Week 14: Italian Spring
Sneak peak on later in the week.
Welcome back! In desperate need of some recovery from Springfest, Monday and Tuesday were spent recharging my social battery. Monday started off per usual with my 8:45 AM art walks class, which was happily only an hour long. Unfortunately, I truly experienced Italian spring because all the warm weather we experienced the previous week was a fluke; Florence was back to rainy and cold. Good thing I sent home the majority of my sweaters and cold-weather clothes home with my parents ;) In need of some warmth, I stopped in La Ménagère for a solo breakfast. Having never been to this cafe, it was the perfect cozy atmosphere to combat the raininess outside. Combined with a flower shop, there was light jazz playing in the floral and dimly-lit cafe. I may have watched an episode of Gossip Girl…
I chowed down a chive and egg baguette before heading to my Pairing Food and Wine class where I had to present my final project. The presentation ran super smoothly and I was just overall relieved to be done with it. After our presentation, the class walked over to a wine bar that only serves all-natural wine. To be honest, I thought the wine kind of tasted like dirt; it was so earthy! I’m not huge on red wine to start, but this was definitely not up my alley so I gave my glass to my classmate. I scurried home in the cold after class to relax a little bit before Lauren, Liv and I walked over to Maggie and Lily’s for dinner. Maggie cheffed up such a delicious tortellini soup, Lily perfected some garlic bread, and us 3 made our famous arugula salad. We spent the night sitting at their dining room table, chatting, laughing and watching random YouTube videos. A perfect casual night with great food and the best company!
Tuesday was eerily similar to Monday, as I said I was recharging, because I didn’t really do much. Lauren and I went to our class at noon, it rained all day, and we snuggled up in bed watching Gossip Girl (I’m trying to finish it before I leave because it isn’t on American Netflix ok). Sometimes I forget that just because I’m abroad doesn’t mean I can’t have lazy days and I begin to feel super guilty about wasting my time. But honestly, it was such a relaxing, stormy day that I push that guilt out of my mind. Suddenly it was nearing 7 PM and we quickly got ready for dinner before walking across the street to Fermento 1889, a restaurant we walk by every day and have been wanting to try. Of course Maggie and Lily came too :) The menu was all pizza, something I crave a lot more ever since moving here! Lauren and I went half and half on a carbonara pizza and a burrata arugula pizza. Topped off with a Coke Zero, that dinner was an amazing finale to my super lazy day.
Santarosa Bistrot
After starting the morning with some chores and laundry, I met up with Lauren and Liv at La Ménagère for some blogging time on Wednesday (I was pretty behind in my posts again…) I worked for a couple hours on the blog while chatting with Lauren and Liv before we caved and left to get some lunch. For once this week it wasn’t raining, so we grabbed some paninis at Gustapanino and sat on some steps in Santo Spirito square. Unfortunately, I tried a new panini order and wasn’t a fan of the black truffle they used, as I’m more of a truffle oil, truffle cheese, or truffle cream type of girl. Needing something to wash down the overpowering taste of truffle, where else would we go except for Sbrino, our favorite gelato place? I tried a new flavor, Sbrinomisu, and I think it’s tied with my usual favorite, Speculoos. I hurried home to jump on my interview for Group X Manager and had a great talk with some of my supervisors at my job at school (the interview went perfectly and I was offered the job for the fall!) Wanting to enjoy the rare nice weather for as long as possible, I walked over to La Cite, determined to also finish my blog posts. Admittedly, that didn’t quite happen as Lauren sent an invitation to join in on a Washington Post crossword… Our new obsession. I think we played 2 or 3 crosswords which took almost 2 hours. They’re hard but so fun, trust me. I ran into Olivia as well, so the goal of finishing my blog posts was toast. We talked until I walked back to the apartment to start cooking dinner with Lauren. Lauren and I made some bomb pasta and chicken with salad and cucumber on the side with cannolis for dessert.
The movie theatre!
Since I was still pretty behind in my blog posts (which is still the case currently…) I knew I really had to put the work in on Thursday. Heading off on my own, I made my way over to Santarosa Bistrot, my favorite outdoor garden caffe. I grabbed a gorgeous table outside, along with a cappuccino and got started. I got a little bit more caught up before Lauren joined me and I became super distracted by a pigeon with only had one foot that wouldn’t leave us alone. After a couple hours, Liv showed up as well and we went inside to get lunch. Liv and I split a salad and club sandwich :) The long lunch brought us all the way to late afternoon, so we changed locations to La Cite so that I could sit inside and, once again, attempt to get caught up on this blog. Lauren and I ate a quick dinner and then walked over to Odeon to watch the new Amy Winehouse movie: Back to Black. Odeon is a super cute cinema that is combined with a bookstore. They play movies all day (in English with Italian subtitles) and have a bunch of seating for reading or movie watching! Lauren and I ate a lot of Fruitella (Italian candy) and rosemary chips. Seeing the movie definitely sparked a new obsession with Amy’s music, but I was fascinated by her life as well. I won’t get into it but I highly recommend going to see it!
Playing cards in our yard.
By now you’re probably asking yourself if I actually stayed in Florence for a weekend instead of jetting off somewhere (or not, but I know I am), and the answer is…. no ;) After moving all of our friends’ bags into our apartment after they had checked out of theirs, Maddy, Natalie, Kate, Lauren, Maddie and I hopped on a train for their last weekend. With aspirations of having a relaxed, easy travel day we trained over to Orvieto, a small city in Umbria, Italy. I suppose our first mistake was being used to city life and the expectation that taxis and Ubers are everywhere, since we did little to no research on actually getting from the train station to our villa in the countryside. We walked to the main downtown area in hopes of finding a ride there, actually having to take a gondola up a hill to get there, only to find out that no cars can really drive through the small streets. Still hopeful, we stupidly decided that the next best thing to do was go grocery shopping! All piling into the local grocery store, we walked out of there with half the store I swear. Grocery shopping for 6 meals for 6 girls was hard enough, yet there we were with not only our luggage but now also 12 bulging bags of groceries. Here is when the panic truly set in, as it was a 2 hour walk to the villa and still hadn’t found a taxi. Sitting on the side of the road, we tried every taxi number we could; an Italian couple even stopped on the street to try to call one for us. After almost 2 hours of sitting there without any luck, our Airbnb host was able to find 2 taxis to pick us up. Pulling up through these back roads, our drivers tried to take us to our Airbnb. These drivers definitely did not like driving behind anyone because they would speed up and swerve around any other cars on the road… Our next challenge was being able to find our Airbnb, as they were convinced the one the address took us to wasn’t it and they ended up taking us somewhere completely different, which we were convinced wasn’t it. We asked them to then take us back to the previous villa, which was definitely it because we ran into the host in the driveway. The whole reason we were so confused the first time we looked at the villa was because we thought there was a pool on the property, as it appeared in the listing, but there wasn’t one anywhere to be found. Turns out the pictures of the pool online are the community pool that is a mile away and closed for the season. Slightly disappointing, but not that big of a deal since it was a little chilly anyways. Our villa was absolutely darling, with a rustic farmhouse aesthetic mixed with Italian charm. We walked into our backyard, sat on the grass, and enjoyed the peaceful view of the rolling countryside, complete with a herd of sheep grazing. The sun slowly started to come down and it truly felt like the beginning of summer, despite me still having exams and final papers to complete. Cracking open a couple bottles of wine, we laughed and just spent some quality time together. It was hard knowing that this was our last trip together (for the time being) and we don’t know when we’ll all be together again.
Lauren and Kate cheffed up some rice and ground beef so that we could make burrito bowls for dinner, something that I hadn’t eaten since being in America. We all just played music in the kitchen, danced around, and then opened up a couple bottles of wine. Our Airbnb had a huge wooden table in the dining room so we all sat down to have a big family dinner. After dinner and cleaning up, Nat made a fire and we just sat in the living room talking and watching movies.
Love these girls so much.
I snuck out of my room early on Saturday to put a couple hours into my final paper for my art walks class since I had 0 out of 2,000 words. I was able to get about a fourth completed before my friends started waking up, causing my computer to immediately shut. The whole day was one of just relaxation, without a car or any source of transportation around we were able to just enjoy the house and property. The morning was filled with laying in the sun, tanning and listening to music. After some homemade sandwiches, half of the group went for a walk while the other half of us sat inside to watch Baby Reindeer. I tried to work on my paper as much as I could, but Baby Reindeer is a captivating show, though pretty disturbing and unsettling. My cute friends came back from their walk with a bunch of flowers to decorate the dinner table with and lured us out of the living room outside for some card games. We spent the next couple hours playing Egyptian Rat Screw (and debated over if it’s rat screw, rat race, or rat slap) and BS (which I won at least once) and drinking wine. The rest of the night looked very similar to the previous night, as Nat and Maddy made us vodka pasta and meat sauce for dinner with a salad on the side. The dinner was delicious and the conversation was filled with our favorite memories from abroad. I am so grateful to have gotten closer with all of them during the semester :) The night concluded with Endless Love, one of our favorite rom-coms.
Although the week started off super rainy, the sun came out towards the end and I really enjoyed our relaxing weekend in Orvieto. Italian spring is nearly as bipolar as Wisconsin ;)
See you next week!
