lovely spring weekend

Okay so this is a blog that I started to write on Monday, March 29th...... Better late than never??? Unfortunately I never wrote more than the following list:


bros bday (also talk about monday)
saturday getting work done
tea house
sunday
vacation


I can't quite remember everything I wanted to say so I will say this:

Monday, March 22nd was the twins' birthday but we celebrated the following Friday. On Monday I gave them party hats, birthday candles and silly string and also brought home their favorite cookies from the bakery. 


Then came the rest of the week. I'm sure it was a lovely week.


Friday night the twins invited 20 of their friends and some of their parents out to dinner at this fabulous pizzeria. I sat with the adults downstairs and all of the bambini sat upstairs and made a ruckus. Dinner was GREAT! Really good pizza, great wine, etc. etc. The usual. 

Saturday.... hmm... Saturday I.... oh, I went to study with Breana in the center. First we went to Moyo, where we often have aperitivo, but it was a little strange because they made us sit at the high table right in the front, facing the bar where all the workers were just standing around, so we couldn't really chat without feeling funny. Therefore that didn't last long... So we headed over to Lion's Fountain for bagels and cream cheese and cider. Only then I decided to have a Bloody Mary instead and it was delicious!!! One of the best drinks other than beer or cider I have ever had! It will be happening again soon! 


Satruday night we went to Mago Merlino's tea house. LOVED IT. A cozy room of tea and floor pillows and lamps and other great things. Breana, Alayna, Lenora, Christine and I just sat and sipped tea and chatted and ate little tea snacks made by the owner (Rocco) until 1am. It was my kind of night, thats for sure! 

Sunday. Not sure why I wrote Sunday on the list.... I couldn't even begin to tell you what I did....


Vacation. I was getting VERY excited for vacation at this point!!! See next few blogs!


xo

PART TWO or the seemingly worse yet still amazing weekend

Saturday
Saturday morning I woke up at 6.30am to head off on a day of adventures. We first hit up Pienza (in this case we = all the Smith girls, Monica and Giovanna along with her husband, Alessio and his sister and our Italian friend Alex – what a crew!) where we wandered around for a good 3 hours. I went to lunch with Ali, Breana and Alayna at this really delicious ristorante where we ate incredible gnocchi. After Pienza, we bussed over to San Gimginano, the city of towers! We wandered for a few hours, ate some really delish gelato and bought supposedly famous wine (which turns out, I thought was disgusting….. too bad…)

When we got back from our little trip, I ran home, changed, freshened up and headed back out to meet the usual nightlife posse, this time to gather for aperitivi in honor of Alessio’s birthday. We ate at this cute place called Oibo (http://www.oibo.net/), although it wasn’t the best aperitivo I have eaten here (first place goes to Negroni, across the arno http://www.negronibar.it/). Something you should know about how we roll in Firenze is this: Every time we go out, we have no choice but to make a reservation, even if we are going on a Monday night to aperitivi at a strange time. This is because, on the weekends especially, we never travel in a pack less than 10. Initially this was frustrating because no one would ever make up their mind, but now by te middle of every week there has been at least one mass Facebook message to everyone stating what we are doing, when we are doing it and where we should meet. It has become a bit of a joke. Take Saturday night for example – I had to call and make a reservation for 20 people two days in advance. It’s great.

Anywho. After aperitivi, we headed to this American/English pub called the Lion’s Fountain (http://www.thelionsfountain.com/) where we spent the rest of the night. Until we left. At which point I realized someone had stolen my wallet. Oops….  I am sure that I didn’t loose it for it was in my hand all night until I put it in my purse which was on a bench right next to us with everyone else’s purses. Unfortunately there was a semi-sketch group of non-Italian men who persistently wanted to take our photo for us…. Or something…. We decided it was them. Needless to say, my cards are all cancelled, I borrowed money from Smith, and my parents will be here in a week. Perfetto.

Sunday
Sunday five of us headed to Alessio’s house for his birthday lunch with all of his friends from university as well as his family and Giovanna. It very well may have been one of the cutest things I have done so far in Florence. His mother and Giovanna greeted us all at the door, and his mom was so welcoming and excited that we were there. We were all extremely awkward, as every good Smithie should be, and we stood around waiting for people to start eating. We ate about 17 different courses and then finished up with a HUGE (I’m talking about 2 feet in diameter huge) chocolate torte which Alessio could not for the life of him figure out how to cut. His house is beautiful (and by house I mean apartment because no one in Florence lives in a house) and pretty much a museum. His dad used to be a carabinieri (police officer essentially) and he has a passion for Garibaldi. Therefore, not only has he collected rare Italian comics featuring Garibaldi, but he has two of Garibaldi’s ACTUAL uniforms in glass cases, just chilling in the hallway outside their bedrooms. Italians really are great.

After this delightful lunch, we headed over to the stadium to meet Monica and the rest of the Smithies, along with our History of Fashion professor to watch a soccer game between la Fiorentina and I Napoli. Fiorentina lost…. Bummer. It was an extremely exciting game though! And Giovanna and Monica bought us all Fiorentina scarves which was good because it was freeeeezing!! Alè alè alè alè!!!! (Did I mention that on my way to Alessio’s my sweater fell out of my bag? What a weekend!)

Monday
Monday was quiet. Nothing too exciting happened really. We found out that our super sweet art history professor has swine flu so class was cancelled for the week (aka my one class on Thursday was cancelled and therefore my weekend would begind Wednesday at approximately 5.30pm).

As I was walking home from Stilistics Monday night, I realized that due to setting the clocks back, it was already almost completely dark outside. As I approached the Duomo, I was overwhelmed by how gorgeous it looked just past dusk. There were a few tourists scattered around, taking photos with flash that lit up the gold leaf details on the façade and as I looked around, I also realized there was a crescent moon just to the right of the dome. Of course. It’s Italy. Things really are picture perfect rather often. At this point, I noticed I was standing in the middle of the street (although as of this past weekend all the streets around the Duomo are closed to traffic- woohoo!) and I decided I should move. I got out my camera and spent the next 20 minutes playing tourist and snapping gorgeous photos of this palatial piece of marble that I walk by at least twice a day.

Upon completing this touristy task, I began my walk home thinking about how I finally felt settled. I had a family, my little bros were becoming less shy, I did things every weekend with my group of friends, I had classes to go to, work to do, I finally felt okay. Reflecting on the past week I decided that even though I had just recovered from bedbugs, I didn’t sleep much, my wallet was stolen, and I was then getting a lovely sore throat and cough, I had maybe just completed one of the best weeks of my life.

Not too shabby, Florence – thanks!

Tuesday
Tuesday… let’s see. Class in the morning. Art history was cancelled so instead I attended my first course at the University of Florence (we have to audit something this semester to practice the wacky system of Italian education). I am planning on going to one class on Tuesdays (Analysis of the Preferences of the Consumer – in the department of viniculture, a lot about product development, etc.) and then one of Thursdays (Economics of Viniculture). Hey, when in Italy… study wine! The class on Tuesday was really interesting and I would say that I actually understood about 85-90% of what the professor said! I even took a few pages of notes! 

Whiskey.

Today was one of the best days I have had in many, many, many years.

As I said earlier, it was Ali's birthday and Luciana was especially sweet and adorable this morning. The walk to the Sede was the

same as always, had language class, a dorky treasure hunt to become oriented in the city and a chat about our mental health being students overseas. Throughout the day, I walked with Alayna and Breana to get tea, pastries, a present for Ali, etc. I am starting to understan

d the city and know where I am most of the time..... soon it will really be home!

After our little health meeting, I took a long and windy path home by way of a few great shoe stores and also a street near ours called Via del Prato. I didn't know what I would find on Prato, but indeed, I found a few little pasticcerie, or pastry shops (often called bars - an American bar is a pub - and

they often also serve wine and panini) as well as a sweet little store where I bought Ali's present (a really pretty silk scarf, and of course I got one as well - 2 for 10

euros! The adorable older woman gave me a deal because I was so carina and I was speaking Italian with her). When I got home, after doing some homework (uffa!...), I watched Luciana

futz around the house, getting ready for Ali's special dinner. We ate in the formal living room tonight (see photo!) and we ate with nice plates and real wine glasses and Giovanna came as a surpr

ise for Ali (she bought the pups of course!! See the other photo!)

We ate the most amazing dinner.... First some aperitivi (appetizers - some bread with homemade porcini mushroom sauce, some with smoked salmon and some with baby shrimp). Then we ate homemade lasagne, complete with homemade pasta. It was traditional Tuscan lasagne, made with bechamel sauce, not ricotta, meat and porcini mushrooms. Then we ate some incredible veal with a sauce whose name is escaping me - made with mayonnaise (yes... mayo... apparently its VERY Italian???), capers, lemon and something else which Giovanna wouldn't tell us because we aren't familiar with it. In addition to the meat, we had the best zucchini I have ever eaten - tiny and so flavorful. Finally, for dessert, Luciana made an INCREDIBLE hom

emade dark chocolate mousse which we ate with gelato. There was, of course, a bottle of red wine and a bottle of prosecco but we only made it through the red wine.

Throughout all of dinner, there was an immense amount of laughter. First, because Ali, Julie and I had tried to explain our one problem with Luciana to Giovanna - we cannot ever say no to her and therefore we always eat way more than we want because she keeps piling more and more onto our plates without asking. Giovanna said this was not a problem and to not worry, we could easily say no. She learned this was not completely the case tonight when Luciana kept bringing more and more food and giving us however much she thought we would want to eat. Così buffo! Later, Luciana was laughing at me because I was flushing and she accused me of drinking too much wine, meanwhile she kept cracking jokes about whiskey, first asking Giovanna if she wanted some (which for some reason was incredibly humorous) and then (in response to Giovanna asking what Luciana would like to name a puppy since we MIGHT be getting one), she said, "Hmmmm...... forse...... AH SI! SI CHIAMA WHISKEY!"

At the end of the evening, Giovanna congratulated us for speaking and listening to Italian all day since 8'o'clock this morning and we took some photographs (as you can see!). After Giovanna left and we helped Luciana clear the table, Ali, Julie and I headed to my room where we proceeded to take a series of ridiculous pictures and laugh hysterically about various things for about an hour, when we then said "Buona notte!" and headed to bed.

I would say, simply, that today was fantastic.

Enough said.

Ci vediamo domani! Buona notte!

Baci e abbracci!