Caroline Wall: Fun in Florence

Thursday September 12th

The Lion's Fountain is now branded

Drinking some wine admiring the Duomo

The Duomo at night

Once 5:30 hit it was the weekend again and I was so excited since I had so much stuff planned with the Heitzleman family. Thursday night for dinner I went over to their house and had a delicious meal filled with gnocci and wine. I brought over dessert from the local grocery store and it surprisingly was really good, I will definately have to get it more often. After dinner, Lori, Kim, their boyfriends and I went out. We started walking around the Piazza Republica and it was Vogue's fashion night out, so we all were a little underdressed for the occasion. But it was really cool to see all of these people and their outfits. During Fashion Night out, all of the high end and designer stores stay open to the early morning selling their clothes for sale, some stores were even giving away free champagne for shopping in them. We got a bottle of wine from a street vendor and sat on a bench as Kim and I people-watched all of the outfits. I couldn't get over how many women were wearing these huge heels in the cobblestone, I do not know how they didn't fall! Once we finished our bottle of wine we went to The Lion's Fountain Pub. I love this bar because it feels like your walking into a an Irish pub in the middle of Boston. They have all American college T shirts hanging from the ceiling and if you are lucky enough you can get a sharpie and write on the wall. Nick wrote our last names(Heitzlemen and Wall) so we have officially branded the Lion's Fountain. From there we went to Red Garter where my friend Chris from home got on stage and sang karaoke. It was really fun. As they were dropping me off we met this kid Maxwell, who invited us to another bar so we went there but only for a little bit but it was closing soon and not many people were there. But he was fun to talk to because he spoke English, Spanish, German, and Italian. And I was able to find the secret bakery by myself so I got to take Kim and Lori there for their first time. I have to say the second time definately wasn't as good as the first but it was still exciting!

Vogue Fashion Night Out

Friday September 13th

Champagne and Roses

It is so nice not having Friday classes! I did some local errands at the grocery store and gym in the morning and I went back to Terese's for dinner. Expect tonight my friend Devyn came with me and we went out to Accademia (one of Terese's favorite restaurant). It is so fun going there because she is a local and all the waiters know her especially their favorite waiter, Kush. When we went on Friday it happened to be Kush's birthday. I had mushroom strudel, brusetta, and lasagna for dinner, it was delicious and after dinner Kush invited us to his birthday celebration at a club near Piazza Republica. All of us were a little unsure if we would go or not so we repeated what we did the night before and got a bottle of wine and hung out for a while until we decided why not (perque no!). We showed up at the club and it was like a VIP table outside set up with champagne, vodka, redbull, tonic water, lemons. I couldn't believe that we actually got invited to this haha it was such a fun time.

Lucky Pig--We're coming back to Florence!

Saturday September 14th

Today we went to the American World War II Cemetery and Memorial in Florence. It was really cool to see all of the white crosses and how it was designed so symmetrically. There was over 4,000 crosses and that is just one of the cemetery's in Italy. We noticed that alot of men died on October 13th (Kim's birthday) so I wonder if there was a battle of some sort that happened that day. From there we went to Castello di Verranzzano for a wine tasting. The view was unreal, I felt like I was on top of the world looking over the entire Tuscan region. We got served three wines, one rose and two red. I thought they were good but wished we could have tried white too. For our first course they came out with garlic bread and antipasta. We tried different types of salami, wild boar, and other meats. Next we had this amazing pasta. They gave us spices and cheese on the side that made it so good, I had two big servings. After the pasta, they came out with a sausage and chicken platter with beans. And for dessert they gave us cookies that you were supposed to dip in some sort of alcohol (I forget the name) but I did not like that at all! It was way too strong. The guys then got grappa and the meal and wine were complete..four hours later!