"In Florence you learn poise" Virgil Thomson

I'm not sure how much poise I learned while I was visiting Florence, but I certainly did enjoy it!

Wednesday April 8th, we woke up early and got on a train that would take us to Florence. We arrived around 10:30 and we able to walk to our hostel from the train station. I wasn't very impressed by what we saw to be honest. The city looked a bit run down and dirty, but that could have been because we were on the outskirts of the city to get to our hostel.

The place we stayed in was called the Dany Hostel and it was run by a lovely lady named Laura who had converted half of her apartment into a hostel where she worked during the day. She had two very cute kids who were 4 and 6 (I think) and were watching Peppa Pig when we arrived. Because check in wasn't until 1, we left our luggage and took off to explore Florence.

We walked along the busy streets admiring the different shops of souvenirs and clothing until we reached the Florence Cathedral.

Across from the entrance to the Cathedral was the Baptistery. The doors are beautiful sculptures of bronze made by Lorenzo Ghiberti and were dubbed by Michelangelo the Gate of Paradise. 

We continued down the street to find some lunch where we were recommended by Laura and some friends who had previously studied in Florence. The shop was a tasty panini place run by really cute Italian guys and because it was only 11ish, the line to get food wasn't very long! All you had to do was pick your meat, your spread, your vegetables (Which I got very few of), and your cheese! 

As you can see these paninis were quite large and they were only €5! 

Of course our next stop after lunch was to find some very tasty gelato in Florence! Thankfully, we were given another recommendation by Laura and more friends and headed along the river to get some sweets! 

Once we hit the gelato shop, tragedy struck. One of my flatmates placed her phone on the counter in the gelato shop and it was taken by a man who came in the shop. Needless to say, it ruined her Italy experience. But the rest of us still got gelato while we tried to locate her phone on the find my iPhone app.

Without any luck, we headed back to the hostel to check in and take a break. 

Eventually that break turned into nap time for most of us.

Except for yours truly once again. After nap time was over, we went in search of dinner! We decided to try another pizza that had been previously recommended to us, unfortunately it was clear across the  city. So we put on our walking shoes and headed out. 

The pizza was pretty good, it was oven baked and had all fresh ingredients. But I must admit, I have been spoiled by homemade pizza by my next door neighbors and more importantly my own mother. So no pizza was going to live up to those standards, overall, the pizza in Italy fell short while I was there. Hopefully if I go back when I'm older I'll be able to find better places to eat!  

But we took our pizzas to go and sat on one of the bridges over the river and enjoyed the beautiful weather and the Florence environment. After dinner it was time for dessert! 

We headed back to the hostel and settled in for the night! 

The next day (April 9th) we headed back to the Cathedral and got a ticket to see everything within the Cathedral: The Baptistery, the Clocktower, the crypts and the Dome. 

Our first trip was inside the Cathedral, which was very very large, but not decorated inside. It was clear that most of the money had been spent on the outside. Our next stop was the crypt underneath the Cathedral. My roommate's, who had lost her phone, hip was bothering her, so she just stayed in the Cathedral and read Harry Potter (not a bad alternative!). The crypts weren't all together exciting, they held some of the original tile mosaics that covered the floor, along with grave stones and support systems that held up the Cathedral. 

Our next venture was outside and around the building to the queue to get into the Dome. That was a very long line, we had to wait for about 40 minutes to make it into the building because they would only allow a certain number of people up the stairs and to the top. I found this out later, after we had climbed almost all the way to the top, the entrance and exit were the same staircase! So at times you had to wait squished against the wall to let people pass. Needless to say, I was very claustrophobic and almost had a panic attack. 

Thankfully we made it to the top and and I could breathe normally! And the view was breathtaking! 

The city was quite beautiful from such high a view! But after spending 10 minutes or so at the top, we decided we had left our friend reading Harry Potter long enough in the Cathedral. 

It was time for lunch after our long staircase journey (It was seriously long. My guess was it was at least 20 stories) and we headed back to the panini place and this time the line was quite long. 

You can see how busy the shop was from my picture! 

Afterwards we didn't go get gelato surprisingly! We headed back over by the Cathedral and went inside the Baptistery, it didn't take very long because it was only one room, but the decoration was beautiful.

We headed back to the hostel to wait out sunset! We wanted to go to the highest hill in Florence to get a beautiful view of the entire city at sunset (we barely made it!) We were not the only people who were there! There were quite a few Americans who had also decided to bring something to drink and watch the sunset over the city. In fact. I felt that most of the city was full of American student who were studying abroad. Most often than not the people that we passed in the street were college age girls speaking English. It was a very weird feeling. 

We hung out on the steps of the hill for about two hours until our bellies started rumbling to remind us that we had yet to eat dinner. So we left to search for dinner. It was not an easy feat! It was quite late at that time and not a lot of places were still open. We finally found a place which we didn't review on trip advisor (BAD MISTAKE) and sat down and ordered food. All 6 of us were very very disappointed with our meals. The food was lacking flavor, some of my food was still cold, they didn't have any tap water to give (?What the heck?) and on top of that we were charged a service fee when the guy barely did anything!!! We were all pretty pissed about that, but thought that the night should end on a good note since it was the last night I was going to be in Italy, so we went back to a gelato place we had passed earlier in the day. After getting our dessert, we headed back home.

Friday morning the 10th, was my last day in Italy. So before we left the hostel, I made sure that all of my belongings were packed up and I checked out of the hostel. Thankfully, Laura let me leave my luggage so I didn't have to lug it around the city while going to museums. 

Today was the day we had bought tickets to see the David and another museum (some other Gallery). From our hostel it was a quick walk to the museum were David was held!

He was definitely so much bigger than I was expecting! I can't believe that he's one piece of stone! In case any of you are wondering, the reason that he has a piece of wood behind his right foot is because it helps the statue balance out. Without it, he wouldn't be able to stand upright! 

Our next stop was the bell tower to finish our tour of the Cathedral! All of us prepared for our daring climb except for TP who once again returned to HP who she waited for us to go up and come down. Thankfully, it wasn't too crowded coming up and going down, so I didn't get claustrophobic! While it was a much shorter climb to the top than the Dome, it still stunk climbing all those steps (I'm just terribly out of shape!)

We then took off to find a market where we could get souvenirs for ourselves and for our family members/boyfriends. I really enjoyed at looking at all the cool items, however, I did not enjoy getting accosted by the men who were in charge of the stalls. 

The second you showed any slightest interest, they would approach you or grab something from their stall and shove it in your face! Um hello, if I wanted to buy your stuff I would stick around! 

Although, most of us ended up buying something from this super cute old man who was selling glassware painted with lemons and all sorts of flowers! I bought some stuff to take home with me! Afterwards, we went inside the market, where there was air conditioning and food and got some lunch! (And dessert for me!)

After stocking up on souvenirs we went to the next museum which had both paintings and lots of sculptures! To be honest, the only one I was really interested in was the Birth of Venus!

While there were a lot of paintings to see, I became bored quickly and tried to rush through to the end as quick as possible. Thankfully, I was not the only one who felt this way! With a quick stop by the Carabinieri station to file a report for a stolen phone, we then headed home so that I could make my way to the airport and the long trip home I had ahead of me. 

After saying my goodbyes, it was an easy two bus trip to the airport where I waited for an hour and a half to bored the tiny airplane to Barcelona. Thankfully, I was able to catch a small nap while I waited for my plane AND I got the entire row to myself on the plane!

I think Father in Heaven knew I wasn't going to be able to survive the trip home without the ability to layout and take a proper nap on the plane. After landing in Barcelona at 10:30 PM (the same airport I had been in previously) it was time to find an outlet (which are hard to come by in Europe, surprisingly) and take a nap! By the time I had found an outlet and someplace to lay out I was pretty awake, so I watched two episodes of Doctor Who until 2:30 where I then slept till I was rudely awoken by a airport employee who wanted to check my boarding pass. Thankfully, after they left me alone I slept again until the noises of the airport waking up woke me up! I made it through security without a problem and sat down to read at my gate after grabbing breakfast at Starbucks. 

At 6:25 I boarded by plan to get home to London, it was a short trip which I mostly slept through and we landed at 7:45. I had plenty of time to get home from the airport and shower before going to pick my mom up from the Heathrow airport at 1:30!

That'll be my next blog post! I would say I'm sorry for all the Office and Parks and Recs gifs, but I'm not really:)

It's Volcano Day!

So, Tuesday April 7th was probably one of my favorite trips that I took this semester. We took a day trip to Pompeii and Positano and I LOVED IT!!! I even took a bunch of notes on my phone's notes app to share some interesting facts about Pompeii with you because it had been quite a while since I've gone on a tour and shared some cool history facts with all you lovely readers!

We headed to the place where we were meeting our bus at 7:15 and the second we arrived I knew that we were going to have a problem. Instead of a luxurious charter bus I was expecting, there was a 15 passenger van waiting to take us to Pompeii and we were the last group of people to arrive, so I would be sitting in the back of this "bus". My first thought was that I was going to have to skip out on the very expensive day trip I paid for because I would not have survived in the back of the van.

However, thankfully our tour organizer allowed me to sit in the front between her and the driver. The drive was about 2 hours to Pompeii and I napped for a good portion of it. Once we arrived in Pompeii we met our tour guide who was a different person than our organizer and she got us set up with headphones so that she could talk in a microphone instead of trying to yell so all of us could hear her.

This was outside the gates of Pompeii. Which is the largest open aired museum in the world!

 

Pompeii was huge city of between 12,000-15,000 people who were all simultaneously killed on August 24 79AD. This was caused by large clouds of hot ash and poisonous smoke that swept over the city when Mount Vesuvius erupted. 

These people were absolutely brilliant! They built their streets lower than the rest of the city purposely so that when they were flooded with waste and rubbish it could be contained. They even built stepping stones to cross from one side of the street to the other. I like this picture particularly because you can see the indents the wagon wheels made in the stone between the stepping stones. 

This is an ancient bakery! How do they know that? Well in the oven in the back of the shop, they found 80 pieces of carbonized bread! If that doesn't scream bakery, I'm not sure what does!

Another cool fact that makes these people so brilliant was their indents for doors. These grooves would be made at the opening of shops so that when the sliding doors (like garage doors) would be pulled down over the entrance, it would make it harder for people to open the doors back up! 

There are over 40 fountains throughout Pompeii and some of them are even still functioning to provide cool water for tourists throughout the city. Lead pipes were used to connect the water system while Pompeii was still a functioning city, don't worry, they aren't still in use today. The emperor of Pompeii, Augustus, built the city's water structure through aqueducts and incorporated water pressure systems that the rich could use to bring water into their homes. 

These two images are take from the ancient spa that was discovered in Pompeii. The squares were storage facilities where the visitors could place their items before heading to the hot or cold bath. Because of the pipes that ran throughout the city, they were able to get enough hot water and steam to hold a sauna room. 

This was the large marketplace of town where you can get an awesome view of Mount Vesuvius. We were told that the marketplace was pedestrian only because there was no traces of wagon wheels or hoof prints in this area. 

In the corner of the marketplace, there was a large storage area that housed some of the relics that were uncovered in Pompeii. Some of these include casts of people and animals, such as the dog. 

Another cool fact that showed the brilliance of the people of Pompeii was their system of lighting for night time. Because they obviously didn't have streetlights, they placed pieces of marble in the ground between stones, so that when the moon shone on the marble pieces, the light would reflect and light the path. 

Unfortunately, if you go to Pompeii, you will also notice that many of the buildings are in rubble. Well, Titus, the emperor (not sure what he was the emperor of) thought that the destruction of Pompeii was a sign of anger from the Gods, so he ordered that all the large buildings be taken down. (not exactly sure what it was going to prove, but he was the emperor, so he could do what he wanted)

Pompeii was excavated in 1745, it had been covered for over 1,500 years! In fact, not everything is still uncovered today! They are still uncovering parts of the city slowly but surely! 

After our 2 hour tour in Pompeii, we piled back in the van and this time I was very grateful to be in the front seat because we hit traffic on our way to Positano. Not only did we hit traffic, but because we were driving on the coast, the road was very curvy. In fact, our journey into the city of Positano was filled with a ton of hairpin turns, our van was so large that our driver had to back up quite a few times to make the turn. 

Now I don't know much about the history of Positano, but I do know that it's beautiful and I want to go back. The Almalfi Coast is protected by UNESCO, which means that people cannot expand and build on anymore land! So people do a lot of renovating and the housing prices are expensive! As you can see from the picture, there isn't much of a downslope from the city to the beach, in fact there really isn't any beach either. The city is stacked on top of one another and there are a lot of stairs that one must hike when walking throughout the city. 

I'm determined to come back to the Positano, heck any part of the Almafi Coast because we only got an hour to enjoy the city due to the traffic from Easter Weekend. However, I'm not sure that I would want to drive in, so I'm thinking a nice cruise to the Almafi Coast is in order! 

One thing this cute town is known for is their lemons! I wish I could have shown you the comparison, but to give you a rough estimate, they are larger than a grapefruit! However, even with their large size, they still don't give out much juice. In fact, the skin of the lemons in Positano are just incredibly thick! Most of the tourist shops held some sort of lemon flavored candy, drinks or pictures with lemons painted on them. I ended up getting some beautiful lemon candy that I still haven't finished! 

Before we headed back to the van, we stopped and got a treat of frozen lemonade and it was delicious!!! But all too soon we had to pile back in the car for the long trip home. In fact it was a long trip, remember the traffic I mentioned earlier? Well it came back to bite us in the butt because instead of taking 2 1/2 hours to get home it took 6 hours to get back!!! But I did get to have a lovely conversation with our tour organizer while we waited in the car for that long. I learned some pretty interesting facts about Italy, and while it might be nice to visit, I don't think I would want to live there.

Lin (our tour organizer) told me that because health care is free in Italy, everyone is treated the same unless you can afford a private doctor. So if you go into the hospital with a heart attack or a stroke, you will be waiting in line behind everyone else who arrived before you, which could be DAYS! If you end up getting cancer, unless you are very well off, they usually give you pain medication and are told to say your goodbyes. The government in Rome is pretty corrupt. When an individual is elected into office, they raise a bunch of money for a certain project and then they leave the office and take the money with them. In fact, a tunnel we drove through to get to and from Positano took 20 years to build!!! (While it was a long tunnel, and when I say long, we were in there for 10 minutes driving at about 60 mph, I still couldn't believe it took that long!)

We finally arrived back in Rome at 10:45 and we were RAVENOUS!!! We headed to McDonalds (Yuck!) to get some dinner because it was the only thing open. After reading Fast Food Nation in high school, I refuse to eat any sort of real food there, so I just ordered an ice cream cone and some french fries. We finally made it back to our hostel at 11:30 and by that point we passed out very quickly because we had to get up early for our train to leave to Florence. 

When in Rome!

Easter Sunday April 4th

Today was an interesting day, due to it being the first Sunday of the month, all the museums in Rome had free entrance! One member of our party, PC, wasn't feeling so well, so we went to a local cafe to kill some time while she recovered from whatever she had. Afterwards, we traveled down to a museum that was down the road from where we were staying, thankfully, we didn't have to wait in line too long outside because it had started to rain. Honestly, I'm not even sure what the name of the museum was... and there wasn't any famous pieces in it either.

This guys was called the boxer and it was weird because he was hallow and had no eyes. 

PC met us after the museum and took off to the oldest gelato shop in Rome. There were so many flavors to choose from and they placed a very tasty cream of sorts on the top (the cream reminded me of Bahama Bucks cream they put on the shaved ice).

Our large stop of the day was to the Altar of the Fatherland, the large white building we had glimpsed a few times, but not really got a good look at. 

This lovely monument became slightly less impressive when we found out it was built in 1925 for the  first king over united Italy. I believe his name was Victor Emmanuel...I'm still not exactly sure why such a huge building was needed to commemorate him. At the top of the first set of stairs was the tomb of The Unknown Soldier and the Eternal Flame. We wanted to go to the top, but you had to pay to get into the elevator that takes you to the top, so we skipped out. But on the backside of the Altar was a lovely looking Cathedral that we walked into to get out of the rain. 

Afterwards, I wanted to find the Bocca della Verità or the Mouth of Truth. 

In case you don't know what this lovely thing is or the legend behind it, let me give you a brief summary on it! Carved from marble, it was thought to be part of a fountain and portrayed a Pagan God. But, beginning in the middle ages, it was thought to be a lie detector. The myth behind it was if you told a lie while your hand was in the mouth, it would be bitten off. Unfortunately, when we arrived, there was a line that was at least an hour long, so we didn't wait in line to test our luck and headed to St. Peter's Square to get some pictures and see if we could spot the Pope!

Chairs and some lighting equipment was still set up from this mornings mass and there was a very long line to get into the Basilica. We didn't wait to get in, instead it was time to get some dinner! We went to dinner at this awesome place called Papi Papi (which I highly recommend if you ever go to Rome) I wasn't very hungry because I had had the largest gelato from earlier, so my dinner consisted of 2 croquettes (I think they were potato flavor) and a deep fried artichoke (OH MY GOSH!!!! it was sooooo good. it almost tasted like Kale chips, but soooo much better). One cool thing that happened during dinner was that the subject of religion was brought up and I was able share my testimony about the temple and forever families, along with the church beliefs on the subjects. Afterwards we walked home and enjoyed the nightlife of Rome. 

Monday (April 5th)

It was a somewhat early morning today because we had our reservations to go to the Roman forum and the Colosseum! We left the hostel at about 9:00 and arrived at the forum at 9:30 to get our tickets, unfortunately our reservations for the Colosseum weren't until 1:30, so we had quite a bit of time to kill until then. Thankfully, there was a lot of stuff to look at while we waited. 

Yes, I know I'm a huge fan of selfies and I don't know why. But I must say, I do a pretty good job even without the selfie stick! I must apologize, because honestly, I have no idea what any of these relics are, and no, it's not just because it's taken so long to write this, but because there were sooooo many different signs and things to see in the forum, that it eventually became one large blur. 

We then left the forums and searched desperately for a place to eat! Surprisingly, there aren't that many places to eat around the Colosseum, but we finally found this cheap looking fast food place where the guy at the counter didn't understand or speak English. It was a bit hard to get our meaning across, but we finally got unimpressive food and headed back to the Colosseum to brave the crowds at trying to get in and see the awesome building. 

I was very very unimpressed with the way the lines we handled to get into the Colosseum. The people who still needed to purchase tickets were in a large queue that wound around the building, on the other hand, the people who already had reservations were mobbing into a gate to get past security. I'm serious, there was no line, just a large swarm of people trying to make it past the gate, I don't think I've ever been pushed or shoved quite so much as that time. After 15 minutes of this we finally made it into the outer wall of the Colosseum, but we weren't in yet, we still had to go through the ticket gate which would let us in at our certain time frame. RT and I got quite lucky because we got through the gate at 1:12. However, the rest of the group tried to go through a different gate and the lady wouldn't let them through. I think due to safety reasons, they only let a certain number of people in the Colosseum at a time. Well, we weren't having any of that, so the other girls just moved to a different gate and got right in!

The first thing I realized was that Lizzie McGuire did not have her concert in the Colosseum, firstly because it doesn't hold that many people and secondly because there is no way they'd allow a concert in a 2000 year old historical monument. 

No, but seriously, I really enjoyed the Colosseum although there were a lot of people and it was quite large around with three stories. 

We spent about an hour in the Colosseum walking around and enjoying the view. While there weren't very many signs explaining the history, I did find out that it was never supposed to be lopsided! There was an earthquake within the past 2000 years that lead to half of the building collapsing! And that if there was ever another earthquake in Rome that there was over a 50% chance of the other side of the walls falling as well. Crazy! Hopefully there aren't any earthquakes scheduled in Rome for a long time coming!

After we were finished walking in the Colosseum we headed to our gelato store of the day! And I must say that it was probably the best gelato I had had in Italy thus far!

We then headed to my fabric shop so I could get some fabric from Italy, but because it was the Easter weekend, many shops were still closed on Monday. Instead we stopped by some souvenir shops and then took the bus back to our hostel. It actually took longer to get there on the bus than to walk because the traffic was so horrible and the bus was very crowded. I started to get carsick so we ended up getting off the bus rather early so I wouldn't throw up over everyone. 

After arriving at our hostel, everyone promptly passed out and took a nap, except for yours truly who just ended up reading a book. We then headed out for dinner and then for groceries to make lunch because we had a long day trip on Tuesday and we wanted to make sure we were prepared for the long trip!