Buongiorno,

This past weekend was really fun!!! We didn't travel this weekend, we just ended up staying in Florence.  Since my classes end by 10:30 AM on thursday, I felt like we had so much time to do everything! Although it ended up being a pretty relaxing weekend, which is what I think we all needed because we've all been very tired.

Thursday night after I blogged, we went to a really awesome family style dinner place.  There were 12 of us, and we all got 2 bottles of wine, bread, 2 big appetizers, and 3 dishes of pasta.  There was so much good food, and I was so full, and the best part was that it was only 15 Euros.  It's a great place to go with a big group.

On Friday, we decided to do some exploring and we didn't end up accomplishing all that we wanted.  But, it was still really fun.  We went to the general market, which is basically like the Reading Terminal in Philadelphia.  There's tons of fresh food and meat.  They have really weird meat there, like cow stomach/brains, and a lot of seafood like octopus and squid.  We walked around and just browsed and decided to come back on Saturday to buy things.  You mostly have to speak Italian there, so we brushed up a little bit before we went on Saturday.  After the market, we walked around the little stands of leather jackets, purses, and scarves.  It's called the leather market and it's a lot cheaper than buying leather in the actual stores.  I'm not sure that it's real leather but it looks nice enough.  We then decided to go back to the Pitti Palace and try to see the Boboli gardens which are supposed to be very pretty.  We got there around 4:30 only to find out they had closed at 3:30.  We were bummed, but we finished walking through the parts of the museum we hadn't seen.  We went home, made dinner, relaxed, and then caught up on our sleep.

On Saturday, we went back to the market and bought a few things.  My italian was awful, so I mostly resorted to pointing to things... they get mad if you touch anything.  I bought some strawberries, a tomato, and a pepper all for only 1.75 Euros, which was really cheap.  After that we stopped by the leather market and I bought a new purse.  I managed to haggle down the price from 18 to 15 Euros so I was pretty happy about that.  We found a supermarket really close to us when we were walking home a different way! We've been going to one that is about 20 minutes away and now this one is only about 5, so it will be way easier.  We then decided to go the the museum called Academia which has the David sculpture in it.  I was somewhat forcing myself to go there because I just thought the David was just some statue that everyone over-exaggerates and I was only forcing myself to go just because I had heard so much about it, but I wasn't expecting too much. Instead, I was blown away by how unbelievable it was.  It was HUGE and it was so beautiful.  I was so blown away by how human-like it looked and wondered how Michelangelo carved it.  It was definitely worth seeing.

On Sunday, we went to a futbol game!!! We walked to a breakfast place and met up with "Florence for Fun" which we ordered our tickets from.  They were really cheap tickets and we went with other Americans.  We grabbed breakfast before we went and they had bagels!!! It was so nice to have a bagel again.  It's really hard to find a bagel here, they really only have croissants.  Then we walked to the stadium.  We watched Fiorentina vs. Napoli.  It was a good game, and luckily it only rained for about 20 minutes when we thought it would rain the whole entire time.  The game ended in a tie, 1-1.  The fans were so crazy and really into the game.  There was a whole line of security guards standing in between the two team's fans, most likely so they didn't start fighting each other.  After that, we went home and finished our homework!


Upcoming Plans: 

This weekend (Jan 25-27): School trip to Chianti on Friday, then Siena and San Gimignano on Saturday.  We talked about maybe Piza on Sunday, but we haven't planned anything.

Next weekend (Feb 1-3): Opera trip on Friday, then the Venice Carnivale on Saturday! We also talked about doing Pisa this weekend, but are still figuring things out.

Feb 7-10: We might be going to Interlaken, Switzerland, which is the alps!! We would do it with a group trip, and we get round trip bus (8 hour ride) and hostel included in the price.  There is a lot to do there, such as ice skating, skiing, skydiving, bungee jumping, snowshoeing, etc.  I was considering doing night sledding, ice skating, chocolate show, and a day trip to Zurich.  We haven't booked this yet but I think we are close to doing it!  I think we will be getting a discount since we have a large group of us going.

Feb 15-17: I officially booked my flight to Paris!!! I didn't think I really wanted to go to France that badly, but now I am so excited. I am leaving Friday morning and getting to Paris at 9 AM.  It's only a two hour plane ride.  I'm hoping to see the eiffel tower, and the louvre, and Versailles.  We come back to Florence on Sunday afternoon.  It should be a really fun weekend.

Ciaoooo!