Boboli Gardens

A couple weeks ago, I was feeling very anxious. I was talking to the girls down the street and they suggested that we go to the Boboli Gardens here in Florence. I had wanted to go for a while, especially since we have these special passes that let us go for free. So we spent one afternoon at these beautiful gardens behind the Pitti Palace across the river.

The Pitti Palace was the main seat of the Medici grand dukes of Tuscany at Florence and the gardens are located behind the Pitti Palace. The gardens were initially made for the wife of Cosimo I de'Medici, Eleonora di Toledo. She felt restricted in the Palace and wanted a place where she could walk around freely.

Spending the afternoon in the gardens was wonderful. Not only are they absolutely beautiful, but something about being in wide open spaces feels soothing to me. My anxiousness came to rest and I felt much more at ease.

I am hoping you are all enjoying your fall. Fall, especially October, is one of my favorite times of year. I even made my sister send me pictures of the trees in our yard that turn from a bold green to vibrant oranges and reds every year. I am definitely missing the changing of the leaves. I am also missing Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice latte, which is one of my favs. But most of all, I missing all of you :)

Ciao,

Sarah

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

Barcelona

Last weekend I went to Barcelona, Spain with one of the girls that lives in our apartment building. It was quite the adventure taking the bus from Florence to Pisa, flying to Girona, and then taking another bus to Barcelona. But we had such a wonderful weekend exploring Barcelona. When we arrived on Friday, we spent the day walking around taking in all the Spanish architecture:

These are just a few random buildings in Barcelona. They aren't particularly famous for anything, but I found it very cool that even some of the "everyday" buildings had such intricate and unique architecture.

This is the Barcelona Cathedral (also known as La Seu). It is an excellent example of Catalan Gothic architecture, with its graceful spires. I was thoroughly impressed with the intricacy of one of the doors.

The bull-fighting stadium.

Camp Nou Stadio- the athletic stadium.

Arc de Triomf, which sits at the end of this beautiful promenade.

Casa Batllo. The local name for it is Casa dels ossos (House of Bones), which is so fitting considering its skeletal look. The house was designed by Antoni Gaudi, the most well-known architect in Barcelona.

Later in the afternoon, we took the metro to go see the most famous building in Barcelona, the Sagrada Familia:

Some Spanish ceramic art of the Sagrada Familia.

The real Sagrada Familia. La Sagrada Familia was designed by the one and only Antoni Gaudi. Initially, the building was designed by architect Francesc de Paula Villar, who proposed a simple church in a traditional neo-Gothic style. Gaudi took over the project and completely changed the style to express his strong religious and nationalist feelings. He abandoned secular art and devoted himself to the project for 40 years, until his untimely death (he was run over by a tram). He is buried in the crypt of the La Sagrada Familia. Work on the project continued, but was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War in 1935. Construction began again in the 1950s, and has continued ever since. Progress is slow, but estimated completion dates range from 2017 to 2026, the 100th anniversary of Gaudi's death.

We happened to be in Barcelona on the weekend of the La Merce festival, so we saw a few random, but cool things:

Some Spanish dancing.

Some entertainment in front of Town Hall. This is a stack of 7 people (you can't the bottom person). It was nerve-wracking to watch them pull off this stunt, but incredible. They would crawl up each others backs to the very top.

On Saturday, we went to see the Spanish Village. On the way we ran across the Palau Nacional:

They were getting ready for a concert, which slightly ruined the aesthetics of the picture, but how awesome would it be to go to a concert in front of a palace?

This is the first thing you see when you walk into the Spanish Village. The walls of this building almost look like wallpaper.

Two of the streets in the Spanish Village. It was so quaint and cute, Gina and I were instantly in love. We spent hours here, wandering in and out of unique shops with lots of ceramic artwork. We also had churros, which were absolutely delicious.

I even found another door I liked!

On our way back to our hostel, we wandered through all these little streets of Barcelona, looking at shops and markets and scoping out restaurants with good paella and sangria for dinner. One of the markets had a honey stand, with more kinds of honey than you could ever imagine:

We also found a shoe store that sold the same exact shoe in every color you could ever dream of:

A glimpse of heaven on earth.

Sunday was our pier/beach day. The weather was absolutely beautiful, and I realized that I am such a beach girl. Maybe I should have figured this out sooner, considering every weekend since I've been here I've made it to the beach. There is just something about coastline that is so exciting and soothing at the same time for me. Also, I know if I am near water, there is good seafood, which is my favorite food :)

The statue of Christopher Columbus located at the place where he returned to after his first voyage to the Americas.

The huge lobster statue down by the pier.

The fish statue, also down by the pier.

The professional volleyball game that we caught glimpses of on our way to the beach.

After a wonderful afternoon in the sun, we found a place to have seafood paella and sangria:

Seafood paella... incredible :)

Sangria on the beach.

Later that evening, we found a place to have churros dipped in chocolate:

Another glimpse of heaven on earth.

Overall, Barcelona was amazing. Another weekend at the beach, another weekend of amazing food, another weekend of adventure.

A Barcelona sunset.

I just spent my first weekend in Florence (aside from the first weekend we were here) and am uploading pictures so I can blog about that soon.

Ciao,

Sarah