cinque terre!

This past weekend, two of my friends and I went to Cinque Terre. For those who don't know, this is a region in the northwest of Italy on the coast. It's basically the most beautiful place on Earth according to my friends and I. "Cinque Terre" means five lands, and the region is made up of five incredibly charming towns and we hiked through the whole region starting in Riomaggiore and ending in Monte Rosso. It was a great hike, especially because it ended on the beach after a beautiful (and hot) day hiking. I took almost 300 pictures, and had a hard time choosing which ones to put up, so I just threw on a bunch at random...plus added a random picture of me jumping in front of the Duomo in Florence just because it's funny. For anyone that's into gardening (namely Mom and Carl) the foliage there was beyond amazing. We stopped so many times to look at the array of flowers and plants. There were pine trees next to bamboo next to white lillies next to cacti. It seemed like the area could grow any kind of plant wild...so cool and beyond beautiful!

Next weekend I'm heading to the French Riviera (Nice, Cannes, and Monaco) for my last weekend of travel. The only traveling I'll be doing after that is heading back to the good ole' United States. See you guys there!

pictures from the meal

okay, like i said. it was a pain in the butt to format the pictures into the blog, so I'll just put them all here. The pictures don't do the food justice at all, it looked beautiful on the table but most of the pictures aren't so great.

birthday in bologna/imola

Hiii. So Dad and Steph, I told you I would put pictures up from my birthday dinner gift. The lighting in the restaurant was not very good and the pictures aren't very good but I swear the food was way better than it looks in the pictures! (My friends said it was the best meal they'd ever had). I tried for a while to fit the pictures in this post, but I'm going to have to make the next post all of the pictures because the formatting for this blog is a pain in the butt.

We had the most ridiculous taxi ride there in history. Our driver was flying down the highway and yelling in Italian about how blocked the highway was, etc etc. He didn't speak any English and was making all kinds of small talk as he did such things as back up down the wrong side of the road and get stuck in a ditch...and make us late for dinner.

When we finally got there, we got a welcome bottle of champagne, which felt strange but great to be treated like that. We got a different type of wine for each course (which was also included in the fixed menu). We had that champagne, a white, rose, and red. I meant to take a picture of the bottles because the wines were fantastic but I didn't get any. =[.

First was an asparagus soup with a little vegetable cake in the middle. Asparagus isn't my favorite, but it was delicious.

Next was a tiny little pot of langoustine in a thick yellow curry that was my favorite dish of the whole meal. It was tiny but unbelievably good.

The third course was something that my friends and I stared at for most likely longer than it took us to eat it. It was an egg that seemed like it was fried on the outside but once you got through the crust, it seemed to be hard-boiled. Then, once you got through the hard-boiled part the yolk was still oozing on the inside. My favorite part of the picture I took is that now everyone can see how weird the eggs here are--the yolks are such a bright yellow. My friends and I were split between the egg and the langoustine as our favorites, especially because it came on top of mashed potatoes, and I mean...who doesn't love mashed potatoes?!

Fourth was the lightest gnocchi I've ever had in a really light but delicious white sauce with tomatoes. Now that I'm looking at the menu, it says the sauce was some kind of lard, which is kind of disappointing but doesn't make the gnocchi any less delicious.

The fifth course was a really delicate white fish that according to the menu, was in an olive oil and cream of onion sauce. It was perfectly seared and crunchy on the outside and fell apart on this inside. Around it was drizzled sauce that tasted like it was made from garlic and sweet red bell peppers.

Sixth was a duo of lamb. For the first time ever, I had a piece of fried lamb. It sounds like the fried-ness would be overpowering but it was delicious and was balanced really well with the taste of the lamb. The second piece of lamb was a simple but really well done roasted leg of lamb in a tiny bit of rosemary and olive sauce. I'm not sure if I could eat lamb every day as I could with dumplings, but I could probably eat it three times a week and still love it.

Barely able to fit any more into our stomachs, the desserts came. There were three different plates, all with different desserts. One had a traditional rum-soaked Italian cake (I have no idea what it's called)--it's the one that looks like an apple in the picture, wild strawberries, some type of gelato that I can't remember, and a raspberry cream dessert. That plate also had caramelized bananas, a molten chocolate cake, awesome coffee gelato, and something in a shooter glass that I didn't like that tasted like rum and nothing else. The third dessert was an almond brittle that was so toasted and delicious.

Anyway, that concludes our meal. Thanks so much for the great experience!

Love you

By the way, the picture of the silkscreened art with the guy lying on his stomach says "How much I have eaten!" and he's rubbing his belly. I felt it was appropriate to take a picture of it on our way out.

oooh, italia.

Italy cracks me up. I mean, I'm sure if you come to America as a foreigner just as many stereotypes are seen to be true. Last night, on my way home from a night class, I walked by a man standing outside an apartment building with a ton of grocery bags. He looks up, yells, Angelo! Le chiave! toward the sky, puts his shopping bags down, and catches a key that falls right out of the window. I was walking by myself laughing most of the way home because it was straight out of Life is Beautiful. Italy looks, feels, and sounds just as you would expect it too, complete with motorini (mopeds), tons of food, and wildly gesturing hairy men.

Anyway, my last two weekends have been spent in different parts of Italia. Two weekends ago I went to Lucca, where we went to an olive oil farm and did an olive oil tasting. Lucca was beautiful, though not the most exciting town ever. The nice thing about Italy though is that every town, no matter how small and random, has so much beauty in the details and has so much history around every corner.

This past weekend, I went to Siena, Perugia, and Chianti. Siena, of course, was beautiful...we didn't do anything remarkable but tried their famous pastries and laid out in the sun since it was a beautiful day out. This whole trip was courtesy of API, the company I travelled to Italy though, so it was included in our tuition. We did, however, go to a spa in Siena where they had Turkish baths. I had no idea what that was til we got there, but they were giant outdoor pools filled with all kinds of minerals. Despite the fact they smelled like sulfur, we left with soft skin and totally relaxed.

We had a similar day in Perugia--minus the spa--but since they are famous for chocolate, we scoured the city for chocolate. It was such a cute little town (much like all the others), but the chocolate was disappointing considering its fame. On the way back, our bus stopped at the Verazzano Castle in Chianti, where we had an awesome tour of the vineyard there and a great wine tasting complete with tons of prosciutto di Parma, pecorino cheeses, three types of wine, salad, fagiole bianchi, and much more. It turned into a much bigger feast than any of us expected and we went home and fell into food comas. So in sum, the last two weekends were very relaxing and quite cost-friendly but filled with food. Italia è bellissima.

We also went to a soccer game, which was a lot of fun but I don't have any good pictures from that. On the 11th, I turned 21! My friends and I went out to a nice dinner to celebrate and went out and got one drink (even though we can legally drink here, it feels wrong to not get a drink on my 21st) and came home and went to sleep. It was nice to have a relaxing night but to dress up and go out to dinner. My hair is messed up in all hte pictures, though, cuz they all insisted that a wear a gigantic birthday hat all night which ruined my hair...so just ignore that.

Oh, for some inexplicable reason, there are an incredible amount of pigeons everywhere you go in Italy.

Time flies

"Follow the dream

Doesn't mean leave the love

Roam if you must,

But come home when you've seen enough."

-Atmosphere.

I have 3 weeks left of classes, a week of finals, and then a week on the Amalfi coast with friends, then home! I'm loving it here but am excited to see everyone at home. It'll be great to get to spend the summer with my family.

(Dad Steph and Julie--apparently I have no recent pictures with you to put up...don't think I forgot you!)

Miss everyone!

(and happy birthday mom!)

croatia

I went to Croatia for the long weekend and loved it. We went to Split, which is a pretty built up city but it was still great, with palm trees, an old city build out of all white marble, and outdoor cafes on every corner.

To get to Croatia, I had to take a 4 hour bus to Ancona, which is on the east side of Italy and take an overnight ferry to Croatia, and then a 2 hour bus to Split.

Despite all the traveling, the day after we got to Split, two friends and I opted for another 4-hour busride to the Plitvice Lakes, which I had posted

a picture of in a previous post. It was an amazing thing to see: sixteen lakes in the middle of nowhere in Croatia all made up of waterfalls. Unfortunately, we didn't get to stay all day like we all wanted to due to the strange bus schedule since it was Easter weekend. The other problem was that it was hard to take pictures because the pathway was so small with no guardrails, winding through the lakes, and it was crowded. Because of that, my pictures didn't turn out as planned but I still got a bunch of the waterfalls. The picture of me at the waterfall was the smallest one there, but the entrance to the park and I was so excited to see a waterfall I needed a picture anyway.

In order to get to the lakes, we woke up bright and early (5 am) to catch a bus to the lakes. Turns out the schedule was different from the day before and a bus didn't leave until 8:30 so we walked around the city while the sun rose and found this great outdoor market at 6:30 am. My friend Elissa and I were so excited that we bought a loaf of ciabatta as it was coming out of the oven (which was outdoors as well) and some fresh cheese from a vendor...and ate it for all 3 meals.

We had some traveling troubles, where our bus never showed up and we waited around for a couple hours at a bus stop and eventually caught a bus to a different city, transferred busses, and finally got back to Split.

We spent the next day wandering around Split looking at the sites, climbing its famous belltower, getting a free lesson on its history from a very nice and well-spoken tour guide, and searching endlessly for an open restaurant on Easter.

All in all, it was a nice and relaxing trip.