Round 2: Weekend in Florence

WELCOME TO FIRENZE!

After a full day of a Kepner-Tregoe workshop and learning how to make decisions, we headed off to Florence for another adventurous weekend. Luckily, our transportation arrangements were already set in place as one of the CIMBA students organized a bus for about 50 of us to take all the way to Florence. It was only about a three hour drive to Florence, and wasn't too bad considering there were so many of us going so we all kept each other entertained on the way there. Most of the students booked rooms at a hostel called Plus Florence, so it was simple to just follow the crowd to where we needed to go. Plus Florence was a nice hostel mainly because it was very "amercanized": clean, dorm rooms, indoor pool, area to play Wii, pool table, etc.

We checked into the hotel 10pm and my friend Ally and I made our way to our 5 bed female dorm, just us two. So aka we were in a room with 3 random people. It wasn't bad except every time we came back to the room, our roommates were sleeping..but we both decided from now on to get a private room instead.

Anyways, our night consisted of walking around the freezing cold streets of Florence trying to find somewhere to eat and get warm. Unfortunately, we settled for some good ole Mcdonalds but after walking so much, none of us were complaining.

After our gourmet meal, we walked around trying to find a bar to go to and stumbled upon the Duomo di Firenze, aka the Cathedral of Santa Maria. It was unbelievably big and overpowering even at night. Mike, Lauren and I met up with some friends at this bar called "Rex" which ended up being a very local Italian hangout in my opinion. In other words, Lauren and I were terrified because of all the people just staring at us, obviously knowing we were tourists. It was probably quite a scene since me and Lauren shuffled our way through the crowd squeezing each other's hand for dear life while Mike acted as our body guard. We only stayed for about 10 minutes, but it was quite an experience.

The next day, we got up early and ventured our way to find a diner that apparently served American food! The streets in Florence were much like New York City streets, yet it was still a very beautiful city. We explored a little and somehow ended up finding the diner. After looking at the menu, WE WERE IN HEAVEN. A little pathetic that we already were craving American food but that's besides the point.

French toast, eggs, omelet, toast :)

Leaving the diner, we were extremely content and ready to start the day. We made our way over to the tourist spots and had plenty of picture opportunities with statues, buildings, and scenery. Florence is a beautiful city with plenty of architecture to see and enjoy. We had to negotiate on what museums we wanted to see and enter because some of them cost money to enter and we all knew that our money was verrry limited. Below are just some of the sights we were able to see throughout the day:

Street view outside our hostel

Us girls posing around the city!

Basilica di Santa Croce- contains the tombs of Galileo, Dante, Michelangelo 
and many other famous Italian figures

Ok, so story behind the locks besides me being super artsy. Apparently, couples come here to this bridge with a lock and key. They put the lock on one of these strands and throw away the key, signaling their love for one another...how cute!

Sweet castle/church

Pretty cool architecture..another artsy pic maybe?

The real Statue of David!

One of my favorite places we saw was the Statue of David. I had one of those "WOW" moments and had to catch my mouth from hanging open too long...it was unbelievable. The size and presence of the real Statue of David doesn't hardly compare to see it in pictures and on postcards, definitely a moment I will never forget. Maybe also because our group got yelled at for taking pictures inside when we weren't supposed to :)











 Probably even more amazing than the Statue of David was the view overlooking the entire city. On Sunday, despite the cold and the drizzling rain, we made our way up to the top of the city to a place called Piazza Michelangelo. The view of Florence was incredible and being able to say we walked through most of it was very rewarding. Even more rewarding was being able to make it to the top after so many hills and stairs haha.

Never ending stairs up to the Piazza Michelangelo

View from the top

Oh hey Florence!

After taking in the view, we made our way back down and across town back to the train station. It was a long weekend, yet very satisfying. The weekend ended on an exciting note however, as we experienced first hand the train strikes that are happening across Italy. So instead of paying a 3 euro train ticket back to our bus, we ended up having to take a 45 euro taxi..not cool. All in all, Florence is an amazing city, although I will say that I enjoyed Venice better so far. Florence has more museums and monuments to see, but in general, I thought Venice is a far prettier city.

The girls and I are now planning our trip for our first long break which is coming up in about two weeks. We have booked flights to take us from here to Dublin, Ireland then to London then finally to Amsterdam. We are soooo excited and cannot wait to travel to all these places.


But that's all for now...gotta run to finance class! Yaaayy
And HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!! I LOVE YOU BELLA!

First weekend in Italy...

Wow! I have no idea where to even begin...

Let's see, classes on Wednesday and Thursday..eh syllabus week, not too bad. However, Friday was an awesome day and a great way to start off the weekend. We began by running 5 laps around the gym...yes warm-up laps. CIMBA makes all students participate in what they call the "Da Vinci Challenge". Usually, it is outside and involves physical activity and a ropes course. However, since the weather is so cold we were forced to stay inside the gym. It included a number of activities first starting with a "trust fall" except this trust fall was off a 6 foot high platform and involved falling into the arms of 8 other students. That was just the first of many team building activities that honestly were enjoyable. All in all it was an awesome experience with plenty of awkward moments that only helped us to get to know other students so much better.

So after getting our workout, us girls decided to treat ourselves to the Pizzeria. The pizzas were huge but extremely thin so don't judge that we all ate the entire pizza...molto benne!

Ok so now for the fun part! We planned to catch the 8:30 am bus that takes us to the train station from campus..but of course for some reason the clocks on all of our cell phones were messed up so I think I jumped out of bed around ehh 8:19 ish. Talk about a mad dash! But luckily we made it and caught the train into the Santa Lucia train station. Arriving around 11:30am, we literally ran off the train all so excited to finally see the beautiful city of Venezia!

Words cannot even describe how gorgeous the city was even at the train station. The Grand Canal was directly in front of the train station so of course we had to take a couple of minutes to take our tourist pictures. From the directions given to us by our hostel, we were supposed to take a water bus on route 2. Do you think we got on the correct route? Of course not! Haha so after a couple attempts asking locals we found a stop close to our hostel and continued on our adventure.

While on the waterbus, I noticed that almost every person had either shopping bags or grocery bags in their hands. It then occurred to me that this was the typical means of travel for people living in Venice...how cool!
Anyways, we got off the waterbus and were forced to buy a map of Venice since I left my pocket map back in the dorm room, oops! I'd say we only got lost for about 20 minutes before finding our hostel! Fortunately, we booked a decent hostel and it definitely fine and nice enough for our needs, we were just happy to make it there in one piece!

In front of our hostel- Ca' Contarini

We dropped our bags off and met up with two other kids from our program who were waiting for us at the Basilica! Holy cow...again no words to describe the heart of Venice. Our 15 minute walk from our hostel forced us to walk past stores such as Versace, Prada, Gucci..but hey I wasn't complaining! It was simply incredible to see one of the most famous buildings in all of Europe. It was overwhelming, surreal, and just ahh breathtaking as we walked through the Piazza San Marco, through the Basilica di San Marco, and out towards the waterfront overlooking the rest of Venice.

Basilica di San Marco

Bell tower in the plaza

Just posing in front of the Basilica, no big deal

 

Waterfront view

And yes there were plenty of people feeding pigeons and I can't tell you how many times all of us ducked our heads trying to avoid getting flown into by a pigeon! And interesting fact of Venice...tons of locals walk around with their dogs. However, there dogs are very well trained and just wait outside while the owner is looking in a store and just follow them while walking, without any leash!

We walked around for awhile, oh and bought our Carnevale masks! Carnevale is a huge celebration in Venice, similar to our Mardi Gras in the States so we are definitely planning on going back for that.

Our next stop was the Rialto bridge and we decided to test our skills and take the back streets to find it. fter getting lost numerous times, we finally found the bridge and again it was unreal. I could have stood there literally all night soaking up this view of the Grand Canal. I got chill bumps! These pictures don't even do justice to this unbelievable view and atmosphere.

Walking down from the top of the bridge

View from the Rialto

Then of course comes the gondola ride! We ended up only having to pay 12 euros each for the ride and my advice to anyone planning on traveling to Europe: you HAVE to go on a gondola ride. It was so neat!

Gondola ride!

We finally made it to dinner at a restaurant called "Vino Vino" and I honestly had the best lasagna of my entire life! When my parents come over to travel, I am taking them to this place solely for that lasagna :) After dinner, we explored a little more before calling it a night.

The next morning our hostel provided breakfast and we made our way back to the Santa Lucia train station. We were all extremely tired and tried to take a small nap on the train ride home. However, we got disturbed when the shady train conductor came around to validate our tickets and ended up charging us 7 euros to the three of us that had our feet resting on another seat. Word of advice for the trains: DO NOT put your feet up on the seat unless you want to pay double the cost of the ticket!

We were all exhausted arriving back at campus but could say that our first weekend was a huge success! Sorry for the delay of posting about the weekend but I'll warn you that you might have to get used to the delayed postings. Also, sorry if this was too long..I know I tend to ramble sometimes so my apologies! That is all for now, we are planning on going to Florence this weekend so we are all very anxious for the week to be overrrr! Ciao!

Buongiorno!

Well we made it safe and sound and all is well!! My roommate and I are finally all moved in so it is starting to feel a lot more comfortable! It is only the third day here and I feel as if I have been here for a week or more. It might be because we have been up late and have had to wake up early for orientation and class.

Now to begin..let's see we landed in Venice and found our hotel pretty easily, arrived and checked in around 4pm. We were all starving because all we had eaten was the food they serve on the plane. We did not run into too many language barrier problems either, most everyone understood our English.

The only bump we had came when Lauren, my roommate, left her book bag on the bus from the airport to the hotel! We definitely thought it was long gone but to our surprise the bus driver took it off the bus and left it at the bus stop! Needless to say she got very lucky.

So anyways, our group consisted of six of us that all hung out together and went out exploring the streets of Venice. Our hotel was very nice but there were definitely some different qualities compared to American hotels. I was surprised to discover that in order for any of the electricity to work in the room the room key must be in a certain slot by the door. Smart way to save power and not lose a room key!

I think we were the most tourist-y at the train station on Monday, trying to find where and how to buy a ticket and where we need to go to catch the train. We probably provided some comic relief to the locals being a group of 6 American kids, with large bags of luggage, chugging them up and down stairs one at a time.

Campus is beautiful too! There are three main buildings that we use and our dorm room overlooks the square outside of all three buildings. We have also met a lot of new people on our hall and in classes so  it will be fun getting to know them more and more throughout the semester. We actually share the campus with an Italian boarding school so we are able to use their cafeteria, gym, dorms, etc. Breakfast is served from 7:30-8:30am, lunch from 12-12:30, and dinner from 7-7:30. So yes exactly 3 meals a day and yes there is always pasta for lunch and dinner.

Classes began yesterday on Wednesday, and continued today on Thursday. I am excited for all of them, but a little worried that they might be more challenging than most of us expected or hoped.

We are planning a trip to Venice for the weekend now and found a hostel right in the heart of Venice, so we are definitely looking forward to our first time exploring the city.

Our dorm room!

 View from our room, overlooking the main gathering area.

 View of the countryside and mountains.

 Another picture of campus.

I think that is all for now though, nothing else too exciting but will update again after our weekend in Venice. Love and miss everyone!

Getting used to this thing...

Hello all! So this is my first time doing a blog so don't judge if I tend to ramble! And I will warn you now, I am going to be very informal in writing this blog, so I hope that is okay. :) 

Well, t-minus 4 days now until I depart for Italy!! It still feels so surreal to me that I am going to be spending the next three months in a foreign country, not knowing the language or customs. The hardest part so far is deciding what and how much to pack. It probably doesn't help that I am notoriously known for over packing and bringing entirely too much. But, I no longer deny this fact so hopefully I can try to break this habit on this trip. It isn't looking too promising though because almost every travel tip website advises to pack light..oops. 

For a little background, I will be studying abroad in a small town outside of Venice, called Paderno del Grappa. I am going through the CIMBA program and will be taking business classes including: cost accounting, intro to finance, international marketing, intro to law, and Italian for travelers. I've heard great things about this program, its classes, and professors so I am really looking forward to learning, making new friends, and creating memories. 

Well, I think that is all for now! Back to packing, unpacking and removing, and packing again! Until next time!