The San Giovanni festival in Florence is every year on June 24th and it honors this patron saint of the city. Festivities begin with a flag performance and is followed by a parade that winds through the city to the Santa Croce piazza where there is a ballgame of Calcio. Not even the Italians I was friends with quite knew how to explain the game. It's an old, old, traditional game that now seems to be a brutal form of rugby.. but hey! Traditions are traditions! ;) Later on in the evening , the night finishes off with an amazing fireworks [View Full Entry]

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After leaving Siena, we stopped by the midieval town of San Gimignano. The town itself is a upward hill, and we were only given 1 1/2 hours in the city. This was just enough time to make it to the top of the slope, enjoy the view, and then return. The view was nice though. :) [View Full Entry]

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I went along with my school (Santa Reparata) for the day trip to Siena and San Gimignano. First we went to Siena, which is less than an hour away from Florence. This city is broken into regions and is also the site of a famous horse race. The city centers around the main square which is in the shape of a seashell and away from this area is the duomo at the top of the hill. It is a smaller city compared to Florence, but it still had a charm of it's own. Interesting fact about the city: in one of [View Full Entry]

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Wow.. I'm going to attempt to put two months of happenings within Florence in this entry. I knew after living in the North of Italy for Summer 2004, that I wanted to return to this amazing country, so I was thrilled to find a program that fit what I was looking for. I enrolled for 2 month long semesters at Santa Reparata International School of Art near the city center of Florence and decided upon taking their Italian language classes. For the first month I would be taking intensive intro to Italian, and the second month I would take a normal [View Full Entry]

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I left Atlanta with Kevin and Brittany around 7am on Friday and rolled into PCB around 1pm or so, so we made fairly good time. I have a bunch of friends from the area, so after going to the beach for a little while, we went to dinner and then on to Club la Vela where we danced for a while and even hung out in the pussy cat lounge. Saturday we returned to the beach, in addition to hanging out poolside at Club La Vela and watching the competitions there. (Bikini and Male Hard-body.) After we got cleaned up for [View Full Entry]

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(entry added January 29, 2006) Tramonti is an amazing little area north of Aviano that we heard about through a friend. It took a while to get there, winding through roads and even having to back up in areas where it was only one lane... with a truck trying to go the opposite direction around the curves! ...but once we arrived, we realized that it was well worth it. Nestled between the mountain rocks was a clear, blue, pure river with slow flowing waters. The water was extremely cold because of the snow melting and adding to the water supply that [View Full Entry]

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(Entry added January 28, 2006) We headed for a day and a half trip to Florence which was several hours by car away, we made pretty good time, thanks to the Autostrada. Joining us were our neighbors Nick and Janel, and their little boy Xander, and also a friend, Ross. We probably should have made hotel arrangements ahead of time, but we found a place on the opposite side of the Arno that wasn't too far away walking from all the main 'attractions'. We found a nice little place to eat with an outside patio, and I stayed safe and went [View Full Entry]

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(entry added Jan. 28, 2006) Piancavallo is a little ski town near Aviano that we rode up into the mountains to see. Not because we wanted to ski.. but where else were we going to go to say we'd stood in snow in MAY at? It was absolutely beautiful, and Nathan had never been in snow before. I got a good laugh out of watching him walk onto a mound... and then being suprised when he sunk to his knees! [View Full Entry]

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(entry added Jan. 28, 2006) Since we were living only one hour from Venice, it was nothing at all to drive in for the day. And boy were we unprepared! After wandering around in the maze of walkways.. and constantly finding ourselves in deadends with no place to go but into the canal.., we finally broke down and bought a map. We didn't really have any goal or places we definately had to see, which was fine. Venice is amazing in itself to just stroll around. We had dinner in a little place and I quickly learned that ordering fish abroad [View Full Entry]

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(entry added Jan. 28, 2006) I had never been on an airplane before.. much less flown alone to another country, but I found myself adjusting to everything quite quickly. I was to spend part of the summer in Aviano, Italy with my boyfriend at the time. It's a region in the north around an hour drive west of Venice. It's an American Military area, so while the base was in Aviano, the house I stayed at is in Giais, the next town over. It's not a populous area - instead it's rather calm and relaxing. The house sat at the base [View Full Entry]

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