Love my Family

My family came to visit me in Florence and let me tell you, I had a great time with them.  At first, I thought that 10 days would be a good amount of time for them to be here but when I woke up this morning and realized that they were on an airplane heading back to the US of A, I wished they were still here.  I miss them so much already.  As crazy and loud and non-Italian language speaking as they may be, they are still my family and I love them so much.

They first day they arrived I had high hopes for what we were going to do.  I told my mom to drug everyone up on some Tylenol PM since that knocked me out for 7 hours on the flight over here but she didn't because they didn't really have ideal flights for sleeping.  Needless to say, they were exhausted when they arrived.  I still managed to drag them to my favorite little sandwich shop, Noe, and took them to the Chocolate Festival and Santa Croce- the largest Franciscan church in the WORLD!  They really enjoyed Noe (or so they said) and the chocolate festival was yummy.  I think they liked Santa Croce at the time, but they were so tired they had to go back to their apartment and sleep.  Poor little jet-lagged family.  We went to dinner at a restaurant literally right across the street from them.  Then we went to see the Duomo at night and ate some gelato since Kenny made it his mission to eat gelato at least once a day.  All in all, a good day.


The next day we woke up bright and somewhat early to go to Fiesole where there are ancient Roman and Etruscan ruins.  You might remember that I went here too on of my first days.  Alli was in heaven and took about a thousand pictures of the ruins for her Latin project next year- overachiever warning.  I think it was really interesting for them to see these super old structures and be able to touch and climb them.  We went to lunch at one of the best restaurants that I have been too.  My pici with pomodoro and parmesan was so yummy.

After Fiesole, we came back to lovely Florence and climbed up to the top of the bell tower.  The views were so pretty from up there.  It was neat to be able to see Florence all spread out below.  We also went to mass at the Duomo which was a great experience for my family.  I know that my mom and I enjoyed it and I think it was a unique (insert boring) experience for Alli and Kenny.

For dinner that night, we went to a not so great restaurant but we had gelato after which definitely made up for it.

So, that's two days down and unfortunately I have midterms this week which I have to study for and I think a run is calling my name BUT I will probably blog again later today and let you all know about more of my wonderful trip with my family

M.I.A.

Wow!

Have I been M.I.A. these last couple of days or what?

Well, not that I like excuses but my family has been here so I have been spending most of my time with them.  It was has been nice to see them and show them my home.  I think I will just stay here forever. 

On Friday before my family arrived, I went to Volterra and San Gimignano with my school.  They are super pretty little medieval towns.  The bus ride to Volterra was super windy though and our bus, like all other moving vehicles here, was stick shift so it would stall, roll backwards, and then go forward.  This happened multiple times.  As my roommate Carolyn would say, "not okay!"

Once we got to Volterra (any Twilight fans?) we saw the main Piazza where they filmed that awful great movie. Then we went to their cathedral and a museum.  We were only in Volterra for about 2 hours so I didn't get a real feel of the city. We saw some neat stuff though.

On our way to San Gimignano, we stopped at this super yummy place to eat.  Definitely the best group meal yet.  We had lasagna, chicken, potatoes, peas, and vanilla ice cream with blackberry sauce.  Soooo good.

I loved San Gimignano.  In fact, that is where my family is right now!  It is a beautiful town that used to have 70 skyscrapers but now only 7 remain.  The views are amazing from here and the town is so cute!  There are two towers there that the architect who designed the Twin Towers got his idea from.  True story.

  that was a great day for me!  Then my family came and we have been doing lots of touristy things which I will tell you about later.  I am currently in the midst of midterm studying (yuck) and I can already tell that Sunday is going to be a long day of sitting and learning.  Not fun my friends, not fun. 

Last Day of Paris

Our last day, we went to the Eiffel Tower in the morning and Julie and I went all the way to the top!  As soon as we 
made it up, they closed the top tier so thank goodness we got there early.  It was super windy and cold but the views were pretty amazing.  The elevator up wasn't bad, but I didn't like the way down. All I could do was think of Tower of Terror. Thank goodness that didn't occur!



After the Eiffel we went to the d'Orasay Museum.  It has impressionism type paintings which are my favorite. We saw Seurat, Monet, and Van Gogh.  Unfortunately, you couldn't take any pictures there. Oh, and if you are a Gossip Girl fan like me, the d'Orsay museum is the museum that Blair went to everyday that she was in Paris to look at a painting and hope that a smart, attractive boy would come and talk to her. 


Then we went up to Montmartre, which is a hill town that looks out above Paris.  They sell painting here but I couldn't find one that I absolutely loved, just a bunch that I liked so I didn't get one.  Instead, I ate another crepe (which are absolutely delish) and some macaroons (which are oh so yummy).  Montmartre was really cute. 

The plain ride home was not so fun. Our plane couldn't land in Pisa because of fog so we had to land in Genoa, take a bus to Pisa airport, a taxi to Pisa train station, take a super gross, sketchy bus to Florence train station, then take a taxi to our apartment. We got home at 4am instead of 11 when we were supposed too. 

Thank goodness the wonderfulness of Paris made up for the trip home.  I had such a good trip!