Goodbye and Hello
Well it’s been a week since I’ve left Florence and returned to the US and now that I’ve had time to think and reflect I’ve decided to do my post about things that I’ve either missed from the US or things that I will miss from Italy…
I’ve missed from the US:
1. Butter on bread
2. The gym (for only $10 a month compared to 300 Euros for 3 months!)
3. Salads, real salads with stuff on them… and dressing!
4. A grocery store in the shape of a grid, not a maze
5. A city in the shape of a grid, not a maze
6. Coffee- big coffee, flavored coffee, iced coffee, coffee with skim milk, coffee that is meant for you to “take away”
7. Ice
8. A variety of food
9. pick-up trucks
10. The American language in regards to labels, menus, instructions, and communication purposes
11. The dollar
12. No sitting fee
13. Grass and trees
Things I will miss from Florence:
1. 2 Euro coins
2. Fast-train transportation
3. 50 cent baguettes
4. 3 Euro big bottled wine
5. Ryanair
6. Not getting carded
7. Gelato
8. Not having to tip
9. Nutella
My Favorite Teachers
This post was meant to be a post about what I really liked about Florence and what I’ll miss. But I got talking about my teachers and it has become a very long post already. So I want to talk about Romeo and Jacopo.
Most importantly I will miss my friends. I’ve become very close to a lot of different people, especially my roommates. They have become my family in the past four months and they have taught me a lot and opened my eyes to different ways of thinking. I will really miss the people I’ve met here.
I will also miss my teachers, more specifically, Romeo and Jacopo (my black and white teacher and my color photo teacher). It is very hard to describe these people. But I will say this, they are like photographs and photographs are like children’s tears. They are personally connected to us and they could only mean exactly what they were meant to mean, to yourself. It is like the moment when you can’t accurately describe their significance and their importance because there are no words, so you get deeply frustrated and burst into tears because you can’t communicate. -This analogy was spoken by Jacopo. He speaks like he is the narrator of a romance novel. The things he says and the way he says them always puts a spin on what I thought I already knew. He compares two things that you never thought could be related but are. Romeo is the kindest man that I’ve ever met and will probably ever meet. He is a very successful black and white photographer. He’s lived in Canada, Georgia, and Italy. He knows a lot of famous photographers and he even knows Mr. Leica. He’s worked for Kodak and printed for many magazines including Vogue. But he is the most modest person ever. He creates these tiny black and white images of landscapes and he does portraits through the means of trees. Very cool! On the last day of class he told us with passion and a certain gentleness, “Don’t be scared, you guys. Go do what you want to do and believe in yourselves. Show your work, you guys. I mean it. Because people will buy it. You have to follow your dreams. Because if you don’t, you’ll regret it. Thanks you guys, I’ll shut up now.” He would always refer to things as the most beautiful thing in the entire world. But he said it with such meaning That I really do believe he thought everything was beautiful. “You guys need to explore you’re own country. Go to South Dakota. It’s the most beautiful place in the entire world.” “Fiber paper is the most beautiful paper in the entire world. It gives you the best tones that you can ever imagine.” He is convinced that he is still friends with Mr. Leica because he hasn’t asked for a camera yet. He is truly an angel and falls in love with everyone’s work and everyone that he has encountered. He taught me a lot about believing in myself and believing in my work. And when you believe in what you do, you can make others believe in what you do. And he has taught me that being a genuinely kind human being can get you very far.
Jewelry Pieces. I really loved that class. Probably my favorite class I’ve ever taken.
“Everything has a blighted, faded quality about it now. Still, if you look at it for a long time, the old charm reemerges. And that is why I can see that I will lose absolutely nothing by staying where I am, even by contenting myself with watching things go by, like a spider in its web waiting for flies. You need to look at things for a long time…” – Vincent van Gogh”
Amalfi Coast for Easter Break
For the 4 day Easter weekend, Jenn, Jill and I took a trip with Bus2Alps to the Amalfi Coast which included Capri, Positano, Pompeii and Naples. Normally with a traveling agency like Bus3Alps or FlorenceforFun or EuroAdventures, you just pay one fee upfront and that covers you for transportation, and a hostel and other activities that they do as a group. But since we signed up really late, we ended up not paying as much for housing and getting a hotel room in a 4 star hotel about a block from the hostel that they were staying at. We arrived at our hotel at about 3am on Thursday night.
Friday morning we ate at our hotel and then went down the street to the Seven Hostel to get on a bus to the Island of Capri. We took a bus to the shore and then a boat to the island. As soon as we got off the boat, we got on another boat that was set up for us to take a guided tour around the island. The Island of Capri is absolutely one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. It is composed of massive rock but also lots of greens and trees at the same time. The clouds hovered over the tops of the mountains and there were millions of birds floating around and between the mountains.
We climbed up to one of the highest parts of the island and did some shopping and had lunch. Then we took a convertable taxi back down to the bottom. We then took a boat tour to the Blue Grotto. Then we got out of that boat and into a small little cramped boat to pass under the small opening in the wall of the island into the Blue grotto which is sunlight, passing through an underwater cavity and shining through the seawater, creating a blue reflection that illuminates the cavern. It is pretty spacious in the inside of the cave and of course like true Italians, all of the boat drivers sang, very loudly in Italian in the cave to set the mood, I guess. But I think they just did it because it echoed and became very loud.
When we got back we went to a small Italian restaurant down the street from our hotel which was very cheap and very very good. I had a salmon pasta. Then we went back to the hotel to take a nap before we were going out downtown with everyone from our trip to a place called English Inn or something. But we fell asleep for too long and didn’t wake up til 1 am.
The next day we went to Positano. It rained ALL day! We all wore trash bags over our bodies and our bags. The one thing we wanted to do there was go cliff jumping. We debated it for a while because it was freezing cold and decided not to pay to go cliff jumping. We then found out later that you had to swim to the cliff from the boat and some people weren’t allowed to swim to the cliff because the water was too cold. Jenn, Jill and I had a drink and then shopped around for a while. I bought a bag and an “Italia” sweatshirt. Then we went to a really good sandwich shop for lunch. Positano was a shorter day because of the lack of activities to do in the rain. Nevertheless it was still breathtakingly beautiful!
That night we decided to go to the Hostel down the street for a buffet, live band, and a bar. Surprisingly the food was decent but we were really tired and weren’t having the best time so we went back to our hotel and called it a night.
The next morning was Easter and we caught the bus with the group to go to Pompeii. Jenn went on the guided tour of the city (you have to pay 11 euros to get in and 19 for a tour). It seemed really awesome but Jill and I did some limonchello tasting at a place on the main strip. We tried regular limonchello, cream of limonchello, melon limonchello, chocolate limonchello, and lemon flavored chocolates and candies. They were all very delicious!
Then we got pizza at a famous pizza shop in Pompeii and walked around the market for a little bit. After we met up with Jenn, we climbed Mt. Vesuvious (the volcano that erupted on Pompeii in 79 AD). It was a very eerie walk and very very steep! It took about 20 minutes of quick walking uphill to get tot he top. It was very misty and cloudy at the top of the volcano and we got to stand on the edge and look down into the volcano.
When we got back to the hotel we decided that instead of paying 17 euros to go to a club that was in a cave (which sounded awesome), we thought that we would have a nice Easter dinner with each other at our hotel. It ended up costing more than what we would have paid to go to the club but it had 4 courses and they were ALL outstanding!
#1 Appetizer
#2 Lasagna
#3 Lamb, potatoes, and some kind of pea jello or something
#4 Dessert bar
The next morning we went to Naples. Jill said that her family told her, “Don’t go to Naples”… so that’s good. They said they only go there if they need to. This is probably because that is where the Italian mafia is. We hit a ton of traffic heading in, and our bus driver actually paid off a police officer to let us take a shortcut… Welcome to Naples!! The driving was insane; mopeds do whatever they want, cut people off, drive in the medians, drive in the tram tracks, drive between cars. There were cars stuck horizontally across traffic, buses across multiple lanes. It was insane!
When we got there we basically just went to a great pizza shop because Naples is said to have the best pizza in Italy. And I can now say that I agree. Although I got a calzone, it was amazingly delicious!
After about an hour we got back on the bus and headed back home. It was a really great and beautiful Easter but it just wasn’t the same. I really missed going to church and being with my family and extended family in North Carolina
Barcelona
I went to Barcelona on the weekend of March 25th to meet up with Brandon and his friends for his birthday. When I got there I met up with Brandon and Brian about a block from the Arch de Triumphe for a beer. Then we were joined by Michael and his 3 friends from Cornell. We all hung out for a little while at a table outside on the sidewalk andhad some drinks before we went back to their apartment.
I met the rest of Michael’s friends. We all hung out and talked for a while before dinner. Everyone was so nice! Then we found a place to eat at around 10 before we took a cab where the bars and clubs were (which were all right on the beach!)
The next day, Michael, Brian and his friends all left to go home and Alex, Brandon and I went to the Gaudi houses…
-Everything in the house was made for a specific reason. The door handles and railings fit your hand perfectly. The whole thing was inspired by light, nature and water.
^ He decorated the walls with tiles of shades of blue, the higher ones were darker because the light hit them more easily through the roof so they appeared lighter. So when you look up a the wall from the bottom, all of the tiles look the same color. This also gives you the feeling that you are at the bottom of the ocean looking up towards the surface.
Sagrada Familia (an amazing church designed by Gaudi that is still being built)…
^this is the front
^and this is the back. It looks like it is melting off
and the garden designed by Gaudi…
We realized that a lot of the city had been designed by Gaudi!
For lunch we went to 4Cats. Which is a little restaurant that Picasso used to eat lunch at every day, he also designed the menu. But of course, the food was in small portions and cost a fortune.
For dinner we went to a Tapas place and all ordered a few dishes to share. That night we met up with a couple friends from Penn State who were studying in Barcelona. When we got to their apartment, you could definitely tell that everyone was either in a frat or sorority lol But everyone was super nice. We went to the bars again that night to celebrate Brandon’s birthday. Then Alex, Brandon and I took a cab back to our hostel for the night. It was called “Happy Hostel” and there were no signs, the hostel was on the third floor of an apartment and the owner was this really chill guy who kept his money in his socks and blasted 2Pac the entire time.
The next morning we got up at 11 and got ready to leave. My flight was at 2pm and Alex’s was at 6pm and then Brandon’s was the next morning at 6am. Well long story short, Alex and I didn’t realize we flew out of two different airports and me taking the bus to their airport was not right. But by the time I realized that I should be going to the other airport, we also learned that it was daylight savings and we are now an hour later than we thought. So I missed my flight… again. But it really did work out, besides the extra 100+ euros because it was Brandon’s birthday and now I could spend more time with him. So I booked another flight for Monday at 2pm. Brandon and I went down to the docks and laid in the sun for a while, walked around and dreamed about what it would be like to own a huge yacht like the ones in the bay.
Then we walked around some more and saw another church and went to KFC for dinner, since we were both craving it the night before.
At around 10pm we found a really cool mall that was in the shape of a circle and was about 5 stories high. At the very top it was all open and there were restaurants. So we had a beer and looked out over the city before heading to the airport for the night.
We hung out in the airport for a while before finding a spot on the floor to sleep for a little. He got up at 4am to go check in and get threw security. I then slept for a little more and read a book until my flight to Rome and then caught a train back to Florence. Barcelona was such a beautiful city! One of my favorite vacations so far.
Chili Rap Battle Cookoff :)
St. Patrick’s Day Bar Tour
Got a new program today called Silver X Pro
1/4 older »
|