Milan - Fashion Week!

So my roommates took a trip to the Swiss Alps this weekend and had an awesome time, but I opted to save a little money, stay here and go on a day trip to Milan during Fashion Week with my friend Brooke, and it was great! Brooke and I were good friends in high school and she just happens to be studying abroad in Arezzo right now, a small tuscan town about 40 minutes away. So this was a great "catch up" weekend for us! We had a BLAST together, as usual, and we're both very outgoing people so it's hard not to have a good time together. She came up friday night and we met our tour group at the train station at 8 am the next morning (extremely early if you ask me). We even left the apartment extra early so we could get a cappuccino and cornetto alla nutella (croissant with nutella... heaven). We then got on the bus with a full group of 60 people for the 3 hour bus ride up to Milan (it's very far north) BUT they played The Devil Wears Prada on the tvs to entertain us... a very fitting movie for our drive up to Fashion Week - ha! When we arrived, you can't help but notice that Milan is PACKED with people, a true industrial city! Kind of like NY City but for Italy... the architecture was beautiful, but it was very different than the Toscana region I'm used to! It was a nice change for the day and a very high energized atmosphere. I think Brooke was in heaven. Probably around 1,000 shops lining the streets. Even stores like Gap and Banana Republic... they have everything! Except Starbucks. Which I have been craving more than ANYthing lately. I'm contemplating asking my mom to bring me one on the plane ride over that I can heat up when she gets here. Maddy said that's gross. I think it's brilliant. But moving on. The first place we went to was the Cathedral in the center. It is the 5th largest in the world and has over 2,000 statues on its facade alone! It is stunning!

After seeing the enormous Cathedral, we walked about 300 feet to the entrance of the giant open shopping mall, which is also the first shopping mall every created, making it the oldest in Europe. It was here that we watched our first fashion show :) right in the middle of the mall was stage set up for models to walk on and about every 30 minutes there was a different show from a different designer. It was so cool. SO cool. 

Brooke and I ate lunch and shopped around for a while after this. We both avoided the designer shops and opted for shirts that were about 19 euro... more our price range. The shopping really is incredible. Our tour took us for a walk around fashion district after lunch and we got to see the headquarters for every major Italian designer you can think of... Gucci, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Armani, Pucci, the list goes on. It was so cool! What wasn't cool was seeing how many people had bags from shopping at stores like Chanel, Louis V, and Prada... where do they get the money?? Also, a Ferrari was parked on the side of the rode by these stores. No big deal. Just driving to work in my Ferrari. 

 Last we visited one of the most famous opera houses in the world in which I stole a few pictures from, but it really made me miss seeing theatre shows! It was beautiful. And we got to watch one last fashion show which was by far our favorite!

Dinner consisted of a nutella crepe thanks to our tour guide, and on the bus ride back we enjoyed watching Under the Tuscan Sun... how appropriate :)

Sunday rained allllll day, but that didn't keep us from being productive! We spent the entire afternoon at Pitti Palace and it's museums, especially the costume museum which had real period clothing dating back to the Renaissance! And Pitti Palace and it's gardens in general are beautiful and amazing. It's my favorite place to visit next to the Uffizi. I can't wait to bring my mom and aunt! It makes you wish you lived in a castle, so you never really want to leave. And Brooke and I decided that when we have jobs we will host a late 1700s dressed party where everyone has to dress in the huge period time dresses and learn to dance in the big lines. We're very excited about this plan. Afterwards we shopped for a little while and had dinner at Dante's! It has free wine for students, and yes, we drank a bottle and half over our 2 hour dinner of great conversation :) What a great weekend!

Noodles are made from eggs and flour. Trust me. I'm an expert.

Well it has been all week since I've updated but my week has been busy with school (and procrastination) and somewhat uneventful. But not today!

The most exciting thing that happened was on Tuesday night my friend from high school Brooke who is studying in Arezzo (45 minutes away) came down to have dinner and stay the night, so that was fun catching up! She taught me how to say Basto! Which means something like Enough! Go away! So this is useful when guys make comments and wont stop bugging you. For example she used it when we went out to get drinks and a guy wouldn't leave us alone. Basto! Ha!

I also made my best painting yet on Wednesday! Pictures to come... but I am actually proud of it. It turned out nice. Or as nice as an orange and pear can turn out.

Allora, on to today. Well, last night. Maddy and I attended a free wine tasting near by after my class got out at 5:30 but after that, Maddy and Shandie left for the Swiss Alps at around 11 pm and so sadly I was left alone in the apartment. It was weird, but I survived :) This morning I woke up bright and early because my study abroad program (ISA) offered us a FREE 2 hour guided tour of the Uffizi. Obviously I went. I actually already knew most of what he talked about but I still learned a lot, and bought a book that talks about every piece in their permanent collection and its history (I'm already 30 pages in!) so it was well worth it! Afterwards I grabbed some lunch and headed across the river to Pitti Palace! This is where the Medici family lived during their rule in Florence (you should know who this family is. If not, I am disappointed and you need to google them. Just kidding, but seriously they are the reason most of the Renaissance art was patroned/created here. They ruled Florence for about 300 years. Important people). The Palace was AMAZING and so close. Literally right past Ponte Vecchio. I only got to see a tiny bit because I ran out of time. But here are some pictures I stole...

The better rooms, the amazing rooms with tons and tons and tons of art, had too many guards around so I couldn't take pictures, and there are may more museums connected to it, like one with all of the jewels and one of costumes... I'm excited to go back. But I say I ran out of time because I had to go make my cooking class with ISA! Luckily I made some friends there to cook with, and it was a BLAST. I had a "special" menu because I don't like cheese or spinach, both of which were going into the ravioli we were making, so instead the chef helped me make a garlic-rosemary-potato filling with a hint of tomato paste (what you use to make tomato sauce) to put inside. He also taught me how to shape mine into tortellini instead of ravioli like everyone else's. It had a butter/basil sauce on top, and it was heaven. But backing up, we made some eggplant thing with chopped up veggies and a little potato as an appetizer which surprisingly I liked! I just didn't add the cheese. And then made the noodles from scratch! So cool, we had to make a little mountain of flour, create a whole in the middle and then put egg inside, and the whisk it together, the mix it, the smash it, then roll it all out, the put it through a flattening machine a bunch of times, then cut it, THEN it was ready to add the filling to it. And I now know how to roll up a tortellini :) And dessert was tiramisu, which is a lot of egg yolk, cream cheese, sugar and maybe some other things else all beat up then folded, the you dip ladyfingers in coffee mixed with brandy and add them in, then put them in the freezer and whala! Delicious!

Well Brooke will be here soon because we are going to Milan tomorrow for fashion week! So I'll update again when we get back! Ciao!

Assisi, Siena, and San Gimignano... what a weekend!

I started to write this post last night after we got back, but was so exhausted I quickly gave up and finished it today :)

So ASSISI is now my favorite place in Italy (besides the obvious Florence). It was so beautiful and we had perfect weather to top it off! I was in love almost immediately. You just have to see it. The town is adorable but not too small, and the basilicas were so interesting to learn about, and beautiful. For example, the church of Saint Claire has her actual body covered in way behind glass for you to see underground... she died I believe in the 13th century.... so it was a very old body to see! A little creepy, but I'm starting to see a pattern in Catholics and their creepy church relics. Then ohmygoodness... the Basilica of Saint Francis... it is HUGE!! I mean castle fortress huge. Absolutely amazing, on the edge of the city, you're just walking around and then BOOM! There it is! If you ever come to Italy, please take a day to see Assisi. It will be so worth your time!

                                             Church of Saint Claire (and her creepy remains)

                                                                PRECIOUS KITTEN!!!

                                                    Basilica of Saint Francis!! Beautiful!!

                                                        Saint Francis from ground level...

Okay now Sunday! On to Siena and San Gimignamo. It was a cloudy gray sky day to begin with, and by the time we were leaving Siena it was somewhat raining. So you will notice how the pictures get darker and worse as the day goes on. But oh well! It was still fun! We started off with our bus ride to Siena and took a walking tour all the way to the City Center... not sure what it's actually called but I'm sure you've seen the pictures of the huuuuge open area and the clock/bell tower. This place, the piazza, was my favorite part of Siena. There was also a cathedral we went in that had a human head covered in wax of the saint of the church behind glass, and her finger was in another display, and apparently some church in Rome has her foot and something else... see what I mean about the creepy Catholic church relics? Haha, moving on. The rest was beautiful, but not quite as beautiful as I'd hoped (I had high expectations), so we spent a lot of time in this huge open space and near their biggest basilica. We ate these huge slices of pizza while people watching....

And then for dessert got fried rice balls covered in sugar! Sounds interesting, I know, it was. But they were pretty good! Apparently they are just something you get in Siena, so we had to try them. They tasted like a donut, but it was filled with sweet creamy rice stuff... not bad! 

This is me with the rice balls. Also, speaking of people watching, we got to watch tons of little kids dressed in costumes for the carnivale season in Italy throw confetti and have fun. One little girl who was about 4 was running full speed across the piazza on a downward slope (you can see where this is going) and BAM! Faceplant. She even bounced a little on the stones because she fell so hard. This sounds bad, but it was hilarious! Then she got up and walked it off. No crying. See? America needs to let there kids just run and hurt themselves, and then not pay attention to them so they don't cry. Problem solved. Anyways after laughing she walked our way and we asked if she was okay. Obviously she couldn't understand us because she is a little Italian child, so I guess her natural response was to give us the DEATH glare... scariest glare I have ever seen. I thought she might kill us for a second. Anyways, it was funny, lol.

Later in the day we all packed up our stuff and took a 45 minute ride to the BEAUtiful medieval hill town of San Gimignano! I loved it. It was sooo tiny and hilly and had tons of towers with little streets, and one little open piazza as the main square. The best part? They had a carnival going on! We are literally on our walking tour going into the main piazza and BAM! A clown bombards Maddy and I with a giant bag of confetti. And keep in mind its raining a little bit. Lovely. But it was actually really fun because after we got over the shock, we realized EVERYone was covered in confetti and laughing and throwing it on one another! There was also big strange looking floats and you couldn't even see the stone ground because the confetti was like two inches thick. It was one big San Gimignano party! And we loved it! (And I'm still finding confetti in my hair)

Also, the other wonderful part about San Gimignano is the fact that it is completely surrounded by Chianti vineyards!! It was beautiful, even with gray clouds and rain. Bellissimo! 

                                                                     Chianti Vineyrds!

                                                                Soooo much confetti....

Well today I have been doing homework all day, writing a paper and painting. But tomorrow night Brooke Bishop is coming and having dinner with me and staying the night, because she lives close and we can! She is studying in Arezzo (also in Toscana) and this weekend we are going to Milan together for fashion week!!! We are beyond excited. If you can't tell. But this is all I have for now, Ciao!