9 days, 3 countries

Midterms are over! Phew! Now its time to focus on what I've been looking forward to the most while I'm here....my 9 day trip to Eastern Europe! Tomorrow Sarah & I (along with our very small packs; Ryanair has some pretty strict baggage rules) will fly to Krakow. We're there until Monday when we take an overnight train to Budapest. On Thursday we're meeting up with my roommates in Prague. Back home Monday at 8 am just in time for my 9 am class! I'm so excited! Wish us luck. Now on to packing....

Visit Lucca if you ever get the chance

So, remember in the last post when I said that I was going to lay low this weekend because of midterms? Well, I lied. All this traveling that I've been doing makes me realize how much there is out there that I want to see and I would have just felt antsy staying in town all weekend. Plus, honestly how much studying for midterms was I really going to do on gorgeous Saturday?

My friend Ellen & I met at the train station at 8:30 Saturday morning to take the train to Lucca. She had been there before on a class trip and had ranted and raved about the city.

A little background-Lucca is a small city about an hour and a half train ride from Florence. It is famous because it is a fortress city and its Renaissance-era city walls are still intact! Since the walls no longer have military importance they are used today as a pedestrian/biking path overlooking the city. Perfect for some bike rentals! More on that later.

I was a little weary on the train ride because it rained pretty much the whole way. However, like in the movies, as soon as the train stopped at the Lucca train station the skies totally cleared! Encountering the city walls upon exiting the train station is the coolest thing. A great green park surrounds these huge city walls and if I didn't know what to expect I would have no idea that a small (but bustling) city is inside.

Outside the city walls.

Ellen entering the city walls.

We spent awhile just wandering around the streets. So much wide open spaces and oh so much foliage! Autumn and leaves changing has definitely been something that I have really been missing here in Florence. Since Ellen had previously been here with class she was gracious enough to take me around and show me some of the many cool churches and historical buildings of Renaissance art. I thought this church (shown below) was really cool. What you see is the back of the facade of the church complete with some scary looking stairs leading up to the top.


For the billionth time since I've been abroad I happened upon a random fair. Things like that (with different food stands, homemade jewerly and goods, people-watching, etc.) just make me really happy. So we wandered around that for awhile. I was finally able to try a seasonal treat that I've heard a lot about. Schiaccia con uva is a foccacia like bread with sugar and fresh-picked grapes (complete with seeds) baked on top. It was so delicious!

After a little bit of window shopping it was lunch-time. I know I said before that I had given up on Rick Steves (see Geneva post) but he was our only guide to the city so we followed his advice and ended up at a cute little pizza place. The pizza was great, but when I looked around the restaurant I realized that we were surrounded by a bunch of obviously American couples in their forties with a copy of "Rick Steves Florence & Tuscany 2010" out on the table. Oy vey! So much for the "real Italian" experience.

We had heard that bike rentals were the best way to experience the fortress walls and the city, and since we had so much fun riding bikes along Lake Geneva we decided to give it a whirl here. So much fun! And the walls were so neat! I was expecting a three foot wide path with a chain-linked fence around it. Wrong. The paths were nice and wide with gradual hills going down to the city. We biked around the top a couple times and saw such gorgeous views of Tuscan foliage.

The paths along the city walls.

This was such a great little day trip. As much as I really came here to venture to other countries its really nice to stop and appreciate all the great things that Italy itself has to offer! Ok, that's enough procrastination for now. Guess I'll get started on that studying....

This really should be a food blog....

This past weekend Sarah and I took the train two hours to Perugia for a huge chocolate festival called EuroChocolate (and also a little bit to see my friend Vanessa). One of the coolest things about this city, besides that it hosts a chocolate festival is that they have these trams that take you up to the city center called minimetros. They are little, one-car "buses" that spiral up the hills. It felt like being on a really calm roller coaster (mom, you would like it). The city overall is really quaint and oh so hilly! Vanessa, being used to the city by now was speed walking all over the place while Sarah & I were definitely struggling to keep up.

For dinner we met up with Vanessa's friends, who I liked very much, and went to this really cool place (it's Italian name escapes me but it roughly translates to the Land of Lost Time because meals last hours). The name is so fitting...I believe we were there at 8 and left sometime after 11, eating and drinking the whole time. This place is so small that we had to knock on the door to get let inside. There were about five tables, two women running the entire operation, and a very very small kitchen! The meal was so delicious: bread with truffle sauce, fried mozzarella, grilled eggplant, pesto pasta with shrimp, gorgonzola and walnut pasta, spinach gnocchi, panna cotta, nutella crepes, etc. All for 13 euro each! We were up late that night, but it was a lot of fun being reunited with friends!

Saturday was all about chocolate! Late morning we headed to the town center where all the festivities were taking place. First thing Sarah and I got hot chocolate. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before but hot chocolate here more resembles hot pudding then a beverage. It is so filling. My chili hot chocolate was exceptionally good. We decided to purchase some EuroChocolate cards which would allow us to get some treats at different stations around the city. The whole city was really crowded but it was fun to just see all the chocolate delicacies they had to offer: chocolate pasta, chocolate kebabs, churros, so many different kinds of bars and so much more! We stopped at some of the stations and got some goodies but gave up after awhile because of the crowds. The best part of the chocolate festival for me was all the Mexican chocolate and coco beans that were housed in Perugia's awesome underground bus station. We sampled raw coco beans, cinnamon chocolate, and a really delicious combination of coco beans, chili powder, and lime.
Hot chocolate!
Chocolate rock climbing wall.

After being gluttonous for several hours Sarah had to leave to go meet her parents back in Florence and Vanessa and I headed back to her apartment. Later on that evening, some of her friends came over and we made pasta with truffle sauce while trying to make a dent in a huge jug of wine that one of her friends brought over. They are certainly not lacking in good food in Perugia (I said this should be a food blog).

On Sunday we got up and rode the ferris wheel that had been set up for the event. Vanessa's school has midterms this week so she had to go study and I spent some time wandering around (in the rain) making a few too many chocolate purchases. I had a lot of fun this weekend! Even though we didn't get to do a lot of sight-seeing (I'm not sure how much there even is to do there) it was really nice to see the city from an insider's perspective as well as hang out with familiar faces.
View from the ferris wheel.

This weekend I'm staying local because the week after that is fall break-Krakow, Budapest & Prague!

Swiss cheese with a side of Dijon

I don't care what Rick Steves' opinion is (he is bored by Geneva by the way and apparently excludes the whole city from his guidebook), Geneva was amazing and so much fun. Getting there, not so much...

So, to backtrack, Sarah and I, along with her two roommates Ellen and Amanda decided to go to Geneva for the weekend to get our Swiss fix (think cheese and chocolate). Ellen and Amanda left Thursday night because they didn't have Friday classes. After my class on Friday, Sarah and I waited on the ticket line for an hour to activate our eurorail passes (which we thought would allow us on any train, bottom line). The nasty ticket agent informed us that the train that we needed to Milan was sold out and that we wouldn't be able to get to Geneva until Saturday morning. Being that we were only there for the weekend that was not an option. So, we nervously hopped on the train anyway....On the first leg of the trip we successfully evaded the ticket taker by stashing our bags and heading to the cafe car. Then, since we didn't have a "reservation" we spent the next two hours in the luggage storage area between the trains, where I successfully fell asleep on top of everyone's bags.

By now we knew that we needed a reservation for the second train from Milan to Geneva, but didn't have time to wait in line for said reservation. Once again, we got on the train anyway (a little more nervously this time since we were crossing boarders) and sat on the ground awaiting our fate. The ticket taker finally "caught" us, but I was fine paying the 18 euro on-board fee for peace of mind and a seat for our 4 hour trip.

We successfully arrived in Geneva (a little shorter on cash than we thought we'd be), serendipitously met up with the other girls on a bridge to the Old Town where we were staying, and headed straight to the only brew pub in Geneva to reword ourselves for getting there in one piece. I was warned that Geneva was expensive but it really blew my mind just how expensive it was. The bar had awesome 3L, 5L, and 10L barrels of beer starting at a mere 70 swiss francs (more or less equal to the dollar). Umm, we'll pass. Instead we got a few samplers and had all the locally brewed beer in Geneva. Dad, you would be so proud.
Our hostel

Wanting to make the most of this gorgeous city we got up early to start our day. From the first minute we were up on Saturday I noticed so many differences between this city and Florence: there are trees so here so we got to experience autumn foliage, the people are actually helpful and will assist you in getting where you need to go, you can walk on the wide sidewalks and not get side-swiped by anyone, and you can cross the street without fear that the car that is headed towards you won't stop. Such a different city!

We spent the morning walking around Lake Geneva and searching out the UN headquarters. Much to Sarah's dismay the building was closed for the season. We took the opportunity instead to take some photos with a huge chair statue and visit the Red Cross Museum. I was really excited for the museum and it was both informative and moving. From there we took a free tram back to the Old Town area where we stopped in a large department store that had basically a whole floor devoted to chocolate. I was so overwhelmed. We spent a very long time tasting delicious samples and deciding what goods we wanted. We wandered around the gorgeous buildings and quiet streets and eventually sought out the jet d'eau which luckily for us had not yet been turned off for the season. The morning was kind of foggy and chilly but by the afternoon the sun was out and shining and we were very happy girls.
"Broken Chair" Monument

So much chocolate!

Flower clock

Jet d'eau

For dinner we went to a local's only fondue place called "Cafe du Soleil" recommended to me by my cousin Lisa. That meal has to be one of my top 10 and that's saying a lot! We got a huge pot of fondue accompanied by a mound of bread. We took on the challenge and plowed through the food. When we had finished off the bread we thought we had a victory. Much to our groans the waiter brought us more bread, and of course we finished that off too! We were so stuffed afterward that we walked around the Old Town trying to digest the food. It was a struggle staying up to 10 that night after everything we did all day.

Sunday morning was another early morning. We stashed our bags at the train station and Ellen, Sarah, and I took advantage of a free bike rental system that they had. We spent a few hours in the morning riding our bikes around the river. It was so much fun (except for the part where I fell off my bike-of course that would happen to me).

Our original plan for returning home was to leave Geneva around 7, transfer in Dijon, and take an overnight train back to Florence. We found out on Saturday that the train we wanted to Dijon was full so we had to get on earlier train. What a happy accident it turned out to be! We had about 6 hours to kill in Dijon and ended up having so much fun. The city was exactly what you would imagine a cute French town to be like. We found this trail around the city (kind of like the Freedom Trail in Boston) and followed it around for hours seeing all the sites. We also spent some time sunbathing in the Jardin Darcy and, of course, shopping for mustard.
Jardin Darcy


By 7 we were exhausted and hung out in the train station until our overnight train. Boy was that train an experience. The 4 of us were sharing a sleeper car with 2 other people who were already asleep when we got on so we ditched our bags and went to the cafe car (sounds similar to Friday, huh?) where we ended up talking to another guy who was traveling. We eventually decided to try bed, and I truly mean try. I was on the top of 3 bunks and each time the train stopped and started up again I felt like I was going to fall off the bunk! It was a pretty restless night. Oh well! We made up for it with a great weekend!!! Yay for successful traveling!

Florentinian Things

Sorry I haven't written a new post in awhile. Haven't gone on any big trips, but we have definitely been getting our fill of 'Florentinian things'.

I love love LOVE stumbling upon markets and festivals, and I came across TWO last week! The first was this awesome International Market that was set up in the piazza in front of Santa Croce. Rows and rows of tents lined the piazza with different products, food, and more from different European countries. It was so cool to see all the various things and to sample all the delicious delicacies. It was really hard to resist buying something from each stand, but I reminded myself that it would be a lot more authentic to buy all this stuff in the actual country that it came from. All in all it was just a really cool experience. I ended going back for the two other remaining days of the festival with different friends. I also came across a really cool pottery festival on my way home from class one day. There were such gorgeous pieces of art for sale; just a little out of my price range. I just love happening upon that stuff that I know will only be around for a short amount of time.

I am going to be gone from Florence for the next two weekends (on a chocolate pilgrimage to Switzerland and Perugia) so my friends and I decided that we wanted to make the most of our weekend here and do some things in town that we don't get to do during the week. Saturday afternoon a group of us took the bus up to Fiesole; a quaint little town overlooking Florence and beyond. The short, 25-minute bus ride dropped us off in the "city" center and from there we wandered among huge villas to find a good lookout point. What gorgeous views we found! We spent some time wandering around a residential area and then found some hiking trails. We had planned on hiking down but realized that it would have been a lot longer than we had thought it would be. It was such a gorgeous day out that we got us some paninis and lounged in the sun in the main piazza before heading back to Florence. My good friend from school, Allison, who is studying abroad in Rome, was visiting Florence with her roommates for the weekend. I was able to meet up with them for dinner and we went to a great little place called "Osteria del Gatto e la Volpe" (the cat & the fox) where I had delicious lasagna bolognese. We ended the night at our new favorite Irish pub "The Old Stove" with some tasty Strongbow.
Sunday morning, after sleeping in, Colleen and I went to Boboli Gardens. The gardens are apart of Pitti Palace and offer more views of the city. We spent a good deal of time just wandering around and getting lost in the vast space. I bought myself a museum card (for 40 euros I can go to all state museums) and I can use it at the Gardens. I am excited to return there with a good book on a nice fall day!