Spring Break: FLORENCE

After a day of exploring Venice, we jumped on a 2pm train to Florence. I honestly tried to sleep the entire way, but the views from the ride were too stunning. Tuscany is a gorgeous place, full of hills and mountains and vineyards. We reach Florence, and realize that none of us have a map, and the directions that we wrote down to our hostel are super vague. After asking a dozen people for directions, we were led to this door. Does this look like a hotel to you?

This hostel seriously had the best location ever, It was right down the street from the leather markets and the Duomo, a cathedral in the center of Florence. Our view from outside our "penthouse apt" in our hostel was breathtaking.

Our first day in Florence, we decided to climb the top of the Duomo. Its real name is the Basillica di Santa Maria del Fiore, and is the cathedral church of Florence. It was finished structurally in 1436 in the gothic style, the exterior of the basilica faced with marble panels in various shades of white, green, and pink. The cathedral is known for its giant dome and facade.

With a dome 90 meters high, we decided to climb the way to the top. This might be my favorite part of Florence. Climbing up to the top was very very claustrophobic, with spiral staircases with windows looking out over the city.   Something that I love about touristy places in Europe is that people bring padlocks with them, sign them, and lock them on various places across the continent. This is a "lock-spot".

After one of the most exausting climbs of my life, 463 steps to be exact, we finally get to the top. The views from the top of the Duomo were absolutely breathtaking. You can walk around the whole dome, and look over literally the entire city. Red rooftops, churches, and the river are all in sight.

After the Duomo, we headed to a restaurant in the center of the city, and were catered hand and foot by our waiters. We lucked out and found a restaurant that lovess Americans, giving us free glasses of wine, bread, and shots of Lemoncello. After dinner we headed back to the hostel to get ready for our night out in Florence. We were originally planning on heading to a discoteca called Space, however on our way there, we passed another club that we had heard of, and since it was closer to our hostel, went into Yab instead. 

We quickly learned that Italian clubs are much different than those in America, London, or Dublin. They let you in for free, first of all. No cover. But that doesnt mean you dont pay. They give you a little card, that gets punched every time you purchase a drink at the bar. All the drinks are the same price, the first is 11 euros. While that sounds so terrible, the second one was 2 euro i believe. However, if you lose that little card, you can end up paying over 60-100 euros. I hid mine deep deep deep into my purse that night. We also found it hilarious that none of the Italian men at the club spoke english, however, they can all sing along to the top pop songs in America. I suppose its the same as all of us knowing the words to "Vamos a la Playa" but we still found it funny.

The next morning, we made our way over to Piazza della Signoria and Palazzo Vecchio, which is located in the center of historic Florence. It is most famous for having a copy of Michelangelo's David.

We then walked along the Arno River, and passed over the Ponte Vecchio. The Ponte Vecchio was Florence's first bridge across the river, and is the only surviving bridge from Florence's medieval days. The bridge is lined with shops selling gold, silver, and gelato.

After crossing the river, we climbed our way up to Piazza del Michelangelo. We were recommended this place because of its breathtaking views of the city. While climbing the Duomo offered great views, this was overlooking the city from a tall hill. The five of us brought some wine and spent our afternoon hanging out looking over the city of Florence.

After Piazza del Michelangelo, we headed over to Santa Croce, the largest Franciscan church in Italy. Santa Croce is located in Piazza Santa Croce and holds the tombs of Michelangelo and Dante, who both called Florence home. 

For dinner, we put our tourist hats back on and went to O'Vesuvios Pizzeria, where the cast of Jersey Shore worked during the season that they shot in Florence. This pizza was delicious, but we were just blown away at how much these people loved Snookie and JWow. This pizzeria was literally a shrine to the cast, each member having their own specials written on the walls, even their clothes were hung up on a clothesline. 

All in all, i must say that in two days, I saw so much of Florence. I might even say it was my favorite city in Italy. While it is rather large in size, we saw mostly everything in two days, and were not rushed at all.  We spent our last night in, ready to board our 9am train to Rome the next morning.

Spring Break: VENICE

So I spent my two week long spring break mostly in Italy, and made my way over to Barcelona. For blogs sake, Ill just post city by city, otherwise Ill be on my computer for hours :) 

I decided to fly out to Italy a day later than the other four girls that I was traveling with, mostly due to a huge amount of schoolwork due when I returned, but also because a flight on Tuesday to Milan was about 50 euro less expensive, plus other kids from U of I were flying early that morning as well. When we fly to Italy, we've found it easiest to fly into Milan Linate and take a train from there. So thats what I did on my way to Venice. Some people stayed an extra night in Milan to go to an M83 concert, but I'd rather see Venice. The Milan trainstation is definitely one of the biggest in the country, and I would definitely compare it to Grand Central in NY or a Union station on steroids. 

Trenitalia is the largest train company in Italy, operation high speed trains to basically every city in the country. A train ticket from Milan to Venice ran about 9 euro, however my ticket from Florence to Rome was about 29 euro. It all depends on when you book it, I wish I had taken pictures inside the trains, they are super nice.

When I got to Italy, our hostel was really close to the train station, so meeting up with the girls was no problem at all. Venice is a very touristy area, so there was no real language barrier, as most people in the city spoke english. Looking back, the only place I really encountered a language barrier was Verona, since it is definitely a smaller city.

Our first night in Venice, we walked around and found our friend Catherine from Dublin, who was also staying in the city that night. We made our way to San Marco Square, which at night was absolutely breathtaking. Getting lost in Venice is pretty much unavoidable, since street signs sometimes are just graffiti on a wall.

We went out to dinner on the Grand Canal, the largest canal of water running through Venice, and our waiter told us of this bar to go to, one of the most popular among tourists. We said sure. This place was awesome. Posing as an Irish pub, this place had notecards plastered all over the walls of the place, signed and decorated by tourists from all over the world, writing their sorority/fraternity letters, school names and mascots, or just quirky sayings. I made two.

Waking up the next morning in Venice was beautiful. Italy just makes you into a morning person, since most places close for siesta around noon anyways. We walked around, trying to take the city in as much as possible. we were really only there for a day, in which you wan literally see the whole city. However i could have spent a week there if I was able. We insisted that we went back to San Marco, since most of our pictures didnt turn out so great the night before in the dark.

After that, we made our way over to the Rialto Bridge, probably the most famous landmark in the city. Its a bridge that is in essence a street, with stores alone the edges of it, crossing over the Grand Canal.

We missed Carneval by a couple weeks, however masks from the festival are definitely the best souvenir to purchase on the island. They are the most beautiful things and are EVERYWHERE.

My favorite part of Venice were all the side streets and canals. Gondolas floating through the waterways everywhere, some of the most beautiful places were the places not crowded by tourists and photographers.

Venice gave me my first taste of Italian food...my favorites:

Gelato. It is everywhere and comes in every flavor. over time, you can tell real authentic gelato by simply looking at it. We learned that the Gelatarias that said "authentico" in fact, were not. Of course, my favorite was coffee, with a scoop of hazelnut. But once I tried pistachio and some fruity mixes as well. You can't go wrong.

Pizza. Everyone kept on telling me that pizza was everywhere in Italy. They weren't kidding. In one day, I truly ate pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was a good day. Pizza was nothing like back home. They literally cook it in front of you, making the wait very long, but the laid back atmosphere was one of the things I loved about Italy, and is everywhere, even in Rome.

I feel like my Italy blog posts are all pictures, but really I spent my entire time there trying to soak everything in, literally tripped over myself hundreds of times, looking up at everything there was to see. The small city charm of Venice was one of a kind, and was unique to any other city we visited.  

Illinois Invades Ireland

So much has happened since my last post! Since I was not able to make it back to Ireland for St Patrick's day, we made the best of what we could with unofficial. Turns out, everyone wanted to visit Dublin for U of I's unofficial. Over 60 people flew into the city for our very own festivities pub crawl. People not on our pub crawl probably thought we were silly Americans celebrating two weeks early...but hey we had fun and did Illinois proud. 

We made breakfast in true unofficial fashion, granted the boys made it, so it was mostly just sausage and bacon .

After breakfast, we made our way into Temple Bar, and overflowed the area with masses of college kids in green. Kids flew in from Italy, Spain, Austria and who knows where else.

Pub crawl aside, it was awesome getting to see everyone from Illinois for a weekend. Ryan came in on Wednesday and stayed until Sunday morning. Everyone went on a day trip to the Cliffs of Moher, but I had to stay back and get caught up on homework before I left for Italy the next morning.