We traveled to Nice, France a few weeks ago and it was one amazing town! It has a beautiful coast and since we got there pretty late the first night, we just grabbed a bottle of wine and sat on the beach. It was very nice. We explored a little bit before going back to the hostel and I discovered what became a reoccurring theme, France’s obsession with flowers.

For instance we went to this famous candy factory while we were there and they made dried candied flowers, chocolate covered flowers, and marmalade made of violets and roses. That first night we went to a gelato shop and I got the violet flavor and it was sooo good. Not to mention the famous flower market we stopped by and where I bought flower scented soaps.

The second day we wandered around Nice and it is a truly beautiful city. It was warm enough for us to dip our feet into the ocean and sun bathe on the beach. The next day we took a 30 minute bus ride to Monaco, a small country right next to France, with! its own Prince. Unfortunately, even though we went to the Prince’s Palace, we didn’t catch the sight of any royalty. If given the chance I would definitely recommend Monaco as an afternoon side trip. It is very small but also extremely beautiful.

My experience in France was just…amazing!

There’s some truly remarkable people in my program. People who will cook a full on Turkey dinner and invite me to come! I have to say I was just grateful for the invite but the dinner they cooked up was amazing! Including a full-on huge Turkey! I also have to thank those that contributed roasted veggies, stuffing, squash, brownies, and pumpkin pie!!!

I am thankful for:

• My friends and family
• My experience here in Italy
• All of my travels
• The good friends I have met here
• Home. Because I’m looking forward to return to you.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mosquitoes

As requested: More observations from Italia!

-Italy has ninja mosquitoes. I’m serious. Even with all the windows closed they still magically made it into our apartment. Every morning during the warm weather me and my roommates would wake up and compare the new bites we had gotten during the night. I usually got 2 or 3 on my arms.

-Not only are these mosquitoes ninjas, they are also impenetrable to cold! It’s the end of November and I woke up with 3 bites the other day. Ridiculous!

Caffè

-A Caffè is really an espresso shot.

-A Macchiato is a Caffè plus a little milk.

-A Macchiato Latte is a cup of milk with a little espresso.

-A Cappuccino is a Caffè with steamed milk, and is very frothy.

-A Caffè Corretto is a Caffè plus Grapa or Brandy

-And finally, a Caffè Lungo or Caffè Americano is what we drink back home.

These are the things you learn in Italy =)

Musica

-I came here expecting to listen to Italian music, I mean why wouldn’t I? This didn’t really happen because it seems wherever I am, whether the discoteca or the supermercato, all’s they play is American music. It’s random but amusing to be walking down the pasta isle singing along to Lady Gaga on the radio.

-Even so, this is all fine because of what I’ve heard of Italian music I don’t like. I’m no expert but even the Italians, when they ask if we like their music, say that’s it is “different”. What they mean is that it is very…sweet. I mean like sugary 90′s boy band sweet, like 12 year old-Twilight-obsessed-girl sweet. Take this guy Eros Romazzotti, he’s a perfect example…

Watch his video here if you want, since the man won’t let his videos be embedded, but beware I couldn’t even make it half way through so I don’t really expect you to! Lol.

Then again if were talking the classics you can’t beat Andrea Boceli =) You might not recognize the name but you should recognize the song.

That’s all I got for now. If you want more let me know! There might even be part 3, who knows!? =D

Money

Random observations from my time in Italia:

1. People here love coins. I guess when you have change thats worth 1 and 2 euro a piece this tends to happen. One thing I had to get used to was caring about coins. Back home if I dropped a penny or a nickel who cares! Drop a coin here and you could be out 3 bucks without realizing it.
2. In fact people here love change so much they want to keep coins all to themselves. It is highly expected in Italy for you to pay with exact change, or reasonably close to exact change. You might remember from my first post I made it Italy about the angry man at the airport who wouldn’t let me pay with a 20 for an 11 euro ticket. Well now I know why. If a cashier doesn’t have the change to pay you, it’s your fault not theres!
3. The bancomats frequently dispense 50 euro bills here. Don’t even consider trying to break one of these at any small bar, convince store, or even the supermarket, even if it’s the only bill you have. If they do let you use it, they glare at  you viciously the entire time.

Movies

1. Movie theaters here have assigned seating and if you get there late enough you are not even guaranteed that the seats will be together!
2. Most movies have an intermission in the middle of the movie. This is a brilliant idea. I can get all the pop I want when there’s a 5 minute bathroom break in the middle. =D

Public

1. There are no lines in Italy!!! When waiting for something the Italians merely clump together. Do not be surprised if someone simply comes around from the side to skip to the front. My advice? Don’t fight it, embrace it. It’s actually quite liberating once you get used to it.
2. Buying a train ticket guarantees you get from point A to point B. What it does not promise you is a seat. You must pay extra for a guarantee, or else you can just stand!
3. Italians love to stare. If you want them to stop, my suggestion, stare back!

Boys vs. Girls

1. Girls, men will not chase you down the street cat calling you. They very rarely will say anything and when they do, yes it is the stereotypical ”Ciao bella!” However, they do tend to stand in groups and will stop all conversation as you walk by. I myself don’t find this particularly insulting. In fact, when I go home and walk down the street and the boys don’t stop and stare I’m going to wonder what’s wrong with me! Lol.
2. Men, don’t come to Italy looking for Italian girls. For whatever reason most of them won’t want anything to do with you. Not a fact just a general observation. Don’t believe me? Ask the 30 very frustrated men in my program =)
3. Ladies, don’t look for an Italian man at a club. They are only there to meet American girls and once they’ve found you, they do expect you to sleep with them. I mean all American girls are easy, right?

Some of these things make me long for home, but some of them I know I will miss as soon as I get there. I think that as I remember more observations I might do a part 2 of the post. Let me know what you think. =)

Ahhhh cooking class, one of my favorite things here! I decided that I’ve failed at updating you guys on all my cooking adventures and thought I would share with you an awesome recipe for some very strange Italian cookies. Called Gialetti Romagnoli, the cookies are made up of lemon, raisins and pine nuts, and can be topped with dark chocolate and cocoa poweder. Sounds crazy I know but it was delicious if I do say so myself! Now don’t worry I’ll translate both the Italian words and measurements for you guys.

A few things to know before we start. Italian’s have a both inconvenient and overly fancy way of describing amounts of ingredients. For instance,  baking powder here comes in pre-measured packets called una bastina di baking powder. Now a bustina is a packet, unfortunately in America you can’t find these pre-made packages but no worries, after much research I discovered the American equivalent. As for the fancy side of measurement descriptions, my next bit of trouble was the ingredient Latte q.b. which stands for quanto basta meaning ‘enough quantity’. Basically it’s just a super shortened way of saying ‘as much as needed’. They also like to use handfuls as a measurement like in uva passa: una manciata. Now since there’s no way for me to quantify the size of a handful, just put in as much as you want. Now for the actual recipe…

Gialetti Romagnoli

Italian                                                                              English

• Ingredienti:                                                                    Ingredients:
• Farina di mais 600 gr                                                Corn Flour 21 oz
• Farina 00 350 gr                                                         Flour 12 oz
• Zucchero 200 gr                                                         Sugar 7 oz
• Burro 300 gr                                                                 Butter 10.5 oz (melted)
• Uva passa una manciata                                          Handful of Raisins (Your discretion)
• Pinoli una manciata                                                   Handful of Pine Nuts (Your discretion)
• 1 limone                                                                          1 lemon
• Vanillina                                                                         1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1 bustina di baking powder                                     2 1/2 teaspoons of Baking Powder
• Poco sale                                                                        Pinch of salt
• Latte q.b.                                                                        Milk  (As much as needed)

Note: I should translate these instructions in to perfect english, but if a sentence sounds amusing because of the translation issues, I’m totally keeping it. I.E. Bathe the raisins in tepid water. =D

Procedimento (Procedure)

Bathe the raisins in tepid water. Mix well the corn and regular flour and create a “fountain”. Okay the fountain is basically a large circle of flour that you create on a clean counter top. In the middle of this “fountain” pour the melted butter, salt, vanilla and baking powder. Take the lemon and grate the skin to your discretion, add to the center, and, mix everything together slowly. It should look like this…

Combine the ingredients well and add milk until the dough is “homogeneous” and “firm” (can roll into a ball). Form the dough into medium sized balls, place them on a cookie sheet and press down slightly. Bake for 15 minutes at 390 degrees. After baking you can add a dusting of cocoa powder or melt dark chocolate as a coating.

 

 

 

Gialetti Romagnoli are made of strange ingredients and are made in a kind of  strange way but I really enjoyed them. Let me know if anyone makes them!

Until next time, Ciao!!!

Oh no my readers! I’ve slacked off again and I must catch up! We just finished finals here and its only 38 days until I return home. Gasp…shock…I know the time as flown by. Still trying to retain some semblance of order lets talk about Verona!

Ahhh the city of love! Relatively small but still amazingly beautiful. One of the first things we did, and something everyone must do, is went to see Juliet’s balcony. The first thing you notice when you walk in to the courtyard is thousands and thousands of couple’s names written in marker on the wall or on paper posted with anything available. It was touching, and personally made me feel both lonely at hopeful at the same time. Below the balcony is the statue of Juliet, in which it is customary to go up and rub her breast for good luck. There was literally a line down the courtyard of people waiting to do this and take a picture.

After we hiked up to the highest point in the city to see the amazing view of city. Beautiful!!!

As far as Verona, definitely worth a day trip. It is small and there’s not that much to do so I wouldn’t stay there long but going for a few hours is worth it!

The Palace of Venaria, one of the many residences of the Kings of Savoy. We had a ‘field study’ day to this palace near Torino, which basically means they forced us to go for class. The tour really wasn’t that bad though and the place was beautiful! I  honestly wasn’t going to write about it because I honestly don’t have that much to say but I was looking through my photos and the architecture of the place was enough in itself to write a blog post on, so I thought why not.

One of the first things we saw was this fountain. It’s what our tour guide called a ‘disappearing fountain’ the spouts are below ground so if it’s not on then you really can’t tell it’s there. From the picture you can tell it is beautiful but what you can’t see is that the entire thing was set to classical music. The spouts would go soft during the slow graceful periods of the music and then shout to life making designs just using water that perfectly corresponded to the beats in the music. It was so cool. I literally sat and watched it for 10 minutes with this huge smile on my face.

My favorite part of the actual palace on the inside was this exquisite corridor. We asked what the Savoy’s used it for and our tour guide said that ‘…it was used as a corridor’. Those crazy Kings and their fancy ass hallways. Seriously it actually really reminded me of the mansion from Pride and Prejudice, I kept expecting Mr. Darcy to appear at any moment and sweep me of my feet.

And last but not least was the gardens that were outside of the palace. Our tour guide said that they had only begun restoring them, in both the traditional Italian and French style, a few years ago so nothing was fully grown yet. You could tell the garden still needed a few years to really flourish but I bet if I went back in 5 to 10 years it would be the most spectacular garden I had ever seen.

So if you ever in Torino, definitely go visit! Very much worth it!

I went to my first soccer/futbol/calcio game! It was so much freaking fun. If you didn’t know Italians are craaaazy about soccer! There’s two teams in Milano, AC Milan and Inter. I would pretend that I know a whole bunch about the two but honestly I got here and just asked a bunch of people who I should root for. The overwhelming answer, INTER! The reasoning? Burlusconi owns AC, and most young folk hate Burlasconi so there ya go. I’m sure there’s a little more to it then that but…whatever. I’ll cheer for pretty much any team so it’s all good.

The game was so much fun. We got cheap tickets all the way at the top but it was worth it. I think the best thing about seeing a game here is how much people get into it! Every time something good or bad happened the fans were jumping up in their seats. Even in between cheering or booing there was always a song or a chant being sung. It is impossible to be bored! Definitely an awesome experience especially since Inter won! With a goal at the last second no less. I am definitely going back!

A few weekends ago we went to Lugano, Switzerland. Only an hour away by train from Milano it has to be one of best places I have visited so far. It had this small town charm but was still a big enough city that there were enough activities to do. It was also  beautifully set on Lake Lugano with the Alps circling all around. So pretty.

The other thing that really made the trip was that there was an autumn festival going on the weekend we were there. The whole square was filled with bands in costume playing traditional instruments and people selling roasted chestnuts and freshly-made pumpkin soup. There were also massive tents serving traditional foods out of huge vats. When we first got there, I was starving and ended up following the most delicious smell to this tent. I found four chefs with huge wooden poles stirring vats of polenta, soup, beef, and tripe. When they saw us taking pictures, they even let us come inside and stir them ourselves! We of course went back there for lunch, and I got tripe (sheep’s stomach), soup, and some sausage; it was the best lunch ever. Of course we also tried all the fair food that was around -meat on a stick, chestnuts, free grapes, and naturally we bought some Swiss chocolate. It was wonderful! I was soo stuffed by the end of lunch.

Afterwards we took a ferry boat ride to sight-see around Lugano and went to a small town nearby. They have a hiking trail there called the Olive Path that we took all the way back to Lugano before going home. The whole experience was wonderful.

Next stop Nice, France! =D

I know I’m a little behind on my travel updates but I promise I’ll catch up soon. Right now I am way to excited about Cooking Class. Ah! We are taking professional lessons from a real chef in my Cooking and Conversation Class. We cook in this huge kitchen at Teatro 7 , a cooking school and restaurant. We went for the first time today it was so freaking amazing!

It was just a 2 hour class but we made Risotto alla Milanese and Maiale and Patate (Pork and Potatoes). The entire lesson was in Italian too so that made it a little more complicated but still awesome. The chef’s name was Ricardo and he did such a good job. Made it perfectly clear what we were doing and why. Plus our teacher was there to help out…and also quiz us on random kitchen vocab. I got to help make the pork mostly. I learned that when breading them you should dust the fillet in flour before the egg and the bread crumbs and also that somehow making diagonal indents with the back of your knife helps it cook better. As for the Risotto alla Milanese it just means Risotto Milan style. It differs from regular Risotto because ,one, it’s made with butter not oil, a typical Milanese distinction, and two, it is made with Saffron which gives it its color and taste. There’s an awesome recipe here.

I’m so glad that this is the only class I have on Thursdays because we were able to sit and eat lunch with the chef as long as we wanted, they even served us coffee after the delicious meal we helped prepare!

We get to go 5 more times through out the course of the semester and I just might have to update you guys every time I go because it’s so freaking amazing! So happy =)