La Locura de Italia.. May 3, 2009

Wow.. long time no post. So… Italy. Craziness. Exhaustion. Beauty. That’s about all… We got into Milan around 1, ate lunch, then peaced out for Sacile (1 hour from Venice) since we were tired and ready to rest. When we arrived, Jered (my cousin) and Shannon (his wife) were there to pick us up from the train station. We hopped in their cute red (and very American) Jeep and headed to dinner. The pasta was amazing, but it was slightly disturbing to see an entire restaurant in a small Italian town filled with American families (guess that’s what you get on an Air Force base..). Then we headed to their house, which was super nice and different than I expected since the outside looks like an exact copy of the other 50 houses on the street (mass production, gotta love it) but the inside was comfortable and pretty and very home-y. It felt almost like I was back in the States again, and we even had Cap’n Crunch for breakfast! The next morning we were off to Venice, and merely stepping out of the station I knew it was stunning. The concept of canals instead of streets sounds cool.. but it looks incredible! The water was a clear-ish blue/green color, and the streets lined with adorable shops, restaurants, and street vendors. Every store sold colorful, sparkly, fabulous masks, and the details on some of them were unbelievable. I wanted to get one for my parents’ collection but they already have so many… plus, I wasn’t sure how to get that back in a carry-on =)  haha.. We ate our first Italian pizza (good, but not fabulous, I think we ate in a tourist trap by accident), our first Italian gelato (made an error on that judgement call.. so many places had better flavors and creamier gelato.. oh well), and walked through the streets all day. The buildings’ facades are incredible, with layers peeling away that clearly date back to Romeo and Juliet times. Overall.. a crazy long, complicated day, filled with lessons learned, food mistakes, and other mishaps… plus, to top it off, on our train back, some bum decided to get on without buying a ticket (apparently you can get away with it frequently.. but not this time) and he started to CHOKE the ticket collector… NOT cool.. and of course it was in our car, 2 rows away from where Elise and I were sitting. A woman fainted, the train worker’s vein was throbbing out of his head as he tried not to kill the stupid man, and a bunch of men jumped up to separate the two. Then crazy man decides to run up and down the train, we stop in the middle of no where, they find him apparently, we get to the next stop and we see him being ‘escorted’ by 5 Italian policemen.. waving his hands and pretending to be innocent. Then to top it all off, we missed our stop since we were so far back in the train we couldn’t see the station name.. and Jered and Shannon had to drive half an hour to come get us at the next stop. Such a fun time… Let’s just say we went home and went to bed after that..

Next morning and off to Florence.. We got in, grabbed a 20 Euro hostel (PlusFlorence.. if you’re ever in any of the cities with Plus Hostels.. stay there!!!) with a pool, rooftop terrace, bar, club, restaurant, sauna, and gym (all for free.. which never ever happens), ate some delicious tomato soup (maybe not as good as Brio still.. but still very very good.. just different), had our first experience with nasty Italian bread (they don’t salt it because you’re supposed to eat it with food, not before you get your food.. crazy Italians), and headed out to explore. It was raining, but we still managed to see the David.. who is WAY bigger than I thought, at like 17 feet tall? or something ridiculous? and his body is ripped. Then we just saw the Duomo and a bunch of cute plazas and all the ‘sights’ of Florence. Another early night, traveling really wiped us out, and we met these 2 girls in our hostel from where else? Penn State.. and where were they studying abroad? SEVILLA. Nuts, I know. They were great so we hung out for a while before heading to bed.  

Next day, more of Florence. Went up to the lookout point over the entire city, and even with the cloudy day it was beautiful. Then walked about an hour down this huge hill, saw the rest of the city (literally) and went to the best meal we had in Italy. This little restaurant called 4 Leoni (4 lions… bet you couldn’t have guessed that), served us pear ravioli (sounds gross, but don’t diss it til you try it), and a spinach, pesto, cheese, and avocado salad that were both to die for. Yum. After lunch, we headed back to the hostel to meet Lorenzo, Elise’s ex-step-brother-in-law (sounds like a Rabun family connection to me haha). Only one problem, we told him the street name that our hostel is on, but apparently it’s only one way once you get up to where our hostel was, so he drove around for over an hour trying to find us, while we sat on the front step like hobos. But, when he showed up in his cute little Honda CR-V (don’t see many of those in Europe, let me tell you), it was all ok. He was gorgeous, with salt and pepper hair and stunning blue eyes, and his accent was adorable! He was so funny and we laughed all the way out to his parents’ house in the outskirts of the city. Then, his mom made us tea, went grocery shopping, and made us the MOST incredible dinner. To start, fresh salami and bread. Next, tagliolini with a porcini mushroom sauce. Then, gnocchi (my fav) with a chesnut cream sauce. AND, to top it all off, balsamic glazed pork. Man oh man, was I in culinary heaven. The whole fam was impressed at my pasta knowledge (I can name a ton, thanks to my mom.. who knows why that’s so cool.. but I was proud anyway haha). The house was filled with antiques and gorgeous artwork, and we discovered that Lorenzo’s mom was actually the artist! E and I decided we want our busts done some day =)

Tuesday morning.. and off to the train station. Lorenzo took us for breakfast at a café and I had the most delicious cream puff of my life (not helping with the weight loss plan, clearly). Then we drove around the town to the train station to head to Roma! Oh if only we had known… The train took barely any time and we were there before we knew it. It was, of course, raining, so we stopped by an internet café to find somewhere to stay. You know me right? I NEVER go anywhere without having planned where I will be staying, but I tried to be spontaneous in the hopes that a CouchSurfer would respond and we would have free accommodations the whole trip. So much for that. We went and looked at 3 different places on the other side of town. First, Happy Days hostel. Happy Days my ass. We got off the metro to find that it was not at the metro stop they told us, nor even at the address they told us online. When we finally did get there, it was a sketchy apartment with some sort of Hispanic man sitting behind a desk with 5 computer screens in front of him and a Mexican maid running around cleaning up the place. It was repulsive. So, clearly we left. Next, 8 hotels that were out of our price range, one of which was run by Lurch (if you haven’t seen the Munsters.. you won’t get that reference). Finally, we ran into a B&B for 80 Euros a night. Way too expensive, but atleast it was a place to stay. This was after walking around 4 hours around the city, in the off-and-0n rainy weather, asking a million places where to stay, and failing miserably. Plus, E’s luggage broke and then had to be carried around (I had already been hauling my 20 pound bag around all day.. so we were both miserable after that). We dropped our stuff off and headed into the real center to see what we could do about improving the night. We found an adorable street filled with designer shops and tiny restaurants. After forever just poking around Piazza Navona, we picked a place and got an antipasto platter and some pasta. Yum. Then, we stopped by a gelato place only to have the BEST gelato of my LIFE. It was incredible, and the guy doling it out was generous and nice and talked to us for a while. Then we headed home to sleep off our miserable day.

Next day, started out with high hopes of seeing everything in Rome. We headed to the Vatican to get in line before the masses, and got so confused by the 100 lines without signs and thousands of priests, nuns, and tourists of every shape and size that we gave up. Nice, right? Oh well. It worked out for the best, because we pretty much saw everything else. Villa Borghese (in a huge park like Central Park and very green), the Spanish Steps (probably one of my fav monuments), the Trevi Fountain (also gorgeous), the Pantheon (where we ran into the 4 other girls from our program in Rome, but they were on a bike tour so we didn’t talk long) and a bunch more.. We grabbed delicious sandwiches for lunch, walked around Campo di Fiori (another plaza close to Navona) and headed back to the B&B to get our stuff yet again. This time, we headed over to a place called David’s Flat. Supposedly, it was in a good area right by the Colosseum, so we would get to see the other side of the city. HA. What a rip off. It was a grungy, nasty, smelly place that was nothing like the pictures, and since the all girls room had a ‘problem’ we were in an 8 person room with tons of boys. Not usually an issue, but one of them happened to be the worst snorer ever and E had to throw a pillow at him in the middle of the night to shut him up. Anyway, that’s later. After being pissed about being ripped off, we left asap and went over to the Colosseum, only to realize it costs money to enter and we were both broke. Good idea girls. So we headed down to see E’s fav monument, the Vittorio Emmanuel II monument (look it up, it’s so pretty) and get dinner. We headed to the Trastevere area which was supposed to be good for dinner, and stopped by what seemed like a great place. HA, yet another tourist trap (literally, the entire inside was filled with a huge tour group, which we discovered too late). The service was terrible, the food bland and overpriced, and we were miserable to say the least. We booked it out of there asap after we ate and headed back to Navona to walk around. That was about it… other than the terrible night’s sleep I got.

Last day in Rome (finally.. how sad is that?). Got up early, got to the Colosseum, jumped on a last-minute tour due to mad crowds (May 1st is some sort of holiday in Rome.. no one knew what it was though), and walked around for a while. Then, as usual, E and I got separated and had to look for each other for around an hour, before running and getting the most delish sandwiches ever at a tiny deli. Fresh ingredients for low prices.. it was like Subway but better. Then we headed back to do the Palantine and Forum part of the tour. After a few hours there, we were pretty tired, so we went back to the hostel to freshen up and move to our private room. Atleast it didn’t smell bad or contain any train-like snoring men. Then I got the best pizza ever (they eat it in paper wrappers on the streets and I had been craving it for days.. and it was SO worth the wait), we wound our way through the streets in the center, and we headed, yet again, to Piazza Navona and Campo di Fiori. We had our first experience with antipasti, where you pay for a cocktail/drink and get a free buffet (sort of like tapas? but more expensive) which was good, except I was still too full from the pizza to enjoy it. Discovered I didn’t like the Sex on the Beach they gave me, or the Amaretto Sour (maybe last spring break I was crazy? but I think they were just poorly made…). Oh well. Then we moved to the other place E wanted to try. She got wine and food, and I just enjoyed the outside patio with the heaters. After, I had to have one last Italian gelato, so we went back to our fav place (our friend was working again) and I had delicious Nutella-swirled gelato. SO good. Another early night, due to our early flight.. and we were off to the hostel.

Friday- Back to SEVILLA! I was so happy to be home, and Feria was gorgeous. Flo and I went to find our host parents, but their cells weren’t working with all the people so we just walked around and saw all the flamenco dresses and casetas (tent-like things filled with people drinking and dancing that you have to reserve years in advance..). It was like a county fair but dressed up, huge, and WAY more Spanish. Early to bed, due to my exhausting week.

Yesterday- went for a run then relaxed all day. Wanted to go out at night, but E gave me her bubonic plague cough somehow so I was too dizzy and tired.

Today- went for a run, saw the art market and the puppy market, ran into E at the river (it’s her 21st birthday.. crazy!), then came home for lunch. Now I’m waiting for my señor to buy bread and tell me what there is to eat since it appears our señora left us without much food for the weekend.. can’t believe my fam will be here in 4 days! Nuts. Anyway, sorry for the novel.. Hasta luego <3