Annnnnyway, pulling into Florence was basically a culture shock for me, considering that I know approximately 3 words of italian, and they're all types of spaghetti. Following Kate's directions from Pisa airport to Firenze Santa Maria Novella train station was easy enough, but when I arrived there was the potential for me to have a minor panic attack considering:
a) I had no cell phone. My tiny POS nokia had a rough night after going for a swim on Wednesday, so I left it at home.
b) I speak no italian.
c) No one around me appeared to speak english.
d) The pay phone was in italian, AND it was under the mistaken impression that it was actually some type of hi-tech cell phone with options like "leave a message", and "send SMS", and the option of "just place my call because i'm starting to freak out and can't find my friends" was nowhere to be seen.
e) There were tons of people milling around the station. And it's big.
Luckily I figured out how to work the elusive payphone, and had just enough euro cents to tell Kate "I'M AT THE MCDONALDS COME FIND ME." And she did.
Once Kate, Lianna, and I were done jumping around, screaming, hugging, and calling attention to ourselves like typical American tourists, we hiked back to their apartment (stopping for pizza along the way... have I mentioned I've been jonesing for some pizza, since, oh I LEFT AMERICA? because I have). I left my stuff in their cute little anthropologie meets italian interior designer-furnished apartment, and we decided to go up to Piazza Michaelangelo for a great view of the city, just as nightfall came. Let me tell you, the view at the top of gorgeous: you can see Santa Croce, the Duomo, and the Bell Tower, but you definitely have to work to get up there. But sitting at the top, taking in the sights, and catching up with friends made it all worthwhile. After we were all sufficiently cold, we made our way back down and got ready for dinner.
We had dinner at this really cute little restaurant, whose name I can't remember. Considering my lack of italian knowledge, Kate, Lianna, and Berge took the lead when ordering a carafe of vino, delicious bruschetta, water (you have to pay for it there!), and then I ordered the pasta with wild boar sauce. I also had the best tiramisu i've ever tasted. Everything was delicious, and we all sampled each others dishes (a little frowned upon in italy... but we did it anyway), and headed home with full and satisfied. We decided to go out to a new club that night called Glamour. And let me tell you, the italian men are like no other men I've ever met. I'm not sure if I could handle an entire semester of "hey baby" and "bella bella" and kissing noises, but I think we all had a good night out.
The next morning we woke up with a full day of activities ahead of us. Our first mission was hitting up San Lorenzo, the major market area in Florence. On the way, Kate and Lianna showed me their favorite pizza place, and I had 2 slices of the best margherita pizza I've ever eaten (and somehow managed not to get any of the dripping sauce on the white shirt i was wearing). Energized from the pizza, we were ready to brave the market. Going through San Lorenzo somewhat reminded me of going through markets in Mexico, when I went to Cancun in middle school. Its a flurry of different languages, overaggressive shopkeepers telling you they have the best [insert item here], and the same types of things over and over again. But since we were all in the market (heh, heh, literally... get it? yep. lame.) for some pashminas, Sara took us to her favorite pashmina vendor, and they had everything we wanted. The owners were extremely nice, and basically you could tell them what you wanted (example: "I want a dark purple scarf, with creme accents, and non-metallic") and they would look up and down their stacks of pashminas and pull out 3 different variations of what you asked for. After a solid 30 minutes, and about 30 pashminas purchased between the group of us (this is not an exaggeration), we all walked away with bags full of scarves and empty wallets.
I also experienced my first italian gelato that afternoon-- and it was DELICIOUS. With Lianna and Flood as my translators/gelato conoussieurs, I settled upon a cup that was half nutella flavored, and half crema giotta, which is like a coconut/almond combination of awesome. Afterwards, we walked back towards one of the plazas (I forget the name, there are so many!) and we happened upon a wine tasting going on down a small side street. For €5 we were given a wine glass, a nifty little pouch that hung around our necks to store the glass in, and ticket stubs to try three types of wine and two italian foods. I started off with a rose wine, which was really good, and afterwards tried a red wine which I didn't like as much. Then I got to try an italian bread soup called ribollita, which was very good (minus the celery). The last wine I tasted was probably the best white wine I've ever tried, it was really sweet and almost tasted like dried pineapples. However no sooner had we finished scamming as much bread and olive oil as we could, that we had to take off for our real wine tasting outside the Pitti Palace.
Let me just say that I felt pretty darn classy strutting into the cute little wine bar facing the Pitti Palace. We were shown our table in the corner, and given some bottles of aqua minerale while we waited for the other 2 to join our tasting (there were just 6 of us). When the couple arrived, it was funny to hear that, of all places, they were from Wilmington, NC. They were probably in their mid/late 50's, and really nice. Our sommelier for the night was awesome. I didn't catch his name, but for the entire 2 hours, and 12 types of wine we got to try (we were only supposed to try 4! but none of us were complaining...) he was just full in interesting information about the different wineries in the Chianti region (where most of our wines came from), and about what distinguishes the different types of wine. He told us about modern wines versus traditional wines, and how small barrel wines are sweeter because of the way the wood that makes up the barrel is molded. We also learned that 2004 was a great year for wine, but that 2002 was not. I don't even remember all the types of wine we tasted, but after 10 types of red wines, I think I was better able to appreciate red wines. AND we got a plate of really delicious cheeses to eat with the wines, including an awesome pecorino cheese infused with onion and herbs. I think the highlights of the wine tasting were:
1- Lianna informed the sommelier that she was a "yellow-tail kindof girl" and he pretty much hung his head in shame.
2- We were asked what type of wine we drink at home, and we had to respond that none of us can legally drink in america yet.... but that we like whatevers on sale at Harris Teeter and/or Franzia.
3- The couple from Wilmington told us that the only reason the sommelier kept bringing out more and more glasses of wine, was because he was trying to impress us. And then when he asked us what type we wanted last the couple told him, "I think they just want the sommelier." Emmmmmbarassing.
Anyway, it was a great way to spend two hours sipping different good wines (one was a €50 bottle!) with good friends, eating some great cheese, and getting a little bit of a vino edjumacation in the process. No complaints.
That night was Halloween, and even though it supposedly wasn't a huge thing to celebrate in Florence, we decided to dress up as strege (witches) because all it required was black clothing and a €1 witch hat. We went out to a club called YAB for a little while, but I think the real highlights happened after we left the club. Since I was only in Italy for all of 80 hours, I wanted to hit up a secret bakery in that time. So with a little directional know-how, and by following our noses (and the sights of people with croissants) we found one! The concept of the secret bakeries in Italy is actually really cool. They are basically kitchens of bakeries, that only open up late at night (sometime around 1-4am). You have to find one either by word of mouth, or by just following the smell, and once there you knock, give you order, pay, and are given freshly made pastries. We chose chocolate croissants and they were all delicious. However afterwards, we were still not satisfied, so we went to Kate and Floody's favorite donor kebab place (what can I say? middle easterners provide the best late night grub! AND, to be fair, we hadn't had dinner so we were pretty hungry). So, it was late on Halloween night that we committed the good deed of a lifetime...
Basically we were just standing outside the donor kebab place when suddenly a bunch of italian guys about our age half dragged/half carried their friend and plopped him down into a chair near where we were standing. Now I have NEVER seen someone ever CLOSE to as drunk as this guy, whose name we later found out was Andre, was. He was falling off the chair, then he would pass out for a few moments until his friends slapped his face and yelled his name, then he'd snap wide awake for a few seconds, yelling unintelligible things while his eyes rolled everywhere, and thrashing away from his friends who were holding him to the chair. We heard/saw one of his friends coming out of a shop next to the kebab place with a cup of coffee and walking towards him. It took all of about .3289 seconds for Kate, Floody, and I to realize that giving him coffee was the LAST thing that needed to happen. We all immediately started telling the friends first in english, and then in italian, that this boy did not need coffee, that he needed water and an ambulance. His friends, in a mixture of italian and english, said he needed coffee and that they'd take him home to sleep it off. Just from looking at the guy, who was probably no more than 5'9" and 150lbs, that sleeping it off was probably a bad accident waiting to happen. We continued to insist that they call an ambulance, and eventually, they did. And 35 minutes of anxious (and cold) waiting later, an ambulance showed up. I'm not sure what happened to Andre, but I'm pretty sure it's better than what would've happened had we not been there. After that excitement, we couldn't get home fast enough to put on warm pj's and get some well-deserved shuteye.
The next morning we slept in, which was pretty wonderful. Then we headed straight for what is probably the closest thing Italy has to Colonnades brunch: The American Diner. If you want to know where every American studying in Florence is on a Saturday/Sunday between the hours of 11am-2pm, it's there. They've got every bit of Americana cuisine you could want while abroad: hamburgers, omelettes, bagels (which are pretty hard to come by in Europe), and FREE WATER. Needless to say, we all gorged, and it was awesome. Afterwards we but adieu to Lianna who had a paper to write, and set off to see the Pitti Palace-- Florence's major palace. While on the outside it looks more like a fortress than a palace, I was definitely impressed once we got into the Bogoli Gardens, which could be more accurately labeled as a park. The gardens we huge, and each area had a completely different atmosphere: one area looked like a secret garden with a long narrow gravel entryway shrouded in a ceiling of hanging tree branches, one area was more open and grassy with large marble stones you could lay on and just look at the clouds, another area had a beautiful fountain and elegant stairs leading right down to the palace. It was a great place to spend an afternoon exploring. After we'd had enough of the park, we went inside to see the costume gallery, which contained numerous dresses, coats, shoes, and accessories that were "all the rage" (their words) in the 18th century-now.
That night, we took it easy, but my last great experience with italian foods with aperitivos, which are basically the best thing to hit Europe since tapas. Basically you go to a bar and order a cocktail, and then you are allowed to go up to this chic version of a buffet, and get all the food you want, rinse, and repeat (the food part, not the cocktail part... well unless you wanted to but we were mainly interested in the food). The coolestpart about aperitivos is that half the food you get is a mystery. Example: I got these red/maroon colored lumps that,from far away, kindof looked like chicken wings with ranch. They turned out to be some type of potato/vegetable dumping, but were delicious anyways. One spritz (pronounced spreeeeetz, some type of italian drink I can't even fathom a guess as to what it contained, but it was garnished with every possible garnish: olive, maraschino cherry, orange slice, AND lemon peel... and it was delicious), and 3 plates of aperitivos later (they were small plates. don't judge me.), we were more than full, and ready to head back to the apartment to relax after what was an amazing weekend.
Of course, as things always go here, returning to Dublin allowed no rest for the weary. Upon my arrival back in the Dirty Dub, I had approximately 48 hours to kick my butt into essay mode (no easy task), and crank out an essay about Antigone. After two days of painstaking procrastination, I finished it, just in time to visit Meaghan's family in the apartment they're staying in while they visit this week. They invited us over for dinner tonight, and everything was awesome (thanks Britains!). And as I write this, it's 1:29am, and I'm waiting for my laundry to dry so I can pack for our trip to Belfast this weekend,since we depart in... 7 hours. But I'm sure it will be, as the dubliners say, "just grahhnd, yah!"
Cheers!
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