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Published: February 11th 2009
Milano Train Station
This is our train that we took from Milan to Florence, we had to walk to the end of the platform to get to our car. Getting here...
Just when we thought we were off to a good start (after checking luggage which barely made the 50 lb. weight limit, saying our goodbyes, and going through security) we were told that the plane that we would take to Chicago was still on the ground in Denver. I guess there was something wrong with the engine? Anyway, we had to re-book ALL of our flights because of this one glitch, which surprisingly didn't bother any of us much. We found that we had plenty of time to read that 700+ page book that Professor Pate decided to assign. After FINALLY boarding our plane and taking off I read for most of the flight (thinking, ah I'll just get this out of the way). We landed at O'hare safely and found our terminal pretty quickly. With only a few minutes before boarding I found time to grab a hot dog! It wasn't portillo's but i figured it was the closest thing to it that I was going to find. Plus, it was pretty much that or McDonalds, so the choice was pretty easy! We had a rediculously long flight to Frankfurt...it was something like 14 hours long. I sat
Rachel and Jess outside of the train
They're working up the strength to lift our bags onto the train! next to my friend Brad and some strange man that I didn't know. That guy thought it was okay to completely spread out. And my friend Rachel, who sat behind the strange man, practically had him in her lap! Oh, and did I mention that he smelt bad? When we landed in Frankfurt we were greated with snow! Then we found time to brush our teeth, and wash our faces. We grabbed some drinks (coke light...which is in my opinion, better then diet coke). We took a bus to our terminal and loaded onto the plain by going outside and walking up the stairs...it was like something you'd see in an old movie. The flight from Frankfurt to Milan had me sitting next to an Asian man who didn't speak any Italian, German, or English (the three languages that the flight attendants all knew). He too spread out as much as possible, and kept elbowing and kneeing me. 😞 Then, we got to Milan and had an INCREDIBLE view of the Andes mountains...a view like none other that I've seen!! The weather was REALLY nice!! We got off the plane and had to take another bus to our terminal. We
found our luggage and started the journey of figuring out trains, metros, and buses. And let me tell ya, that was crazy!! Brad decided to take a set of stairs and the three of us girls opted out of that! With 2 fifty pound bags EACH plus our carry ons, we decided to search for an elevator. It took us some time to find it, and finally we made it onto the elevator, but then the next challenge was to find what floor the train tickets were sold on. It sounds like it'd be simple, but no...their elevators have floors +1, +2, +3, +4, 0, -1, -2, -3, and -4...well after trying nearly every floor we got it figured out! We finally found Brad, who thought that he might not ever see us again lol! We purchased tickets to the train and I managed to spill my carry on ALL over the floor in front of the train station. And Brad, the saint that he is, came over immediately and told me not to worry that we'd pick it all up and it'd be fine. He helped me get all of my stuff back into my bag. It sounds like
After arriving in Florence
Not lookin so hot, but hey, 30 hours or so of travel will do that to ya. no big deal, but after twenty some hours of travel, you get aggitated by the small things. We got onto a moving sidewalk thing that was sloped downwards and took us to the train station. All of the girls were laughing because our bags were so heavy that they were pushing on us a little bit. We joked about how we had to be careful not to fall because it was cause a domino effect and a MAJOR pileup at the end of the "sidewalk." Well, turns out we had spoken too soon. Brad, Rachel, and I filed off of the "sidewalk" and Jessica was right behind us. Suddenly we heard a big THUD and all turned around. Jess was laying ontop of all of her luggage at the bottom! Haha...it was a much needed laugh. And all of the Italians were cracking up and making fun of us in Italian I'm sure! After loading all of our luggage on the train we sat for a while until we noticed some men validating their tickets outside of the train. We looked it up in Brad's travel guide and realized that a heafty fine is given to all passengers who DON'T
Luggage!
Waaay too many bags. two 50 pound bags for me and Jess, Rachel had 2 bags (one of which weighed 50ish), Brad's one normal sized bag (that was only 35 pounds), and his little carry on, plus purses and totes! validate their tickets so one by one we sprinted off of the train, validated, and then got back to our seats! It was a bit crazy!! Right as we sat down the train took off. We made it to the city center of Milan where we had to take the metro to our next train station. After taking the metro 5 stops in the wrong direction we figured out that we were going the wrong way. So ten stops later we made it to the Central station. We took the Central Station train to Frienze (Florence). That was about a 2 hour and 50 minute train ride. We did however get sat next to two older business men who wanted to practice their Italian with American girls. There was another strange Asian man in our train car as well. This one took off his smelly shoes and was burping in Jessica's face....he was a real winner! Haha! After making it to Central Station, we grabbed hot panninis and hailed 2 cabs (these are like midget cabs if you ask me). They drove us up to the Villa and we then proceeded to carry all of our luggage up some insanely
Duomo
The dome of Santa Maria Del Fiore steep stairs. We took showers and got unpacked and then got to use the internet for the first time. Italian keyboards are TERRIBLE!!! And these particular ones at the villa all have keys that stick! Then it was time for sleep!
Day one...Mike's tour of Frienze
After sleeping in until "half past twleve" we got ready in like 15 minutes (quite impressive if I may say so myself) and then headed out to explore the city. We met Brad, Frank, and Joe up at the top of our hill. They showed us to the bus stop where we met up with Mike (one of the guys who got here a week ago to scope things out). Mike, a freshman, knew EVERYTHING about the town. I guess he's gotten lost quite a few times and just started to get a hang of the city streets. About 15 minutes into our walk it started to rain. None of us seemed to mind it. I think we were all just so excited to finally be here! We saw a few of the piazzas (I cant remember the names just yet), the main cathedral (Santa Maria Del Fiore), the baptistry (with the famous
Baptistry w/gold doors
Baptistry and gold doors described in our book golden doors), the Medici castle, the Arno River, and a few other sites.We stopped at a grocery store on our way home and bought wine, some apples, chocolate bars, and some water...ya know, the staples haha! Then we came back for dinner. By that point all of the other students had arrived, but I was so glad to have had a jump start on the sightseeing. And at this point we had all already sort of become friends. After dinner, we got ready and busted open a bottle of wine. We then went up to the top of the hill and checked out the local bars. We went in and tried a couple of beers, none of which were very good. And then had some lemoncello and a bellini!! Then we all came home and checked internet again. Oh, and we had seen a few of the REALLY nice designer stores...Celine, Prada, Gucci, Pucci, Cavalli, etc. You name it, they have it!
Day two..."Nice bar, nice ass"
Today we woke up, got ready, and had a minor incident where we blew a fuse and the whole room went dark! Needless to say, our blowdryers are ALL 1875 watts and
our converters only convert up to 1600 (oops!). We ate breakfast and then got to start classes...YUCK! Basically they had to translate ALL of the rules to us in English and then we started our Italian classes. We learned how to say My name is ... and how do you say... in Italian and how to ask what something in Italian means. Ya know, the basics. Then we moved on to writing words for each letter of the alphabet. Essentially we made our own dictionary using all of the words we had seen or knew in Italian. Our teacher even did a GREAT Marilyn Monroe impersonation to describe a skirt. It was like a super long game of charades, but I think it is helping us to catch on quickly! Then we had our Community and the Individual class. Basically we just talked about where we were from and the professor told us all of his background info. He studied Polish and could speak it fluently when he was in the Army...how crazy is that! After class we went into town as a huge group. We basically saw all of the same things that we had seen the previous day,
golden doors
golden doors...the building is 8 sided, representing the 8th day, or the day of ressurection. but one of our Professors told us a little bit about each place. The main cathedral, Santa Maria Del Fiore and the Duomo and babtistry were also explained in greater detail. And now the Michelangelo book is starting to make more sense as I can put a picture with a name. We learned that Santa Maria Del Fiore litterally translates as "Saint Mary of the Flower." The flower being Florence. So, it is the cathedral of Florence. The golden doors on the baptistry have several little scenes on them, depicting Christ's life. They are quite ornate for their time period, and they truely are the first thing that catches your eye. The campinelle is the bell tower attached to the church. And El Duomo just means "the dome." The duomo and campinelle are attached to Santa Maria Del Fiore and the baptistry is directly across the street. We saw another church in the city which was the church for people of all trades. We didn't go inside yet, but it is a modest sized building with statues of several saints on the outside. The professor said that each saint is the patron saint of one of the trades. The only
Santa Maria Del Fiore
Saint Mary of the Flower one that I noticed was Saint Peter. He also took us into Santa Croce, which is the Fransician church of Florence. It is under construction, but it's still beautiful! I'm not sure how great my photos are gonna look because I still haven't figured out how not to blur a picture when its on the museum setting...guess I'll have to read the camera book sometime soon haha. After Santa Croce, they let us roam around town for an hour, and Jessica, Rachel, and I all decided we'd do our own thing. We took off into the city (in search of a corkscrew for our wine) and came across a really cute coffee shop. I ordered for everyone ONLY using Italian! I was really proud, until we realized the man inside was listening to American music, so I asked if he spoke English. He said yes a little, and he took a photo for us and then told us that we could find a corkscrew at the super market and he proceeded to give us directions to the store. On our way to the store, 3 Italian men came up behind us and were following us down the street (they were
just headed in the same direction). I pointed out a nice coffee shop (they're called bars here") by saying what a nice bar. Following this statement, a voice from behind us said, "Yeah nice bar, and you have a nice ass." Talk about direct, huh? Anyway, they ended up showing us to the store, but we weren't appreciative of the comment. We met the group and took the bus back to Settingano for dinner. Then I decided to start this blog so that I could keep you guys updated. Sorry this is soooo long, just wanted to jot down all of our stories from the last few days! I'll try to add pictures too if I can figure it out! Hope Mariah's sports are going well and Amanda's classes too! Dad, how was Cali?? Mom, finish that "ice cream frosted" cake yet? Haha...love from Settingano, Katie
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Anne
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soooooo jealous. remember my rock or grass.... :]