Frolicking through Firenze

When we first arrived in Florence, I wasn’t completely sure that I was a fan.  However, by the time we were headed to the airport to go home, I was quite enthralled.  Florence was quite different from the other european cities First of all, the city on the north side of the river is all stone.  There is no green.  No plants, no trees, no parks.  Secondly, the streets are for people.  Cars come second in the chain of command.  Crowds stroll down the center of the streets like they belong there and I’m pretty sure it slows people down to be in cars.

So, without much ado, here are my favorite things that we did in Florence!

The Santa Croce was was easily one of the most beautiful churches that I’ve ever been in.  The exterior of it is beautiful (at least on the front) but the interior is just as entrancing as the exterior.  The first thing that jumps out at you is the sheer size of the place.  It is absolutely enormous.  The altar is colorful and wonderful and the room is surrounded by these wonderful memorials to the famous men who lived or worked in Florence.  The memorial to Dante was particularly entrancing.

(Side note, Annie at pizza for breakfast this morning.  It seemed quite appropriate.)

After the Santa Croce, we wandered through the streets of Florence on our way to the Mercato Centrale for lunch.  The bottom floor is a huge market filled with funky looking pasta, fresh vegetables, meat, cheese, anything you could ask for!  We headed up to the top floor, which is filled with different prepared food restaurants.  It’s like a food court filled with fresh Italian food!  So obviously I had to have pizza.  It was delicious

Then, we climbed to the top of the Duomo.  This provided us with spectacular views of the city of Florence, which looks very different from above than it does from the streets.  It was definitely worth the climb.  However, the interior of the Santa Maria del Fiore was nothing compared to the Santa Croce.   We rewarded ourselves with delicious, organic gelato from Edoardo.

Then we ventured across the river via the Ponte Vecchio!  A beautiful old bridge packed with jewelry stores.  After I posted a picture to Facebook from the bridge, Grancy supplied me with this wonderful anecdote about her mother and father in Florence:

“One of my favorite things in one of my favorite cities! My mother bought my father his “wedding ring” in a little goldsmith shop on that bridge. It was their 5th anniversary in the days when men often didn’t wear wedding rings, and he confessed that he would like one!”

We spent the early part of the evening in the Boboli Gardens, where we wandered for quite a while and saw some great views of the city and the Duomo.  We left the Palazzo Pitti just around sundown and went off to our delicious fancy dinner at a restaurant called La Giostra.  Everyone spoke English and we definitely heard some Nickelback when we were there, but the pasta was delicious, the tiramisu to die for, and the free appetizers and prosecco were a nice bonus!

That night we went to meet up with a couple of friends from Duke who are studying in Florence.  They live in the COOLEST apartment and it was really fun to see them and meet their Italian friends.  Sadly, we had woken up at 4 AM in order to get to the airport in time for our flight, so we weren’t exactly the life of the party (read: we fell asleep at the bar).

On Saturday, I started the day with the best sandwich that I have ever eaten in my entire life.  It can from this store named All’antico Vinaio.  I asked for prosciutto, arugula, cream of truffle and some delicious kind of cheese (one of their recommended combinations) and I received all that in a slice of heaven (focaccia) for $5.  This might have been the highlight of the trip.  It was that good.

With happy, full bellies, we went back across the river and climbed to the Piazza Michelangelo and San Miniato al Monte, a church with the most beautiful views of the city.

After this, we wandered the city.  Florence is actually quite small and by the time we left on Sunday, we had walked the length of the city multiple times.  We walked for quite long time (with some gelato in between) and Jordan and I ended up back at the Palazzo Pitti (an old Medici palace) for some beautiful Renaissance art.

Dinner that night was across the river (the Ponte Vecchio at night is magical) at the Osteria Santo Spirito.  This place was terrific, definitely more local.  And the gnoochi was to die for.  It was absolutely covered in cheese.  My mind was blown.  It was my ideal pasta dish.

The next morning, Annie and I wandered for a few hours before taking on the Uffizi gallery.  The number of paintings in this gallery was astounding.  After taking selfies with the famous Botticelli’s (including the Birth of Venus) I began to play a game where I took pictures of every cow that I saw.  There were quite a few!  I think by the end I had about 10 works of art but I’m sure there were some that I missed.

Then we just spent some time in Florence!  We had lunch, had delicious gelato once more, and just saw in the piazza vecchio for a while.  Then Jordan and I hit the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, which was pretty but not as impressive as anything else we had seen and before we knew it, it was time to go home.

As we were leaving, it started to pour.  It rained cats and dogs the entire walk to the train station. Florence was just as sad that we were leaving as we were.

Nice is Nice

One of my favorite weekends thus far has been the weekend that Annie and I spent in Nice, France.  Nice is one of the most wonderful cities in the world.

It has a beautiful beach on the Mediterranean that is completely unique because there is no sand, just pretty grey rocks that seem like they will be thoroughly uncomfortable but in all actuality made for a pretty comfortable nap location. You can rent a beach chair for a day or a half day but Annie and I opted for just stretching out on the rocks on both Friday and Saturday afternoons.  The only problem with this beach is that getting in and out of the water is extremely difficult because the rocks drop off and you are extremely likely to fall on your butt.  We saw many unfortunate beach goers meet this fate and came pretty close to doing it ourselves.  But I had a lovely swim and the beach was definitely one of the highlights.

Viuex Nice (or Old Nice) is one of the best parts of this city.  The streets are small and all intended for pedestrians and filled with their fair share of delicious bistros, gelaterias, and tiny, funky stores.  One can also find their fair share of souvenir shops here as well as this city capitalizes on its tourist demographic.  We loved Old Nice; we spent multiple days wandering through its streets and we always seemed to find ourselves on a new street, exploring new stores.

On Saturday, we went on an adventure to one of the world’s smallest countries: Monaco.  The train ride was just €5 round trip and 20 minutes, so we decided there was no harm in checking it out!  One of our friends had warned us that while the transportation is cheap, everything in the city is expensive and they were right.  We brought sandwiches with us on the train which was totally the right move.  When we got to Monaco, we walked up to the Prince’s palace and went on a tour.  The building was beautiful and we walked away speculating about what it would be like to live in a palace, what the rest of the place must look like, how fun it would be to wander those rooms with no one else there.  My childhood aspirations of becoming a princess reared their head once again.

Besides that, Monaco was a fascinating experience.  It was extremely clean, like eerily clean, and silent.  As we walked up to Monte Carlo, the streets were completely deserted.  We didn’t see another person for at least 10 minutes of the stroll.  When we got to the center of town, we found the people.  The streets, lined with designer stores, finally felt a bit more crowded.  We strolled into the casino itself (which was extremely reminiscent of the palace we had just seen) and wandered the streets a bit.  Monaco is like Disneyland for rich people (in the best way possible); it’s like an amusement park for the wealthy where the main activities include shopping at the top tier stores, gambling in a beautiful casino, relaxing on yachts, and eating expensive food.  For two college students, there wasn’t a ton to do but I’m happy we saw it!

We also went on the most wonderful bike tour on Sunday morning.  Our guide was an Irish woman named Thelma who has lived in Nice for quite some time.  She showed us all around the city.  We started again on the streets of the old city, where biking is a little bit challenging because you might at any moment hit some unsuspecting human walking down the street.  But she knew a lot about the history of the city and the actual city itself.  Then, we went into the newer part of Nice and biked along the beach.  This was easily one of the best parts of the entire day.  The sun was shining, the water was sparkling and we cruised on down the wide sidewalk.  It was so fun.  We ended our tour with the most physically challenging part, an intense ride up the hill to the most amazing vistas of the city.  We also stopped about halfway up the hill at a beautiful cemetery that overlooks the city.

 

Nice has awesome food.  It has, at some point in time, been owned by both Italy and France so the cuisine is a fascinated fusion of the two countries.  The first day that we were there, we ate these delicious pita-like, quesadilla-esque things called Spinatas; filled with mozzarella, spinach, and prosciutto.  For dinner that night, I ate traditional nicoise food like the nicoise salad and petit farcis (followed by the ultimate Italian dessert: profiteroles).  The second day, we were just as excited about what we ate; the chocolate croissant I had for breakfast blew my mind and the sandwiches that we brought on the train with us were incredible.

But the dessert we ate absolutely took the cake (hehehehe like my pun?).  In Monaco, I found Ladurée (AKA my version of Heaven on Earth) and bought three macarons which were just as delicious as I remembered.  Once back in Nice, we found another delicious supplier of my favorite dessert: LAC Chocolatiers.  Their macarons were sensational (highlights include the chocolate raspberry, the praline, and, of course, the traditional vanilla).  In case anyone was wondering, macarons are the way to my heart.  If you are ever looking for my affection, just give me a macaron.  And fresh flowers.  And I will forever love you.

  

However, despite my love for macarons, it was a different variety of dessert that changed my life when I was in Nice.  On Sunday afternoon, after our happy bike tour, we were strolling through old Nice when we passed a gelato store with a particularly beautiful window display.  The owner could tell that we were a captive audience and she passed over two free tastes of their “Chocolat Noir.”  This gelato was probably one of the top ten best things I’ve ever tasted.  Annie and I both bought cones and took a seat at a little table on this city street.  We then enjoyed probably 20 of the most blissful moments of our lives.  The gelato was delicious, the weather was beautiful, we didn’t have a care in the world, and we were on a beautiful city street in one of the coolest cities in the world.  It sounds over romantic but I am not exaggerating.  It was surreal.

 

Our airbnb apartment was also a unique experience.  It was the tiniest apartment in the history of the world.  It was a single room with a bathroom that turned into a swamp when your turned the shower on.  It had a tiny loft with a twin mattress and a pull out couch that, when pulled out, was took up the entire room.  In order to get up to the loft, you had to pull down the creaky ladder but you couldn’t go to the bathroom when the ladder was down so peeing in the middle of the night was an adventure.  But it was in a perfect location, right on the border of the Old City and a 12 minute walk from the water.

 

And it had the most incredible window.  The window was enormous and seemed incredibly French; it opened onto the Place Garibaldi and I actually spent almost an hour just staring out the window one day.  We loved the window.

 

We loved Nice!  If it hadn’t started raining as we began our walk to the bus station, we probably would have never left.

Ein Prosit! Oktoberfest & Munich

Sorry for the belated nature of this post!  Things got a bit crazy in the last few weeks but I promise I am catching up!  So, without further ado, here is our oktoberfest!

Friday

Annie and I flew into the Munich airport on Friday morning.  I had looked up how to get to the hotel we were staying at from the airport so we hopped right on the bus that they recommended and we were off!  Less than half an hour later, we jumped off the bus.  However, the hotel was not as well marked as we had expected so we just wandered in the direction of the majority of the people who had gotten off the bus at this stop.  The crowd began to peter out and just as we had arrived at a crossroads where we weren’t sure which way to turn, my long lost love, Andrea, appeared out of the mist!  It was extremely excited and elicited many screams from all parties.  And she knew which direction to go!  So we were off to the Marriott where we met up with Abby and Hannah, two other friends from school who are studying in Copenhagen and Berlin.  We decided then to drop out bags and head straight from the fairgrounds.

And I’m glad we did.  You definitely need two days to explore this place because it is basically like an enormous carnival.  There are a ton of rides that have been set up specially for oktoberfest, lots of booths selling schnitzel (which was yummy) and bratwurst and hot dogs and fries and fruit dipped in chocolate (also delicious) and many little restaurants and stands selling pretty heartshaped cookies with colorful icing on them.

After chowing down on some lunch, we went to one of the biergarten’s outside of one of the more German tents to have our second beer of the day (we couldn’t resist having one with lunch).  Our waiter was extremely friendly and when Annie ordered a water, we

So basically, here is the deal.  Tonight, I wrote an extremely thorough post.  It was approximately 2000 words.  It might have been bordering on toooo much detail.  And then, it was deleted.  And this made me upset.  So I rage cleaned and now all of the dishes in my kitchen are sparkling but I am still without an oktoberfest blogpost.  So here is the quick and dirt about the weekend.

Friday: beer, friendly germans, lovely friends, free tea for annie, crazy ride, adorable horse, weird host at the italian restaurant and his mail order bride, snuggles with Andrea (against her will).

            

Saturday: WAKE UP EARLY WAH, off to Hofbrau tent, cold, lots of waiting, mean German security guards, lots of Duke friends, I love Duke friends, lots of beer even though I only paid for one, yummy cheesy bread, should have bought more food, scary German security guards, like really scary, Abby fake cried, more beer, some KPS girls, all of the Duke people ever, lots more beer, friendly German students, FAVORITE COUPLE, more beer, chocolate covered strawberries, nap.

  

Sunday

This day actually deserves me rewriting this post.  On Sunday, Abby and I went off on a totally different type of experience.  We went to the Dachau Concentration Camp which is about 30 minutes outside of Munich via public transportation.  We were not the only ones on our way to Dachau that morning; there were many other college kids cramped onto the bus from the train station.

The first thing that I noticed about Dachau was the sheer enormity of it.  This place is huge.  Despite all of the other students on the bus with us, it felt like the concentration camp went on forever.  The fact that a site this atrocious could stretch on for that much space and all the people of Dachau could simply turn a blind eye to it was mind blowing to me.

And they could not claim that they never made it out to that part of town because the prisoners of the concentration camp were dropped off at the same train station at which we disembarked.  But they were not scooped up by a bus as they were.  No, they walked through the town, almost like a macabre parade, until they reached the same gates that I had just walked through, moments before.

If you know me well, you will know that I was slightly obsessed with the Holocaust.  Not in a weird way, just in a curious way.  I have read almost every famous book on the subject, both the fiction and the nonfiction, and even many of the lesser known ones.  I find it fascinating.  And I learned even more during my visit to the memorial site (that’s what they call it, a memorial site).  They used to color code the stars on the uniforms in order to show the guards what “crime” they were “guilty” of having committed.  And despite the fact that I felt the camp was enormous when there were only a few hundred visitors, they used to be extremely over crowded.  A camp built for a few thousands prisoners like Dachau would house an average of 40-45 thousand during the 1940s.

Despite my extensive research on the subject, I had never actually recognized that this horrible thing actually happened to hundreds of thousands of real people until I walked through those gates.  And I didn’t know that I hadn’t realized that until I was there.  It was an extremely sobering experience but I am glad that I saw it.  I will never forget walking through Dachau and the atrocities that happened to the hundreds of thousands of undeserving souls who were sent to this horrible place.