How Is It Already My Last Week

What is this madness.  I can't even...whatever.

Saturday we went leather shopping.  Bought some good souvenirs and going back tomorrow to get more (and a new purse - yay!).

Went out Saturday night as a last hurrah.  Signed our names on the UNC shirt in one of the pubs.  Left our mark on Florence.

Didn't do much today.  Rainy all day.  Slept in, watched TV, relaxed.  Good day.

Tomorrow will bring cooking practical final and more pointless class.  Yay.

Ciao!!

P.S.  It's also my last Monday tomorrow...what the hell.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Sorry for not blogging lately.  But I have been buried in schoolwork, stress, last days stuff and sleep.  So I've had other things to do.

TUESDAY

Went to Oil Shoppe again.  Got it to go and got some groceries.  They're really close to each other too so it's a nice little routine.  Began stressing about my paper.  Only completed an outline before I went to bed. 

WEDNESDAY

Class was fine.  Meh.  Started paper.  Little to no motivation.  Ending up going up for a drink and dinner with Liz and Jessica.  Awesome.  Went and got a drink at a place called Art Bar.  Appropriate because their drinks are like works of art.

Isn't it pretty?

Then we decided to go to dinner.  But where would be a good place, symbolic of our journey and good food?  Acqua al Due.

It's so weird to me thinking about how I felt walking in there months ago, terrified of Italy, not knowing anyone and not really understanding anything.  My first picture of this whole experience is of the placemat, so naturally, I took another one of the placemat.  It's sad, this journey is almost over.  I feel like I only just got here.  I don't like it.

Regardless, the food was incredible, as is to be expected.  We got a pasta sampler, a meat sampler and a dessert sampler to split among the three of us and it was all delicious.  And some wine, of course.

This photo makes me very nostalgic

Yum yum bruschetta and white bean dip

Broccoli pasta (good - and that's saying something since I don't like broccoli)

Zucchini pasta (top) and pasta with vodka (bottom) - both really good

Gnocchi with vegetable ragu (delicious - favorite definitely)

We also had another pasta (rigatoni with tomato sauce I think) but I forgot to take a picture of it.  But it was good too.

Meat sampler

L to R:  Blueberry steak (good), Balsamic steak (better), plain steak with rocket and Parmesan cheese (best)

Dessert sampler, clockwise: apple tart, cheesecake with strawberry topping, tiramisu, chocolate cake.  All delicious, can't pick a favorite.

So then, I got to come back from that awesome dinner and write most of my paper.  Yay.  I finally finished around 4am and collapsed into bed.  

THURSDAY

No art class (thank goodness) so got up, edited my paper and went to class and turned it in.  Phew.  Finally done with all the stupid paper business.  Then I got to meet a girl in my Italian class and basically tutor her for an hour and a half.  She just needs way more help than I can give her.  I would try to get her to tell me stuff but she didn't know, so she would just read off her notes, which isn't going to help at all.  So essentially, I wasted an hour and a half of my life.

I did go to the Oil Shoppe afterwards to treat myself though.  So that was nice.  I think the lady almost knows my name now.  Success.

Then I came home, ate, took a nap, woke up and went to Dante's for dinner with the roommates.  Got lasagna (pretty good) and drank a fair amount of wine.  On the way home, we stopped to take photos and Alex set down her purse for about 2 minutes and some guy tried to take it.  He got about 20 feet away before me and Erika chased him down and he just held out the purse for us to grab.  So don't worry Mom, no one got hurt or whatever and there was six of us against one guy so he knew he didn't have a chance.  So no harm, no foul.  

Then we just hung around talking and playing cards before going to bed.

FRIDAY (today)

Me and Liz had a Holocaust visit to the synagogue today.  It was kind of interesting but it could have taken half the time it actually took.  She walked so slow and talked forever about nothing.  It was cool though, I've never been in a synagogue.

Then we came back, took a three hour nap (heaven), went to Oil Shoppe again (I might be addicted...oops), took a shower and been planning and updating for a couple hours now.

Got some accommodations booked, been organizing photos and working on this blog post.  I think tonight we're having dinner at the apartment and then going to see Iron Man 3 at the really nice movie theater in town.  That'll be nice because it's been raining all afternoon.  Gross.

Ciao!!

Sicily: Land of the Mafia and Home of Fried Food

FINALLY I HAVE THE SICILY ONE DONE.  WOOHOO.

So, we got into Palermo around noon, with surprisingly no problems.

Palermo is...interesting.  First things first, it was warm, which I greatly appreciated.  Second, it was dirty and full of trash.  I did not appreciate that as much.  As we began our walk from the train station to our hotel, my opinion of the city was basically cemented:  some cool stuff but mostly gross.

And the city has a weird vibe:  kind of like everyone is on edge.  It was one of the few places where I really didn't feel comfortable walking around at night.  I don't know if that's because of the history or just the general feel of the city but for whatever reason, I didn't like it.

Anyway, when we turned down the street for our hotel, I thought Jessica was kidding.  It was an alleyway.  But it had the same name, so we started looking for a sign.  About 50 feet down, we come across literally an abandoned building covered in graffiti.  Thinking this can't possibly be right, we turn back to go down the main street and notice this tiny little sign for our B&B.  About a million steps later, we were in the cutest B&B I've ever seen.  Really, it was adorable and the woman was so nice and helpful.  And our room was super cute.

Isn't it cute?

Jessica, ruining my photo

Bright green, like Kermit

We had a little terrace so these are some views looking down our alley from above

Looks like a bombed out city

It kind of is

Not creepy at all

After mucking around for a bit, we decided to go out and explore.  Our first stop:  lunch.  This is where I discovered Sicilians have a true love for fried food.  Which was nice, for a few days.  But now I'm happy to be back in fresh fresh fresh land.  We went and got lunch at this cafe thing our hotel lady recommended to us, which happened to be right next to some pretty gardens, which we also walked around in for a bit.  They had these really cool trees that had all these different trunks and I even tried climbing them.  I probably got about 6 feet off the ground before I had to come back down.

It was fried chicken and I had french fries

Yay nature

Look at the green

 People carving their names into the trees...typical

Aw

See how cool

After the gardens, we walked down to the harbor, sat down there for a bit, and found more gardens on our way walking back into the city to see some of the more famous stuff.  Saw Quattro Canti, the Four Corners.  And the Fountain of Shame.  And a building that looked like the Haggia Sophia.  So have some pictures!

Harbor

Gardens

Fountain of Shame

Haggia Sophia thing

D'aww

Quattro Canti

 And again

After that, we went back to the B&B, up all those stairs, rested, and decided just to go find a place for dinner.  We ended up finding this pretty good restaurant not too far away, where I got seafood pasta that I'm sure would have been really good had my sense of taste not been on the fritz.  But it was still good.  After dinner, we just went back and collapsed, since we were all tired and I was pretty sick.

But, before going to bed, we noticed that the abandoned building that had looked so creepy during the day, was now full of people and loud music.  Crazy.  They played "Barbie Girl" for 20 minutes.  No joke.  The next morning, the lady told us she was going to leave us earplugs for the night.  Thank goodness.  I have never slept with earplugs before but I might consider it now because it was awesome.  Dead silent.

The next day, the weather was still really nice so we decided to go to Cefalu, a small beach town about an hour outside Palermo, for the day.  Before we went, we took a walk through some of Palermo's markets.  I get the feeling we missed all the really big stuff but we still walked past some cool stuff.

For some reason, this is the only picture I have.  Oops.

So, once we navigated to Cefalu (train), we decided to first lay on the beach while we waited for the tourist office to open.  The beach was really nice - all sandy and warm.  Even got sunburned.  Hah.

Cute little town

That thing in the background - I climbed it.  But we'll get to that.

Beach

Beach again

After we got tired of that (well, I say we, I was perfectly content to keep laying there) we went and talked to the tourist office who said that climbing the mountain, aka La Rocca, was totally easy.  Pfft.  Maybe when you're not sick.  Regardless, we did climb it.  And it was beautiful so I'm glad I did.  I just don't know why I am always going hiking when I'm sick.  It is a pattern now.  Not a fan.

Don't worry, we didn't actually climb it, there was a "path" up to the top

There were castles and stuff on it

See?

"Path"

View down onto the old part of town - you can actually see the currents in the water

Cute little Cefalu - not sure what the smoke was

After we climbed the mountain, we went back into the town, saw the Duomo and then decided it was dinner time.  We ended up getting the tourist menu, something I've never done before.  4 courses, most of which were pretty good.  After dinner, we had seen these people walking around with these desserts we wanted to try, so we went and found them.  They ended up being frozen crepes and they were just as delicious as you would think.  After eating those, we sat at the pier before finally, catching the train back to Palermo, where we proceeded to collapse into bed (with our earplugs).

Duomo

Antipasto - bruschetta, cheese and olives

Primo - pasta alla norma (fried eggplant and tomato sauce)

 Secondo and contorno - sausage and french fries

Frozen crepe - I got mine with dark chocolate, strawberries and bananas (it was delicious)

So this brings us to Sunday, the day of rain.  And I didn't have my umbrella.  Great.

Regardless, we decided to walk around Palermo and see all the things to see.  First, we decided to walk to the Catacombs, since those were the furthest away.  And on the way, we passed this big gate/arch thing, which was cool.  And the Norman palace.  And some pretty gardens.

This building literally looked like it had been bombed out - and who knows, it might have been

Gardens

Palace

 Gate thing - probably something connected to the palace

And then we got to the Catacombs.  They were super cool.  All these dead people just hanging up on the walls.  Kind of creepy but mostly cool.  Really cool.  The most famous inhabitant - who I couldn't get a picture of - is 2 year old Rosie, admitted in the 1920s who literally looks like she's sleeping because she's that well preserved.  Creepy. 

ALSO

I suppose some of these pictures wouldn't be something some people would want to see.  So, here's a warning or whatever.  It's just dead people though.

Just hanging out

Some of them still had hair and stuff - crazy

Children's chapel

Hallways filled with people

After we visited the Catacombs, we ventured out into the rain again and decided to go visit the National Theater.  Lucky for us, we got there just in time for the last tour of the day - in Italian.  Lucky for us, a bus full of French tourists showed up and they wanted a tour in English.  So we tagged along with them.  Score.

The theater was really pretty.  I suppose I still prefer the Opera House in Sydney but this was really cool.  And extravagant and all that.  And you weren't supposed to take pictures but, like I said, I'm quite the law-breaker.

Facade

Foyer

Royal Box in the theater

View of the stage from the Royal Box

After we did that, we decided to go in the Duomo.  As Churches go, it was fine.  Nothing too spectacular.  There was a bird flying around the church though.  That was interesting.

Cool boat thing in front of the Duomo

Facade

Nave

My obsession with organs continues

After that, it was time for us to get on the bus to return back to Florence.  After making it to the airport with little problems, getting on the plane mostly on time, and getting a bus from Pisa to Florence, we finally made it back super late.  And I was super tired the next day.  THE END.