Eire!

Last weekend, I made the trip that I was probably most excited for, and it absolutely lived up to any and all expectation I had.  I am talking about, of course, Ireland!  My friends and I flew to Dublin on Thursday night, and as a fortunate result of RyanAir's crazy grab-a-seat-wherever-you-can-find-one policy, I found myself next to a wonderful old Irish man and his wife, who were eager to give suggestions to an Irish-American girl making her first trip to the homeland.  They had been in Rome performing as musicians for a Celtic mass in San Pietro in Montorio, a church in Trastevere that is right up the hill from my school!  Apparently, the remains of some exiled Irish princes are buried there.  Anyway, we arrived in Dublin around midnight, and caught a city bus to our hostel, Four Courts (where we stayed in a 16-person dorm room, but hey, it was 10 euro for the one night!).  

Friday morning, we headed out to explore Dublin, since we were only planning to be in the city for that one day.  We toured the Guinness factory, which surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly) is Ireland's most popular tourist attraction, and it was a lot of fun and actually really interesting.  The free pint at the Sky Bar, which had 360 degree views of Dublin city, was the icing on the cake (or maybe I should say the foam on the draught?).  Exploring the rest of the city, we saw Christchurch, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Temple Bar, Dublin Castle, Grafton Street (the shopping district), and Trinity College (where Natalie and I hung out in the student center for a while and pretended to be college students hanging out...being on a college campus really made me miss Notre Dame).  Then we caught our 3-hour bus to Galway to meet Chrissy's friend Jen, who had agreed to show us around and even let us stay with her!

enjoying our Guinnesses at the Sky Bar!

St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin

When we pulled in to Galway Friday night, the first thing Jen told us was that, "Dublin is European, but Galway is IRISH." It was so true.  Galway has this small-town Irish charm that I immediately fell in love with.  Dublin was fun and pretty in its own way, but Galway was exactly what I imagined Ireland being.  Galway bay and the coastline are beautiful, but the real attraction there is the nightlife.  Galway has amazing pubs with incredible music (ranging from traditional Irish bands to rock bands covering American pop songs).  It felt like the whole town showed up to have a good time and sing and dance together.  We heard "Galway Girl" at least four times over the course of the trip, and I can honestly saw I was just so happy the entire time.  We ate at Mister Waffle, which had the most amazing waffles I've ever tasted (and then out of the blue, we found out it was closed forever the next day when we tried to go back - so sad!) and had dinner at Couch Patatas, which takes baked potatoes and stuffs them with literally anything you can think of - so Irish, so good!  We also tried some fish and chips, yum! 

Sunday morning as we were walking through Galway to the bus station to head back home, the fog was lifting in the streets and a man was playing "Danny boy" on the saxophone, and I got a little teary because I was so sad to be leaving. I absolutely can't wait to return to Ireland at some point in my life and just see EVERYTHING.  I want to take it all in, because I felt so at home and welcomed.  (It also helped that I had never seen so many redheaded people in my life - finally, somewhere I belonged!) 

walking along the coast in Galway

Galway Bay

On a sidenote, yesterday I had a long break during the school day, so I headed up the hill in Trastevere to find the church that my plane neighbor had told me about.  I found that the church was closed for lunchtime (of course), but I immediately recognized the outside and realized I had been inside three years ago.  The courtyard to the church was open, however, and I knew what was inside - Bramante's Tempietto, or "little temple", which is supposedly the inspiration for the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.  I had been there three years ago too! It was crazy to remember the exactly spot I had sat in the courtyard, or the places I took pictures.  The top of the hill also has incredible views of the entire city of Rome, so I spent a few minutes just enjoying the view and the beautiful day (60 degrees and sunny!) before heading back to school.

Carnivale in Venezia!

This past week, I endured the wonders of Italian bureaucracy, traveling to possibly the shadiest part of Rome to the immigration office to continue my permesso di soggiorno (permit to stay) application that we all have to get. It was essentially like going to the DMV in the States, but worse. Because it was in Italy.

I also experienced snow in Rome (what Mediterranean climate?) - the first significant snowfall in over twenty years, and the city shut down/went crazy. It was ridiculous to watch grown Italian men throwing snowballs at each other, but not so amusing to walk/slip an hour to school in the melting snow on wet cobblestone. I don't think my socks will ever dry, but it was certainly an experience to see snow on palm trees and covering St. Peter's.

So anyway, the main point of this post is Carnivale! It is Venice's signature festival, in celebration of Mardi Gras, and dates back hundreds of years, with a few historical interruptions. We took a 6-hour bus ride that became 8 hours, so we arrived in Venice with only an hour or so of daylight left, and took a waterbus around the city and along the Grand Canal with gorgeous views of the sunset. Venice is completely manmade and consists of 117 small islands spanned by bridges and I absolutely fell in love with it the last time I was there. I had already done the traditional Venice tourist-y things three years ago: gondola ride, glass and lace-making exhibitions, and wandering along the canals. This time around, I wasn't too disappointed to miss out on Venice in the daylight because I was so excited to see a totally different side of La Serenissima at night, with all of its residents dressed in masks and costumes, celebrating Italian-style.

We took the waterbus out to the island of Burano, which is famous for its lace and rainbow-colored houses (although it was dark by the time we got there, but we still got the idea). It was seriously way the heck out in the water, but was quiet and residential and more tranquil, while still maintaining the traditional Venetian look and feel (canals, little boats, bridges...). Our tour guide recommended a good place to buy authentic, beautiful masks for the festivities, and I absolutely love mine! (see photos below) We then stopped at a cute and quiet restaurant for pizza and pasta, and then decided to head back to the main island (San Marco) for the real party in St. Mark's Square.

From kids dressed as bears or Minnie Mouse, to teenagers in hilarious costumes, to adults decked out in Renaissance attire on their way to a ball, to tourists with masks, facepaint, silly string, and confetti, the atmosphere was incredible. We caught the tail-end of a fire show and saw a parade complete with a legitimate marching band (who knew they had these in Europe? all the band geeks among us were thrilled), and danced with thousands of people in the square to a DJ. Around midnight, we caught the bus home, and even though we had only been in Venice for a few hours, they were incredible, and showed me such a unique perspective on a city I already loved. We pulled into Termini (the main train station in Rome) six hours later, and after a Metro ride home, we all collapsed into bed...or so I thought. Apparently, my boyfriend had conspired with my roommates to buy me flowers from him for Valentine's Day, and so rather than come home and crash like me, they went to a florist at seven in the morning and bought them for me so that I would wake up to them. The roses were absolutely beautiful and I'm so happy to have such a wonderful guy (and girls) in my life!

So now my roommates (and everyone in the program, it seems) are writing a paper for a theology class I'm not taking, and I'm enjoying a night off from work, so I think I'll indulge in a little Keeping Up With The Kardashians online :) We're going to IRELAND this weekend, and I am unbelievably excited. Finally, people won't look at me like an alien - I'll belong!! Sometimes I feel like, even though I am actually Italian, I stick out like a sore thumb here, and a little time with in my other "homeland" is definitely something I've always wanted to do!

The Grand Canal

gondolier

Piazza San Marco

Vi voglio bene, ciao :)

You can take the kids out of America...

Happy 4th annual world nutella day! (although every day is nutella day in our apartment...we've been going through a jar every 1.5 days or so...)

It's the middle of the afternoon on Friday, and I think this might be the first time I've actually seen my apartment in the middle of the day.  I've got nothing on the agenda for today, and even though half of me is saying that I should get up and do something with my free time, the significantly louder half wants to just spend a day relaxing and recharging, something I have yet to do in the almost month I've been abroad.  So, the latter half won, and I've been hanging out here and even watching an episode of the Big Bang Theory (Mom, it was the one with Sheldon in the ball pit).  Not so different from a Friday afternoon at Notre Dame after all.

In celebration of groundhog day (and the fact that we were willing to embrace any justification for some good old American protein and grease) all the ND kids cooked up an American dinner, complete with hamburgers, hotdogs, and ketchup (all of which were Italian modifications and a little strange), plus homemade macaroni and cheese, french fries, gelato sandwiches, and beer.  The evening was complete with country music and red, white, and blue attire, and it was really nice to have almost everyone together to just hang out and embrace a little taste of home.  

Speaking of food, I have to mention how wonderful it's been to try new dishes I never would have been adventurous enough to taste at home.  Even my well-documented hatred of tomatoes has completely reversed here, and now I can't get enough of them!  I am also loving the vino, and we've even attending a wine tasting at school to learn what to look/smell/taste for in a great wine (or the 2 euro variations from the grocery store down the street).  My roommates have made such wonderful dinners - pesto chicken, rigatoni with vodka sauce, many types of delicious desserts, and many others.  I am just happy to say that I think/hope I'm becoming less of a completely useless annoyance in the kitchen (I figured out how to turn on the stove!  I can make pasta and even reheat lasagna!), and I can't wait to learn more and be adventurous in order to cook for the room - my ultimate goal is gnocchi, which will certainly be a challenge.

I'm definitely enjoying my free weekend in Rome - Cara and I finally got a chance to go out together last night, and it was a great time.  I hope it happens more often - it's so exciting that we're abroad in the same city and going to school together, but we live so far apart (a tram and two buses to be exact) that it's a challenge meeting up in our free time.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to watch the Superbowl on Sunday, even though it won't start until at least midnight here, and I may or may not have a test the next day.  I'll have to get my studying in beforehand, because this football-obsessed girl has been feeling very deprived in a futbol-obsessed country.  Not to mention New Orleans has a very special place in my heart, and I can only imagine how amazing the atmosphere there must be right now!  I'm hoping for the best for my summer-adopted-hometown, and thinking of all the wonderful people in my New Orleans "family".  GEAUX SAINTS! 

Since it's taken me almost all day to write this post, it's now after dinner, and I'm eagerly anticipating some of Chrissy's homemade crepes with - of course - Nutella! 

Vi voglio bene :)

Firenze!

This weekend, some of my roommates and I traveled to Florence, which I had been itching to return to ever since my visit almost three years ago with my Res girls.  We chose the cheapest transportation option, a four hour slow train that passed through beautiful parts of Tuscany, but unfortunately the weather had no desire to cooperate, and our views consisted mostly of foggy hills.  Upon arriving at the charming hotel, we decided to trek to Piazza Michelangelo, perched on a hill to the southeast of the city, which overlooks the Arno river, Ponte Vecchio, and the entire city of Florence.  The views were wonderful, but again we were surrounded by dense fog in the hilltops, and our pictures from that day did not turn out so well so we descended the hill a little disappointed.  

For dinner that night, Natalie took us to her parents' favorite restaurant in Florence, Il Latini, which is frequented mostly by locals.  They had recommended that we get there early because there tended to be a line outside waiting for the restaurant to open, and sure enough a small crowd had gathered by the time the owners unlocked the doors.  The five of us sat down and a huge 2 liter bottle of their (delicious) house wine was uncorked, and we were off :).  We never saw a menu, the waiter just came by an told us what each course consisted of, which we were more than happy to accept.  The antipasto included Tuscan prosciutto, salami, caprese salad, and chicken crustini, and the primi was made up of three different kinds of soup pastes, spinach ravioli, and penne.  We chose to pass on the secondo (we were already full!) and skip right to the desert.  The waiter brought out four different types of cakes, and a "tuscan surprise" of traditional biscotti and two types of desert wines, as well as another bottle of the house wine to take home with us.  For those of you keeping score at home, we probably finished about 9 glasses of wine each (at least myself and Anne did, I'm not sure if the rest could keep up....kidding Mom....a little), which made for an absolutely wonderful night :).

On Saturday, we headed out in the rain to L'accademia, which houses Michelangelo's David.  Not being much of a museum person myself, I was completely caught off guard with how impressive and detailed the statue was, down to the veins in his legs and the curls of his hair.  In the afternoon, we headed to Florence's market, famous for its leather.  I emerged with a significantly lighter wallet, but a beautiful leather jacket and plenty of scarves.  For dinner, we met up with Anne's RA from our freshman year, who is currently a grad student in Florence...it's amazing all the places you can find ND connections.

After two days of rain, and a third one in the forecast, we woke up on Sunday to find nothing but blue skies and bright sun.  After mass in the Duomo (Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore) complete with Gregorian chants, I insisted on trekking back up to the Piazza Michelangelo for one last photoshoot, but neglected to realize that we would be carrying all of our bags this time around.  The hike to the top left us significantly more winded, but the views were beyond incredible and absolutely breathtaking (hopefully the pictures on here can do the view some justice).  The picture of me at the top of the blog is also from that lookout point!

I had such a great time in that beautiful city, and couldn't help but remember my wonderful trip in 2007 with my amazing friends and Mr. Mazzulla, who's had such a huge influence on my life.  I was thinking of you all this weekend!

gold shops on the Ponte Vecchio

The baptistry, duomo, and belltower.

Brunelleschi's duomo.  While designing the dome for St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, Michelangelo allegedly said he would be able to make one bigger but not more beautiful than the dome in Florence.

in front of the Ponte Vecchio

Tuscan countryside from Piazza Michelangelo

Florence, under the Tuscan sun

The Ponte Vecchio ("Old Bridge"), the only bridge not destroyed by German troops in WWII

the postcard companies should hire me...