Ciao!
What a past few days it's been!! I think I'll go backwards! This morning I went on a beautiful run along the river down to Cascine Park. It's so beautiful that it doesn't even seem real to me. Then, I had my first class: Fashion Design: Sewing. I LOVED IT. My teacher is super nice and helpful and I can tell I'm really going to enjoy it. Yesterday we got up at the crack of dawn to go to Pisa and Volterra (yes. the place from Twilight). We took tons of fun pictures with the Leaning Tower of course and then had some pizza at a little restaurant nearby. On our way back to the train station we didn't know how exactly to get to Volterra. So after using Rick Steve's guide :) we had to take the train to one place and then switch to a bus. We we had approximately 5 minutes til the train was about to leave and we hadn't gotten tickets yet. Long story short...SPRINTING thru the train station to catch the train. It was hilarious. Then we got to the place to get the bus and we missed it by 30 minutes and the next one was in 5 hours...and we were in the middle of BFI no not BFE...BFI. So we decided to go to Lucca. We loved it!!! It was the cutest quaint town surrounded my a huge wall that overlooked the city and the mountains. We walked all thru the town to some open markets and a concert going on in the square, and also a cute circular square that was literally a circle. Then we had barely any time to get back to the station...enter sprinting yet again. Then at the ticket machine the coin thing was practically broken and I was frantically trying to get everyone's money while annihilating the machine...hilarious afterwards. And we watched the train drive away. BUT we got back safely!
Saturday was our first free day in Florence. Another beautiful run for me that morning! Then, we went to the central market. In the tents they have all the produce and no one speaks English. I loved it!! Really trying to work on some useful Italian while I'm here! Then we went inside which has everything from pasta, to meat, to olive oil, balsamic, wine, cheese, etc. We stopped at the supermarket for a few essentials and finally made it back for a delish lunch with all our fresh food!
Then we ventured to Zara, H&M, and the leather market. Haven't decided on a purse from the leather market yet but I bought some Italian hand-made leather oxfords!! They are soooo cute. Needless to say, Florence on a Saturday is quite eventful. We came back and cooked up some of our pasta with the pesto from Cinque Terre (more info to come) and some delicious wine. We headed out to meet our friends from our program and went to a place called Space. Interesting. but fun haha. and we met some Americans on the way who knew one of my friends from home! How ironic!
Friday API took us to Cinque Terre! It was beautiful!!! It was cloudy and raining though so I was pretty bummed but it was still great. We went to all of the towns by boat/walking/train. We bought the most amazing pesto I've had in my entire life and also had a big lunch by the ocean with pesto and pasta!
Thursday, they took us on a tour through Florence and we explored the city. Overall I absolutely love Florence. There are definitely some touristy areas but I really feel at home here! Tonight I have my illustration class and a cooking class! Can't wait! Ciao!
bahahah trenitalia.com really helps. it also helps to look for the time that your train is leaving because its usually easier to find on the board than to find the last stop that the train is named. i had many train freak outs and sprinting just to watch it slowly chug away! im so jealous!
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