Again, I am sorry about the delay in posts! I clearly am not the best at keeping up with this blogging business.. but by the time I am not in school, doing homework, or traveling, I just want to sleep! Anyway, this last week has been AMAZING. And since, again, it has been a full week since I last posted, I will do my best to fill you all in on what has been happening in mia vita bella!
So...
Friday: Day trip with all the UC students to Siena and San Gimignano. SO beautiful! (As are most things here) but these two places took my breath away. When we got to San Gimignano, a small town south of Florence, we paid 5 euro to climb to top of the highest tower to see the view. And let me tell you... it was incredible. I won't lie.. I did grumble a little bit about having to pay to climb up thousands of stairs just to be able to stand at the top, but when I got up there, it was well worth the effort and the money. I had a 360 degree view of miles and miles of country side, the city, and Italy! I probably took about pictures of the same view. After that short trip, we got back on the bus and headed to Siena. Not quite the size of Florence, Siena is a "quaint" town that features an amazing town square with crazy architecture. Siena is also known for an annual horserace they have put on for hundreds of years. In a nutshell, Siena is separated in 17 different neighborhoods. Each neighborhood has a different mascot and each year, 10 of the 17 neighborhoods participate in this horse race. To make the race fair, the horses are chose at random on race day so that no one neighborhood can buy the best horse. The race is three times around this tiny piazza and in total, it is over in about 1 minute and 18 seconds. Obviously, I was intrigued by this fact because you all know how much I love horses. Sadly, this event creates a lot of controversy because of how dangerous the race is for the riders and especially the horses. The corners on the piazza are so tight, they literally have to put mattresses on the buildings near the corners because so many horses fall when rounding them. Our tour guide also told us that one horse actually died this year :( and jockies have died in the past as well. Anyway, I found this to be the most interesting part of Siena and I hope that maybe I can come back to see the race someday. After that part, we finished the tour in different cathedrals, museums, and Siena's Duomo. It is not as impressive as Firenze's but still very cool. We also got to see the Patron Saint Katherine's skull on display at another museum.. not gunna lie, it was very creepy. It is like a floating head in glass box that people pray to daily but alas.. Just one of those things.. cool and interesting, but weird. After the tour, we all got back on the bus, exhausted, and headed home. Since I planned on going to Cinque Terre in the morning early, I spent the night at Ana's so that we could get up early and go to the train station.
Saturday: Woke up at 5:30 to catch a 7 a.m. train to Cinque Terre! I couldn't believe we were finally going! Everyone I have ever talked to about Italy has told me to go there, so I was really excited. We decided to start at the most northern town called Monterosso and hike south to the last town. We arrived in Monterosso around 10:45 and bought a train pass to use between the cities in case we decided not to hike. We started off up the hill and after about 10 minutes of walking in direct sunlight and at a significant grade, I started to feel the heat... this hike was timed out to be about 90 minutes according to the map. No big deal, right? Wrong. 90 minutes of stair climber on steroids. I swear... I have NEVER walked up so many stairs at one time while carrying my backpack and facing 90 degree heat! Long story short, after about 2 hours of hiking a sweating like men, we made it to the second town! As we came around the side of the mountain, we could see Vernazza from the top. I have never been more relieved to see civilization! Although the hike was not the way I thought it would be, I feel very accomplished by finishing it. Vernazza, a beautiful beach town with a small beach and beautiful water, was my favorite town of the five. We went to the beach to cool off and hung out for about an hour. I bought some delicious pizza and we made a group decision to catch a train to the next town.
When we arrived at Corniglia, we got off the train expecting to be sitting on another beautiful beach but sadly, this was not the case. Another set of terrifying stairs stood in our way. But, being the good sports that we are, we decided to climb the stairs up to town #3. When we made it to the top, there wasn't much to the little town. No beach, just a nice view of the water from the top and only a few stores.. Not as exciting as expected but still pretty nonetheless. Luckily, we were able to catch a bus down from Corniglia back to the train station at the bottom of the hill. We got back on the train and made our way to the fourth town; Manarola. Town #4 was my second favorite terra. We walked off the train and down to the water, and lo and behold, there was a crazy cove that looked like it should be covered in mermaids. It was honestly something out a movie. So of course, what else can we do but jump in? The water felt amazing and I felt like a real life mermaid swimming around. :) There a huge rock in the center that you could jump off of but since no one else in my group would do it, I was too scared to climb up there alone haha but I have pictures of other people jumping off. I do believe that if I become a rich old maid, I plan on retiring in one of these tiny towns. They are amazingly beautiful. Last but not least, we caught a train to the last town, Riomaggiore. This was a fairly lively town that had a lot of tourists in it and lots of restaurants. Before we were going to catch the train back to Florence, we grabbed some dinner and walked down to the water. Overall, an amazing trip. I recommend to anyone who comes to this region of Italy.
Sunday: Woke up around 11... had breakfast and decided to go grocery shopping with my roommate Kelly because we needed food for lunches. We left the house to go to the store, got all the way there, and realized it was closed on Sundays... That's the one kicker in Italy. Stores are usually closed on Sundays and randomly throughout the day. Most things are closed from 1 to 4 and ristorantes are open like 10 to 4, closed 4 to 7 and open 7 to 11 for dinner. So if you get hungry around 4.. you are basically screwed. Anyway, we eventually found a K-Mart-like store that had food and everything else you could want so we went shopping there for our stuff. Another thing that is weird is that the food here expired fairly quickly compared to American food. I am assuming this is because there are less preservatives in the food but it has been strange. Probably a good thing overall though. Anyway, Sunday night, Tomasso's friend Mirko invited us over for dinner at his house. First we went to aperitivo though which is this really cool thing where you pay around 6 euro for unlimited food and one drink. Unfortunately, I ate way to much there and by the time I got to Mirko's house, I was pretty full. Basically, Kelly and I couldn't even make it through our primi piatti so we never even got to the second dish! We felt bad but Mirko said it was his fault for making so much for primi piatti. Alas, I think I may have found my future husband.. he is an amazing chef! Too bad in Italy men typically don't cook meals... ha ha. Oh well.. We stayed at dinner probably too late for school the next morning but I figured that it would be worth the exhaustion :)
Monday: School. Nap. Homework. Eat. Sleep.
Tuesday: School. Homework. Aperitivo part 2 with everyone in Acccent including some Minnesotians and Virginians! But, I didn't end up meeting any. Food was delicious but I couldn't stay out because I had to catch a bus home before 11:30. That's one of the cons of living out of the city, I either have to sleep over or get a cab home.
Wednesday: School. Homework. Study for quiz. Aperitivo part 3 with Tomasso and Kelly and drinks at Bar Argentinian. Buy tickets for Sunflower (party on Sunday in Florence). Go to sleep way too late.
Thursday: Wake up at six to study some more. Go to school. Take quiz. Sneak to the bathroom to drink a cappucino. Go back to class. Eat lunch. Class. Home. Run. Shower. Eat. Write this blog.
Wooo! There we go. I hope you all enjoyed that.
As always, I will keep you posted!
Arrivederci!
Sarah
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