Considering the fact that I didn't update my blog for 3 days this weekend, this is probably going to be the longest and most ridiculous blog post yet. Can't say I didn't warn you...
Friday, May 22
Friday was a great day. I went to school, came home, had lunch with my family, and immediately left to visit the IperCOOP in Reggio Emilia with Valentina and Simona. The IperCOOP is basically a HUGE shopping mall, which also has a COOP store inside. (The COOP store is a chain that's basically a mix between a Sam's Club, a Walmart\Target, and a grocery store.) It was such a weird experience going to the IperCOOP because I felt like I was in an American shopping mall, except for the fact that I couldn't read any signs or understand what the people around me were saying. I didn't buy much at the IperCOOP (just a few presents for my family), but I did buy a dress for myself, so that was exciting! Of course I would go to Italy and buy a dress at the mall...
After we got home Jessica and I met at my flat and walked downtown to meet Matteo (our program coordinator), his friends Andrea and Stefano, Casey, Jenny, and Adrienne. Matteo, Stefano, and Andrea (a boy, not a girl) wanted the American girls to experience going to some bars in Modena so we went to a few places and then ended up at an Asian fusion restaurant for dinner. The boys left to go buy food off the street so it was just the girls for dinner and we had a blast. Adrienne was in love with the waiter, a guy from China named Mahwah, so we had a good time with him... we even got offered some free sake! I have never been so happy to eat rice and soy sauce in my life. Italian food is starting to get a little boring at this point.
When we finished dinner Casey, Jenny, and Adrienne left, but Jessica and I stayed and met up with more of Matteo's friends on Via Galucchi (the street with all the pubs in Modena). I was really weirded out when I discovered that there are no open container laws in Italy, but it was awesome! We all stood on the street with drinks and I tried to speak (in mixed Italian and English) to some of Matteo's friends, which was hilarious. They were all very nice and claimed they couldn't speak English well, but they were great. It was nice to be able to communicate somewhat! Matteo, Jessica, and I left the bars around 10 in order to get some sleep before our 7 A.M. meeting time at the train station on Saturday morning.
Saturday, May 23
I woke up at 5:30 A.M. in order to shower, pack, and get ready for our trip to Florence. We met at the train station at 7 A.M. and it only took 2 hours to get to Florence (Firenze) from Modena. Once in Firenze we walked to the hostel, dropped off our bags, broke up into smaller groups, and made our way to downtown Firenze. We had no plans for what we wanted to see in Florence so our entire motto for the weekend was 'go with the flow,' which is a motto I need to live by more often. Our first stop was a pastry shop for a mid-morning snack and oddly enough when we were walking along the street we ran into Robert Butker and his sister, who both went to Lakeside with me!!! It was the strangest thing ever, especially because I had no idea he was going to be in Europe this summer. After we got over the initial shock of running into each other in Florence, Robert and Taylor gave us some great suggestions for what we needed to see while we were in the city, which was very helpful!
Once we said our goodbyes we made our way to the Accademia di Belle Arti, where Michelangelo's David is located. It was amazing to see in person-- the statue is HUGE and so much bigger than I imagined! Unfortunately, the David was the only really exciting thing in the museum so we didn't stay for long. We did sneak a couple of pictures of the statue, even though it's not allowed. Everyone does it anyways so we didn't think too much about it, but I'm definitely glad I have the pictures now, especially since I have no idea when I'll ever be able to visit Florence again.
After seeing the David we met up with some other friends and grabbed a quick lunch. Everything was so pretty that we didn't want to waste any time with eating! We went straight to Piazza della Signora, with lunch in hand, and saw a replica of the David, along with a ton of other amazing marble statues. We then walked next door and saw the outside of the Uffizi, which was beautiful. A group of people from our program were scheduled for a guided tour of the museum so we ran into them on the stairs and talked to them for a while. Most people on the trip signed up to a do a wine tour of Tuscany on Sunday, so it left them with only one day to explore Florence. I personally wanted to be able to experience the city without having to rush and pack everything into one day, so Jessica, Casey, and I got reservations to see the Uffizi on Sunday morning instead of having to wait an hour and a half in line to go that afternoon.
After buying our tickets we walked over to Ponte Vecchio, which is the famous and beautiful bridge in Florence that has a bunch of jewelry shops lining the streets. It was an amazing view and we took so many pictures of the river and the bridges and the stores-- it was great. We also meet a bunch of random boys from Serbia, who were very excited to talk to us about how Serbia beat the US in basketball during the Olympics games. We definitely met a bunch of interesting people from around the world while we were in Florence. It's a very different city from Modena because there are many tourists and almost everyone speaks English! We hardly had to speak Italian at all while in Firenze, which was nice, but also made us miss the smaller city of Modena where there are no tourists.
After visiting Ponte Vecchio we went on a search for gelato because it was miserably hot outside (this weekend was a record high in Florence, which is horrible when there's no air conditioning). After eating gelato almost every day of this trip, we've started to become gelato snobs. None of the gelaterias looked good enough, so we walked to the center of the city and ended up settling on a small gelateria off a random side street. Not long after we sat down we started speaking to an old Italian man named Marco, who is from Firenze. He spoke no English, but we were able to communicate with him through simple language and lots of hand gestures. After our introductions Marco showed us a map, asked us where we'd been to visit so far, and said that there were three things we had to see in Florence: the Piazzale Michelangelo, the rose gardens, and the Chiesa si San Miniato al Monte. We had no idea what he was talking about, so he offered to take us there! At first we thought it was a little sketchy, going off with a random Italian grandpa, but he was the sweetest man in the world. We started to call him our nonno di Firenze (grandfather of Florence) and Santo Marco (Saint Marco) because he showed us things in Florence we never would have been able to see otherwise. We walked probably four miles, past the city walls, and up hundreds of stairs in the heat to the rose gardens and the Piazzale di Michelangelo, but the panoramic view was breathtaking. Straight ahead we saw the Duomo and the center of the city and on each side we saw the hills of Tuscany... it was by far the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. Even Marco said that he is in awe every time he climbs to the top to see the entire city.
I don't know how we were able to communicate with him so well because he spoke no English what-so-ever, but it made it even more fun because we had to speak Italian in order to talk to Santo Marco. I actually understood almost everything he said and most of it was hysterical. First off, he couldn't believe we were from the south because we were so biancha (white). He told us that we were bella, but we would be bellisima if we got some color on our skin. Apparently he has a vegetable garden that he works in every day, so he has very dark coloring (and the whole Italian gene thing doesn't hurt things). The things he told us about the city were amazing... it was like getting a free Italian tour guide for four hours. He told us so much about the history of the city, the churches, the bridges, the cemeteries, the monuments, the flowers, and on and on...we learned so much from him that no tour guide would have ever told us. He also gave us a lot of advice, about making our way around the city and about life in general. Meeting him was by far my favorite part of the trip and it was so sad when we finally said goodbye to him after our day of sightseeing. Never in my life could I imagine someone in America giving up their whole day to show tourists their city. Italians in general just seem to have so much more love for their country than anyone else in the world.
After leaving Marco we met went back to the hostel and started to get ready for dinner. We were so exhausted at this point that it felt amazing to just be able to SIT (sidenote: in Italy there is nowhere to sit. People are constantly standing. It sucks when you're tired.). We had plans to meet Matteo and his friends (the ones we met the night before in Modena, along with some others) at a local, non-touristy bar. At this point there were about nine girls from our trip who came with Matteo, so all of his friends were pretty happy to meet the flock of American girls. We were starving, but they insisted that we stay for some drinks so we did. We finally ended up eating dinner at 10:00 at night... I was not a happy camper. I was so tired and hungry that I could have cared less what I ate, but his friends insisted we go to a traditional Florentine restaurant, so we went along with it. The food was great, but I think anything would have tasted good because we hadn't eaten since 2:00 that afternoon. After dinner Matteo's friends insisted that we go to a disco, but I was about to kill someone if I didn't get to sleep. Thankfully some other girls felt the same, so we walked back to the hostel and I fell asleep within two seconds of getting into bed. It was probably the best night of sleep of my life because we had literally been walking from 9 A.M. to 11 P.M. at night. It was a long day, but it was also the best day we could have asked for in Florence.
Sunday, May 24
On Sunday we woke up around 8:30 and went to breakfast in the hostel. Our hostel was literally full of Americans. We met people from UGA, Clemson, NC State, etc and everyone there spoke English. It was a really nice place to stay, but I was happy to get out of there because it felt like I was in American again, not in Florence.
Most of the girls and our professors left to go on the wine tour, so there were only a few of us who stayed in Florence for the second day. Casey, Jessica, and I had our reservations to see the Uffizi at 10:30, so we walked around for a bit and then went into the museum with zero wait time, which was great and definitely worth the extra money to make reservations. The museum was beautiful and HUGE, but also kind of boring. I'm not the biggest fan of museums and there were only a few paintings I recognized so we only ended up staying there for only about an hour.
After the Uffizi we met up for lunch with two other girls from our trip, Elizabeth and Marianna. Since we had all day to see the city and we had already visited most of the sights, we took things really slow all day. Lunch lasted about an hour and a half and then we went off to shop.
The street markets in Firenze are incredible and they are everywhere. Florence produces a ton of leather, so there were an endless amount of tents full of purses, wallets, bags, bracelets, and belts made of leather. A lot of girls on our trip spent a ton of money on bags in Florence, but it was more fun for me to look around and see everything than to spend all day shopping. I did end up buying a leather wallet and I got the guy to lower the price for me though, so that was exciting!
After a bit of shopping we went to visit the Piazza Duomo and the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. The outside of the church was probably the most ornate church I have ever seen in my life. I took so many pictures because I couldn't get over how beautiful it was! We decided to go inside the church as well, which, unfortunately, wasn't as pretty as I hoped it would be. I'm definitely glad we got to see it though.
When we had finished at the Duomo and the Cattedrale we all walked back to the markets and shopped more. At this point it was only about 2 in the afternoon, we had seen everything we wanted to see, and we had five more hours before we had to meet the rest of the group to go back to Modena. Even though we could have spent all day visiting sights around the city, it was too hot to be outside. We found some gelato and then we walked to a bar to get drinks and talk for the next few hours. It ended up being a lot of fun to just talk and relax, even though there was no air conditioning inside the bar and it was still miserably hot. Time seemed to go by very quickly and before we knew it it was time to grab some dinner and meet up with the rest of the group.
Everyone was absolutely exhausted by the time we got to the train station and I think we all were ready to get back to Modena after a long and busy weekend. The train ride seemed to take no time at all and we were back in Modena by 10:00 P.M. Even though this weekend was very tiring, we all enjoyed visiting Florence. The city is beautiful and I really hope that someday I'll be able to go back and visit!
Friday, May 22
Friday was a great day. I went to school, came home, had lunch with my family, and immediately left to visit the IperCOOP in Reggio Emilia with Valentina and Simona. The IperCOOP is basically a HUGE shopping mall, which also has a COOP store inside. (The COOP store is a chain that's basically a mix between a Sam's Club, a Walmart\Target, and a grocery store.) It was such a weird experience going to the IperCOOP because I felt like I was in an American shopping mall, except for the fact that I couldn't read any signs or understand what the people around me were saying. I didn't buy much at the IperCOOP (just a few presents for my family), but I did buy a dress for myself, so that was exciting! Of course I would go to Italy and buy a dress at the mall...
After we got home Jessica and I met at my flat and walked downtown to meet Matteo (our program coordinator), his friends Andrea and Stefano, Casey, Jenny, and Adrienne. Matteo, Stefano, and Andrea (a boy, not a girl) wanted the American girls to experience going to some bars in Modena so we went to a few places and then ended up at an Asian fusion restaurant for dinner. The boys left to go buy food off the street so it was just the girls for dinner and we had a blast. Adrienne was in love with the waiter, a guy from China named Mahwah, so we had a good time with him... we even got offered some free sake! I have never been so happy to eat rice and soy sauce in my life. Italian food is starting to get a little boring at this point.
When we finished dinner Casey, Jenny, and Adrienne left, but Jessica and I stayed and met up with more of Matteo's friends on Via Galucchi (the street with all the pubs in Modena). I was really weirded out when I discovered that there are no open container laws in Italy, but it was awesome! We all stood on the street with drinks and I tried to speak (in mixed Italian and English) to some of Matteo's friends, which was hilarious. They were all very nice and claimed they couldn't speak English well, but they were great. It was nice to be able to communicate somewhat! Matteo, Jessica, and I left the bars around 10 in order to get some sleep before our 7 A.M. meeting time at the train station on Saturday morning.
Saturday, May 23
I woke up at 5:30 A.M. in order to shower, pack, and get ready for our trip to Florence. We met at the train station at 7 A.M. and it only took 2 hours to get to Florence (Firenze) from Modena. Once in Firenze we walked to the hostel, dropped off our bags, broke up into smaller groups, and made our way to downtown Firenze. We had no plans for what we wanted to see in Florence so our entire motto for the weekend was 'go with the flow,' which is a motto I need to live by more often. Our first stop was a pastry shop for a mid-morning snack and oddly enough when we were walking along the street we ran into Robert Butker and his sister, who both went to Lakeside with me!!! It was the strangest thing ever, especially because I had no idea he was going to be in Europe this summer. After we got over the initial shock of running into each other in Florence, Robert and Taylor gave us some great suggestions for what we needed to see while we were in the city, which was very helpful!
Once we said our goodbyes we made our way to the Accademia di Belle Arti, where Michelangelo's David is located. It was amazing to see in person-- the statue is HUGE and so much bigger than I imagined! Unfortunately, the David was the only really exciting thing in the museum so we didn't stay for long. We did sneak a couple of pictures of the statue, even though it's not allowed. Everyone does it anyways so we didn't think too much about it, but I'm definitely glad I have the pictures now, especially since I have no idea when I'll ever be able to visit Florence again.
After seeing the David we met up with some other friends and grabbed a quick lunch. Everything was so pretty that we didn't want to waste any time with eating! We went straight to Piazza della Signora, with lunch in hand, and saw a replica of the David, along with a ton of other amazing marble statues. We then walked next door and saw the outside of the Uffizi, which was beautiful. A group of people from our program were scheduled for a guided tour of the museum so we ran into them on the stairs and talked to them for a while. Most people on the trip signed up to a do a wine tour of Tuscany on Sunday, so it left them with only one day to explore Florence. I personally wanted to be able to experience the city without having to rush and pack everything into one day, so Jessica, Casey, and I got reservations to see the Uffizi on Sunday morning instead of having to wait an hour and a half in line to go that afternoon.
After buying our tickets we walked over to Ponte Vecchio, which is the famous and beautiful bridge in Florence that has a bunch of jewelry shops lining the streets. It was an amazing view and we took so many pictures of the river and the bridges and the stores-- it was great. We also meet a bunch of random boys from Serbia, who were very excited to talk to us about how Serbia beat the US in basketball during the Olympics games. We definitely met a bunch of interesting people from around the world while we were in Florence. It's a very different city from Modena because there are many tourists and almost everyone speaks English! We hardly had to speak Italian at all while in Firenze, which was nice, but also made us miss the smaller city of Modena where there are no tourists.
After visiting Ponte Vecchio we went on a search for gelato because it was miserably hot outside (this weekend was a record high in Florence, which is horrible when there's no air conditioning). After eating gelato almost every day of this trip, we've started to become gelato snobs. None of the gelaterias looked good enough, so we walked to the center of the city and ended up settling on a small gelateria off a random side street. Not long after we sat down we started speaking to an old Italian man named Marco, who is from Firenze. He spoke no English, but we were able to communicate with him through simple language and lots of hand gestures. After our introductions Marco showed us a map, asked us where we'd been to visit so far, and said that there were three things we had to see in Florence: the Piazzale Michelangelo, the rose gardens, and the Chiesa si San Miniato al Monte. We had no idea what he was talking about, so he offered to take us there! At first we thought it was a little sketchy, going off with a random Italian grandpa, but he was the sweetest man in the world. We started to call him our nonno di Firenze (grandfather of Florence) and Santo Marco (Saint Marco) because he showed us things in Florence we never would have been able to see otherwise. We walked probably four miles, past the city walls, and up hundreds of stairs in the heat to the rose gardens and the Piazzale di Michelangelo, but the panoramic view was breathtaking. Straight ahead we saw the Duomo and the center of the city and on each side we saw the hills of Tuscany... it was by far the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. Even Marco said that he is in awe every time he climbs to the top to see the entire city.
I don't know how we were able to communicate with him so well because he spoke no English what-so-ever, but it made it even more fun because we had to speak Italian in order to talk to Santo Marco. I actually understood almost everything he said and most of it was hysterical. First off, he couldn't believe we were from the south because we were so biancha (white). He told us that we were bella, but we would be bellisima if we got some color on our skin. Apparently he has a vegetable garden that he works in every day, so he has very dark coloring (and the whole Italian gene thing doesn't hurt things). The things he told us about the city were amazing... it was like getting a free Italian tour guide for four hours. He told us so much about the history of the city, the churches, the bridges, the cemeteries, the monuments, the flowers, and on and on...we learned so much from him that no tour guide would have ever told us. He also gave us a lot of advice, about making our way around the city and about life in general. Meeting him was by far my favorite part of the trip and it was so sad when we finally said goodbye to him after our day of sightseeing. Never in my life could I imagine someone in America giving up their whole day to show tourists their city. Italians in general just seem to have so much more love for their country than anyone else in the world.
After leaving Marco we met went back to the hostel and started to get ready for dinner. We were so exhausted at this point that it felt amazing to just be able to SIT (sidenote: in Italy there is nowhere to sit. People are constantly standing. It sucks when you're tired.). We had plans to meet Matteo and his friends (the ones we met the night before in Modena, along with some others) at a local, non-touristy bar. At this point there were about nine girls from our trip who came with Matteo, so all of his friends were pretty happy to meet the flock of American girls. We were starving, but they insisted that we stay for some drinks so we did. We finally ended up eating dinner at 10:00 at night... I was not a happy camper. I was so tired and hungry that I could have cared less what I ate, but his friends insisted we go to a traditional Florentine restaurant, so we went along with it. The food was great, but I think anything would have tasted good because we hadn't eaten since 2:00 that afternoon. After dinner Matteo's friends insisted that we go to a disco, but I was about to kill someone if I didn't get to sleep. Thankfully some other girls felt the same, so we walked back to the hostel and I fell asleep within two seconds of getting into bed. It was probably the best night of sleep of my life because we had literally been walking from 9 A.M. to 11 P.M. at night. It was a long day, but it was also the best day we could have asked for in Florence.
Sunday, May 24
On Sunday we woke up around 8:30 and went to breakfast in the hostel. Our hostel was literally full of Americans. We met people from UGA, Clemson, NC State, etc and everyone there spoke English. It was a really nice place to stay, but I was happy to get out of there because it felt like I was in American again, not in Florence.
Most of the girls and our professors left to go on the wine tour, so there were only a few of us who stayed in Florence for the second day. Casey, Jessica, and I had our reservations to see the Uffizi at 10:30, so we walked around for a bit and then went into the museum with zero wait time, which was great and definitely worth the extra money to make reservations. The museum was beautiful and HUGE, but also kind of boring. I'm not the biggest fan of museums and there were only a few paintings I recognized so we only ended up staying there for only about an hour.
After the Uffizi we met up for lunch with two other girls from our trip, Elizabeth and Marianna. Since we had all day to see the city and we had already visited most of the sights, we took things really slow all day. Lunch lasted about an hour and a half and then we went off to shop.
The street markets in Firenze are incredible and they are everywhere. Florence produces a ton of leather, so there were an endless amount of tents full of purses, wallets, bags, bracelets, and belts made of leather. A lot of girls on our trip spent a ton of money on bags in Florence, but it was more fun for me to look around and see everything than to spend all day shopping. I did end up buying a leather wallet and I got the guy to lower the price for me though, so that was exciting!
After a bit of shopping we went to visit the Piazza Duomo and the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. The outside of the church was probably the most ornate church I have ever seen in my life. I took so many pictures because I couldn't get over how beautiful it was! We decided to go inside the church as well, which, unfortunately, wasn't as pretty as I hoped it would be. I'm definitely glad we got to see it though.
When we had finished at the Duomo and the Cattedrale we all walked back to the markets and shopped more. At this point it was only about 2 in the afternoon, we had seen everything we wanted to see, and we had five more hours before we had to meet the rest of the group to go back to Modena. Even though we could have spent all day visiting sights around the city, it was too hot to be outside. We found some gelato and then we walked to a bar to get drinks and talk for the next few hours. It ended up being a lot of fun to just talk and relax, even though there was no air conditioning inside the bar and it was still miserably hot. Time seemed to go by very quickly and before we knew it it was time to grab some dinner and meet up with the rest of the group.
Everyone was absolutely exhausted by the time we got to the train station and I think we all were ready to get back to Modena after a long and busy weekend. The train ride seemed to take no time at all and we were back in Modena by 10:00 P.M. Even though this weekend was very tiring, we all enjoyed visiting Florence. The city is beautiful and I really hope that someday I'll be able to go back and visit!
Fabuloso! I just started "The Agony and the Ecstasy" so tickled you saw and will have photos of DAVID. I'm happy you're seeing the big cities in between to better appreciate the charms of Modena. Thanks for all the updates! You're bellisima, even fair skinned. Love, MOM
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