Cheers to Dublin

The crew at The Brazen Head

Our flight touched down in rainy Dublin around 10 in the morning and I was excited that we still had the whole day to do anything. Walking through the airport noticing all the signs in English, I realized that Dublin was the first English-speaking country I’d set foot in for 2 months. As much as I love Italy and becoming seasoned by its culture, this was such a nice break! The first thing we did there after grabbing our bags was unload our wallets of all our sheckles at the vending machines, loading up on our newfound favorite chips, Hunky Dory’s. We love Hunky Dory’s. We figured out our way to our hostel via bus and checked in to the coolest hostel I’ve ever seen. Granted, it was only the second hostel I’d ever seen including the one in Paris the night before, but that doesn’t make that statement any less true. If you ever go to Dublin, stay at Four Courts! It was so big and awesome and just had that really fun and personal atmosphere that made young people feel super comfortable. The longer-than-mine-haired dude at the front desk gave us a map and circled where he suggested we have lunch, The Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Dublin built around 1198. No big deal. We of course went straight there. I was thrilled to get my first Dublin Guinness and my friends and I joked about funny it is to see “ham and cheese panini” on the menu, because we know that panini is really just the plural form of the word panino, which just means sandwich in Italian. Who was the first one to call grilled sandwiches paninis? It isn’t correct! The caesar salad I ordered was below par, but with my delicious Guinness in hand sitting at the oldest pub in Dubtown, I really didn’t care.

YESSS.

After lunch it was off to the Guinness factory. I was SO excited about this. Hal turned me onto Guinness this past summer and it’s become my favorite beer by a mile. I realize that this is difficult to understand, but it is. I wished Hal and Neil were there with me. The Guinness factory was radtastical! It was a self-guided tour, beginning at the 9000-year lease framed in the floor at the front of the tour route. That’s right, Arthur Guinness signed a lease back in the day for nine thousand years on the building that the factory is in. I can’t remember what year it was signed, but I think it’s safe to say they still have quite some time left on the lease. If I heard the introductiontothetour man correctly, I believe he said they pay 45 euro for the entire place every month. I could be wrong, but that’s what I thought I he was saying. Unbelievable.

We led ourselves through the factory over the next three hours or so, but I was slightly disappointed to find that it’s not really a factory so much as a touristy exhibition of fake machines and video demonstrations of how the beer is made. I was looking to see the actual process and machines like I did at the Jelly Belly factory when I was a kid. Why couldn’t I see that? The first floor that explained the entire production of Guinness seemed to go on forever, the second floor of their advertising history was really fun to look at, and the third floor about alcohol awareness just annoyed me because it reminded me of The Incident. The fourth floor was great, they have a room where you can go in and they teach you how to pour a perfect pint of Guinness. It was cheesy and the guys in there seemed so annoyed that they had to teach their 534^th group of the day how to pour a pint, but I liked it. We each got our own glass and got to pour our own from the tap, and we had a good laugh at Liz for her, um, special pint, poured about an inch shorter than the rest of ours. Sitting down to drink our beer was lovely, one because I love Guinness and two because I always like just enjoying being together. As time went on, we realized it was getting late and that we still had two floors and the gift shop left before we wanted to make it over to the Jamieson factory before the last tour at 5:30, so we decided to skip floor #5 which was more on advertising and just go up to the “Gravity Bar” on the top floor of the building. The building is designed to be in the shape of a pint glass, and this top floor was designed to be like the creamy foam on top. It was a circular room with 360 degrees of glass windows with great views of the city. We might have stayed up there for a while longer had it not been packed with people, but we just went in, looked out the window for a couple seconds, took a group picture, and headed down to the gift shop. I just had to buy something for Neil and Hal (if you’re reading this you guys, don’t get too excited, it’s not that big) and of course for myself. After making our purchases, off to Jamieson we went.

Our perfect pints... and Liz's special pint...

I know, from the beer factory to the whiskey house. Awesome. However I will have you know that I hate… hate hard alcohol, so I wasn’t so excited to be going there. But I know not everyone loves Guinness and I got my turn there, so now it was Giancarlo’s turn. That guy loves Jamieson. I don’t get it. The tour was nice but started with a documentary video in a tiny little theater-like room with seats that were a little too comfortable, and I am pretty sure that every one of us fell asleep for at least a few minutes. We were so tired from all the traveling. The tour finished with a tasting but I gave my cranberry juice and whiskey to Ricky after he and Giancarlo participated in the tour’s whiskey comparison and declared that Jack Daniels was the worst whiskey ever. I just nodded my head and smiled; I know nothing and could contribute nothing to that conversation. I liked the idea of going to dinner.

On Thursday nights our hostel leads its guests to a pub that does free Thursday night BBQ’s, so we of course joined in on that. We waited for quite a while before we got food, but we filled up our time with highs/lows and talking to this guy that approached our table, who was your typical anywhere-USA frat boy, and I mean that with every stereotype you’re thinking. The only thing he had to say that I found interesting was that he was studying at Edinburgh and when I asked him where he lived, he said he lived in the same building in the dorms my dad lived in 30 years ago (Baird at Polluck Halls). When he first told us he was studying in Edinburgh, we said it must be really beautiful there. He responded with… “Yeah, I guess... if that’s what you’re there for.” He also asked us if we found enough to do in Florence because he couldn’t find the cool bars when he came here. Oh he was a silly bloke, to say the least.

After dinner was fabulous. We ventured into the Temple Bar area, which is essentially a couple blocks of bars and food places. Liz and Giancarlo stopped into a place to use their bathroom, all of us unaware that it was the Temple Bar. They came out and said we should all hang out there, so we did. We walked in and went into a room where two guys saw us and asked if we were locals because they were looking for something to do. We said no and then continued amongst ourselves. This lady was walking through the bar with a basket of pretzels and I haven’t had a pretzel in months, so Giancarlo and I split one while everyone else went to get some drinks. When they came back we huddled in the corner of the very busy bar having a good time with each other. The same guys in that room started talking to Giancarlo, Liz, and Steph, and I moved over there not soon after to listen to what was going on. Once again, I was not really interested at first in meeting new friends, especially at a bar, but these guys seemed nice enough (also quite attractive enough…) so I gave it a chance. Sooner than I knew it, we had all pulled up stools around their table and were lost in conversation.

Temple Bar: where you meet cool people.

Bryn and Luke were so fabulous! They were from Australia but studying in Brighton and were in Dublin for the weekend like we were. They were such amazing people. It was refreshing to meet people who were actually really nice guys who I could have an actual intelligent conversation with. It just happens that we met in a bar, where you usually meet the meatheads or creepy Italians. Not in this case. We pretty much never ran out of things to talk about and I think I laughed at nearly everything that Bryn said. Luke was extremely enjoyable to talk to. I was sitting next to him so naturally I think I chatted with him more than Bryn, but I really liked both of them. It was such a nice night, so many things happened that I could write about but I really just want to remember how wonderful it was to meet them. It eventually got really late and we took off to go back to our hostel, so Bryn and I exchanged phone numbers to meet up the next day after our tour of the countryside.

=]

Rainy day in Wicklow

The tour could have been fabulous. It could have. It should have. But it was pouring. The rain was coming down like crazy and the wind was flipping our umbrellas inside out, which didn’t make for happy girls but made for some pretty hilarious pictures. Our tour seemed like it had the potential to be a really cool tour on a nice day, but for our rainy day that was really really rainy, we couldn’t see through the sheets of rain much farther than 20 feet out the van, and that was even if we could see through the foggy windows (I couldn’t). It was a constant arm wipe to keep the windows from fogging up, but it didn’t do much good. I couldn’t see anything. We did get out of the van a few times, like to see Guinness Lake, but we couldn’t see anything from the top of the hill looking down into the lake at the bottom of the valley. Quite disappointing. We drove past the valley where Braveheart was filmed and got out of the van once to take a picture at the P.S. I Love You bridge, where Holly meets Gerry (this is from where we have the best inside out umbrella picture). The only really good thing about the tour was the lunch we had at a hotel with a fireplace where I warmed up my jacket, and the coffee with Bailey’s we had at another hotel farther down the road. Our journey back into town happened right as the sun was peeking out and we got out of the van to enjoy the bright double rainbow it created. We went back to Dublin up the coastline where we got to see Bono’s house and Enya’s house and the beautiful beach town and harbor. Because the sun had just come out I wished we could have done the return drive back through the countryside, but oh well.

We got back to our hostel soaking wet and freezing and took turns showering and changing into dry clothes in our one bedroom mixed room. We met up with Bryn and Luke at a restaurant called The Church for dinner. This restaurant was a really cool place, it was an old church that had been converted into a bar/restaurant. Seems kind of sacrilegious right? It wasn’t really. It was really cool! The hostess told us when we arrived that it’d be an hour to an hour and a half wait for our table, but our group doesn’t do very well together when we just wander around the city, so we decided to just sit down at their bar and wait. We waited with Luke and Bryn and we talked about our days over a couple of beers. Our table was ready early, so we headed up to the second floor to our big table, where we ordered an expensive yet delicious dinner. I so enjoyed spending more time with the guys, but our guys didn’t. Giancarlo and Ricky sat at the end of the table and didn’t do much talking while the girls talked up a storm. Not surprisingly. =]

Dancing at The Church

Our fabulous new friends

After dinner, the hostess offered to get us a table in the basement, the restaurant’s dance club. It didn’t cost anything and we didn’t have any plans after that, so we did it. The place was empty when we got there but we really didn’t care. If there was music on, we were dancing. We apparently start the party everywhere we go because sooner than we knew it there were a bunch of middle aged people there whipping out their awesome dance moves. We danced and had a ball for hours. Luke and Bryn were not shy to dance with us, Giancarlo was busting out his hilarious moves that he only shows off when he’s had a few too many, and the girls were just having a really good time. The later it got, the more we danced, until it got too late and we decided it was time to go. We walked a ways with Luke and Bryn before hugging goodbye on the street corner, but not before exchanging last names to catch up on facebook. Oh thank goodness for facebook. The rest of the night was pretty much filled with laughing at a drunk Giancarlo who insisted on having both a very loaded hotdog and a hamburger before going to bed. Awesome.

Our last half-day in Dublin we spent walking around the city looking for sweatshirts. For some reason, when we all came to Dublin we all wanted to buy Ireland sweatshirts. I had made up in my mind the exact one that I wanted, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I finally settled for one that was a size too big and had makeup on the neck from the girl who tried it on last, but it was the only one I semi-liked. I argued with the cashier for a discount since it was dirty and they didn’t have any other sizes and paid 2.50 less than it was supposed cost. Nice. That’s an entire gelato. We went from there to Subway for lunch, and of course right when I walked into the subway that was attached to a tourist shop, I saw the exact one I wanted hanging up on the wall. Great. I couldn’t take the last one back, I had argued with her for a discount. I had to have the green one though. I tried it on just to try it on, and then I just couldn’t part with it. So I bought it, okay? Don’t judge me. Also during my fabulous day in Dublin, I bought a clover necklace and a Starbucks. A STARBUCKS! First one I’ve had in months. I love Ireland. We also got to quickly glance into Trinity College at the last minute and I really wanted to see the Book of Kells, but it was going to cost 8 euro and we had to get to the airport. I guess that’s just another reason to go back.

We left Dublin feeling quite depressed just because we couldn't stay and took Ryanair to Milan. That's next post. Ciao!

STARBUCKSSSS

We found him.

Dublin airport

Obviously depressed to be leaving Dublin.

Solo travels bologna, if you know what I mean.

Mom and Dad took off on Wednesday morning and I had a couple hours before my train left to Pisa, from where I was flying to Paris to meet my friends. I already said it was strange being in Florence without my friends, but it was extremely strange being in Florence without anyone. I wandered around town and bought some tights which I had wanted for a while and shopped around for some boots since my black flats are the only pair of closed toed shoes I have here and my parents left me money to buy some new ones. I tried a pair on at the place on the corner near my apartment but walked away because I didn’t want to pay what they were asking. I kept searching all over town but couldn’t find what I wanted. I wanted real leather so that they’d last, but I didn’t want to pay too much. Well as you might imagine you can’t really find cheap real leather boots. So after a while I went back to the first store and bargained him down quite a bit and walked out with a new pair of black boots. I still paid more than I’d have liked too, but I have a really nice pair of boots sitting right next to my bed and the owner of the shop gave me a free scarf because I’m a student. So ha. A free scarf and black leather boots for an amount I am not willing to reveal. =] During my waiting time for my train I also of course made it back to Gusta Pizza to get my t-shirt. I got one for myself and then took a chance and asked the guy for another, because I knew that if I got one and didn’t get one for Giancarlo that might have been the end of our friendship considering he’s the one that gets it nearly every day. I walked out with two t-shirts but was so so sooo disappointed when I got home to see that my shirt said “Gustapizza” and GC’s said “Gustapanino”, a panino place around the corner owned by the same people. Now I have to find a time to go exhange it with the owner and it made my surprise for GC far less exciting. Oh well. He’s still forever indebted to me.

My train took off to Pisa around 12:30 and I was sooo excited to finally be on my way to see Marissa, Liz, Steph, Ricky, Giancarlo, and JC in Paris and later Hannah in Dublin after almost six days away from them. It’s weird when you spend every hour of every day together and then don’t see each other at all for six days. So I was excited sitting on the train. I arrived in Pisa and found my way to the airport and had to sit and wait for my gate to show up on the board. I don’t mind doing that kind of stuff when I’m traveling with someone I can talk to, but standing for an hour where there is nowhere to sit while waiting for the flight to show up on the board while listening to everyone’s conversations around me was not fun and I quickly got so annoyed and frustrated. I needed water but couldn’t find anything but wine to buy and I did not want wine. So I went without it.

Finallyyy a big blinking 7 showed up next to “Paris Bouvais” and I moved to gate 7, where I only sat for a second before people started to line up. I don’t know why people do this. No one called our flight, no attendant was at the desk or anything. People just lined up. So I did too. So then I had to stand and wait again between two super touchy couples until they actually started boarding the flight 30 minutes late. I. Was. So. Annoyed. Especially when the line started moving and the couple behind me started crowding me in line. Oh nuh uh. So I pushed them out of my way and gave the woman at the desk my boarding pass and was relieved I was finally getting to sit down on the plane and not have to move. That is, until we got herded into this hot hot stuffy room before they let us out onto the runway. I don’t know why the delay, but I wanted to punch a baby. It was so stuffy that I couldn’t breathe, I was dying of thirst, the couple behind me was crowding me again, and I didn’t want to listen to any more American girls’ loud conversations.

After too much time, they finally opened the doors and I stomped my brand new boots out onto the runway and up the boarding stairs and took the first seat I saw in row 4. Finally. Sitting down. I had only paid 8 euro for this Ryanair flight to Paris (that’s right, 8 euro) so I wasn’t sure if I was going to be getting any refreshments but I assumed not and wished I just had some water. When I saw them start preparing the beverage cart at the front of the plane, though, I thought maybe I actually do get refreshments and I started getting excited about drinking some nice cold water. The dude eventually trolleyed through the cabin and I was so upset when he told me that it would cost me 3 euro for a water. UGHHH. So I went without and sat there pouting like a baby just waiting for the Eiffel Tower to come into view because I just wanted to be with my friends.

My plane landed… no… more like was shot down… at 6:00 pm and I looked out the window to see fields instead of city. No Eiffel Tower. No actual Paris. I stomped off the plane and went inside to find out where the heck I was and how fast I could get to my friends. Once again the water at the food counter inside was going to cost me an arm and a leg, so I skipped it once again. I was dying but I was not going to pay that! I was annoyed to find out that it cost 15 euro for a bus ride into the city of Paris, but unlike the water I didn’t have a choice about this. I called Marissa and told her I had landed and would be there soon, purchased a ticket and sat down on the bus. I was thinking, okay, so I’ll be there in 20 minutes, drop off my stuff at the hostel and head to the Eiffel Tower where my friends are. I’ll see them in an hour, yay.

The bus started moving, and 15 minutes into the ride I was thinking we should be there soon. 20 minutes in, I was still seeing fields. 45 minutes in I was thinking any minute now, and approximately one hour and fifteen minutes later from when I left the airport, the bus finally stopped… somewhere… and I got off and stomped my way to the metro station while angrily wondering why they call the airport “Paris Bouvais” when it is not actually in Paris! I for some reason trusted the dude walking in front of me who seemed like he might be headed to the metro, and luckily he unknowingly led me right to it. I bought a ticket to what I was told by the airport information lady where my hostel was and went straight to the platform while keeping my eye out for some water. The metro was there when I got there, so I rushed towards it only to have it beep in my face and close me out. Fine. Awesome. I wanted to wait 10 more minutes for the next one anyway. 10 minutes went by and I was the first one onto the next metro, which was PACKED. It was the kind of thing where no one could hold onto anything, everyone was invading everyone else’s personal space, and every single face looked like that person would rather be anywhere but here. Including mine. I wanted to just scream when this loud giggly group of girls got on a couple stops before I got off and blocked my way out.  If I wasn’t having fun, no one could, so at my stop I shot them a death glare and pushed my way out. I stomped to my next platform, slightly worried because I felt really lightheaded carrying my bag down the stairs due to the lack of water in my body, but was happy to see the last metro standing between me and my hostel waiting there for me. I rushed to it again, not wanting to miss it like I missed the last one. Metros hate me, because this one yelled at me too and shut its doors in my face. Cool! 10 more minutes without water and I just might die. Surprisingly I didn’t and the next train came before I just toppled over.

That train took me to my final stop and I got off and aimlessly wandered up a set of stairs to the world with fresh air. No clue how to get to my hostel from here. I walked down a street, over a street, up a street, and somehow actually wound up on the street I wanted to be on. Amazing! I searched for addresses on the buildings, just dying to see the number 80 with “Young and Happy Hostel” in big bright letters. Nope, couldn’t find it. I then realized that I had a missed call from Giancarlo’s phone and listened to the message from Liz that said they were wondering where the heck I was. Oh that’s right, I realized it had been almost 3 hours since I called them to say I landed and would see them soon and they had no idea where I was. Right then my phone rang and it was Marissa. I answered and told her before she said anything that I just couldn’t find the hostel. Right as I said this I looked to my right and saw “Young and Happy” in big green unlit letters on the building. FINALLY. Marissa told me they were on their way back and they’d meet me so we could all go get some dinner. Yay. I hung up and went into the hostel, just wanting to get rid of my suitcase, but the guy at the front counter wouldn’t let just me of a seven-person reservation check in. ADFSADSFJKLDFJKL. Why meeee? I sat down on a barstool to wait and heard a heavenly choir singing when I looked up and saw a refrigerator stocked with water. Hallelujah. It had been nearly 8 hours since I realized I needed water. The same French dude who wouldn’t check me in turned into a god-sent angel when he told me that I could just have the water. Water has never ever tasted so good.

While I sat there and waited, a group of students pulled me over to their table and I sat with them while I waited an hour for my friends to get to the hostel. It was just one big group of students who mostly didn’t know each other, a few from the states, a couple guys from Brazil, one from England, and me. I made conversation with one girl for a while and that’s when I decided that this is probably normal for a hostel, so hostels are awesome. Finally I was so so SO happy to see my friends walk in the door and fell into Marissa’s arms just so relieved to be with people I love. I told them about my journey and because of the extremely long venture to the airport I knew we had ahead of us, we had to be walking out of the hostel the next morning at 5:45 am and that didn’t allow for much hanging out for me in Paris. The farthest I went away from the hostel during my entire time there was up the street to the crepes place for a nice ham, cheese, egg, and onion crepe. Oh well. Next time, Paris.

The next morning was an adventure to the airport. We did indeed leave the hostel at 5:45 and even that made us rush to get to the bus that would take us to the airport. We took the reciprocal metro of where I’d been the night before and I led everyone to the bus stop, but that did come along with running across an extremely busy and dangerous roundabout curve in the middle of Paris. We must have looked ridiculous scurrying across a busy road, suitcases dragging and backpacks strapped on. We’re all safe now so… good times.

The airport in Paris was also an experience. As you may know, Paris is full of nonsense right now due to the pension reform, and one thing leading to another put everyone on strike and public transportation is mostly at a stand still. We got to the airport just crossing our fingers that our flight to Dublin was still on, because if we didn’t make that, we’d probably just have to get an expensive train back to Italy (if there even was one) and Hannah, who was supposed to be meeting us in Dublin, wasn’t going to go by herself so she’d be screwed too. One member of our group, JC, had decided to go on fall break flying by the seat of his pants, so he still had to purchase his ticket for the plane we were about to get on. Not kidding. So we left him at the ticket counter while the rest of us went to check in and get breakfast. That’s the last we saw of poor JC. No chance for him to get on that flight. We grabbed some French breakfast and then waited to see what the “Departures” screen said. I glanced at it and could not believe what I was seeing. Rome: Cancelled. London: Cancelled. Edinburgh: Cancelled. Bergame: Cancelled. Trapani: Cancelled. Sofia: Cancelled. Gerone: Cancelled. Dublin: Check-in! Gate 2/3! …Say what? No joke, our flight was THE. ONLY. flight out of Paris that day. Why? It’s questionable and I will never know. I’m just extremely thankful. Dublin rocked my world and I loved it.

...You'll hear why. Dublin and Milan coming soon.

I miei genitori sono venuti a Firenze! (My parents came to Florence!)

Having midterms that week is precisely what kept me from updating my blog, and then my parents arrived here on Wednesday, the 20^h. My parents were here!! This is a great spot to tell you that currently as I am typing this, I am drinking Dr. Pepper out of a wine glass because my parents brought it to me! They are too good to me. They brought me so many treats! Eight mini cans of Dr. Pepper (!!!!), two big bags of peanut butter M&Ms, a bunch of Mexican food for Mexican Monday, some indomie (thanks to Carrie), my curling iron, my gray dress, real deoderant, my duvet cover, and REAL BAKED COOKIES! It’s funny how excited I was to get this kind of stuff that is probably not that big of a deal to you. But I was excited!!

Mom and Dad at Boboli Gardens

Having my parents here was so lovely. We stayed in Florence for a few days once my 10-day fall break started and I got to show them around. My favorite was taking my mom to Mercato Centrale where they have all the fresh food on display and I was excited that she bought some balsamic glaze and both Parmesan and Pecorino cheese. YUM. We also went to see the Statue of David (my 6^th time), the Duomo, Palazzo Pitti, the Ponte Vecchio, Piazzale Michelangelo, Santa Croce, Boboli Gardens, had dinner at the restaurant down my street twice, and had gelato at Grom (one of the best in town), and ate dinner at Il Latini for my dad’s birthday on the 22^nd. Remember my entry a month ago about the restaurant we went to for Ricky’s birthday? Yep, that one. Yum. It was fun to be a little tour guide for a few days and explain to my parents about the art we saw and the things I’ve learned about Florence. It was really strange being in Florence while my friends weren’t here because I don’t know Florence at all without them, but it was really nice to have my parents with me. After hanging around Florence, we took off to explore Tuscany for the next few days.

We went to Sienna on Saturday, but I got really sick and didn’t have a lot of energy that day. We still got to see the Duomo there (which is absolutely marvelous) and the Duomo museum, got to climb up onto the arch for a panoramic view, and went into the Baptistery to see more art. We also visited the Piazza del Campo where they have horse races twice a year. That's a reeallyy cool looking Piazza. I really liked Siena but I was wishing I wasn’t so sick so I could enjoy it more with my parents.

I love San Gimignano

The next day I was feeling even worse when I woke up, but I still really wanted my mom to see San Gimignano because I knew she wanted to see Tuscany the way you see it in your mind when you think of it. Like I just wrote about it, I had been there a little over a week before but it was worth going back. I took them to see all the same things I saw while I was there, we walked down to that little path I had lunch on, we went into some of the same shops and just generally had a good time once the Ibuprofin took care of my miserably achy body. San Gim is so beautiful and the Tuscan countryside is picture perfect, I’m glad I got to go back and this time with my mom and dad.

We debated for a while whether or not to do this on that Monday, but we managed to muster up enough energy to head all the way down to Monte Cassino, 5-6 hours away. So glad we did. We woke up super early so that we could have enough time there and we still didn’t arrive there until after 1:00. If you don’t know much about World War II, The Battle of Monte Cassino was an important element of the war and it just happens to be where my grandfather fought with the Polish Army when he was younger than I am now. I don’t know when I’m going to be back to Italy, and I probably won’t be back here with my dad, so it was important to me to be able to see it just even for the sake of honoring my grandfather. So when we got there, I did my best at understanding and speaking Italian to an elderly taxi driver and managed to get us a ride up to the Monastery on the hill, which is the site of the pinnacle of the Battle. Even the taxi drive was interesting. Our driver didn’t speak hardly any English, but the little Italian I know was able to get us by. I asked him if there was anything to eat up on the hill and he said no and drove us to a market where we could get sandwiches. I asked him if he knew when the last train back to Rome was and he was kind enough to drive us back to the station to find out. We finally started the trek up the hill and while he was driving he was doing his best to explain in simple Italian terms that the whole city has been rebuilt since the war because “tutto caput”… as in, everything was destroyed. Not a single building currently standing in Cassino survived the war. One of the few things I understood him saying was that he was “un piccolo bambino” when the battle happened… He was only ten years old. I love hearing from older folks about their experiences because it’s worlds apart from anything my generation has ever known, and certainly from an authentic Cassino resident telling me in Italian. Great experience.

A Polish grave

At the cemetary with the Monastery behind

He dropped us off at the street that led to the Polish Cemetery. I don’t think I’ll ever forget this. We approached the cemetery that is just so amazing to see from afar because of its design. Right next to the gate entrance to the cemetery there was a big sign with every name of every Polish soldier laid to rest there, and there were thousands of names and dates and we noticed that my grandfather must have been one of the youngest that fought there at around 20 years old. I walked in and the first thing I noticed was the red and white flowers and Polish flags all over the graves. This really struck me. To me this meant that the deaths of these soldiers 60 years ago are still painful for a lot of people. I wandered around with my camera and really couldn’t help but read names and wonder if any of these men knew Guppy. Which of these men shared their water with my grandfather? Which of them hid on the ground right next to him? With who did he talk when he was lonely? Which men did he joke with? Which of these deaths affected my grandpa the most? As one of the youngest, what kind of mentors did he have while he was here and which of these graves hold their bodies? Even typing this makes me choked up. There are so many questions. Standing there I realized that I can’t remember very many times when I actually had a conversation with my grandpa about the war. I’ve known my whole life that my grandfather fought in WWII and that he has an absolutely amazing story, but I could never relay that story to anyone else, I don’t know it well enough. Why did I never ask him about anything, especially when I say I love to hear stories of elderly folks’ experiences? I miss him. I know he’d be proud of me though. If he knew I spent a semester in Italy studying photography, he’d be proud of me.

A courtyard in the Monastery

A torrential downpour drowned us out of the cemetery and we walked through the pouring rain up to the Monastery. We had two umbrellas for three people and there is pretty much no shelter to be seen, so we were so soaked when we finally made it up there. The Monastery was just so amazing. The Allies bombed it during the war because they believed Germans were inhabiting it. They weren’t at the time, but once it was bombed it became the perfect battleground and the Germans moved on in. They fought the Allies there for three months there until one night the Germans just got up and left. The rest is history and the Monastery now stands there as an amazing reminder of those three months. It was rebuilt as close to the original as possible and it’s absolutely beautiful on the inside. Every single thing in Cassino was really cool to see and even cooler to honor my grandpa in that way.

At Verrazzano

Cassino was a long day full of lots of traveling and lots of emotion, so we took it easy on my parents’ last day in Italy and headed to a winery not too far away in the heart of Chianti called Verrazzano. Monte Cassino was my favorite day but Verrazzano was also a lot of fun. We got a tour of the winery from a cute British woman and then the tour group sat down for some tasting. We tasted three red wines, Vin Santo (try it, I dare you), and guess what else… yep. Grappa. WHYYY do I keep tasting it?! Before we were allowed to taste the wine, the woman taught us how to properly taste. I loved learning this. Look, smell, swirl, smell, taste, swish, breathe. That’s pretty much all there is to tasting wine (YOU’RE WELCOME). Apparently I have a good nose, because I was the only one of our group that was able to recognize the pepper scent in one of the wines. Me and my parents so enjoyed the whole day, that winery is just lovely. I want to go back with my friends.

That evening I took my parents to Gusta Pizza for dinner. I know none of you know what that means, but it is a BIG. DEAL. Gusta Pizza is our favorite place in town. I don’t even think I would actually consider it in Florence, now that I think about it, but more like a little piece of Heaven that hovers above Florence that you can access by walking to Santo Spirito. There is no way I could possibly explain the goodness of this place other than saying that they get business from at least one of my friends nearly every day. We love it so much that we each want our own t-shirt that the workers wear. Well you can’t really get these shirts, they’re not for sale. We’ve asked before and have been shot down. I have never asked myself, so while I was there alone with my parents I decided to take a shot. So I asked. Aaand I must be pretty because he told me to meet him there at 11:30 the next day and he’d give me one. I could not believe it. My parents might have thought I was a little strange for worshipping this pizza place. I don’t even care.

Next installment soon. =]

Italians, Wine, and Chocolate. Sounds awesome.

It has been quite some time since I have updated. I keep this blog for my parents and some of you guys at home but I mainly write it for me. It’s my way of documenting my time here so I am disappointed that I have to recap the past four weeks in one entry. So yeah, this will be a long one.

Four weeks ago seems like absolutely forever ago. That’s pretty much how all of my time here has felt, actually. It’s been over two months since I arrived here and I feel like it was a lifetime ago. So four weeks ago is hard to remember but I make notes of the things I do to help me remember what to write here.

The last night that I updated this was a Tuesday night. Tuesday nights here are typically fun nights with my friends, and we had recently found an Italian bar here called Kitsch, which has some good apertivo. That night my friends and I went there and met up with some Italians who we had found through putting up a sign somewhere that said we wanted Italian language partners to help us learn the Italian language. A guy had responded to Marissa and we met up with him and his two friendgirls at Kitsch that night. By the time I got there, half of our group had already been there chatting with them for a couple hours. I sat down and was at first not interested in them at all. If you know me at all, you know this flaw I have: I have a seriously difficult time letting myself meet other people once I have an established friend group. I don’t like letting other people in. So like I said, I was really not interested. But after a while of listening in on their conversations, testing my own Italian figuring out what they were saying, and learning that the two girls were studying art, I became interested. The guy sounded hilarious and the two girls were so easy to talk to. So I eventually jumped in and joined. I learned that their names were Laura and Gabriela, but I can’t remember the guy’s name. It was really fun to talk to each other. They spoke fairly good English, but they were meeting up with us because they wanted to learn it better too. It was interesting to see them help each other out with English words just like we were helping each other out with Italian words. We loved talking to them for hours and once again I was annoyed at myself for keeping my guard up so long to some really cool people. They eventually complained about having to get up early for school/work the next day and we had to say goodbye, but my friends and I stuck around the bar afterwards and had a good time with each other. I spent the night on defense against Krissy’s blame on me for whispering about her every time I talked to Giancarlo, but all in good fun. Krissy can’t figure out whose team I am on. =]

San Gimignano's awesome countryside

That Friday I got up early and headed to San Gimignano, a small classical Tuscan town, with Krissy, Jon-Michael, and David. We left the train station at 8 am and it was so worth spending the whole day there. I wound up spending the day using Krissy as my impromptu model and going around and doing what I do best: photographing her. That girl is so beautiful it is easy. I taught her how to use my 5dm2 and we photographed each other, the place was so beautiful I wanted my own pictures too. It’s funny when sometimes I liked her shots better than I even liked my own. Eventually we met back up with the guys for some of the best gelato I’ve ever tasted. The “World Champions” banner hanging in front of the gelateria pulled me right in. San Gim is known for its white wine so they even had Vernaccia flavored gelato, which I had to try. I also had cinnamon gelato on my cone too, which I liked so much that I went back for three more scoops a couple hours later. Hehe. Earlier while me and Krissy had been off photographing, the boys had found a trail outside the walls with an apparent spectacular view of the tuscan countryside, so we grabbed some panini and vino to head down there to have the rest of our backwards lunch. And spectacular it was. We found a little small bench outside the walls and panino’d and vino'd it up down there and enjoyed the countryside. San Gimignano is beautiful. That was a rather fun day, I really liked hanging out with just me and Krissy. That night in Florence though, yikes. We decided to celebrate Jon-Michael’s 21^st birthday that night because his actual birthday was over fall break during which he’d be roaming Egypt alone. Let’s just say… solo-celebrated he sure did, helping him home was an extreeeemely difficult hour-long tast, neither he nor I will be drinking any red wine for a while, and he didn't make it to the chocolate festival the next day.

Choco festival!

That’s right, the chocolate festival. Eurochocolate. Don’t be fooled though, I was quite disappointed and I don’t even like chocolate. We got there and assumed it was something like the wine festival had been a couple weeks ago where we bought a card and got to spend points for tasting at different tables. So we each paid 5 euro for a chococard and then couldn’t figure out how to use it. We wandered around from booth to booth for a while, freezing our butts off, and I was disappointed to see that not many tables were offering tastes of their chocolate. You just had to buy it. I reeeallyyy wanted to buy a bar of cinnamon white chocolate but just couldn’t bring myself to spend 3 euro on it. If I would have known that would have been the only thing I wanted to buy all day, I probably would have just sucked it up and paid for it. But I walked away, sadly. At one of the few tables that did allow tasting, I tasted chocolate grappa. Have you ever tasted grappa? I had never even heard of it before coming to Europe and meeting Giancarlo. It’s basically a really high-content alcohol made from all the leftovers of the wine making process, like the skin and stems of the grapes, and it’s so so bitter. I hate it. But somehow I have tried it about 5 different times now, each time thinking maybe this time I’ll like it. Why? I don’t know. And chocolate grappa was none the better. Gross. We eventually found some booths that would punch our chococard and give us some free stuff. The first thing we got was this silly little purple fuzzy cell phone holder with the Milka logo on it. Are you kidding me. We paid 5 euro for crap like this? So at this point I decided the whole day could go one of two ways: whine about the crappy nonsense swag, or make it fun… Make it fun. The area around the free stuff booths was constantly packed and we lost Giancarlo, Liz, and Steph, but Ricky, Marissa, Krissy and I decided to just go find the rest of our swag booths and take swag pics along the way. Some booths pleasantly surprised us with big free chocolate bars, but others like the Milka booth or the one where we got a single packet of fake sugar (think Splenda) were [a] disappointing [b] easy to make fun of. Oh well. We made the best out of the cold, rainy day anyway. We got home umbrella-less and it was pouring on our walk home from the train station, which I chose to make fun as well. These are the days.

We spent the rest of the weekend studying for midterms. However, studying for midterms here is nothing like studying for midterms at home. I had a photography exam the next day, and like you might guess I didn’t do much studying for 10-15 questions on the technical side of photography (examples: What are the three ways to adjust your exposure? What does SLR mean?). I did have Food and Wine on Tuesday though, along with two art history midterms on that Wednesday and Italian on Thursday. I’m not getting credit for Food and Wine at Cal Poly, so I didn’t put a ton of effort into that one either. I am getting a bunch of credit for art history though, so I spent essentially all my studying time on those two midterms (I found myself really missing you and our silly study habits, Megan). I was pleasantly surprised when I realized that I wasn’t so much memorizing dates and artist names for Great Masters but that I actually knew what I was looking at. Studying for Iconography was actually quite enjoyable too, man I love that class.

Well the more I write, the more I realize I have to write, so I'm breaking this enormous four week post into 4 or 5 different entries. I have so much to write about and I don't want to forget any of it. I'll post the next half about my parents' visit tomorrow. =]