Morning Glory in Firenze

This week is going to be a different week for me, but I'm very excited for it. My dad and sister are coming to visit me here in Italy! At the moment, my sister is visiting her old roommate from college who is living in London right now, and later on this week she will be meeting my dad in Rome. The two of them will come up to Foligno to spend a few days here and then I've got the weekend off to go explore the wonderful city we've all been dying to see... Venice!

Consequently, this is quite a busy week, but I'll try to give a (somewhat) brief summary of what I've been up to the past couple days.

Wednesday I spent the day at home with the kids as usual, but I had some time in the afternoon to take Cesare to the river to feed the ducks. The sun was just starting to hide behind the horizon, tinting the whole landscape pink and orange. Families were out walking in the brisk afternoon air. The ducks were noisily quacking in excitement as they raced to be first to the bread pieces that fell before them. It was a beautiful afternoon. Cesare was so calm the whole time and planted himself right in the grass, watching and observing the ducks and all the fascinating things going on around him. He talked a lot and kept asking me questions about what the ducks were doing and, of course, wanting to know why. He only spoke English. I was amazed thinking about how he understood but didn't speak a word of English when I got here, and now he can spend over an hour with me speaking in English the whole time.

On Thursday, I went with Andrea, Shaila, and Giulio to sing karaoke at a pub in Perugia. I'm pretty sure I totally embarrassed myself but it was still an absolute blast :) Before we headed home, I got a little midnight snack at a kebab place right across the street from the pub. SO good!

Friday I went with the same group to eat Japanese food in Perugia again. Let me tell you.... there's nothing like sitting on the ground in a Japanese restaurant, ordering sushi from a menu all in Italian! I had to have my friends translate everything so I could figure out which sushi rolls had fish and which didn't. I ended up getting California rolls ;-) After our Italian sushi experience, we walked around the center of Perugia and I couldn't believe how many people were out and about, considering it was after midnight! We found a cool pub called Merlin's that was playing all American pop music and belted our lungs out while we danced.

 

Saturday morning I woke up and intended to spend the afternoon in a town nearby called Spoleto, but I decided last minute that I wanted to go to Florence again instead. My friend Madeleine had gone up to Florence for the weekend with a group of 14 other au pairs from Rome, so I thought it would be fun to see all the things I missed last weekend with some good friends. I ended up getting a train around 5 pm and arriving in Florence around 8. I didn't have a place to stay yet, but I stopped by the hostel I stayed in last week to see if they had any rooms available for a good price. I was hoping for the same awesome room I had last time, and luckily they had it! I got a great deal for two nights and dropped my stuff and relaxed for a few minutes before setting out to find Madeleine and the other au pairs. I found them a little ways down the street at a cute cafe. All fifteen of us sat down to a nice (and inexpensive dinner) and enjoyed learning about where everyone was from, who they nanny for, and how long they've been in Italy for. There was a wide variety of answers, so there was lots to listen to and learn about each person and their story. After dinner, we all decided to go to a place called the Fish Pub where we hung out, met lots of other Americans, and enjoyed some more American pop music ;-)

 

The next morning I slept in and met up with Madeleine and one of the au pairs, Karen, at one of our favorite stores - Zara. We spent some time shopping and trying on lots of cute clothes that were all half off, until we realized how hungry we were. For lunch, Madeleine and Karen wanted to try special balsamic steak that someone had suggested to them, so we sought out a very nice restaurant and had a delicious meal (probably one of my favorites so far...except for La Cantina of course). After lunch we walked around the city a little more and then walked up the Giotto Tower in hopes of having a bird's eye view of the sunset over the city. The Giotto Tower has 414 steps. What a work out! Luckily there were landings about every hundred steps, so we got to take breaks to catch our breath and rest from the burn in our legs. We made it to the top a little before sunset, so we made good use of the time and took a zillion pictures. Unfortunately, we headed down a little too early, so when the sky turned the soft pink and blue color I was hoping to catch, we were already too low for sunset landscape pictures. It's okay though because I still got lots of other great pics :)

 

We got some gelato, shopped some more, saw Karen off on her train, and then I went to visit Florence Gospel Fellowship, a church I had found online. I enjoyed having some time to worship but was really tired afterward, so I didn't stick around to talk to anyone. I went straight to the hostel, only stopping at McDonald's on the way home for some 4 euro french fries (yikes!), and spent the rest of the evening curled up watching movies in my room with Madeleine. The next morning I had to take an 8:00 am train, so we woke up at 6:30 to make sure I had plenty of time to check out and get to the train. It was just in time to watch the sunrise, something I haven't seen in a long time. I couldn't believe how many colors there were in the sky... yet another beautiful sight!

The train ride home was three hours. I slept the entire way.