Friends in Italy!

These past couple of weeks I have had an array of visitors come my way which has been a ton of fun! And semi-exhausting as well. First up it was Val Baum, Morgan Dougherty, and Jenna Kempf who all arrived on Thursday, March 20 – all stayed in our three bedroom apartment. On Friday, I caught an early train to Milan to meet my future roommates – Andrea Thompson, Linney Warren, and Jess Johnson – for the night while the other three started touring Firenze! The next day (Saturday) the four of us in Milan headed back to Florence and with those three girls staying with us as well, doubled the occupancy of our apartment! It was quite the squeeze but well worth it. (All six girls are Kappa’s with me at CSU and are all studying abroad as well!) We had a fabulous reunion going out to dinner (Kappa style) and then going out on the town! Jenna, Morgan, and Val headed out on Sunday, Andrea departed on Tuesday morning, and then Linney and Jess departed Wednesday morning… only to be followed by my very good friend from Phoenix, Anthony Gallese, arriving on Thursday with three of his friends all on spring break from U of A! Once again, out to dinner and out to the bars/discotecs! On Friday, another fellow Phoenician, Mark Grant (also a good friend from high school) arrived and with this now very small Xavier/Brophy reunion taking place in Florence, decided it was necessary to stay out till 6am?! Bad idea… or good – I’m undecided! On Saturday afternoon, my mom finally arrived!!! We left the boys to do their own sightseeing (which turned into napping because of our previous late night) and we went out for dinner at Trattoria Quattro Leoni – one of the oldest and most delicious restaurants in Florence! On Sunday, everyone woke up early for the Easter service at the Duomo, an experience all to itself! Every year, they start the ceremony outside and then they basically blow up this chariot in between the baptistery and the basilica – you basically feel as if your on the front lines of a war, it’s that crazy! The boys left to head back to the States and my mom and I began to plan our weeks adventure – which we’re on as I type! So more to come soon!!! xxoo <3

March 13 - 22, 2008

The Swiss Alps - Interlaken!

A couple of weekends ago, Nicole, Janelle, and I took a “Bus2Alps” trip (basically a tour company that organizes bus trips out of Florence to destinations throughout Europe) to Interlaken, Switzerland. Interlaken is the outdoor activities capitol of Switzerland, near Grindelwald. I think this was my favorite trip so far and I basically would like to move to Switzerland asap! The people there are so friendly and so relaxed and you basically feel like your looking at a postcard all weekend, the vistas are that spectacular! So, we arrived in Interlaken, after our 7 hour bus ride – yuck, at about 4:00am on a Friday morning. We woke up the next day at 8 to get our rentals and then head to the slopes of the Alps. The first run and a half of the day was great… and then I fell and incurred my first snow (skiing/snowboarding) related accident. Somehow – hard to do in a snowboard, I know, I have no idea how it happened – sprained my ankle. So then I was stuck at the lodge the rest of the day while Janelle and Nicole enjoyed the sunny, great skiing weather. Awesome. So after our trek back to the hostel, Balmer’s Herberge, and I say trek because I couldn’t put any weight on my ankle and I was hobbling, we grabbed some dinner and then headed down to the bar that’s under our hostel – it was actually pretty fun and our friend (fellow CSU KKG), Jess Johnson, met us there, as she was also in Interlaken for the weekend to skydive! The next day we decided that it was be a really great idea to go canyon diving aka jump off a 180ft. cliff. It actually turned out to be a ton of fun, although a little scary right before the jump – but the adrenaline rush was so worth it! While on this adventure, we met our new friend Chris Lincoln, a native Californian, who was on an extended business trip for his company in San Francisco a few towns over. We ended up hanging out with him the rest of the time and we were able to drive up to some amazing views to see the two lakes that are one either side of Interlaken as well as to the town of Grindelwald the next morning. Also on Saturday night, the four of us went out to have our first traditional Swiss meal (or at least Janelle’s and my first traditional Swiss meal, as we had never had fondue before); it was a little different, but a lot of fun. On our way back we stopped at a bar called Buddy’s, where I met my Swiss boyfriend – he didn’t really speak English but he took a lot of pictures with me and then introduced me to his friend as an international firefighter? Not really sure. I should also tell you that this guy was in a full blown ski racer suit… needless to say, we didn’t exchange contact info – haha. Unfortunately we had to leave the following afternoon, everyone was extremely exhausted from the action packed weekend but was not ready to leave this beautiful country…  We all decided that moving there would be a very wise idea… But as always, as our bus pulled into the Florence train station, I was happy to be home!

March 6 - 9, 2008

Boboli Gardens - a day in Firenze

Today, I woke up around ten, Pat and the girls came over, I put Pat in charge of making amazing breakfast sandwiches for everyone again while I got ready. They headed off to the Uffizi, a huge museum just across the river, I’m waiting to go till I get my Uffizi pass so I can get in for free! So I went up some stairs that I always see while walking to school and explored this huge hill and walked down and up some winding roads… for a while I was just walking around this wall and every so often there was a door, so I’d try and peek in the doors but it was just green pasture looking scenery – I came to find out later that it was part of the Boboli Gardens which is behind the Palazzo Pitti (Pitti Palace) which is like a two minute walk from my apartment. I then met up with Tony and we went to the Boboli Gardens, which were amazing. We walked around and talked for a good 1.5 hours. I think that is definitely my favorite part of Florence so far. I love cities that have parks in the middle of them (aka London and New York) and I had yet to find one in Florence – something that I thought was definitely missing – and I’m really glad I did. I’m excited too because as soon as I get my Uffizi pass, I’ll be able to go into the gardens for free and you could basically consider them my back yard (think the walk from Kappa to Pi Kapp – it’s that close; for Pho-town people, the walk from, wait what am I saying, we don’t walk anywhere…)!! So, anyways I can’t wait to just go and sit in the gardens for hours and hours and take picnics there and such like that!! After the gardens, we grabbed lunch from this place called The Oil Shoppe, best and cheapest sandwiches in Florence by far, and then it was time for the boys to leave L so I escorted them to the train station and said good bye with the hope of visiting Rome again soon! On my way home I stopped by a gelato place about two bridges down from me and I’m excited to say that not only do I think I just found the best gelato I’ve had since I’ve been here, but it was also the cheapest – 1euro!! So, yeah that’s definitely going to become a staple snack while I’m here!! Anyways, I think today has been my favorite day in Florence so far, it probably helped that it was 70 degrees out and I got to wear flip flops – ps I was born to live in flip flop weather. But I definitely re-fell in love with the city cannot wait/really hope that the weather stays nice! Next weekend, we are taking a trip to Interlaken, Switzerland; it’s in the Alps and I’m so excited to ski (or snowboard… haven’t decided which yet, any suggestions?) I’ll update you all soon!

April 2, 2008

A Chianti Experience

On Saturday, Angie, Nicole, and I had signed up to go on a school field trip called the Chianti Experience, so we gave Tony and Mike a map and sent them out into the city and we boarded and bus and went to the Verrazzano Vineyard about an hour and a half away. The vineyard has been there since the 1100’s and the guy who stared it or originally lived/owned the place is the same guy who founded New York and there is now a bridge in New York named after him, the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge. They also mentioned that the owner of the vineyard on the other side of the next hill over was originally Amerigo Vespucci which I though was pretty cool too. So we got there, took some pretty touristy pictures; Gino, the manager, gave us a tour of the vineyard and explained the wine making process in short and then we sat down to our four course meal with like three bottles of wine and at and drank with the best of them. The girls at our table ended up knowing Tony and Mike (they have a friend that was studying in Rome and had stayed w/ the boys a couple of weeks ago) so we made friends with them and had a great time. By the end of our meal I was absolutely stuffed and proceeded to take a nap on the way home, it was delightful, except I missed the beautiful Italian countryside that we saw on the way up to the vineyard. We got back around 5ish and found that Tony and Mike’s other roommate Pat had also come to Florence with his sister and cousin who were visiting him and so they all came over and we cooked a big meal – penne pasta with chicken, zucchini, and a white cream sauce – again, amazing. I really do feel like I’m just studying abroad to become more domesticated sometimes – just kidding mom!! We also had a series of power outages while cooking dinner – at least 15+ times, no joke, our power went out, I finally gave up and made Tony go down our six flights of stairs every time. Later that night, we all went out and met up with Neil and his girlfriend, we then met our roommates and went to a new bar/club that had opened that had 5euro drinks (pretty cheap for Italy) – it definitely turned out to be another great night! I love all three of those boys and Pat’s sister and cousin; everything is so much better in good company I’m learning. 

April 1, 2008

Pisa & Lucca

On Friday, we took a short day trip to Pisa and Lucca! Nicole and I hopped on a train and met up with Tony (PKP friend from Rome) and his roommates, Mike and Neil, at the Pisa train station. We journeyed to the famous Leaning Tower, which was pretty cool, much better than the pictures. We took a ton of touristy photos of ourselves and then we definitely peaced it out of Pisa because other than the leaning tower, there is absolutely nothing there. So then we got on a train and went to Lucca, which is a very old Roman citystate. The entire city has a huge wall around it that was used to close in the city when enemies arrived back in the day. We had lunch at the oldest restaurant in the city, Bistro Sant’ Angelo (est. 1170). Although expensive, it was very good. I had some type of pie thing with artichokes and ricotta inside of it… interesting – yes but still tasty. We walked around for a while and went into two different cathedrals and then realized that we had to get back on a train to Florence to meet Neil’s girlfriend and Nicole’s friend Angie (studying in Tourino) at the station at 6ish – but it got really cold and windy out anyways so I was kind of glad to go, but I definitely want to go back to Lucca and wander through the quaint little town. Oh, and it was really exciting because now that I’m learning a lot more of the language I can talk to some of the locals, who are usually very nice. And when I say talk, I mean ask them for directions and then they something that I usually don’t understand but get the jist of because they point in one direction or the other, so that was really exciting. Once we got back to Florence, Tony, Mike, and Angie came with us to our apartment where we started in on some wine we picked up and then made some Baked Ziti – which turned out amazing, if I do say so myself (thanks dad for the conversion info and the oven advice – couldn’t have done it without you)!! We then proceeded to go out to a disco called “Twice” where we danced the night away! 

February 29, 2008

KKG reunion in Amsterdam!!!

Last weekend we had a Kappa Abroad Reunion in Amsterdam!!! It was so good to see all of the girls abroad (there’s 12 of us but only seven made it to AMS), especially one of my best and closest friends at CSU, Andrea Thompson. While we were there, we visited the Rijks Museum, which held a lot of Renaissance paintings, including a collection of dollhouses from the 1600’s (Nancy- you would love this, I definitely thought of you!) and some of Rembrandt’s work as well; we also went to the Van Gough Museum – not very many of Van Gough’s famous works as we imagined but it was still neat and it did have a few Monet’s too. Nicole and I barely squeezed in the Anne Frank House on our last day there between all the socializing we did, it was very neat but very much lingered with a solemn feel. I definitely fell in love with Amsterdam’s gothic and Renaissance inspired architecture. The “Red Light District” was – we’ll just say interesting. And it was so odd to see everyone just smoking joints in public… everywhere smelled of weed. The main event of the weekend though was a 30,000-person rave in Utrecht. It took place in the Jarburs event center (kind of like a convention center). Basically, we danced to crazy techno music for seven hours, when we finally left and caught the 6am train back to Amsterdam – it was a very long, but surprisingly very fun night!! Nicole and I developed a new love/appreciation for techno! The weekend was definitely a success, but I found it hard to say goodbye to my friends when it was time to go!

February 22 - 25, 2008

When in Rome!!!

A couple of weekends ago Nicole and I traveled to Rome via train to visit our friend Tony Macias, a Pi Kappa Phi at CSU, and of course to see all of the wonders… one word: amazing!! To start, the train was really neat and I felt kind of like I was from Harry Potter. The first day we did the Vatican and I am pretty much obsessed, as it is something that I have seen pictures of and learned about my entire life, we didn’t make it to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel, but we decided that we need to plan a trip back to squeeze that part in. But we did climb Michelangelo’s Cupola, which is the highest point in all of Rome, all 400 and something steps – tiring but well worth it. We also visited the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain that day. We threw coins into the fountain so we will see if the superstition comes true (that one day you will return to Rome)!!! The second day we saw all of ancient Rome (the Colleseum, the Roman Forums etc.) that was amazing too. We stayed with Tony in his apartment of 8 guys – they were all so much fun and a blast to go out with! Both nights we went out and had a ton of fun. Both of the nights that we stayed there we went out with the boys. The second night was so much fun! We went to an Irish pub called Scholars and danced the night away to oldies! Overall, I’d say that with all of the sights topped off with the great company, this was the most fun I’ve had in one weekend since I’ve been here! We are already planning a trip back to Rome to see all of the things we missed!!

February 15 - 17, 2008