Venice

      On Monday May 16th, we took a train from Florence to Venice in the morning.  Our class got a little confused at the train station but we eventually figured it out and found everyone.  Venice was beautiful!  I was surprised because most of the waterways were huge and I was expecting a ton of little water canals between the building like in the cartoons I used to watch.  First, we took a private boat to our hotel was on Lido Island, and then ate lunch at the Roxy (it was really delicious so Mark and I ate dinner there later).  Then we took the aqua bus to the main island for a walking tour of Venice.  We did a lot of sight seeing and visited Doge’s Palace.

            Tuesday morning we went to the cruise ship terminal for a meeting about marketing for the cruises.  The ships were huge, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to go on a cruise considering how easily I get motion sickness.  In the afternoon we went to Murano Island, which is now my favorite shopping place.  It is an island with a bunch of handmade glass factories and stores.  I love getting handmade items because I think they’re unique.  We watched a glass blower make a cobalt blue spotted tumbler and a glass horse.  After buying a few souvenirs in the gift shop we went to lunch and had a delicious past with pesto sauce.

            After lunch Mark and I took a boat back to our hotel and then took a walk to the beach.  The beach was really spacious and it had some neat little snack shops and restaurants on it.  We took a walk on the beach and we had to be careful walking by the water because there were tons on seashells.  Later on, we had our last dinner in Italy.  

            On Wednesday May 18th we took a boat from our hotel to the airport in the morning.  We had a layover in Philadelphia then got on a small plane to Pittsburgh… we had no idea, but apparently there were tornados in Philadelphia that day and there was tons of turbulence.  We finally landed in Pittsburgh around 6:30.  I was glad to be back, but now I miss it a lot!  Hopefully I’ll have plenty more chance to travel there again.

Florence

            On Wednesday May 11 we took a bus from Rome to the Agriturismo Poderi Arcangelo right outside of Florence in Tuscany.  Our bus Eddie was really skilled, he took us up a tiny road and across a tiny bridge, we thought we were going to fall off the side of the road and Eddie was calling his boss and yelling at him in Italian.  Then when we got to the agriturismo we found out we took the wrong road and there was a wider road up for busses.  We ate lunch there and had the best spaghetti I have ever tasted.  It was amazing!  We also had a small wine tasting with lunch.. 2 red wines, 1 white wine, and 1 dessert wine.  Here’s a link to the farm’s website http://www.poderiarcangelo.it/. We also went on a little tour and saw one of the rooms they rent out for vacations; it was really nice I’d love to stay there for a vacation some day.  I also bought a couple bottles of wine and a bottle of olive oil as souvenirs in the gift shop.
           

      After lunch we got back on the bus and took the wider road to go see San Gimignano.  It’s a really old town with a bunch of stone towers.  We did not get to stay there very long, but I wish we had because it had a lot of shops with handmade items I would have like to browse.  Then we got back on the bus and headed to another agriturismo outside of Florence Castello del Trebbio.

            Castello del Trebbio was built by the Pazzi family… there was a big conspiracy with this family and the Pope to kill the de’Medici brothers back in the fourteen hundreds… but the whole thing led to “pazzi or pazzo” being a common phrase for “crazy” in Italy today.  

            The next day we went on a tour of the castle and had a wine tasting with lunch.  Then we had some free time to relax by the pool at the guys spacious villa (the girls had a three bedroom apartment, but it was pretty nice because there was only 5 of us).  Later we went to a cooking class in the castle where the owners mother-in-law taught us how to make homemade pasta, a creamy vegetable sauce, and a tomato meat sauce.  Then they brought up the food we made to eat on the back porch of the guy’s villa.  After dinner Mark and I went to the restaurant with a couple friends and sample four desserts… they were AMAZING.
          

 

     We left very early in the morning on Friday the 13th for Florence.  We went on a tour of the high school for marketing there... which ended up being a kind of pointless way to spend 3 hours in Florence.  Then we went to lunch and to a meeting at the tourism board, which was boring (sitting in a hot room, in the dark during a PowerPoint presentation) but at least was more useful than the high school visit.  On Saturday we went on a walking tour of Florence and visited the Uffizi Gallery, Ponte Vecchio, Accademia Gallery, and the Duomo.  Later that night mark and I went on a walk where we found a building with the name Biliotti on it which is almost the same as Mark’s last name Billotti.  After taking a picture of Mark and his family’s building we went to get gelato!
           

    

Sunday was our last day in Florence, Mark and I did some sight seeing.  It was kind of chilly and rainy so we did not do too much besides go out for lunch and dinner and walk around a little.