Winery pictures

These barrels where built into the cellar









This is holding Chianti Classico 2006



Grapes drying for the Vino Santo




The wine


Me and my roomies ready for some amazing wine and dine.


Part of the vineyards.

First is last

Well I realize that there aren't any photos of my apartment on here. Which I will be leaving on Sunday at 10 AM for a hotel on the Arno. But here is Stacey one of my roommate's blog link with the photos.
http://staceytravelinlight.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-florence-apartment.html

Soon to Come, I promise

I promise that soon there will be pictures of the winery and Thanksgiving, maybe something else, depending on if I'm forgetting something at the moment.

Though it might have to wait until after finals, which are next week.
Love you all.
Ciao tutti!

What I'm Excited to Come Home to:

• Good Mexican and Chinese food
• Watching Roxanne peel oranges
• The photo lab
• Westminster
• Snowboarding
• Krista’s cooking
• Peanut butter
• Making money
• Real school
• Making Roxanne giggle
• Having inside jokes
• Hamburgers
• Milk shakes
• Sugar House Coffee
• Hanging out in the kitchen with the girls
• Dinners with my uncle
• Friends!
• English
• American boys
• My room
• My bed
• My apartment
• Internet whenever I want
• Calling Shannon
• Texting with out fear of being charged outrages amounts of money
• No exchange rate
• Midnight runs to Walgreens
• Almost midnight runs to the taco stand on state
• And if it’s past midnight Los Betos
• Movies
• Watching dumb TV shows with the girls
• The new need to explore more of America
• Being comfortable
• The feeling of being home
• Going grocery Shopping with the girls
• Buying groceries for more then one
• Sharing without worry with the girls
• Knowing what my roommates are thinking from our psych link
• Random visits from Andrew

I’m sure that once I return home there will be a ‘what I miss about Italy/Europe’ list. No worries, I’m just excited to come home after chilling here with Mom for a few days!

A Few Things About Italy

• Trains are a great way to travel from town to town!
• Casablanca in Italian, just isn’t the same
• Euros are such strange and cool money. You spend “change” and you spend Euros at a time.
• Italian men are just as skeezey as they are in the movies, well they can be.
• The further north you go in Italy the slower they speak, until they start to speak a strange mixture of German and Italian.
• Marble is everywhere.
• You don’t find change on the ground here
• But you do find frescos on every other building if you just look
• If you can find the Arno you can find your way around Florence.
• For some reason people find Florence confusing to get around, “Where’s the duomo?” When the Duomo is the largest building in the city, “You see that huge dome? That’s it.”
• Chinese food here is not good.
• I love the little 3 wheeled ‘cars’ and ‘trucks.’ It looks like only one man would be able to fit, but I’ve seen two at a time.
• Just because it’s a ‘sidewalk’ doesn’t make it safe.
• Wine is cheaper then beer and almost more inexpensive then water.
• Tuscan bread is tasteless and dry.
• Foccacia on the other hand yum yum.
• Tripe should be tried, just don’t think to hard about what you’re eating.
• The measurement etto, is important when buying sliced meats.
• Ciao, is just fun to say.
• Allora, is better.
• There are different types of pizza, regular Italian pizza and panne pizza on bread, both wonderful!
• Meat will go bad the day after you buy it from the grocery store!

Coming to an End

Coming to an End

I have three weeks until my mom flies into Italy herself and I get to show her around the city I’ve been lucky enough to live in for the last few months. We’ll spend Christmas and New Years here, three days in Rome and then back home to America for the both of us. That means that finals are upon me and time is going to fly by quicker then you can say some stupid long drawn out word.

It’s almost the end of my experience here, and I think I’m actually ready for it. I’m excited to see my mom and show her around here. Then I get to go home, and be comfortable. Nothing is cozy here, nothing is home. Though that might sound negative, it’s not entirely that way. Home is home and home is the USA. Home is my own bed, with my sheets and my roommates and my language.

I wish I had learned more Italian, and met more Italian people. I tried, I signed up for a conversation partner and I tried to speak Italian whenever possible, but when you’re in a place that is so full of tourists the locals start to talk to you in English as soon as the first word comes out of your mouth it’s a little hard.

I think I’ve learned some things about the world, I’ve learned a little about living in a different place, and how they live. I’ve seen things older then my own country, I’ve eaten too much new food, enough to gain 10 lbs, and I’ve tried to speak a different language. I can not go home and say that I didn’t gain anything, because I have.

I’ve seen everything from the Duomo of Florence, The Eiffel Tower, and the home of Mozart. I’ve seen priceless pieces of art work by Da Vinci, Monet, Degas, Botticelli, and many, many others. I’ve lived a dream, but now it’s time to come back down from the clouds and I’m ready for my landing captain.

I’m coming home in a little over a month, I’m coming home to snowboarding, spending a lot of time at the gym, the photo lab, I’m coming home to my loving roommates, putting my room back together and making it mine again.

I’m leaving Europe as a whole, new friends and roommates, history, all the art from my history books, the Italian language, and so much more.

But Ciao Bella Italia and hello America the Beautiful I’m coming home!

The Day After

Thanksgiving turned out better then I thought it would. Dinner with Stacey and Maria went well. We actually just stumbled upon a Thanksgiving dinner at a resturant.
It was something in between Italian food and American Thanksgiving. It invlolved Italian appetizers and pastas then turkey, gravy and mashed potatoes.

But today is rainy and cold and I want popcorn a comfy couch and a good movie. But insded I'm working on fashion photos (which I dislike the class) and I'm just way to tiered to do them.
So as I work on the photos I"m downloading a rented movie from I Tunes and I'll go to the grocery store and find a substitue for popcorn and curl up on my bed, b/c the couch is not comfortable and watch the movie later tonight.

Great food and wine.

So about a week ago my roommates and I went on a free trip to a wine estate in Chianti. Wow oh wow what an amazing trip. 

We thought we'd see the cellar taste a wine or two and go home, maybe there would be some bread and olive oil.... Oh no no no no. It was so much more then that!

First of the estate Verazzano is amazing! The land and building is Beautiful. (there will eventually be pictures). The man who owns it talked about the land, the history and his passion for wine. "Do not drink the wine only to get drunk. Do not only drink the wine, drink it with the food, it makes the happiness last longer." 

We got to see the wine cellar with the large barrels that are built into the cellar the old bottles of wine, the white grapes drying for Vino Santo.

Then they take us into this dining hall and we sit down at a fully set table, 2 bottles of wine open on each table. One an everyday wine, and the other the chianti classico. 

The first course was a great pasta dish with tomato sauce, then we had bread and olive oil on the table. They also served salami, and prosciutto, and boar meat, salad, white beans in olive oil, and then cheeses with their amazing balsamic vinegar drizzled over the top. We also got to try the chianti classico resierva, and then they gave us vino santo with almond biscotti. I've never eaten or drank so well in my life. It was one of the best afternoons I've had since I've been here.

Fall Break. Part 4 - Paris

Click on the pictures for better viewings.


Paris, this is where most my photos are probably, I wish I had had at least one more day there.
The city of lights, and the home of the Louvre, and of course Crapes with banana and nutella, and Ecliars (yum) It was a great time, After I got over the fact that no one speaks English and I know no French. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris


The first day was super cold and rainy, and the first thing I saw was my crappy hotel room. It was in a bad neighborhood and the place was so bad that I didn't use the toilet and the stairs were so badly damaged by water I thought I would fall through. I left, and found a hostel to stay in that was better. But I did take a picture of the view from the first place:







So to get the thought of such an awful hotel off my mind I decided to check out the one and only Louvre! It was pretty amazing. I didn't get a picture of the pyramid underground, but the ones on the above ground level were pretty amazing. The French don't seem to like things when they are first constructed. They hated the Eiffel Tower, and they hated these as well.
The Lourve was amazing it self was pretty amazing. I saw only the biggies, I didn't have time for anything else: Venus de Milo, Nike, The Mona Lisa, and a few others. Lisa is smaller then you would think. I think my favorite was the Nike.




This was the view out side The Louvre. I ate an expensive, but really good sandwich looking at this.


Did I mention that it was cold and foggy that day? But totaly amazing!




This was from the L’Orangerie with Monet’s water lilies. They're in a big white oval room. Just amazing!



Notre Dame-






One of the rose windows, there was mass going on for All Saints Day so I couldn't get a good look at the main one.




All Art Nuvoue fans will know about these famous metro signs.



This is the metro stop right before the Tower.





And this is the Tower, I had no idea it would be sooooo amazingly large!
<------ There's me way at the bottom.












This was the last thing I saw before I left Paris. It stop raining right before I went to see it.



It was a great great fall break!

Fall Break. Part 3 - Vienna

Vienna the capital of Austria, and the largest city in Austria. It's known for it's opera and the Hofburg family.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna


This is the view from my hostel:







This is their main cathedral:






This is a tribute to God, asking for mercy from the Black Plague:




This is the inside of the Opera:
The Chandelier


Grand Staircase



The outside of the Opera House:



Famous Swarovski crystals:



This is part of the park of the Schonbrunn Palace.


More of the Gardens, they make the Bobili Gardens here look like child's play. It even has the worlds oldest zoo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6nbrunn_Palace






The actual Palace:




Some sort of yummy pastry with a cinnamon concoction inside.





Yummy Sandwich:

Fall Break. Part 2 - Salzburg

Salzburg was my next stop for my fall break. It was a cute city, full of green hills, distant mountains, and smiling Austrians. It's known for the fact that Mozart was born and lived there for about 25 years, and the Von Trapp family and their famous singing talent of course. Also another interesting fact, it was the American center of occupation in Austria during WWII. Again the Wiki has more info for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salzburg

The Hostel I stayed in there was cute, and colorful, they play "The Sound of Music" was played ever night at 8pm. The city center is green and beautiful. The birth house of Mozart was sadly disapointing. They tried to make it into something high modern art, but it just comes off as cheesey, though the house he lived in for most of his time in Salzburg is much better. It was fun to look around and see all the places that were used in the filmming of Sound of Music, they used all of the historic center. Sadly the large fountain they sing infront of in the movie was under constrauction when I was there, but in most of my pictures you will see famous places of the movie.






This is St. Peters Catheadral:





This is the main shopping street, everyone has to have a rodiorn sign:



Me and the man of the city:



Winerzsnizel, french fries, and a Salzburg beer:


Some sort of yummy sausage with curry powder in a bun.


Me in the famous gardens used in "SOM":


Part of the open market:


More of the gardens:



This is an old horse fountain, the equivalent to a modernday car wash: