So Cait (for those of you who dont know, i will be living with cait and laura next semester) and Veronica are studying in Copenhagen and they came to milan last night! We went to the biereria and drank from a crazy contraption.
me, cait, laura, veronica.
It was a good night.
when i stop being lazy.
So. Im late but we were in Tuscany from March 19th to the 21st.
We embarked on our journey at 1:00 on thursday. 5 hours, one bathroom break, and 2 powerades later we arrived at our hotel in San Giovanni Valdorno! It was pretty cute, me and jess lucked out and got a sweet balcony.
So from there, since this was the school planned trip, we went dinner. It was provided and consisted of like, unlimited pizza and frech fries. Then SURPRISE, it turns into karaoke.
town square on our walk to dinner and…
Karaoke
just like bocelli!
me and patty wanted to do some sonny and cher i got you babe, but The Italians clearly do not value sonny and cher enough. We had to settle for truly madly deeply by savage garden. Ill spare you the video of it.
So, the next day was Florence:
There are many versions of the David. This is the bronze one in the square where you can basically just view the city.
One of the most beautiful churches:
inside the church
we were such a small group.
inside the church was a relic, we saw a lot of relics that weekend. ew.
Me, jess and this guy David we met. He was cool.
so…. rubbing this pig is good luck.
so then we ventured further into the city. and it was beautiful. We saw the real David done my Michelangelo. that was jaw dropping, no art history class, photograph or description could do that thing justice. It’s mind boggling.
We walked around, got a great lunch with the girls with the cutest little old man waiter who flirted with all of us, and explored all the leather goods, the gold bridge and all that stuff.
So Saturday was San Giovanni Valdorno street market, Tiberio and San Gimignano
The town where we were stationed for the weekend was having a market so we checked it out:
some man saw us stuggling to take a picture: he clearly did a better job.
Tiberio is where we had a wine tasting. It was pretty awesome. Basically this wine-making family just opened up their home to us and let us eat and drink.
I look like a devil whatever.
Its clear we were all totally sober.
Naturally when you go to a winery you pose with barrels. duh.
Spotted: Imitation Nonna Angie. Also a good thing to pose with. She was precious.
also spotted: imitation Anthony.
After the wine tasting, we got back on the bus and headed out to San Giminano:
There was a statue: me and jess climbed it.
the town was known for the Gelato which i definitely got.
The last day was sienna! I loved Sienna!
The church was breathtaking.
Fun fact about sienna: It used to compete financially with Rome and Milan. The bigger your church the better off. Too bad the plague killed off 1/3 of their population. They haven’t recovered from that since. There were planned to make the church like huge, so there is this big tower that was supposed and everything was supposed to be indoors, but that never happened. We climbed the tower, that was claustrophobic.
but worth it!
we grabbed lunch, we were recommended to eat “pici pasta” it was delicious.
Then we headed back to Milan, which was depressing cause it was so beautiful.
More pictures from the Weekend:
So, as i mentioned in my previous post, due to the great Carnivale Mishap of 2010 we visited Venice for a second time!It turned out to be a very nice weekend, as the hotel we booked was the nicest yet.
we all posed like idiots on the couch thing when we got there:
what a nice ghostly orb next to me! its bruce willis.
The view from the hotel was very nice also:
there were singing gondoliers! i took a video:
We just kinda walked around friday night and went to a jazz bar with the rest of the girls
The next day we had a mission:
1. See a glass blowing demo
2. Gondola Ride
At first we got rejected from everywhere cause you are supposed to go with a tour, but we wondered in a place where the guy was very nice and helped us out. We got a demo for just the 4 of us.
he did that in about 2 minutes. We were told it takes around 20 years to become any kind of good at the whole murano glass thing. considering its so easy, ive decided to change my major. but seriously, this guy was amazing.
and the gondola ride: ahhh that was amazing.
that night we went to the jazz bar again for happy hour and dinner. it was just funny cause they brought out both drinks at once for happy hour buy one get on free. so there were many drinks on the table.
and then that night we went to another bar with the rest of the girls, which is noteworthy because honestly! we tried and tried to pay the bill.
we tried hard actually, but no one would take our money. so free drinks for us.which was great cause they were like 13 euro drinks. (we didnt know we were walking into a 5 star restaurants bar)
To end the trip we got some lunch and gelato and waited around for our train.
(honestly i just like this picture)
stay tuned this weekend for our Tuscany/Florence trip!
This past weekend we went to London!
I really loved it there, and I know I am probably gunna say that about everywhere we go, but there was something about London. The vibes, the people, THE STYLE, Starbucks. Also it could have been the great people we knew from home we met up with.
Our trip began on Thursday night. We left our apartment, took the metro for a half hour to Centrale Train Station where we caught the hour long bus ride to Malpensa Airport. The only reason I bring up the train time is because the plane from milan to london was only an hour and a half.
Anyways, we got to London around 11:30 and took the Gatwick Express to the tube and met Emily (we stayed at her flat) It was pretty late and we were pretty pooped, but we got falafel’s (as recommended by Emily) and hit the hay. We woke up Early the next morning to see the changing of the Guards. We got there entirely too early but it worked out because we ended up with a great spot.
The Guards played some Pirates of the Caribbean and something i dont know, and imagine which i taped!
As we were leaving, so was the Queen, I saw the top of her head in the car.
From there we just decided to walk towards the touristy stuff, do some english things, you know.
We ran into our friend Ben.
When we saw the Queen i got her number, gave her a call (collect). Talked a little about Tea.
From there we kept walking and ran into the houses of parliament where there was some crazy riot (later we found out that there is always some crazy riot) and headed for the London eye, which was really amazing.
We explored some, got starbucks (which was like heaven in a Mug! They give it to you in a Mug!)
and got to meet up with Jess Rice and have Dinner! Im not gunna lie i might have cried a little when we saw her and Anna. It was a touching.I dont know what im gunna do when my family comes.
We went back and met up with Emily and went to a Pub called Prague. Emily recommended we get the Cider, it was a good drink. I liked it. The next day we woke up and kinda took it easy, met up with Jess’ friend Talia who is also studying in London and grabbed some brunch and went shopping for a little. We experienced the crazy that is Top Shop at Oxford Circus on a Saturday, and got Street Waffles (!)
We walked down to St Pauls Cathedral which is interesting because its where Prince Charles and Princess Diana were Married, and survived a the great fire of London.
There is a not so anatomically correct statue of the firefighters who saved it outside the church.
Look at the guy on the far right, his arm is very wrong! But we give it an E for effort!
After that we went over the Millenium Bridge,
where we saw the London bridge from a distance. It wasn’t falling, and its not in the US, as rumor would have it.
We visited the Tate Modern Museum which was pretty awesome. There were pieces from Warhol, Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg, Picasso. Also the Kiss Statue by Auguste Rodin, which i’m pretty sure we had a replica of in our house for a while. http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=12718
To end the night Talia took us to see Harrods which i guess would be equivalent to a Bloomies, and was lit up at night and was beautiful. It reminded me of Christmas in New York.
Then we got fish and chips. I got a beer with it and our waiter was so excited cause i asked him to recommend me something that would go well with the fish and chips. He made me get up and go to the bar and try like 5 beers. I ordered a half a pint of the one i liked best (i forgot what its called, if anyone recognizes the glass lemme know) and waited. The waiter came out with the full pint and said he made a mistake and only charged me for half. Yay for happy accidents.
We went to head home and got off the tube at Kings Cross to be Harry Potter Nerds and take pictures at Platform 9 and 3/4 wizard style.My favorite part of that was us not being able to find it, so i asked someone and he was probably drunk. he was all like (in a british accent) oh! Harry Potter! its over there! You get it! go get your pictures! and laughed like a zany person.
an that concludes my short novel about London. Sorry to bore you parents, the only ones who read this. Get ready for next weeks update about Venice number 2! Thanks booking.com!
(more pictures: http://www5.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=3987446014/a=88436969_88436969/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/ )
Claudio (our professor) brought in wine and we watched 
It was a nice way to end the class, although im not exactly fluent in Italian.
Today I did not have class until 3 which was a treat in itself.
On top of that the day was BEAUTIFUL. All i wore was my little leather jacket and I was fine.
During class our teacher deicded to take us to centrale station and tell us about it and why its important and it really made me take a closer look and see how beautiful it really is.
Then from there Elana told me about some great coffee by the Duomo, so we decided not to waste a good night and do that.
and the point of this post is that i went into the duomo for the first time cause of that.
It is breathtaking. I felt that was notable.
and now, it is noted.
So, we decided to take a day trip to Pisa to see the leaning tower.
It ended up being a long day.
We caught the train at 8 in the morning (mind you it takes a half hour to get to the train station using the metro so we were up around 6 30) and caught it home at 7.
Both ways it was around 4 hours, but in my opinion totally worth it, especially since it turned out to be a beautiful day when we were all planning on rain.
here are some pics:
Before we got to the tower we walked through pisa and found this wonderful statue to pose as. It was the original lady gaga in all its salad fingery glory.
it was funny to see people posing with the tower from the wrong angle.
especially these fools.
and now us:
(leaning with it)
Like i said, it was supposed to rain but it turned out being a beautiful day, lucky for us.
At the end of the day it did decide to rain a little, but it was only a drizzle and from it came a rainbow, that was a nice bonus jonas.
more pictures:
(via appleday)
oh hey.. imma see you tomorrow.
yup! tomorrow, but weather forecast says it will look nothing like that tomorrow :(
Hopefully it changes.
