My Firenzeee and me (get it friends and firenze)

 

sorry I am really bad about posting, but its getting to the point when i am getting used to everything so it doesnt seem like there is as much to write... anyway.. so I know all you have been thinking about for the last week is which famous person I saw...

so heres the down low- not sure about that saying by the way- anyway so vivi and i were walking somewhere that I don't remember now.. and there was a huge crowd of people around a hotel. We asked what was going on and at first someone told us Johnny depp .. so we were like sweet, johnny depp.. so we stood with them for a while, and then someone else told us no it is David Beckham.. so at this point, I'm thinking bend it like beckham, even better.. finally about 15 minutes later some girl walks out.. an italian pop star? who knows.. but we saw her.. and she is famous.. so be jealous

another night we decided to order pizza because Hannah told me it was a brilliant idea; HOWEVER, she left out that the delivery men don't speak english. So here I am.. on the phone.. with an italian dude.. and then about 3 more italian dudes. .. trying to order a salami pizza and 2 cheese pizzas...  the italian man, now we will call him dudio, was very frustrated. Dudio kept handing me around to other employees.. who also didn't know english.. eventually I was so flustered that I was saying tre pizzas que hahaha... o geeezzzz ... finally niki just got on the phone and they found someone who knew english.. 2 hours later we got our 3 pizzas.. and they were decently bad, but still pretty good. Myth busted, italian pizza is not that much different than in the U.S, so far anyway.. now don't get all defensive about that comment please

pictures of my art history class... our teacher is a character

my attempt at cooking... it was the best thing ive cooked so far.. by the way wine + peach juice + pineapple juice= bad idea


  

So we went out to Naima bar, in attempt to be young and with it..

pretty much mission accomplished
  

however Maryn did not inform me that her lover Simone would be there and would also bring his friend Marco...
  

moving on... so the following day we took off on our adventure to IKEA... I kea to you americans and ee kea to you italians.. now everyone is happy.

anyway so it was raining. and of course I wore my longer pants that happen to flare at the bottom.. and on top of that I have never thought it was a good idea to invest in an umbrella.  so it was raining, my pants would only stay up if i rolled them to the top of my knee, and before vivi bought me an umbrella I was wearing a scarf on my head, sari style.

props to vivi for selling her body in order to get my umbrella for 2 euros cheaper.

finally made it to Ikea. There is supposedly a free shuttle, but somehow we got on the not free shuttle.. 2 buses, some frustration, and a walk through china town of Italy we finally made it.

Ikea isn't as cool as in the states.. Its a lot smaller, the displays are only half as impressive, and they have arrows that tell you where to go. To spite them we went the wrong way through their maze. 

Think Pink.. he is

They sell these on the street. Supposedly you can put them next to any kind of music and they will "dance" slash hop to the beat. Seems like a good investment to me. My mom wants some so that must mean something.

I have two more blogs coming. Sorry I am behind, but there are two blogworthy things to write about from this weekend... 

lollipops yall!

Pisa

  

Pisa, Pisa, Pisa.. First trip out of florence and I think my face in the second picture perfectly summarizes it... Awkward, fun, random, spontaneous, but overall beautiful. (cocky? no confident) We left at 8:30 am, and took a 70 minute bus ride there. We arrived at the Pisa Airport and then took another bus to the center.

     

There we found a huge pigeon statue.. In the second picture you can find Kat on her way to mounting its neck comparable to Harry Potter himself.  

 Abbie and Maryn can be seen here enjoying the one of many bus rides on the way to Terrania beach which is off of the Ligurian Sea.

     

 So we arrived at the beach somehow and ended up walking through this creepy passageway (some do not think it was creepy but I still do)  The weather was questionable at first, but it ended up being a really nice day. Of course Vivi, Maryn and I figured it would be a good idea not to pack towels. No we did not forget them, we actually thought about bringing them and then decided against it; therefore after an hour on the beach maryn's red scarf just wasn't doing it. We then ventured off to find out how much a chair would be to rent.  The place we were laying in front of had blue chairs and the beach spot was called Bar "something i dont remember" calypso. Of course the guy at the hut type stand did not know english, but of course we tried to explain to him in english and very broken italian what we wanted. We eventually came to find out that we were supposed to pay 4 euro just to sit on the beach and then renting an umbrella and 2 chairs was another 15 euro. Not too many were thrilled with this idea considering we had already been sitting on the beach for an hour for free and nothing bad had happened to us yet.  Maryn and Vivi were on the verge of giving in until I convinced them that we should check out the other chair places. Next to us, on the other side, were some other blue chairs and after that were some orange chairs. The second set of blue chairs were slightly nicer and ended up being a private club. The third set of chairs were orange and we thought we would give it one more shot... Bitchen enough it ended up being an American Military base beach, so not only did the lady at the "hut" speak very wisconsinion English, but it only cost 11 euro to rent 3 chairs and an umbrella, but it did not cost to just sit there.

  

dear Iowa and all of my friends I miss you and this is not only your proof, but your postcard so don't be expecting one

  Vivi lookin hot 4 u

 

we also decided to rent a paddle boat for 10 euro. They knew we were fashion design majors so they made sure to give us the most attractive, high fashion life jackets that they had available. I think these were JLO brand but I'm not sure. Anyway in the water we spent most of the time paddling in circles, jumping waves, and running into a little boy who was surfing.  our shadows, plus abbie's penis.

  

meet mustache man. possibly a very awkward picture since he knew I was taking it, but obviously worth it in the end.

  

So after a long, good day at the beach, we head back to the center and then to our hostile. Don't be fooled by the first picture because when we arrived it was dark and extremely terrifying. I may have seen our hostile in Dawn of the dead.

 Picture this car at night, with that small light next to it turned on. Exactly. 

The inside was decently nice and had tons of free candy available, and yes I took advantage of this and ate at least 7 pieces. The first picture is of the room Alyssa and I stayed in.  

The other 4 stayed in this room which had bunk beds and then a set of beds like ours. We stayed in the part of the hostile that used to be a church, so at first I was thinking oh well this is a place of god. About 5 minutes later I had convinced myself that there was also a high chance of being possessed by some sort of demon.  Later that night I dreamt that I went to the hair salon to dye my hair brown, but then I went into a possessed state and did something crazy to the lady who was dying my hair. I am now more skeptical about dying my hair brown.  lobby of the hostile.

 all in one bathroom. I don't think I can call it a full bathroom because there was no shower, but just a shower faucet sticking out of the wall. I guess this would be easier for people who like to pee in the shower.

  It was really nice of them to give us the Iowa themed room.

   

After settling into our cozy rooms we ventured off yet again to go get something to eat. While waiting at the bus stop for a mere 30 minutes, we ran into some Larrikan Australian dudes who had been traveling around the world for the last month. Oddly enough now they are in florence, so we will probably see them again.

 

The next morning we took the bus down to the field of miracles. First we stopped and got coffee and pastries. 

 

Notice how everyone, no matter where they are from, does the same pisa picture. I took pictures of them, and I hope they look at my blog and realize how silly billy they look.

 

At 7 pm we climbed all 294 steps to the top and you might think you are not afraid of heights, but maybe if you are on top of a leaning tower on a windy day you will think differently. Other than that the view was amazing and it was completely worth the 15 euro. Brief history: The tower started being built in 1173 and was finished in 1372. It is leaning at a 5 degree angle or 15 feet off being vertical and 30 million dollar were spent in 1990 alone trying to stabilize it. It leans because this part of pisa used to be part of the sea, and so now the tower lays on very shallow 13 foot foundation (florence & tuscany 2008).

  

One of the miracles in this field was the Baptistery as seen above. Please don't confuse this as being called the duomo just because it has a dome. Every half an hour a man or a woman comes and "sings" in the middle, and other than that the only noises that are heard are people shsshing... Brief history: In the center you can find a statue of John the Baptist, which is surrounded by an octagon baptismal font, and the 8 sides represent the 8th night of Christ's ordeal or his resurrection. 

 

Now here is the pisa duomo. This was probably my favorite building just because it was amazing inside and out. This cathedral houses Emporer Henry VII's tomb, St. Ranieri's body, Galileo's Lamp, and Giovanni's pulpit.

  

Here is the Camposanto Cemetary. The floor is made of gravestones of nearly 600 pisans. Here we also saw the famous painting, Triumph of Death, which is said to show the mood of Pisa at the time with the Bubonic plague that killed one in three.

 of course we had to still support Iowa State during the game even though we unfortunately lost. :(  Please take notice to the hilarious guy in the back, also obviously a Cyclone fan.
 

Overall the Field of Miracles was breathtaking and I was really happy that we had the whole day to completely take advantage of seeing each building. 

Around 8pm we headed to dinner until at 10 pm and then we attempted to catch our bus. Unfortunately we forgot to check the bus schedule and didn't know that the last bus to the airport left at 8:15 pm.  Since our bus back to Florence left in an hour we attempted to call ourselves a cab, but again the language barrier made that close to impossible. From this we all ran back to the restaurant and thankfully they called us a cab. On a funny side note.

So around 1 am we got back to Florence. We were welcomed home by Ryan's wine teeth and Willy's gearing sense of humor (im not sure that is an actual word, but i think its fitting). 

I hope you enjoyed Pisa as much as I did. 

Thanks for reading and be excited for the next blog when I tell you about the famous person I saw today! dun dun dunnnnn

again to be continued...