A Weekend in Florence

So I've realized that I am always writing about things that happened about ten days ago, and I am really going to try and get better at that. I also want to try and write more often, so that you can have a few more details of the fabulous things I am doing! But for now, let me recap a couple weekends ago.

It was my first weekend actually IN Florence since the first weekend we arrived. I felt like I could finally catch my breath. Don't get me wrong, all the traveling was exciting and adventurous, but it was starting to get exhausting as well. However, I did not want to waste my precious time that I had in the city that I am actually living in, so the weekend was packed with fun activities.

The weekend started with a climb to the top of the Duomo. A friend, Kristen, and I started by just walking into the Duomo and looking around:

While the whole exterior and interior of this building is absolutely breath-taking, my favorite part of the inside is the ceiling of the dome-shaped part:

After looking around, Kristen and I paid our 8 euro and began the trek to the top. We made a quick stop along the way to get a birds eye view of inside the Duomo:

En route to the very top, I thought about all the things that I have climbed to the top of while being in Europe. I think there is just something about a landscape view that gives you such great perspective on how big and beautiful the world we live in is. This view did not disappoint:

Worth every step of the climb!

After we climbed back down, we met up with a few other friends to head somewhere that I can't even remember. The reason I can't remember is because I was so concerned that I had broken my second pair of shoes. My mother will be the first to tell you that I am incredibly accident-prone (at one time in my life, I was given the nickname "Crip" by my dad because I was crippled from so many accidents) and these cobblestone roads have not helped me one bit. So I have now broken two pairs of perfectly good shoes, simply from tripping over them so much. How embarrassing.

Saturday morning, we got up bright and early for a little excursion to the lovely town of Bologna:

Now the very first thing I noticed about Bologna is how many arches there are! They are everywhere:

We took a little tour of the city, which included Europe's first university, the University of Bologna (it began in 1088):

We got to look inside the anatomy room, which was incredibly interesting. They would lay cadavers out on this table in the middle of the room:

Since, at the time, there was no way to preserve the bodies, anatomy labs lasted 24 hours. The teacher would stand up at a podium and tell the student what to do. For those 24 hours, the student was not allowed to sit down or eat. Thank goodness science has advanced!

We also got to see a marble replica of the Holy Sepulchre that is in Jerusalem:

The rest of our tour took us through little streets, many of which displayed tortellini and mortadella (bologna), two specialties of Bologna:

Delicious!

Can I just bring to your attention how massive this piece of mortadella (bologna) is?

After our tour ended, we caught the end of a little medieval parade that was going on in the city center:

These are the Firenze drumline men.

Later in the afternoon we headed to a town right outside of Bologna to a balsamic vinegar vineyard. We were so lucky to have beautiful weather, as the vineyard was so beautiful itself:

I never knew that the process of making balsamic vinegar was so involved and specific! It's very similar to the making of wine. First, beautiful grapes are harvested from the vineyard:

The most delicious grapes I've ever had!

The juice of the grapes is boiled in these huge boilers until the juice becomes a thick syrup:

Once the juice becomes a thick syrup, it is transfered to wooden barrels to begin the aging process:

Bacteria is added to oxidize the syrup and turn it into vinegar. As the vinegar is aged longer, it becomes thicker and sweeter. The type of wood that the barrel is made out of has an effect on the taste of the vinegar as well. We tasted vinegar that had been aged for 7, 17, 30 and even 50 years! You can absolutely taste how thick and rich the vinegar is the longer it is aged. The owners of the vineyard laid out a spread of all sorts of snacks to try the balsamic vinegar on- it included quiche, foccacia bread, cheese and meat samples, bruschetta and even brownies! Everything was absolutely delicious and I was thrilled to have experienced something very non-touristy.

Over this entire weekend, there was a huge market being held in front of Santa Croce. It included food, jewelry and chocolate from all different European countries. We made multiple trips to the market, but Sunday's visit was by far my favorite. I have noticed that Italians don't eat a lot of meat, and most meat they do eat is fine meat (prosciutto, salami, etc). As much as I love my carbohydrates, I am a huge meat-eater as well (not to mention I was convinced that my iron levels were dropping rapidly), so when I noticed the large bratwursts at the market, I knew I had to get one:

Everything on the menu happened to be in a different language, so Kristen and I thought we ordered the bratwurst, but we came to find out that we had ordered this dish of cow intestines! We begged them to change our order and they graciously gave us our bratwurst. It was absolutely delicious with some sauerkraut and ketchup on top.

We then headed with our program to our very first Italian futbol game! We had so much fun getting all dressed up in purple (Firenze's colors are purple and white) and cheering on our team!:

Now I thought people were really intense about sports in America, but people are out of control here. In fact, it is required that there be a line of security people in between the Firenze fans and the opposing team's fans because people get so heated.

We unfortunately ended up losing 2-1, but it was a really fun thing to experience. Overall, the weekend was a lot of fun and very eventful!

Ciao,

Sarah