Arrivederchi Italia, Ciao Alaska!

Good morning from Italy!

It's Thursday morning here in Florence and Katy and I just woke up to our last full day here.  We leave on an early morning (6:35 AM) plane out of Florence tomorrow, and are scheduled to get back into AK early Saturday morning, around 1:20 AM. Lots of travel, but I think we're ready!  

Katy and I both have one more final today, at noon, and then we both have to return our cell phones and internet before 5 PM Italy time. So after around 7 AM on Thursday morning in Alaska we will be out of reach until we get back.  Most of the rest of today for us will be spent packing up and cleaning up our apartment. 

Italy has been quite the experience, to say the least!

We're both so excited to come home. To see friends and family, to see mountains, to be able to drive and to be able to communicate in english again!  I think it's safe to say we've really appreciated the times that we've had here, but are both so happy to be coming home and are definitely looking forward to seeing everyone SOON!

Prayers for our flights, connections, and safe travels in general are always appreciated!

Thanks for reading, and we look forward to seeing everyone soon!

Fiorentina Soccer Game!

This shouldn't be a long post, but I thought even if it's just a shorter one, the event is still definitely blog-worthy.  In case you couldn't tell yet from the photos or the title, this past Sunday I went to my first soccer match here in Florence.   This was something both Katy and I had been wanting to do all semester long.  Unfortunately, the game schedule didn't work out for Katy to go too, but I was able to go and even met up with some people I knew from school.  It was quite the experience.  I had a slight scare the morning of the game, however, when I went to the ticket counter in the square near our apartment at 12:40 only to learn that they closed at 12:30 on Sundays.  Thankfully though, I was able to buy a ticket at the gate of the game, so it was worth walking over, even without the ticket.  The stadium is a just about a 20 or 30 minute walk away, just a ways outside of the city center.  The closer I got to the stadium the busier it got, people were all over the place, all ages, young and old, all wearing jerseys, scarves and hats proudly displaying their team pride.  There was  TONS of purple - Florence's team colors are purple and red, and everyone seemed to be shouting and cheering in Italian.  There was the most adorable little boy behind me too that was cheering in Italian the whole game long, SO cute.  I wasn't however, as impressed with the man right in front of me who decided to light up three separate times in the first half of the game alone... but, this is Florence we're talking about, so it didn't really surprise me that it happened!

 Florence ended up winning, 1-0 against one of their rival cities, Torino.  The game itself was, of course, very similar to any other soccer game, but just the fact that I was in Florence, sitting in their huge stadium, watching this game, was pretty cool.  It certainly was a great and memorable way to spend another beautiful and sunny day in Florence.   

The AMAZING Amalfi Coast: Pompei and Capri!

This past weekend, Katy and I both went on our last big trip of the semester - the Amalfi coast.  We went with the school, because it was just easier that way, school trips are good for when you want to just have everything planned out and all you really have to do is follow directions and be where there they tell you, when they tell you. All the transportation and lodging is taken care of, for, of course, a "small fee". But I think it was still worth it for a trip like this where there's a lot of traveling involved, including busses and ferries across the water to the island of Capri. 

So, we started our weeked EARLY Friday morning. We all met at a park downtown at 6:30 AM and got onto our respective private motor coaches, there were so many students on this trip, we had two tour busses.  The first few hours of the trip passed quietly as most people slept and Katy and I just tried to avoid the poor choice of movie they were showing on the bus TV. The first was in Italian with english subtitles, and actually wasn't as bad as the second one, which was, in my opinion, just terrible, but oh well...

A few hours into the trip we mad our first stop, which I soon discovered was referred to by our trip director as a "pee-pee stop", which might sound strange when you read it, but to hear this old Italian man saying it, it's actually kind of cute.  After this we were back on the road and on our way to Napoli, where we would stay for a few hours to have lunch and explore a tiny bit.  Napoli is the third largest city in Italy, following Milan and Rome, and is apparently notorious for pickpocketing, which made me a bit nervous, but I just zipped up my bag and kept a close eye on it at all times, and thankfully nothing bad happened.  

Lunch in Naoli was of course to be pizza, as Naples is notoriously known for their pizza.  So Katy and I found a restaurant/pizzeria along the street where we sat outside in the sun and were able to look out onto the water.  We sat to look at the menus, and it didn't take me long to see "melanzana alla parmiggiana", which, for those of you who are wondering, that means an eggplant and parmesan cheese pizza - I knew what I was getting! Ever since I've been in Italy, I've developed a huge love for vegetables here, they're so delicious. And eggplant is probably my favorite one of them all. I will get anything that I see it on, pizza, pasta, sandwiches, lasagna, you name it, if it has eggplant on it, I will happily eat it.  So, I got that pizza and Katy got the traditional Pizza Margherita.  In all honesty, I have to admit, the pizza was alright, but it didn't really knock my socks or anything like that.  I certainly wasn't impressed with the black hair I found in my pizza either... if that's how Naples does pizza, then I'm really not so much a fan.  

Anyways, after lunch it was back on the bus to drive along more of the Amalfi coastline toward Maiori, where our hotel was.  Oh my goodness, what a drive!  The only way I can even begin to explain it is if you've ever driven the road to Hana in Maui.  Basically it's this very narrow windy road with the trees and rocks right on one side, and a very steep cliff down the the water below on the other side.  Such a gorgeous sight, but a little nerve-wracking if you're on the cliff side of the bus...  Once we were safe and sound at our hotel we were told that we still had about an hour before we needed to meet back up again in the hotel lobby for dinner. Katy and I put our stuff in our room and went off to explore and walk along the water.  We found some gelato along the way from this great, cheap little place called Mamma Mia, of all things! We climbed out onto some big rocks and sat and talked and watched the sunset until it was time to head back to the hotel.  It was so nice and peaceful out that evening, such a wonderful place.  Dinner was not quite as peaceful, but rather loud and chaotic, but not bad.  In comparison to the dinners we were served from out hotel on our first trip with the  school to Rome months ago, I'd say this was better. They brought out the food just like before, pasta first and then the meat dish. However, after seeing the meat dish, I was almost tempted to go vegetarian... something about being served french fries and deep fried breaded chicken just didn't seem to fit... oh well, dessert was good! And actually, I think the first night's meal was better than the second, which was a seafood pasta dish, tentacles and all, followed by some sort of cooked sea-bream with potatoes.  Hey, it can't all be great, right? 

So anyways, our first full day we got up early in the morning and caught a ferry over to the island of Capri.  It was a gorgeous day and I was so happy for the sun and blue skies!  We got on the island in the late morning and were told we'd have the whole day to explore, lay out on the beach, whatever we wanted really.  Some people even went on the boat tours to see the famous Blue Grotto.

Katy went out on another boat tour to see some more of the island and some other random colors of grottos, and I stayed on the island.  The first boat ride over was enough for me, especially since I knew we'd still have to take the boat all the way back later that night. 

I was pretty content to just some beach and sit in the sun.  Now, the beach that we wanted to get to was on the opposite side of the island from where we had come in on, and to get there, you had to hike all the way to the top, walk through the city center and then all the way back down to the other side to the water.  Needless to say, it was quite the trek.   The beach was not that impressive, rather small and rocky, but still very pretty and I laid out for only an hour before getting sufficiently sunburnt.  It didn't help that I borrowed some girls TANNING LOTION, thinking it was sunscreen... girls from Guatemala and girls from Alaska probably don't share the same SPF number... oops!  Yet again, I go in the sun, and I get burned. It's okay... for me, it's totally worth it, the only real painful bummer was the burnt tops of my feet.  Katy got a lot of sun too, mostly on her neck. So I called her Red Neck and she called me Lobster legs.  It worked out well. 

After a long day in the sun we headed back to the coast for dinner again and to wrap up the evening at out hotel. 

The next morning, Sunday, began early, but not quite as early as the first, thankfully, and we soon found ourselves back on the bus complete with a tour guide. We were headed in the direction of Pompeii to take a tour of the ruins.  It was another hot and muggy day and the tour was getting a little long, in my opinion, but it was still very interesting and useful, I'm glad we went.  

After our tour we had some really terrible Pizza Margherita from a local restaurant before getting back on the bus for our long trip back to Florence.  The trip home was rather uneventful, watched the first Bond movie... Dr. No? I believe? And then The Devil Wears Prada.  Not so bad.  I obviously favored the second feature, but both were fine. Again, much better than the films we watched on the way to the coast. 

So, we finally made it back into Florence a little ahead of schedule around 8PM, ready to be back after a long and full weekend.  Tired and hungry, Katy and I visited our local Kebab man before going back to our apartment to rest and get ready for the week ahead of us.  All in all, I'd say it was a great weekend and I think we were both happy to have gone, but also happy to have been done with our last big trip of our time here in Italy.    

Road Trippin' across the Tuscan Countryside!

So, I had an absolute blast with my mom when she cam to visit. After our crazy yet amazing weekend in Paris, we had about a week to just relax a little more and explore Florence and the surrounding areas.  I had classes all week long, so I just showed her around the city in the mornings and evenings when I was free.  And on Wednesday, when Katy and I both had a full day of classes, our moms went to Rome for the day.  They left on a very early train and got the whirlwind tour of Rome from another big red tour bus, saw the most important things and then came back late that same day.  Other than that, most of the time during that week was just spent looking around Florence, shopping and checking out the local tourist spots - until the next weekend.  The last weekend my mom was here, she and I took a train to Pisa, saw the tower and then headed off to the airport to rent a car - that's right, I said rent a car, in Italy. If that sounds crazy, that's because it was, but it was also SO fun. Here's the thing.  There is a chef at the restaurant I work at back home (Turkey Red) who grew up in Florence and told me that his mother still lives in the area, in the Tuscan countryside and that I HAD to go visit her. So we figured what better time then when I was with MY mom. We got the directions from Franco, the son, on how to find Slyivia, the mother, and then we were off.  

Keys in our hand our first task was to find our car: A Fiat Panda, not the smallest car I've seen in Europe yet, but still, pretty tiny compared to what we were used to from back home.   Here's a couple of photos of our little vehicle for the weekend. Not to shabby, huh?  

Things went surprisingly well, considering we were driving a new car in a new country... the only minor problem was when we needed to back up to turn around and we couldn't figure out the reverse... so we just opened the doors, got out and walked the car backwards until we were facing the right way.  No big deal.  Not soon after this, we discovered that the reverse only engages after pulling up on the knob below the gearshift... good to know! 

Before we knew it, we were off, listening to the Italian radio, cruising our way on down to Livorno, where we were going to stay for the evening.  Livorno was wonderful, a nice city right on the water with the port right there nearby the city center. We stayed at a nice little hotel called Hotel Grand Duca and had a great view of the port and all the boats in the water.  Here's mom standing outside our hotel by the statue. I took this photo from our window of our room. 

Like I said, Livorno was a really nice place, and it was nice to just walk along the water on all the paths with the trees and greenery.  There were people out everywhere running and walking.  We saw lots of strollers and little children playing and rollerskating too, which was nice, since I don't see a lot of that back in Florence.  

We also found this really great shop called a Yogurteria, which basically means they sell frozen yogurt with all kind of toppings, SO delicious.  Don't get me wrong, I really like this whole Italian gelato thing here in Italy, but some nice frozen yogurt was actually a nice little break from all the gelato I've been eating here.  I, of course put chocolate on my yogurt, along with some of these strange wanna be M&M type candies - YUM. 

So the next morning, Saturday morning, we got up early, had breakfast at the hotel and hopped into out little car and found the road to Cecina.  This was the little town about 50 kilometers away from Livorno, where were going to attempt to find Slyvia AKA "the mother"  The road we were on took us right along the coast, and even though the weather was stormy with thunder and lighting, it was still a beautiful sight.  At one point along the drive it started to hail on us, which was kind of fun. I think it was then that I mentioned to mom that I was happy that we didn't end up renting a little smart car like we had joked about because at that point of the storm I would not have felt very safe! 

We made it into Cecina rather early around 11 or so, which was nice, considering we knew we'd be needing a fair amount of time to find this little old lady's house and have some time to visit before having to turn around and drive back to Pisa to return our rental car before 4PM.  So, with only her home address in hand, we began our search.  About and hour later and with nearly four different sets of directions given to us by four different Italians, we finally found her building.  We buzzed her door and thankfully she was home and let us into the building.  As we rounded up the last set of stairs leading to her apartment, however, we saw her peeking out her door, and as soon as she saw us, and realized she didn't know who we were, she slammed the door in our faces.  Thankfully we were able to shout to her before she shut the door, that we were friends of her son Franco, we were the ones coming from Alaska, and was she Franco's mother.  Slowly, she eased the door back open and once she figured out who we were, she graciously let us inside.  Let me just say, Sylvia was one of the sweetest little old ladies I have ever met. Unfortunately, she had just recently taken a fall and had broken her shoulder so was rather out of commission, to say the least.  Even still though, she was so hospitable and insisted on knowing what she could do for us! Can you believe that, we were the ones who showed up completely uninvited just to visit and she's still asking if she can do anything for us, like if we were hungry and could she make us a sandwich or anything, what a dear!  So we had a really nice visit with Sylvia for about an hour or so before we had to get going so as to not be late getting back into Pisa. I think she really enjoyed having someone to visit with and share some her life stories with.  All in all, I think that my mom and I were both really glad that we decided to take the trip and look so long and hard to find her.  

It was a wonderful weekend get-away and a great time spent with my mom.  Made me realize how special mothers are, I know I'm so truly  blessed and grateful for my mom. Love you mom!  Thanks for a great week, weekend and road trip - and thanks too for never getting upset with your very inadequate co-pilot and map-girl... I'll take a road trip with you any day, mom!

Here's a photo of Sylvia and I in her apartment right before we left! I'll never forget her sweet face and all the great stories she told us. Franco, you have a very wonderful mother!

Mama Mia! Quelle surprise!

Bonjour! Here's your blog from our adventures in Paris, France!

Let's see, where to begin? I guess we'll start with Thursday afternoon, when the fun first began. Katy and I skipped our Thursday classes to catch the train to Pisa and then hop a Ryan Air flight into Beauvais, France.  From here we would then continue on to meet my mom in Paris. Travel was a little nuts to say the least, as it was Easter weekend and that is apparently THE biggest traveling weekend for all of Europe.  Thankfully we made it to France without too many complications.  The hour or so long bus shuttle from Beauvais to Paris took us though some beautiful French countryside that I was very thankful to have been able to see.

We finally made it into Paris around  8PM.  Our shuttle bus dropped us off somewhere in the middle of Paris, leaving Katy and I to our own defenses to figure out how to find the hotel where we were to meet my mom. All I knew about where our hotel was that it was, "somewhere near the Eiffel Tower"...  So, our newly developed city/street smarts directed us to find the nearest Subway and try and find the lines that went toward the Eiffel Tower. We knew that our hotel was somewhere near there, but beyond that, we were a little clueless.  So we finally found the subway and, after some very appreciated guidance of some very helpful english speaking French people found our way toward what we thought was the closest subway stop.  We got off, the tower as our North star... the only thing we knew was the follow it.  Unfortunately, it wasn't all that helpful in leading us to our hotel, so I stopped at a very nice, 4 or 5 star hotel and asked one of the men standing outside in uniform.  His job was probably really to do something like greet guests and take luggage, not direct young girls who speak very poor french to their 2 star hotels, but oh well.  He ended up being rather helpful by giving us a map and a finger pointed in the general direction and we were off again. Not long after, we found the street and headed down it.  We had just seen the sign of our hotel in the distance and crossed the street to enter the building when we heard a lady across the street speaking english to another person in a room upstairs. It was my mom! My mom was the lady on the street. I called out to her, whereupon she screamed and ran across the street to hug us.  Soon we entered the hotel lobby where Katy asked who the person was upstairs that she was speaking english to.  Before my mom could answer, the elevator door opened and we saw Katy's mom!  She had surprised Katy and come with my mom to visit Katy.  Screams and hugs were again shared for quite sometime until we all headed up to our rooms to put our stuff away before heading out for a late night bite and the beginning of lots of chatting and catching up. 

Friday was our first morning in Paris, and we soon discovered that my mom and I and Katy and her mom had slightly different ideas of how we wanted to spend our time seeing the city, so we ended up splitting up for most of the day with plans of meeting up again later that evening for dinner at a little bistro/bar near our hotel.  I discovered soon after arriving in France that my allergies were pretty bad due to all the blooming trees and flowers, so the first thing on my agenda in Paris was to find a pharmacy and get some medicine so I could breath again.  Once I found this, I was good to go, feeling so much better. Thank goodness for allergy medicines!  

We all bought tickets for one of those big double decker tour busses, the ones where you can sit inside or on the top and they provide you with the earphones that tell you all the little touristy facts in like, 10 different languages.  It actually ended up being a really nice way to see Paris, because it's just such a large city, to try and see it all in just a few days by walking around would be really tough.  So my mom and I spent some time on that bus and also checked out one of the largest shopping districts in the city.  Katy and her mom spent most of their day hitting up some museums like the Louvre and other popular sights of Paris.  The following day in Paris was spent visiting more museums and tourist hot spots of Pairs.  I loved Paris! I didn't have nearly enough time here, so I'm definitely going to have to come back some day! There was still so many things that I didn't get to see, and so much food that I didn't get to try.  I tried the cafe au lait and pain au chocolate one morning and was totally sold.  But I guess I'll still have to return someday just to try escargot.  

We didn't actually have any return tickets to get us from Paris to Florence, because once my mom and I found out that Katy's mom was coming along to surprise her, we thought the plans might change a little, so we figured we should leave some room for flexibility and just plan out what we wanted to do when we all got there.  This might not have been one of our more intelligent ideas... as I previously mentioned, Easter weekend is one of the busiest travel weekends in the year in Europe, so for us to just expect to find a flight or even a train back to Florence turned out to be a rather far fetched idea.  Originally I had really wanted to take trains all the way back to Italy so I could see the French countryside as well as the city of Paris, but we soon discovered that every train was booked full. In the end, we were lucky to even be able to find our flight out.  Sadly however, this flight left early Sunday afternoon, so we didn't even have any of Easter Sunday to spend in Paris.  We traveled that whole day, riding a bus, plane, and train all in one day before finally making it back to Florence.  

All in all, I know I can truly say that it was a fantastic weekend for my mom and I, and I think Katy and her mom seemed to enjoy themselves as well.  Even with all the stress in the last day to find our way back it Italy, it was still a great time.

I know one thing for sure though: Paris will be seeing me again sometime down the road, I think it'd be a great place to go back to, and I hope Mitchel is willing to come with, I really think you'd love it honey!  

Here's a photo of me at a traditional French bakery near our hotel. This particular bakery is called Poilane, and I was really excited to see their shop, because this happened to be the same bakery that I had written a paper on last semester for my bakery development class.  Their bread art in the window display was amazing, and I soon discovered after trying their baked goods that their actual products were equally as good.

Mom and I at the Eiffel Tower!  They light it up at night and it looks fantastic! At 9PM it sparkles for about ten minutes, what a great sight!  

Here's a photo of me in the Napoleon apartments found inside the Louvre. 

Spring Break Fun under the Sicilian Sun!

In case anyone was still wondering what I did for the second half of my spring break here, and the title didn't clue you in well enough - I'll tell you -  I went to Sicily! 

According to my very scholarly geographic knowledge, Sicily is the little oddly shaped ball that the high heeled boot (also know as Italy)  is kicking. It's technically still a part of Italy, but in my opinion, is very different from the rest of the country 

So, early Thursday morning I left with 6 other girls to catch a train to Pisa, and then a flight to Trapani, where we would be staying.  It was a lot of fun to be able to travel with a group of girls, and just be silly and have fun.  I knew most of them, but a couple I had just met and had a great time getting to know better.  This weekend was all about just chilling out and relaxing - a good phrase to use to describe it might be "chillaxin".   (One of the many new words and phrases I learned over the long weekend)

We arrived in windy, but beautiful Trapani around noon on Thursday where we proceeded to lounge around on the pavement outside the airport in the sun while we waited for our bus to come to take us into the town, about a half and hours ride away.  Once we got into the town, we went to our bed and breakfast/hostel.  Long story short here, we ended up getting moved to a different location where we could all stay together.  The place was amazing.  It was like an apartment, with a kitchen, a living room, two bathrooms and three huge bedrooms with queen sized beds. It worked out so well, because we had thought that we'd be in separate rooms, but thankfully because of plumbing issues in our first hostel location, we all ended up in the same building.  This place was like no other hostel/B&B I had ever been in before.  It was super great too because now we were able to cook lots of meals right there at our place and so we saved a lot of money by not having to go out a lot for dinner and whatnot.

So, the first day, we went out for lunch and got well fueled for our first day in Sicily.  We found this great little restaurant that had a fixed menu for lunch all for only 10 euro, and it came with SO much food.  We got LOTS of bread - which was wonderful in itself because this was the first time that we'd been in Italy and not had to eat "Tuscan" bread, which has NO salt and therefore NO flavor, which is all they have in Florence.  So it was really nice to have a good, flavorful bread. We even packaged some up in a napkin and took it in a girls bag... I don't know if that counts as stealing, but I feel like bread is a part of the meal that you're paying for, so why not get all your moneys worth, right? And on top of that we all got a first course (pasta) and a second (a meat dish) and a side ( salad/potatoes) SO much food, but SO good. Regardless, I felt like I was ready to be rolled off to the beach when we were done eating. 

The beach was AMAZING though. Not super hot, and very windy and dirty, but there was still sand, sun, and waves, so I thought it was great.  Here's some photos of our first day and some of our first moments playing in the sand.  

We found lots of jelly fishies on the beach too, but were careful of course to not step on them, I'd hate to have gotten stung on my first day.

We spent a lot of time that first day just hanging around the water and exploring the town.  I went out again too later that night to see the beautiful sunset on the water.  Such a gorgeous sight! 

The next morning everyone took advantage of being able to sleep in and so we just had a lazy morning relaxing and hanging out in the morning sun that came in straight onto our little terrace.  Our accommodations also included "breakfast vouches" at a cafe a few blocks away, which meant each morning we would walk there and get cappuccinos and brioches for breakfast.  It was wonderful and I was definitely spoiled by being able to get a coffee and a pastry for 4 mornings in a row. There were so many choices too, I never even had to eat the same thing twice! Nutella, cream, apple cinnamon... I was in pastry heaven here!

Friday was our first full day, and half of us decided to hang around the beach and sunbathe.  The other half, myself included, decided to go on a hike.  One of the girls we were with had seen this "mountain" in the distance earlier that morning when she had gone for a run and she told herself she wanted to climb it. I of course, wanted to go too.  I didn't bring any tennis shoes to Sicily though, all I had were danskos, and I knew I couldn't hike in those, so I borrowed some shoes from another girl... well, I don't really know if  you could call them shoes, but they were better than what I had, and I really wanted to go hiking, so I gave them a shot.  They worked out pretty well for the most part, I just looked really silly and thankfully only got one blister, I ended up walking back barefoot, but it actually felt pretty good, so that was alright.  So, merely hours later four of us found ourselves trekking up this mountain.   Even though there was no path, and we ended up bushwhacking our entire way up, scraping our legs the whole time, it was so worth it. The view was phenomenal!  Truly a great way to spend a couple of hours!  I had no idea how sunny it really was however though until I got back to the hostel, and I definitely got VERY sunburnt on that hike. I'm STILL peeling, one week later.   

Once we got back down we met up with the other girls and went back to the hostel to make some food because we were all very hungry.  Certainly hiking, and apparently suntanning too, takes a lot out of a girl.   

Again, we all just hung out that night and didn't do too much, because that's what this trip really was all about, just relaxing and having fun.  

The next morning we all slept in again, still enjoying the sun and the "free" breakfast from the cafe.  We took a walk around the town a little bit and looked into taking a ferry/boat across the water to go over to an islands just about 30 minutes away.  Not everyone wanted to go, but I ended up going with another girl.  We acually tried to leave about three different times, but they kept canceling the trips across because of "bad" weather, so we decided to go eat some lunch and checked back later in the afternoon.  Thankfully they had started sending out boats again, so we hopped the next one and 30 minutes later I arrived, feeling very seasick and thankful to be back in land.  

This island, however, in all honestly, was a pretty big disappointment.  Everything in the town was closed, and there was really nothing to do there. Never the less, we were stuck here for the next two hours before the next boat was scheduled to leave back to Sicily.  So, we walked around a little bit, took some photos, and then took a nap on some benches in a little "park".  Had I to do it over again, I'd say it was NOT worth the wonderful 20 euro rocky voyage across the waters, but, oh well, live and learn!

The trip back was much nicer, a lot smoother and seemed to pass much quicker for me as well. 

Once we got back we all went out and got pizzas and brought them back to the apartment and hung out more and chatted about the days events, or lack thereof...

The next day, Sunday, was an early day for us all, because one of the girls who was with us had to catch and earlier flight out because she had a class to go to Monday morning.  We dropped her off at the bus stop at around 6:30 AM and then went back to our little cafe to get our much needed morning coffees.  We decided to take advantage of the fact that we still had a lot of time left in the day so, a few hours later, around 8 or 9 AM we hopped on a bus to Palermo, a larger more city like town a couple of hours away.  There were some nice things to see there.  We found lots of little markets in the streets and we even bought a bunch of fresh strawberries and ate them all while we were walking around the town. I have another funny shoe story here too...   This is actually a pretty good one too, believe it or not. 

So, you see, all along, for the two plus months that I've been here in Italy, I've been telling myself, NO shoes Emily, NO shoes.  And it's been really hard because I LOVE shoes and there's SO many cute shoes here. But I hadn't gotten any still, and I was actually feeling pretty proud of myself for that.  But, since I didn't come to Sicily prepared for warm, sandy beach weather at all, I found myself borrowing lots of clothes and other things from the girls. I also happened to be borrowing a pair of flip flops from one girl.  I'm not the greatest at wearing flip flops, really, at least not until I've seasoned my feet into wearing them. I guess that little spot between my toes is just too sensitive to having material between then all of a sudden like that. Apparently,  I have to work my way into flops,I don't know, but I think I shocked my feet here in Sicily by wearing this girls plastic Old Navy flops because my feet were just starting to really, really hurt and bleed a little, to be honest.  So, I told the girls if they saw any cheap shoes in these markets to let me know.  Well, not two seconds after these words came out of my mouth, but what did I run across.  A little lady selling "frocs" - fake crocs.... so, long story short, even though I haven't really made this a short story, basically I spent the last 2 months avoiding buying all these cute shoes and what do I do in Sicily? I break down and by a bright yellow pair of foam shoes for 6 euro... way to go me. Oh well, at least they are comfortable.  I felt a little like big bird, but it's alright, I didn't mind, and the girls seemed to be okay with me still walking near them as well too, so I suppose all was well.

We caught the bus back to Trapani just as it started to rain and then just spent the rest of the rainy and windy night in our place for the last night.  We ended up playing cards till almost 1AM only taking a break to make a midnight (literally, it was past 12) snack of pasta and bread.  This was was actually lots of fun, until 5 AM rolled around and we had to be up and out and on our way to the airport to catch our Monday morning flight back to Pisa.

So, we ran past our cafe early that morning, grabbing some fresh brioches, hot out of their oven and hopped on the bus back to the airport. The rest of the trip back was rather uneventful, but we all agreed that this long weekend in Sicily was a great time and just what we had all needed.  A few days to just hang out in the sand and sun and laugh with some girls truly was a great way to end our spring break! 

All in all, Sicily was a great time and I'm really glad that I got to go with a bunch of girls and just hang out and relax for my last few days of spring break.  

A Jolly good weekend in lovely little Derbyshire

Well, everybody, this blog entry just might go down in history as the quickest post ever for me.  So, Katy and I just returned from England last night and now, only one day later, I'm already blogging about it!  Amazing, I know, but, I kind of feel like I have to since I'll be leaving for Sicily for the second half of my spring break early tomorrow morning and that will be a whole other entry in itself.  So I wanted to write about our first trip before the memories and experiences from my second one could possibly cloud my memory of the first.  

So, ENGLAND! Was, AMAZING! Katy and I both loved it so much!  

Planning for the weekend was rather rushed and we booked our B&B literally the night before we flew out.  We ended up staying at a little place called Chuckles Guesthouse.  We tried and tried all day long to get a hold of them, but to no avail, until finally I tried one last time later in the afternoon.  I was definitely not expecting anyone to answer, but I just happened to get someone, and it turned out that they just happened to have a twin room available for us for the next three nights, just like we wanted.  It was so wonderful how it all worked out, and the owners, Nina and Glenn turned out to be the sweetest and nicest people ever.  We just loved them.  

So, on Saturday morning we took the train to Pisa where we were supposed to fly out and on into East Midlands, England.   We had a mild scare after not getting off the train at the right stop, which resulted in a bit of running and mild panic at the though of possibly missing our flight, but thankfully we didn't.  In fact, in the end, we even had enough time to find a McDonalds and a pizza place at the train station so we could buy some food and shove it down our throats before continuing our run all throughout the station to catch our little trolley train over to the Pisa Airport.  Which, in looking back, we should have just avoided trying to find food, as it was greasily disgusting and certainly didn't sit very well in our bellies once we were off and running again.  Oh well, I guess that's just another lesson learned.  

So we caught our flight out of Pisa just fine.  After I, of course, got stopped twice by the security.  It seems like no matter where I'm going, I always get stopped... but there's an even better story about my being stopped in security later, so I'll share that later when I get to it. 

We arrived in England at about 6 PM, having gone back an hour from Florence time, got our passports stamped, much to Katy's disapproval as her stamp was very faint and barely legible, and headed out to exchange our money to the UK pound and find the Skylink bus to Derby, where we would be staying for the weekend.

Here's a photo of me with my 20 pound note. 

 

Katy and I both loved England from the get go.  It was green  and there were yellow daffodils everywhere and every one was just so nice! They spoke english and we could understand them, it was wonderful.  They had the cutest little english accents, it was just so fun to listen to them speak.  We were both truly happy that we had ended up in England for spring break.  

Later that evening, upon arrival at our bed and breakfast, we were informed by Nina, one of the owners that there was a great little steak house called Emily's just a few streets away if we wanted to find some dinner.  We both loved the idea and I was totally game to go to a place that shared my name.  We were both pleased with our meal and afterwards headed back to our room to crash, as we were pretty worn our from our day of traveling.  

Here's a picture of Emily's Steakhouse sign as well as a picture of our spread from the evening.  The steaks were good, but what was the most amazing was the cheese and garlic baguette, SO delicious.      

Sunday morning we woke up and headed downstairs to our first tasting of a Full English breakfast... wow! That's all I can say.  It's so much food, but it was all so good.  We started with either coffee or tea, then had a  selection of cereals and fruits as well as fresh fruit juices.  Katy and I both would have been entirely happy with just the cereal as were both eyeing the much desired name brands like Special K and Frosted Flakes. But we didn't need that because our hot English breakfast was just on it's way.  This included: sausage, bacon, beans, eggs, mushrooms, tomatoes and toast - complete with delicious homemade jams.  Needless to say, we were definitely well fueled for our day of exploring Derby. 

With full bellies and no real plan for the day ahead of us we headed off to explore the town.  Not long into our adventure did we come across the beautiful Derby Cathedral.  It was about 10:35 at that time and as I was admiring the amazing building this sweet little old lady walked up to me and invited me to come in, informing me that mass started in about 10 minutes and that the music was beautiful.  Katy and I were more than happy to go and attend, and were not disappointed.  The cathedral was gorgeous and the music was even more beautiful.  We happened to be in England on their mother's day as well, or as they called it Mums Day or Mothering Sunday, so at the end of the service we all got flowers to take with us. 

Here's a photo of the Derby Cathedral, pretty impressive, huh? 

Once we were out of church, we decided to use the rest of our day to continue wandering around the town and check of some of the shopping scene as well.  We found a large mall in the area and shopped around there for a bit.  It felt nice to be somewhere where we felt a little closer to home just because of our surroundings.  We ate miniature shepherds pies for lunch at the food court upstairs, and then later had milkshakes from this amazing shop called Shake It, where you could choose almost any candy you could imagine and have it blended into your milkshake, so cool.  Here's a photo of this amazing place.  I loved how colorful it was!

The mall closed at 4:30, so Katy and I spend the rest of the afternoon and a bit into the evening walking around Derby Park and all along the river.  The weather wasn't the nicest, but it was still so beautiful with all the green and the trees and the flowers.  It's spring time in England so all of the trees are just budding and there was ivy crawling all over the place.  It was so beautiful and peaceful.  A great get away from Florence for sure.  Here are some photos of the beautiful English country side scenery.  

Katy and I finished our stroll through the park and then headed back to our room with the best of intentions of finding Fish and Chips for supper. However, the only good fish and chips place that we were told about was closed so we ended up at this Australian Bar/Restaurant type place called the Walkabout.  Katy got a Kangaroo burger, called the "Roo Burger" on the menu.  Here's a photo of what a kangaroo burger looks like, in case anyone was wondering.  It was a little tough and dry and tasted a bit like venison, but with some sauce, not too bad.  

 

Monday morning came a bit earlier, but with the same deliciously large breakfast, and soon after Katy and I found ourselves on a large bus headed for the Peak District, which would take us to see more of the English country side.  The bus driver offered us a good deal on a wayfare ticket for the whole day if pretended to be a child under the age of 16 and Katy was the adult.  I choose 15, and thankfully I made it though the rest of the day without any questions from the other drivers.  I can't believe that at the young age of 20 I'm already lying about my age!  It was fun to get out of Derby and see some other little towns.  We went to Buxton where we found some great little chocolate shops, a wonderful old bookstore that was at least 4 stories tall and then tried to eat some disgusting fish and chips for lunch.  Our next stop was a little town called Bakewell, which was super cute and my favorite of all the towns we saw that day.  Finally, our last stop of the day was in Matlock, where we walked around a lovely little park and took some more photos.  Well, Katy took photos, my cameras battery had died and me bringing my Italian charger didn't do me any good in England where they have yet another style of plug ins.  Oh well, I still got some great shots on the other days.

  Later that night, once Katy and I got back into Derby, we went out to a pub for dinner.  We went to a place called Ye Old Dolphin Pub, which is supposedly the oldest pub in Derby.  It was actually really cute inside, if you're allowed to call a pub cute... and we really enjoyed the food and ale.    

We flew out on Tuesday morning after having our last delicious hot english breakfast, and stopping at the mall again for Katy to pick up some earrings and grabbing some smoothies from a little smoothie shop.  If it sounds like we ate our way through England, then you're right, we pretty much did.  But it was just so nice to not be surrounded by pasta and pizza everywhere we turned.  However, I do think that we both ate more meat in the three days that we were in England than we probably have in the almost two months that we've been in Italy.  

Our flight back to Pisa was rather uneventful except for my being pulled aside at security once again... So, here's the story that I promised.  We were going through the line and this time I made sure that I took my shoes and sweatshirt off to begin with, in hopes that nothing would go wrong, yeah, right.  Still didn't work.  I still beeped, and so then this lady had to "pat me down"... I guess they call it.  It was bad. Let's just say she was very thorough.  She was thorough enough to feel around all my body and even pat about my bum well enough to ask me to take out the business cards I had in my back pocket!  But wait, it gets better.  I had left my laptop in my backpack for the screening, because that was what I had done in Pisa, no problems there... here it was a little different story.  Another lady pulled my bad and I aside where she proceeded to take out every single thing in my purse and bag and rub it with her little swatch of cloth to test for bugs or drugs or whatever it is they test for.  So, out went everything.  She flipped though my checkbook, agenda, bible, opened every possible case I had, pulled everything out of my bag, my p.j.'s, and oops, there goes the underwear! It was great, let me tell you.  Good thing I'm not one to get too embarrassed at stuff life this, and thankfully too we had come early enough to have enough time to deal with all of these little set backs.  Makes me a little nervous for the flight to Sicily tomorrow.  Maybe I should just wear a sign that says, "I'm going to set off the alarm regardless, so just check me now"  Oh well, it just adds to the memories I suppose.

     

So, as I've said before Katy and I both absolutely loved England, it was fun to ride around on the wrong side of the road and be able to listen to and understand all the sweet English people speaking in their adorable accents.  I think we were both really happy and pleased with our time spent in another country!