves its own section of this post….
So for anyone who is ever considering taking an overnight train with three station changes and a two hour layover…DON’T! I can promise you that those two hours were two of the longest hours of my life. We get to Bologna and immediately our lack of Italian proves to be a challenge. We keep asking where to find the station but cannot seem to get clear directions, so we climb down the steps to what seems like a logical place for a waiting room. Instead we find hallways leading to the metro system lined with homeless people. Not only does it wreak, but the homeless people are yelling at each other and there doesn’t seem to be any place else to go (also note that it is 3am and freezing cold outside…we are also dressed to go to the beach in what we thought would be a week of 80 degree weather). We find an empty hallway nearby with vending machines. In order to distract us from the scary fighting and yelling in a language we do not even begin to understand, we try different things from the vending machine. The machine is also called a Self Bar Self which was extremely funny at the time but I can’t seem to remember why. It could be fear or complete exhaustion. After an hour, the fighting gets worse and we decide its time to find a new hideout. We go back upstairs and there, right before our eyes, is a well-lit waiting room with people sleeping rather than yelling.
Cinque Terre: this is another trip that really speaks better in pictures but I will do my best. Cinques Terre is a series of 5 cities that you can hike or train between. The first city had a beatles/love bridge where people had filled the walls with graffiti and locks. This also had one of the most beautiful views of the cities and the water was bright blue and so clear you could see the bottom of the water. At one city, we stopped to hang out some rocks by the water.
I decided to climb up one of the higher rocks and sit to look out over the water. There was another guy on the rock behind mine who looked pretty familier. We stared at each other for a while until I realized it was Mike Allerhand from UVA. I took off my sunglasses to see if he would recognize me, and immediately he shouted “Becca?” This was, by far, the strangest place to run into someone from home. He was studying in Florence and came to Cinque Terres for the day. He walked with us a little further and decided to go swim while we found a place to eat lunch.
Cinque Terres is known for its lemons so we got lemon “slushies” while we waited for a table to open up. The slushies were amazing, and they were even better because it was the same day as Foxfields and Gulfem was sad she wasn’t going to get to drink vodka slurpees so this was a pretty amazing substitution. We all ate fresh pasta and pesto for lunch, and as we were leaving the old owners of the restaurant surprised me with a bib and a perone full of red wine. This was the same pitcher thing that we drank from in Valencia where your pour wine straight into your mouth like watering can. Gulfem got cocky and held it about a foot above her head…see picture below. We visited the main beach of the last city and then took pictures with this strong man rock formation statue thing.
Then we got on a train (only one this time) and made our way to Florence.
Florence:
The first day of Florence, most of the more touristy activities were closed because it was Monday. We started the day with a Café corretto which we thought was a small cappuccino. The woman at the counter gave us strange looks and then asked us if we were sure that’s what we wanted. We soon understood her confusion when our coffee came with brandy. Apparently café corretto is espresso with a shot of liquor. Gulfem and I took ours like shots and I chased my espresso with my rice pudding tart. After breakfast/pregame we decided to go to the Duomo and climb the tower to see the city. We spent a lot of time hanging out and taking pictures in the bell tower, and then we met up with Gulfem’s friend Nas for lunch. Nas is a cooking student in Italy right now, so she took us to the best place to bolognaise and vegetable puree. There are no words to describe how amazing our meal was. You could actually taste the pasta and the puree was gone in like about two minutes, and of course there was wine. After lunch we walked through the leather markets followed by more gelato. This time we opted for fruit options and I got strawberry and coconut. Then, as usual, we had to stop in H&M and Zara. We stopped for drink and found a small café that had buffet happy hour. Since we couldn’t decide what we wanted to drink, the man said he would surprise us and we were fortunate enough to receive 5 spritzs. A spritz is a funky tasting, highlighter orange, bitter liquor drink that is quite popular in Italy. We hadn’t planned on eating anything but the mini ham sandwiches took away the foul taste of the drink. For dinner, Nas sent us to an amazing pizza place where we got fried mozzarella and warm octopus salad. Once again there are no words for that meal.
Our second day in Florence was our tourist day. We began at the Academia to see Michelangelo’s David. The statue was apparently made from a piece of abandoned marble and it was larger than I had ever imagined. The detail of the statue, from his facial expressions to the veins on his hands was indescribable. Despite the long lines, I highly recommend anyone in Florence to go see it.
After the Academia came a little bit more shopping and afterward Nas showed us a small sandwich place for lunch. The place looked just like a lunch counter, but it turned out to have cheap, incredible sandwiches. I got truffled cheese, artichokes, ham, and rocket on fresh bread. It came in a little paper pocket with a cartoon sandwich that read “Speedy Snack.” I found it pretty amusing that one of the best lunches of my life had a dancing sandwich on the front.
We then rushed to the Ufizzi and saw some of the most incredible art in the world. We saw a DaVinci painting that was the first painting to ever show a woman reading. We also saw the only painting that was known for a fact to be painted by Michelangelo. There was also Raphael’s self portrait which came in handy when we were in the Vatican museum and we could recognize that Raphael painted himself into his work.
That night was our last dinner in Florence so we went for steak, apparently Florence is known for its meat. In Florence you order meat by the kilo, but we just knew to ask for 5 servings. An old Italian man came out with a huge slab of meat, doused it in olive oil, and then cut it right by our table. The meat was barely cooked and tasted amazing. I cannot impress upon you how much meat there was, and unfortunately we couldn’t look at steak for a few days after that. It was still a classic example of a great cut of steak that doesn’t need a sauce because it is cooked so well. A great ending to Florence.
No comments:
Post a Comment