in fair verona we lay our scene...

I am actually currently at the wifi-offering caffe just down the street from The Palace (I shall whenceforth refer to my apartment as "The Palace," mostly for my own amusement) because when I left this morning around 11:30 AM, there was no internet. I have since received word that the internet is indeed back up, but I am currently living outside the law: I bought a month of internet on February 9th and have yet to renew it, though it was working up until March 12. I am afraid that my luck has run out and I will have to actually pay for my internet (horrors), so I'm hanging at the caffe in order to delay that inevitability.

So as you know, my roommates and I scooted off to Verona on Friday afternoon, after first completing the final step of our permesso di soggiorno (uh, probably spelled that one wrong...Gillian?) applications, meaning that we are now officially LEGAL residents of Italy...at least until May. Funny that we have been here for almost 2 months by the time that is done. Also, can we just take a moment of awe at the fact that we have been here for almost two months? That's eight weeks, 42 days, and too many hours for me to calculate. I have a little over two months left, and if the second half flies by as quickly as the first, I'll be home before I know it.

Anyway, we brought our bags with us on our permesso field trip, so we headed directly to Santa Maria Novella after that. We bought our one-way tickets to Verona, and then sat around for almost an hour before our Eurostar train to Bologna left (can we also talk about how ridiculous it is that it cost 24 euro to go from Florence to Bologna and only 7 to go from Bologna to Verona? Stupid Eurostar train.)

May or may not have gotten a little bored while waiting at the station...

We were actually waiting at McDonalds, and since we were there for almost an hour, temptation overtook Marissa and me. We just had to have a.....

Tiramisu milkshake!

I've been talking about getting one pretty much since our first week here but sadly...

It did not taste anything like tiramisu. It wasn't bad, just bland. Blah.

After our culinary experimentation in milkshakes, we caught the Eurostar to Bologna. Such a quick ride! Only about a half hour. We didn't realize what a quick transition we'd have to make to catch our train to Verona, only about 10 minutes! And let me tell you, the Bologna train station is CONFUSING! Apparently there are central, east and west platforms. Our train was due to depart from Platform 3 Ovest (west). We found platform 3, and were slightly concerned when there was no train listed as arriving, and no people on the platform with us. We stood there for a bit before I happened to notice a sign that said "Binari est e ovest ->" and it suddenly dawned on me that we were NOT on the ovest platform as I had previously thought. We literally RAN (apparently I pranced, much to the amusement of my roommates) back to where we had started, one platform over from where our original train had dropped us. We had literally one minute to board, and the door actually closed before Sam got on. Luckily, some friendly Italians responded to our frantic Italenglish and terrified looks and opened the door to let her back on. Crisis averted.

When we finally arrived in Verona (two and a half hours later...phew!) we had to walk to the hostel. Fortunately, the weather was absolutely BEAUTIFUL, cool and sunny.

We saw this right as we walked in. I'm thinking it was originally a part of the old city walls.



Corso Porta Nuova, the large street we came in on.

A piazza...whose name I'm blanking on. It was really cute though.

The directions to our hostel were pretty straightforward and we found it with little trouble. It was actually a B&B, not a hostel, which means that we shared two double rooms for the low, low price of 22 euro per night. Not bad at all, considering I will be paying more than that to share a 12 person room in Amsterdam....ugh.

Marissa's and my room.

After chillaxing a bit and freshening up, we hit the streets to walk around a bit before dinner, which was recommended and marked on a map by our friendly hostel owner. We hadn't been walking 10 minutes when we were ambushed by a woman carrying paper hippopatomus crowns, who insisted on taking our picture. Grazie, signora!

After wandering for a bit we were famished, but realized that we had gone completely the wrong direction from the restaurant il signore had recommended. Whoops. So we trekked it back across the city with minor difficulty before finding...al Bracere!

The restaurant was apparently an old, converted church. The inside was SUPER kitschy...looked half like an antique shop, half like a restaurant. It was two stories, with an upper loft where some sort of reception dinner was going on. The food was excellent. I had an unpictured bowl of linguine with fresh pesto and tomatoes and shrimp. My main complaint is with Italian cuisine in general...they do not peel the shrimp for you! So my fingers got all pesto-y while I attempted to peel them. Unfortunately, I'm not very nimble, and I ended up getting frustrated with the whole process and leaving several behind.


After dinner, Sam and I debated going to a bar to get a drink, but in the end, we were too tired to go through the whole process of getting ready and going back out, so all four of us just stopped and got cappucinos. After savoring the espresso-y goodness, we headed back to the hostel for the night. It's crazy how riding a train all day can tire you out!

We got up bright and early (uhhh...9 AM) to be ready for 10:30 checkout. Breakfast provided by the hostel was decent...toast, cereal, and yogurt, mostly but it did the job for me, anyway. I filled up, hoping to put lunch off for as long as possible. We packed up, left our keys, and hit the city for a few more hours. We ended up back in the same large piazza with all of the bright stores and restaurants pictured above, but this time we took a closer look at the park across the way. I was particularly amused by this:

Do not go barechested.

The piazza I was talking about. I'm blanking on names again, ahh, sorry! Such a fail.

The weather was totally gorgeous again, and it really felt like springtime!

The old Roman amphitheater is in the same piazza as the park and all the shops, so we hit that next....after some necessary touristy cheesin'.

A group of women having some sort of bachelorette party took our picture after we took theirs.

The view from the top. Phew, were those steps STEEP and KILLER!

So steep we had to go down on our behinds...

But not before snapping some shots of the city from the top as well.

We walked back the same way we had gone the night before, towards Casa di Giulietta (Juliet's house) and a particularly alluring chocolate fountain-sporting gelateria we had seen. The street we walked on, Via Mazzini, was so beautiful, especially to a shopaholic like my roommate Sam.

There were tons of stores of every kind lining the street.

Even this little guy stopped to window shop! (Or maybe his owner was inside.)

Aha! The gelateria!

Stracciatella (chocolate chip) and some sort of chocolate-hazelnut combo that I'm forgetting. It was thicker and heavier than most gelato I've had, more typically ice-cream-like, but still good. I'm becoming such a gelato connossieur!

After that, we walked back towards Juliet's house, passing Piazza Erbe, which I think was my favorite part of the city. There was a market going on there and the buildings were just so...stereotypically Italian, with all of the terraces, plants, and shutters. So pretty.

I think prisoners must have been kept here. Note the chain.

Fresh fruit! Just what my breakfast was lacking. I picked up a pear and a banana for snackage.

After a bit of meandering through the market, we went to Casa di Giulietta.

People had adorned the walls with tributes to their Romeos as well as notes wishing for one.

Juliet's balcony.

I didn't realize it before, but apparently Romeo and Juliet is actually based on a true story that took place in Verona. I'll have to do more research on that one later.

What? Everyone else was doing it. Apparently it's good luck, and you can see that her breast is all kinds of shiny from millions of tourists groping it. I had to do it.

FRIENDS REFERENCE.

"I caught him kissing Mr. Garibaldi."

"Who is Mr. Garibaldi?"

"DOES IT MATTER?"

Now I actually have to find out who Garibaldi was.

This was on a plaque outside of Romeo's house, which we wandered forever to find...only to realize it was just this plaque with a door in a wall. Cool.

With not much else on our agenda, we decided to follow the river towards Verona's duomo.

Along the way we made a few friends...this is Richard.

Sam also found her dream ride: a mint green Vespa.

Verona's duomo, or main church.

And as a self-respecting English major, I couldn't walk past a statue of Dante without taking a picture of it.

After this, we were all pretty wiped, and we realized there wasn't much else we truly wanted to see in Verona. We got another cappucino, picked up our bags and headed back to the train station. The ride back to Florence was much quicker (fewer stops between Verona and Bologna going back the other way), and we got home just in time to enjoy dinner at a vegetarian joint just down the road from our apartment. Delicioussss. We have pretty much been holed up in our apartment studying (internetless) ever since.

I have two midterms tomorrow (Italian and Travel Writing), cooking on Wednesday, then history on Thursday. I'm finding it hard to stress; I either feel super confident in myself or I'm just not taking my classes here seriously (worry not, parents, I am doing fine so far). I promise to do some studying tonight...after I catch up on my shows and do some online crossword puzzles. Nerd.

internet fail.

Got back last night from our quick trip to Verona only to find that the internet in our apartment is....not working. Perfect timing, considering midterms are this week and we are all abuzz with papers to write and studying to do. I'm currently sitting at an "internet point" close to our apartment, but it's costing me 2 euro an hour, so I'm really just updating to let my parents know that Skype is a-not happenin' unless Solving Problem network suddently gets itself in order.

Pictures are going up on Facebook from Verona as we speak, and that will have to do until internet resurfaces at the Palace (our nickname for our beloved apartment). Ahhhhhh.

abstraction in art and cinema.

[BLOGGER SUCKS]. This is a photo of the inside of the Odeon Theather, that I obviously didn't take. Read further to understand.

Today was inadvertantly all about the abstract kind of mind-twisting that generally only occurs when one has taken illicit drugs. It started after my history class ended (that was a doozy!) at 2:30. I left my class, walked about 20 yards, and came to the Odeon Theater, where I met up with Bethany, her roommate, and Mary to see Alice in Wonderland.

I tried to take some photos of the inside of the theater, but it was weird lighting and none of them truly show its majesty. I'll try again the next time I see a movie. The theater itself is SUPER DUPER fancy, more like the inside of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center than the local AMC 20. The seats are huge and comfy, the screen is enormous, and there is balcony seating in addition to the normal seats.

Obviously showing in English AKA original sound. Though I do wish there had been Italian subtitles so I could work more on my (lack of) language skills, I couldn't have handled an entire movie in a language that I essentially do not know. (Hey, I bet if I watched Friends in Italian I would pick it up SO quickly! Excellent idea.) I wasn't super thrilled with the movie. It was a good way to kill an afternoon, and I was glad to finally see a movie at the Odeon.

After that, I skipped...er...RAN home in the cold and made myself some lentil soup for dinner before going to see an exhibit with API. Marissa and I headed to the Palazzo Strozzi to see "A Look Into the Invisible," an exhibit featuring artists such as De Chirico, Magritte, Balthus, and Ernst who specialize in abstract art, mostly of the metaphysical sort.

While the exhibit was very interesting, I find it hard to listen to tour guides for whom English is a second language. Their technical language is often good but they have difficulty stringing together ideas in a coherent way that makes me lose track of what they are talking about, which makes it so hard to focus. I generally find myself drifting and reading the art explanations more than listening to the guide. I was definitely ready to leave by the time we had gone through the whole exhibit, but I am glad that I went.

Tomorrow, the roomz and I are headed to finalize our permesso di soggiorno (or something like that) applications, which essentially allow us to live here legally. We are planning to leave directly from there to go to the train station for our overnight stay in Verona! That's right, the four English majors are headed to Fair Verona, setting of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet...I'm just hoping this means that the Italian men are more Romeo-like and less...lurky.

FOODIE ALERT.

I spend entirely too much time thinking about food! My life seems to revolve around it here. Between thinking about spending money on it, planning what to buy or cook at home, and having dinners and lunches with friends, it's a wonder that I can ever think of anything else!


Last night, for what my roommates and I have effectively established as "Ethnic Tuesday", we decided to try the Greek restaurant down the street, partially because Gillian and I had a serious hankering for hummus, and partly because the weather was so disgusting and nasty that we had little motivation to go any farther. I wasn't HUGELY fond of the meal that I ordered, but I must say that the warm, fresh pita they served, and the Greek salad I got as my side were phenomenal. Sam and I finished it off by splitting a baklava.....holysogood.


Then this afternoon, I went to my Wednesday lunch place, Trattoria Sergio Gozzi with Mary and Bethany. I was quite disappointed becuase they didn't have the soup I've gotten the past two times, but I was assuaged by the deliciousness of the soup I ordered instead, minestra di farina gialla or something along those lines. Not exactly sure what was in it, but my tummy was happy.


Wednesday nights always mean one thing: cooking class! The pictures I took this time turned out really yellow for some reason, so the food doesn't look so appetizing :/ I promise you, though, it was delicious! This week, were were studying the region of Toscana, or Tuscany, of which Florence is the capital.


Antipasti this week was trenutta, which is essentially just toasted bread with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

I personally found it a little too salty, which should tell you something.

Next up, for primi piatti, we cooked up a pappa al pomodoro, which is a tomato soup made with stale bread mixed in. Sounds weird, WAS TOTALLY AMAZING. I'm legit going to make it for my roommates next week, after Verona. We started by browning some garlic in olive oil in a large saucepan, then we added tomatoes that had been peeled and chopped. After allowing it to stew for awhile, we added about a liter of chicken stock, and then an entire loaf of Tuscan bread that we had sliced and toasted to simulate staleness. It turned out exactly like I eat my soup at home: tomato-soup-soaked mushy bread. I forgot to photograph it because I was so busy chomping it down, but it probably wouldn't have been very photogenic, anyway.


Our secondi piatti was (not veal!!) arista alla fiorentina, pork chop cooked Florentine style! We cut small holes into the pork chop and stuffed them with cloves of garlic and sprigs of rosemary. The chop was roasted in a pan with olive oil for about 15 minutes on each side before the teacher added some white wine to the pan. From there, it cooked probably another 45 minutes.

I'm not generally a huge pork fan, but this was mm mm good.

Finally, for my favorite course, we made torta della nonna, which technically translates to "Grandmother's cake" or something along those lines. It is actually a custard-filled DREAM of a pie. We started by handmaking the pie crust from flour, sugar, eggs, and butter. The dough needs to sit in the refrigerator overnight, though, so the teacher brought out some dough he had made previously. Roll the dough ball out and line a pie pan. The custard filling was made from milk, vanilla, sugar, eggs, and flour. Heat in a saucepan until thick and creamy, then allow to cool. Fill the pie pan with the custard and then bake for about 45 minutes. Optional: Top with pine nuts and add a sweet liqueor, which we did.

Wowza!

Today was also my jeans-shopping expedition. What a complete and utter failure. Not only did I NOT find jeans (I am just too big for this country), but Sam got her shopping bag from Zara stolen while we were in H&M. How rude! I ordered a pair from Express instead, which my lovely mother will be shipping to me once again (thanks, Mom!). I'll also probably look for a pair while I'm in London; maybe the Brits actually have some junk in the trunk.

Just to prove I did actually rip my jeans and I'm not just a money-sucker!

Tomorrow, after my class ends at 2:30, I'm going to see Alice in Wonderland with Bethany and her roommates! Then I will be spending the afternoon prepping and packing for Verona, and securing my last minute spring break plans, which seem to be changing by the second. AHHH SO MUCH MONEY!

For now, I'm about to put a pot of coffee on before settling down to some history homework and Law&Order:SVU. You wish you could live my life. Boom.

P.S. Also, I will be making posts ASAP with pictures of me being an obnoxious Gator in front of monuments, as well as creepy photos that I surreptitiously take of local Florentines while eavesdropping on their conversations. Thanks for your suggestions! I live to serve.

mish mosh.

So it's not that I have been remiss in my blogging so much as...these past days have been pretty chill. We have mostly been hanging in the apartment, avoiding the sudden onslaught of cold. Apparently Florence was merely teasing us with the hints of warm weather these past couple of weeks, but more on that later.


Last Thursday, my history class, The Rise and Fall of the House of the Medici, took a little field trip to the Medici Palace. This class is growing on me; I was really frustrated with it at first, but as it has gone on, I'm liking it more and more. We rarely have class in the actual classroom. More often than not, we are getting lectures on historical grounds, which is probably the best part about taking classes in Florence. It is one thing to learn about a historical event or family, but it is quite another to learn about them while standing in their magnificent palace.

Just to give you a little history lesson (and review for the quiz I have on Thursday!), the Medici were a family that actually originated in the hill town of Mugello, just outside of Florence. The patriarch of the family, Giovanni di Bicci, came to the city sometime in the early 15th century when he established the Florentine branch of the bank that would originally became one of the largest and most powerful in not only Italy, but all of Europe. His descendants gained political power through a combination of arranged marriages and the growth of the bank's power. Though never official rulers of the city, it was understood throughout the entire region that they wielded a significant amount of power, and were seen as many by tyrants.





Cosimo the Elder, the son of Giovanni, commissioned the building of this palace in the mid 15th century to the architect Michelozzo. The palace itself is three stories high. The immediate, important family members lived on the first floor (second floor, to Americans) while guests and lesser family members stayed on the second floor (third floor). It is also home to a private chapel on the first floor, where Benozzo Gozzoli, a relatively small-time artist, decorated the walls with a large fresco known as The Procession of the Magi.





The Medici were all well-known sponsors and patrons of the arts, and were close friends with important artists and architects such as Michaelangelo and Brunelleschi, who completed many works for them over time. They also funded small-time artists like Gozzoli and Beati Angelico, who became one of Florence's most important Renaissance artists.

There, now don't you feel educated?

On Sunday, Gillian, Marissa and I decided to attempt to make ribollita, a typical Tuscan soup made with a cabbage and white bean base. We followed a recipe sent to us by Monica, one of the API advisors. We had to improvise a bit because the market is closed on Sundays, and we were restricted to what our local supermarket offers in produce.

Don't we look like real chefs, with all of our pots going at once?

Turns out we aren't much of chefs. Or the recipe was a dud. Either way, the soup was edible, but I wasn't all that impressed. To me, it just needed...MORE. More vegetable and spice variety, more bread, more time to cook, just...yeah. Worry not, however; the ribollita will not defeat us! And if it does, we will just get it at Sergio Gozzi's, our new favorite lunch place. I'm actually going to meet Mary and Bethany there for lunch tomorrow afternoon, and I'm already craving me some soup!

[Subject change] This morning, I woke up to the sound of my alarm, and very seriously started considering skipping class. It is already almost midterms, and I've yet to skip one yet! (Good job, Alaina!) But I hauled my cookies out of bed and went to go make breakfast, knowing that I am likely to want to skip a class again later in the semester, and I only get two absences without penalty. But in the middle of breakfast-fixin', I managed to smash a glass all over the kitchen floor. By the time I got it all swept up (and spent a good 5 minutes trying to dig a shard out of my foot), I was running late...and then I noticed it was snowing! It just seemed like a sign from God that I should skip Italian class this morning.

I reasoned that this was likely the last time it would snow in Florence while I am here, and that I should enjoy it. So I took my sweet time getting ready, watching my new episode of House before grabbing my book and heading to Nabucco to get a cappuccino.

Ahhh, coffee and literature. My favorite combo.

I finished my book, then spent the hour before my second class just walking around. I checked my mail, and received a postcard from ONALEE, who was in Boston a couple of weeks ago. Thanks! I enjoyed the snow during my walk, but I was feeling it less when my writing teacher dragged us out of class to the Piazza della Signoria to "observe" people and be inspired for an in-class exercise. I almost froze to death, so I hurried back to the class as soon as she was out of sight (don't worry! I still managed to observe enough to write a little something).

Also of note, I ripped my jeans today. Not just "Oh, look, a little tear"...I ANNIHLATED them. Apparently there was a little like...pre-made tear in them up by the pocket, you know, to make them look old or something, and when I went to adjust them before I sat down in my writing class.....RRRRRRRIIIIIPPPP! Almost all the way across the top of my leg. Fabulous. So now tomorrow, I really have to go shopping to find a new pair, since I only brought two pairs of jeans wth me.

This weekend, me and the roomz are headed to fair Verona, where we will spend one night in the city of Romeo and Juliet. We booked an adorable little B&B and will catch the train back on Saturday night, in time to attend some sort of gastronomic festival going on here in Firenze all weekend! [Pssst, Gillian, you got plans for this yet?]

Well, this was quite a random post. But that's what's been going on here this week. With midterms coming up, I expect to be doing quite a bit of reading/writing. I'm also working on another piece for my travel writing class, entitled Portrait of a Place. We get to choose any city, place within a city, or country, if we are feeling ambitious and we have to portray it as though it were having its portrait painted (metaphorically, of course). I'm pretty sure I'm going to do London, especially since Florence is off-limits, and Gainesville isn't exactly portrait-worthy (I can imagine it now...."So, um, everything is orange and blue, and our idea of fine dining is Chili's..."). Maybe if you're lucky I'll share my portrait with you when it's done :]

Ciao, bellas!

P.S. If you have any questions or requests for particular subject matter in the blog, PLEASE leave a comment! I'm open to photographing/discussing pretty much anything :]