THE PARENTS ARE HERE!!!!

WOOOOHOOOOOO! I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR MONTHS FOR THIS! but really.

Finally! I woke up early Friday morning to surprise them and meet them at the airport. I got a little teary eyed, not gonna lie, but I ducked behind a column so they wouldn't see my wiping my eyes. Haha. It was so nice having them here. I planned on staying part time in the pensione and part time with them at the hotel.  I guess I underestimated how much I missed them because I spent every single night at the hotel, and most waking moments that I could with them. I just didn’t want to waste any time with them! The first couple days we just walked around and showed them Florence.

While I was in class, they went to the standard museums and walked around the city. I would meet them after class at night and we went shoe shopping (scored on some awesome boots) and then we went to dinner. Boy did we eat well, not that you had any doubts we wouldn't! But it was wonderful meals, I couldn't bring myself to order any pasta (can you blame me, once a day is killing me!) so I finally got my first red meat since being here. They don’t serve it in the Pensione and it’s too expensive on a college budget, but oh man was it delicious. We had some great food, awesome wine, and even better laughs. Asks mom for a good mozzarella bar joke :) (inside joke) The only thing missing was John. Really! I missed him lots, the family dynamic without him just isn't the same.

 

        Wednesday we took a train to Luca, an old medieval town about 2 hours outside Florence. The original city wall is still in tact! Simply amazing. We rented bikes and tooled around the wall and inside the city before stopping for lunch. It was a great way to get outside of Florence for awhile. Not to mention it was a beautiful fall day. The leaves were all turning a beautiful color and it was sunny, yet still cool.

And before we knew it, it was Thursday! Thanksgiving! Thanksgiving, being one of my favorite holidays, made me a little homesick. If mom and dad hadn’t been with me, I don’t know how I would have managed. But do not worry, the homesickness did not ruin the day at all! We took a fabulous tour with Monika, the same woman I had my prior wine tour with (in the post below). We went through all of Chianti (which is a wine area in Tuscany). It’s so funny 15 minutes outside of Florence, and you feel like you’ve been transported to a movie set. (think: Under the Tuscan Sun). It is simply beautiful. You know, I don’t think I could live in Florence for my whole life, but I ABSOLUTELY could live in Tuscany with a vineyard or olive trees. It’s amazing. Monika set up a great day for us, from 11am till 7pm of Tuscan adventures. What’s great about Monika’s tours is she doesn’t have a set itinerary, she just calls up her friends the morning of to see who’s home and who she can bring us too. The woman can talk to just about anyone and knows all of Tuscany practically. It was more like spending the day meeting friends, rather than being on a “tour” per say.
Our first stop was to see Lucia, who is this 78 year old Italian woman who makes all her own wine and olive oil. We got to taste the olive oil, which is more like “olive juice” as Monkia said since it was just pressed about 8 or so days ago. We tasted it with spoons, which gives you an idea of the informal setting we were in. When Dad asked to take her picture with me, she responded (in Italian) “No, no, please, I’m so beautiful my pictures are all already around the world” We laughed and she bottled up some olive oil for us, right then and there. Pretty sweet. We left Lucia’s and headed through scenic Tuscany, stopping frequently so dad could hop out and take some beautiful pictures.

 (i hate the above picture, but i had to show how she bottles the oil)

We then headed to “the Academy of Good Taste” where Stefano was waiting for us. Talk about a character. Here we sampled 5 different types of olive oil and vinegar. I had no idea there was even a difference in any of them. But they all tasted good, and it was an experience we’ve never had and will never forget. He was a funny man, as you can tell from his get up. Next Monika took us to another friends for a burger. This butcher, is a little crazy, Monika said. She told us that when mad-cow disease became prevalent in Florence and restaurants outlawed serving Florentine beef steaks for awhile, he made a coffin for the meat and had funeral procession through town…. Does that give you a picture!? Haha, but it was a really cool restaurant on top, with a butcher shop downstairs. When we walked downstairs, it was like a party was going on rather than people working. The butcher was eating what he cut for customers, as he cut, and everyone was gathered around laughing. Just enjoying their time together, which totally the attitude here. Just enjoying time together over food, no worries type of thing. So we went back upstairs and ate a giant burger that was amazing!! No bun, just good and tasty meat. We ran into a little bit of car trouble so Monika left quickly to change cars.

We then headed towards Roberto’s vineyard for some more wine. His house/vineyard looked like it came out of a story book. The house itself was built in the 1400’s (I believe?) or 1600s. I think the former. Either way, INCREDIBLE. Most everything was the same on the inside, and a large fire was burning when we walked in. We sampled 2 of his chianti classic’s and talked. I would kill to live in a house like this! After that, we stopped in a 30 person town. I’m not kidding 30 people. We walked the one road and looked at the castles and homes. It was surreal. We had an espresso at a little old woman’s cafe, where she and a friend were visiting, and some Ricciarelli, traditional Tuscan cookies. They were made of almond paste and melted in your mouth. To die for! We had to buy some for snacks later, obviously :)

After that we were on our way to our final wine destination, Fernando’s. Fernando, was also our last stop on my first tour with Monika (this was the only repeat I had). Fernando, is 72 years old, and lives in Montefiorelle, a town in Tuscany. Here he makes about 10,000 bottles of wine per year, and some olive oil. But 1500 of those bottles he saves for his family (3 families, 1 bottle per day!) He is the sweetest old man who only speaks Italian, but last trip, I was the only one who could communicate with him (not very well though, but hey I tried!) so he loves me. We went and sampled all 8 of his wines from the years from 2005-2009. He made us some bread and meat and cheese too. It was another great stop! Our final destination was a butcher shop in town which had tons and tons of prosciutto hanging from the ceiling. A little disturbing, but it tasted great! We then headed back into Florence. Talk about an amazing and once in a lifetime Thanksgiving!!

 Fernando!

    Friday morning we woke up and made the day a shopping day. We got cool items but my favorite is the necklace Dad bought me. I really wanted to have one from Florence since I don’t have that many necklaces. I guess I shouldn’t share about it since it IS my Christmas gift, but I’m too excited not too! It’s a bronze coin shape, which has the Florentine symbol on it an Iris, and the flip side has St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of Florence on it. It’s BEAUTIFUL! I will always have a piece of Florence with me, and it is the perfect gift of my trip. After I write this, I will forget about it (wink) until Christmas and I open it! After shopping, we had a picnic of cheese & prosciutto that we bought at the butcher shop the night before and Lucia’s wine. We ate it at Piazza Michelangelo, which in my opinion has the best view of Florence from above. It was a clear, beautiful day. The best day I’ve been up there.

After that we walked up to San Miniato, an old Church to hear the Gregorian priests chant. Except we sorta got stuck at mass, which was nice, since the ceremony felt like we were back in 800. Then we went back to the hotel to regroup and have dinner. After another awesome meal, we walked around and went back to the hotel. Oh! And this whole week they have been working on putting up christmas lights all over the city! And on mom and dad’s last night they got a peak of some of them lit up! The city looked beautiful. I’m so glad they got to see them lit, what a great last night.

   

    It’s Saturday morning, they just left about 2 hours ago, and I miss them already. Everyone is traveling this weekend...literally there are only 4 people from Gonzaga here. And only 1 other person in the pensione this weekend. Kinda creepy. So I’m sitting here, blogging, eating the peppermint taffy mom left me listening to Christmas music (shoutout to the classic holiday jam: “donde estas santa claus?) . Naturally..it’s my favorite time of year, the buildup to Christmas, plus let’s be real I’ve been listening to Christmas music and watching Christmas movies (with Nicole and Hanna) since MID November :) I’m so excited to come home for the most magical time of year and see everyone. I have such mixed feelings on leaving. I don’t want to say goodbye to this amazing adventure, but I know there will be nothing like coming home. That’s for sure. Dublin next weekend, my last trip of the semester! It should be magical. Love you all. Eat some leftovers for me! And Fight On SC! Ciao belle!

Vino, Vino...Me Piace Vino Molto

    Tuesday, Anna (my good friend in the pensione) and her mother and a couple other girls and there mom’s invited me to go on a wine tasting! It was Hanna’s birthday so we thought why not! There was 8 of us: Myself, Hanna (miss 21 bday girl!), Nicole, Anna, Anna’s mom, Michelle and her mom, and the mom’s friend Ginny. Our tour guide was a younger woman named Monika who moved here in the late 70’s from Germany as a young adult, and hasn't left since! She was simply amazing. We went to 3 different vineyards to taste wine and olive oil! The olive oil was amazing. It was so green and flavorful, seriously unlike anything we have in the US. We had such a great time with all the girls, just laughing and drinking wine. Some of the moms and girls started pouring out their glasses after mid-sip because they knew we had alot of wine to get through. However, Hanna and I were going to make the best of our 50 euro and we drank every glass they gave us at each stop! It was simply fabulous. I emailed Monika and arranged her to give Mom and Dad a tour too because it was just a great time seeing Tuscany.
(Michelle, Nicole, Me, Hanna the BDAY GIRL, and Anna)
 
 The Girls with Ginny, Monika the tour guide, and Fernando 

 The girls with Michael, an American who moved out to Tuscany to produce his own wine

 The girls and the moms!

Under the Tuscan Sun

 After Rome and Barcelona the weekend before and my parents coming the upcoming weekend, I decided to have a weekend in Florence to myself. My two friends Hanna and Nicole and I decided we would do touristy Florence things which we never really take the time to do. Which was perfect since Mom & Dad were coming and I wanted to be prepared! :) We also spent this weekend listening to Christmas songs and getting ready for Christmas time. Early? I think not! Since there’s no Thanksgiving here, it technically is the holiday season already! Anyways, Friday morning we got up early and headed to a sandwich shop called the “Oil Shop” only open on the weekdays. Its famous with Study Abroad students so we had to see what the hype was about. It was pretty good. We then ate them in Santa Croce, which is an old Church and one of my favorites. The piazza is pretty big so we ate, and talked, and people watched. Florence is the prettiest when you just take the time to sit and watch. There’s always Italians arguing, or just talking at an arguing volume, and tourists wandering aimlessly. It’s nice.
 
We then decided to go to the Bobili gardens. They are behind the Pitti Palace, a giant old palace which belonged to the Pitti family and now contains museums. We wandered around and ran into our friend Bobby who lives in our pensione.

(art in the garden)

After seeing most of the garden we decided to lay in the grass and just admire the views. It was freezing so we got all snuggly, hence the photo our friend Bobby took. Bobby, who has been singing all his life, serenaded us. We demanded Christmas tunes, naturally. We laughed and listened thinking how this should totally be apart of a movie. His voice is amazing, sorta gospely and soulful. It was the perfect day. It was one of those moments when you sit and think, "I'll always remember this exact moment and how it feels". Those moments are so rare, but they are the ones that will always last. We then headed back to the Penisone to freshen up for dinner. After a delicious meal at one of our local spots “Il Gato e Volpe” (the cat and wolf) we came back and watched a movie. It was a great day.

The next morning we got up and did some homework. We then went to the Pitti palace to look around and hit up some of the museums. Our favorite was the Costume museum which has gowns and outfits dating from the modern time till the 1600s. There was so many pretty outfits in there and it was really cool to see all the different styles of the days. We wandered around for a couple hours, and then went inside the Cathedral, the Duomo. Walking by it everyday is one thing, but the inside is beautiful and HUGE! We then had dinner, and went out for a little.

 (above: outside the Duomo, below: the inside of the Duomo)

   Sunday we took a trip to Fiesole, which was an Etruscan (civilization, pre-Roman) settlement. It’s in the hills overlooking Florence and really gives some awesome views! It’s a pretty quaint town but it’s beautiful. There’s a monastery and church at the top that we got to peek through. We sat and looked down on Florence and talked about how lucky we all were. It’s weird to think how quickly time is flying by. I’ve been marking the end of my semester when my parents come, since I only have 2 weekends after they leave. And now that they are here, I am so happy to see them, but also sad knowing my time is ticking. Which is why we spent this whole weekend doing as much as we could. I’m just not ready to say goodbye to Florence.

Roman Around!

I have been a bad blogger. Or a lazy one at least! Two weekends ago, I was in Rome with my class, Roman Art & Architecture.
 
We left Friday morning at 6 am, and I was less than my bubbly self to put it nicely. Thank god we had a 3 hour bus ride for me to get some shut eye! There’s about 25 kids in my class, plus my teacher and 2 staff for assistance. We arrived at 10am, and went straight to business.
        Before I begin talking about my trip, I need to first explain our tour guide, aka my teacher, Professor Carrera. Although, I’m fairly certain that words cannot adequately describe her. She is about, oh I don’t know, 90? Okay, alright, she’s in her late 60’s AT LEAST. She’s taught so many people’s parents who were in Florence God knows how long ago. She was initially from Puerto Rico and the States, but eventually met a Florentine and has been here ever since. She is a trip. She repeats herself constantly and claims to know everyone’s names by heart (she also teaches the Intro to Florence class, which I am in, so that makes another 80 students, totaling about 100 plus students). In ONE conversation she called me Allie, then Amy, then after I corrected her, she said Oh I know Abby. So….that’s her, in a nutshell. Which seems the appropriate colloquialism since she is A NUT.
       But we all love her, you just have to learn to love her.  Professor Carrera claimed prior to this trip that she “would kill us!” from all the walking we were to do in Rome. We laughed, being that she’s been around since the antiquity and is like 5 foot nothing. WE WERE WRONG. This trip was more sightseeing and touring than ever thought possible. We saw Rome like no one else. It was amazing, but defiantly an exhausting weekend.

The Arch of Titus


Colosseum, or the Flavian Ampitheater (which is the actual name of the building, the name Colosseum came much later as a nickname, since Flavian built the temple of the colossal statue of Nero, a former emperor who was insane. Hence, the location of the building on the colossal statue made it the "colosseum") there's a little lesson for ya.
 
  So we arrived at 10 am and saw everything to see in Rome till about 6 p.m. The deal with the class going there was that we students would present all the art pieces and monuments/buildings. So before the trip we signed up for 3 pieces to research and then present to the class in front of the work. It was really a great learning experience. Not only did we get much more involved and engaged, it made the day go by faster since the “guide” would change at everything we stopped in front of. Day 1 we packed it in! The Palazzo Massimo museum, the colosseum, the Arch of Titus, the Forum, The Sacred Way, The Borghese museum. By the time 5 rolled around and we were waiting to get inside the Borghese museum we were all laying on the grass outside of pure exhaustion. Until the horrid woman (just kidding) made us go inside. However this was my favorite museum. The Bernini sculptures blew my mind. The way he used the marble to show weight and depth was incredible (don’t I sound cultured!) but really. Google image him and you will get some pretty sweet sculptures. We couldn't take pictures inside the museum so I can’t show any.


The Roman Forum (or what's left)

The Spanish Steps, and my friend McCall (who's a Manhattan beach local!)

 

The Pantheon (by far one of the coolest buildings I've seen in Europe; 1st c AD, meaning "house of the gods" dedicated to the 7 Planetary Roman gods) NOT to be confused with the paRTHEnon, professor carrera said she'd fail us.

    The next day was another jam packed day. We headed to the Vatican city to see the Museum, the Sistine chapel,etc. I really enjoyed being there, but it was a different experience than I expected. With so many people there, I really didn’t feel like I was anywhere holy, let alone where all (well, most of) the Popes lived. It was a little much. However, the Sistine chapel, art-wise was amazing. It was just hard to stay there long without being pushed over by an Asian tourist who JUST had to have the perfect picture of them not smiling in the chapel, though pictures weren’t allowed. But I snuck one on my iPhone :)

Sistine Chapel fresco

St. Peter's Square

    We then went to St. Peters, and what seemed like a thousand other churches. The last church was the Church of Gesu, the “mother” of all Jesuit Churches, where St Ignatius lived and studied.We even got a private tour of his quarters next to the church. It was pretty cool, being that I go to Loyola Marymount where our mascot is “Iggy the Lion” after IGnatius..(Iggy, Iganatius, get it?) The church was over the top decorated. Professor said Ignatius prayed in his quarters and then would walk next door to the church and after entering the church he’d lose his faith again and have to go back to his quarters to reflect. Old people humor. It really is amazing though, being in Rome. Everything is so old, and you really feel like you’ve time traveled. After the tour, we,with the little energy we had (and the coffee I refused to go without) headed to see the Colosseum at night. It was so much more stunning without all the crazy tourists everywhere. Plus the way its lit up, all you want to do is stand in front of it and stare. Which is basically what we did. We then met up with some friends who are studying there, but go to Gonzaga, and went to an irish bar...what did you think I was TOO tired to go out? Please. It was a fun night.

Colosseum at night (first: with flash, second: sans flash)

    The next morning we toured more churches, yes, there are even more than I thought. We were supposed to go to Ostia Antica, which was the ancient port of Rome for more relics, but with the weather forecast predicting rain we couldn't go since it wouldn’t be safe since its all dirt. This gave us our first day-time free time! We decided to go hear the Pope speak in St. Peter’s square. We waited an hour or so, and finally he came out and gave a speech in Italian. He then addressed all the people in their native language that he knew. He knew a ton, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian (obviously), Dutch, German, English. He wished us a Blessed Sunday and peace and thanked us for coming. It was so cool. With my camera which has aweeeesome zoom I got some pics of the Pope. Pretty cool.

 

 Yep, that's him!

    After that we grabbed a bite to eat and headed back to the hotel and back to Florence. Definitely my most educational trip thus far!