"Oooooo would we call her chubby?" -Love Actually

With the amount of food I not only took pictures of but also consumed in Italy, it would be fitting to say I had a chubster weekend. It was just all so good. Gelato, pizza, paninis, pasta, bruschetta, and some more gelato, om nom nom. No regrets. Whoever said 'a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips' first, clearly has an eating disorder and second, never experienced the minutes of pure bliss of this food. I think my final gelato tally was 6 or 7 by the end. If I had studied abroad there I would probably be the size of a manatee when I came home.

Yeah, about this guy's size. I've named him Hubert. 

I went to Florence with Dom and JJ. We left on Thursday morning and missed our classes that day cause we're bad-ass like that. That Wednesday night before I went out with Lian and co. (but didn't drink) and then got home at 3:30 am. Of course I hadn't packed yet so I packed until 4 am, took an hour nap, and then got up to shower and get out the door by 6 am. My packing job consisted of grabbing random items of clothing and shoving them into my bag. Katherine had said to pack for 75-80 degree weather, so I wasn't too worried about being cold and didn't bring a jacket or boots to save room. I grabbed the lunch that Concha had packed me for my flight and then headed to the metro. Concha packed me two sandwiches, two croissants with nutella, three plums, and apple juice. Lord I love that woman.  After checking in for our flight JJ and I munched on the croissants and waited for Dom at the gate. Once on the plane I conked out. The flight wasn't bad at all and once we landed in Pisa went to check out the train schedule to Florence. We had 30 minutes before the next train left so we went and got some lunch. But then we started chatting and missed it, so we had to wait another 15. Dom realllyy wanted crepes so he went to get us some while we waited for the next one. And then we missed that train too. We finally got on a train about 2 hrs after we landed. It was only an hour or so train ride to Florence so once on it we goofed around and dozed off some more.

Bitch, what. are. you. doing?

Bass Face 

OMGEE HAI!

We when got to the station in Florence we had to get money back for JJ because the machine that she got her ticket from ran out change to give her. JJ and I started speaking Spanish to the woman because we thought it might be better than speaking English. So wrong. They do not like it when you speak Spanish to them when you're clearly American and speak english. After some sassy and curt help, we figured out how to get her money back.
Once we got to Florence we took a cab to Katherine's, Kelsey's and Ali's apartment because we were staying with them while we visited. Their apartment was hugeee. We met their other roommates Lauren B., Lauren H. and Sam, and unwound for a little bit. Kyle is also studying abroad in Florence, but he was only there for my first night because he was going to Amsterdam the next day for the weekend, like an asshole. But we were re-united for a couple hours and it was glorious. Chef Kyle decided he wanted to make bruschetta and it was so tasty.

Chef Kyle in his element.

When we were eating bruschetta, Kyle started making fun of me and while he was I moved his backpack off a chair so I could sit in it. I moved it in a 'i hate you go crawl in a hole and die' manner and dropped/threw it on the floor. When it hit the floor it the unmistakable sound of metal/glass/electronic/expensive hitting tile rang out and my heart sank. It was his super nice film only camera. Luckily nothing happened to it and it was fine, but I felt so bad and was bright red for 5 minutes straight. To cheer me up Dom proceeded to squeeze my cheeks together with his palms and have me say a little story. It makes you look and sound ridiculous, and it worked. It was great. He then proceeded to say "Yeah I go to the preschool and do it to make kids stop crying. They're usually crying cause their knees are scraped or bruised." . . He said this with no explanation that he worked at the preschool or anything. We were all like oooohhh okay pedophile.  He soon realized how it sounded and tried to explain but somehow kept digging himself a deeper and deeper hole. It was very entertaining. Once ee polished off the bruschetta Kyle left cause he had an early flight and Dom went to find some other friends of his that were studying in Florence. JJ, Katherine, Kelsey, Lauren H. and I headed out to a bar and then to dinner. 

We hit the bar and then went to Dante's, which is an Italian restaurant who has an actual person named Dante who owns it and works there. Last time he gave them all hats and free desert wine, but apparently he does that for pretty much all abroad kids. He creeps me out, but the food was great. I got some pasta and we order some wine. Kelsey and I started having a thumb war, and although I'm not quite sure how it started, it got very intense. She won't accept it but I won. Good moment. Dante then took Lauren outside to show her the fireworks. At first we thought it was funny but the longer they were gone the more weirded out we got. But she came back in a couple minutes later. After she came back we paid our bill and headed out to get some gelato and then see the nightlife in Florence. 

You can feel the intensity can't you?  

Multi-tasking Professionals 

CHAMP

We went to one bar/club that had karaoke. It was pretty crowded when we got there, but it was also a pretty small place. We we're standing by the karaoke stage and one guy kept trying to get us to go up and sing. I was tempted but then remembered that my singing is so terrible it could make a nun swear. That guy then told me to beware of a different guy standing near us because he was creeper. But he said that he would come over and save us and say he was our boyfriend if we gave him a signal, the signal was a shaka. He made tell all the other girls this so that they would know too. Thank you for your concern, kind sir, but we got under control. We left pretty soon after that to go to a different club. Kelsey and JJ headed home while Lauren, Ali, Katherine and I went to the other place. We danced for a while and then went home. 

The next day Lauren B. and Katherine took me around Florence. Remember when I said I packed for 80 degree weather? Well, Italy decided that this weekend would be a good time to change seasons and switch straight to winter, because it was rainy and freezing. I had to borrow a hoodie from Katherine and vans from Ali because I didn't have a single thing I could wear. After I threw on a random assortment of clothes they took me to the Duomo, Santa Croce, and the leather school. We also went to a coffee place where I had the most delicious latte ever and then to Grom which is a gelato place. I kinda have a thing for gelato. The best news about this one is that it is a chain and there's one in Malibu. I almost cried I was so happy. 

mmmmmmmmm

all bundled up in front of
Santa Croce 

Santa Croce 

Duomo 

Santa Croce 

Santa Croce 

For dinner we went to Gusta Pizza. It. is. so. good. Kyle lives right above it and I'm pretty sure it's all eats. Well that and microwave hotdogs with ketchup.

Me gusta Gusta 

After Gusta we went and got some more gelato. Then we headed up to Piazzale Michaelangelo. I justified my second gelato of the day to myself by saying that the all the stairs we walked up canceled it out. Pssh yeah right, only in my dreams. I would take two steps, eat some gelato, take two more, eat some gelato, take one more, eat some gelato. It was a good system. When we got to it was I blown away. I felt like I was looking at a giant movie screen as I stared out at all of Florence lit up at night. I know it sounds cliche but it was straight off a postcard.

While we were up there we heard techno-y club music playing and tried to figure out where/what club it was coming from and thought it was one across the river. We walked down a different way then we had come up, and on our way down we found out where it was actually coming from. There was a guy in a large white van sketchy parked on the street just blasting the music. It was strange. When we got home we all went to sleep because we had to be up early for our wine tasting in Tuscany!

We had to meet our bus for wine tasting at 7:30 in the morning. JJ and I both wore the long dresses and sandals we had brought and froze our butts off on the walk there. Katherine, Kelsey and Lauren were all in tights and boots. We met up with our tour group and then got on the bus. The bus was colder than it was outside and I was pretty sure that I was going to lose my toes to frostbite. We made pitstop at a gas station mart where our tour guide (who was this 60 year old Italian guy with legs the size of my arm, elaborate true religion jeans and louie v backpack) declared that he was going to go "smoke a cigarette. . or 12." We killed time in the mart looking at the ridiculous things they had. And then we continued our journey to Pienza. Pienza was adorable. If you think of Italy you picture a landscape that looks just like Pienza. We wandered around, got a latte, and then JJ and I bought a wheel of cheese with red-pepper flakes in it to bring back to Madrid (fyi its to die for).













After Pienza we were off to Montepulciano to go to the Bindella Winery for our wine tasting. It was gorgeous too. Our tour had lunch provided and we were all starving at this point. But the gave us the tour of the winery pre-lunch. You think that at this point in the trip I would have built up enough fat reserves to not eat for days, but that wasn't the case. JJ, Kelsey and I ate some berries off a tree. . . it got that bad. Finally we had the lunch and wine tasting part of the tour. Almost everyone on this tour were American study abroad students. The food was out on platters it turned into a swarm of people just trying to get to the food. It calmed down when everyone had a little something to eat and then we got to taste the wine. All three were reds, and average-good wines, but I didn't love any of them. Of course I finished every glass though. The college mentality of 'Thou shalt not waste any alcoholic beverage" is still firmly rooted in me. After Bindella we went to another small town for an hour and it was cute also. When we were waiting for the bus to pick us up I overheard a girl on our tour talking to our guide. She speaking to him in English. . . . but with an Italian accent. She was American. It was as if she thought talking in the accent made it as if she was speaking Italian. There are some weird people out there.

She walked straight through our picture. Rudee

On the bus ride back they played The Titanic and even though it skipped a lot Lauren B. still cried.  I must say, Leo's character Jack died because he's an idiot, not out of some grand gesture of love trying to save Rose. There was plenty of room on the thing she was floating on for both of them. There was also tons of other floating stuff. They both could have lived. But nooo Jack was all 'i have to be close to you, let me be straight ruhtarded and float in icey water til I freeze to death.' But thats just my two cents. Anyway, when we got home we all just relaxed and rested before dinner. I went to my couch that was my bed for the weekend and took a nap. I woke up to to camera flash and it was JJ taking a picture of me sleeping. Sweet. We went to dinner and then came home after because JJ, Dom and I had a 9 o'clock flight and had to pack.

The next morning, right before we're about to leave to walk to the train station, Dom decides he has to go to the bathroom. 10-15 minutes later we were finally on our way. On our way walking there, church bells went off to signal that it was 7. The train we were going to take left at 7. When we got to the station we found the next train, but it didn't get into Pisa Centrale until 8:20, and you have to transfer to a different to train to get the airport after that. The ride to the airport only takes 10 minutes but our flight check in time ended at 8:30. If we missed it we couldn't get on our flight. We realized it got in that close to our check in time when two American girls, who were freaking out, started talking to us. They were on our flight and had heard us talking about it. They were so stressed about missing the flight they were near tears. We had the philosophy that since we couldn't do anything about it there was no need to stress right then. I fell asleep on the train and JJ woke me up when we got to the station. That's when we went into super speed mode. The three of us booked it off the train at a speed walk/run to get a taxi to get us to the airport. We passed the two girls and they were walking super slowly, talking and laughing. . . .they definitely stressed out at the wrong time. They didn't make the flight. We got in the cab at 8:18 and then told him to go as fast as he could. During the cab ride Dom realized he didn't know where his passport was and thought he left it at Katherine's. Not great. We got to the airport at 8:26, paid the good man, and then sprinted to the RyanAir desk. Dom found his passport and we all checked in without a minute to spare. Literally, we left the desk after checking in at 8:32.  We calmed down and started laughing about our near miss while we walked to the security line, only to see it was HUGE. The security at any of the airports usually takes all of 10 minutes, so this was abnormal. If it had been at LAX it would have taken at least 2 hours to go through. Luckily it was moving quickly and when got close enough I told a security person that our flight was boarding and they let us cut. We made it to the gate and got in the back of the boarding line. We were literally the last three on the plane. All of that because Dom had to poop.

On the flight I was in aisle seat. As soon as I could I put the tray table down and fell asleep on it. I was sitting next to two older Italian men. I woke up to the sound of the guy in the middle seat slamming his hard back on to his tray table. I raised my head, looked over, saw it was just them and when they didn't say or do anything. Five minutes later they did again. I woke up and sat up for a minute or two and they guy in the middle asked me to stand up so he get out to go to the bathroom. Really? You couldn't just tap me on the shoulder to wake me up, you had to slam your book next my ear? Not chill. We got home and then Dom and I went and played soccer with our Wisconsin and local buddies. I scraped up my knee and it's real attractive right now.

Then on Tuesday Lian, JJ and I decided to wander around Parque Oeste, which is an enormous park right near school. It's about the size of Retiro, just more stretched out. While exploring we ran into the Teleforico, which are cable cars that ran from Oeste to Campo. So we bought a round trip pass and hopped on.

 The view from it put a lot of things into perspective, and it was cool to see Madrid from so high up. All in all it was a great day of exploring in addition to a great weekend.