Out and About in Italia!

Hi!

A blog update sooo soon?!?! Awesome! Lately I've been doing some travels around Northern Italy (even though Frommers doesn't consider Florence to be really party of the North). First I got to do a day trip to Bolzano & Castelrotto! These towns are up in the Dolomites, and part of Italy that used to be Austria. This leads to the interesting situation of them not really wanting to admit they are Italian, and so everyone speaks German. The fun thing about Bolzano is it is where the Ice Man lives!

Ice Man Link you can't take pictures of the Ice Man so I included a link to his Wiki page, are some pictures of the town! This is Castelrotto, it's a really small town about 50 minutes by bus from Bolzano. You can read about it in Rick Steves ;). Terese and I went hiking while we were there and took the Path of Peace. It was pretty cool.

The next little Italian European adventure was with the group to Asiago, which is also in the Dolomites. The 10 of us spend a whole weekend in Asiago, watching them make cheese, horseback riding, and ice skating. This is Claudio and the owner of cheese factory, aka "The Big Cheese." They took us through the whole factory, it takes about a year and a half from the milking of the cow until hits the grocery store shelf, and that's just the young stuff. This is me stealing a wheel of cheese. These wheels by themselves are worth about 500euro! WHOA! We also went horseback riding, and that was a little scary. Only because we were on the edge of cliff and my horse was blind in one eye, so he couldn't really see! On Sunday we went ice skating and practiced our triple axles!

The next adventure happened to be Florence! Whoo! What a beautiful city! We took a bus tour of the city and got to see it from the top of hills. That is a picture of me demonstrating how tall I am! You know who is tall? The David! We went to see him in the Academia. Very impressive. There are two other fake David statues in Florence, one is where the original used to stand in the middle of town and the other is a bronze version and stands in Piazza del Michangelo. There is the bronze version. He is surrounded by 4 other Michangelo statues representing the seasons. The bus tour was really fun, and very informative. After that we did some walking and got some gelato. Gelato was invented in Florence around 1548, by an amateur chef in a cooking contest.

Other than those mini-trips things have been pretty laid back in Verona. I will now leave you with two funny youtube links about Italy.

Europe and Italy - this one is VERY TRUE! Especially about the waiting in lines thing!

The Italian Man Who Went to Malta - this one is about Italian accents. Even the Italians think it's funny!

Hope everything is well! Happy Halloween!

Love,

Heather

Roamin' Around

Hey All!

Sorry it's been so long! Busy busy busy (well not with school, but we'll get to that later)! So I spent one more weekend with my parents in Rome!

Okay There are my parents! This is them outside the trevi fountain putting their coins in, in hopes they will return to Italy one day! I'm sure they will! They had a fabulous time. While we were in Rome we saw the Pantheon, the Forum, the Colosseum, the Trevi fountain, the Spanish Stairs, Vatican City, and much more!

In case you were wondering how big the columns at the Forum are here is a little photo that can you give a scale view of them: . There I hope that was helpful! Okay we also got to eat dinner at a fabulous restaurant near the Colosseum the first night we were there: . So here it is at night, they use it to broadcast ads off of. No joke! Don't worry we visited it during the day when there were no ads, and Dad and I had a disagreement on whether the gladiator should live or die: . That happens though. He would ultimately win because women didn't really count and they had to stand on the top tear of the Colosseum along with "slaves and foreigners." Emma and her friend also came in for the weekend and we had a huge Italian dinner the last night we were all there. Sorry, I didn't get any pictures of the food this time. Rome was fun, a little dirty, but very fun!

The following weekend. After my parents left, I headed back to Verona for some intense class. We really did have class at least 3 days! That weekend my friend Brittany and I headed to Sweden for the weekend! Whoo! It was fun to go to somewhere completely different than Italy! Sweden was really nice, and though this picture doesn't do it justice the weather wasn't that bad! In Sweden we went to the Nobel Prize Museum, The Palace, The August Strimberg Museum (Brittany is a theatre major), did some shopping and of course got a drink at the Absolut Ice Bar!!

That's Me in my Absolut Ice Bar coat and furry hood. You have to wear them in the bar to keep your body temperature up, and they are specially designed to release only a small portion of heat to keep the bar at temperature. Behind me you can see the cups made of ice on the bar, and the bartender wearing a furry hat! It was a lot of fun! We also ate some delicious Swedish meatballs and tried Reindeer! Yum!

Okay so those have been the adventure for the past few weeks! This weekend I am going on a group trip to Asiago which is where they make Asiago cheese. Yay! Cheese factory!

Hope all is well with everyone! Stay safe!

Love,

Heather

Sorry It's Been Awhile

Hi Everyone!

Sorry it's been a week, but we've been busy! And when I say 'we' I mean my parents are still in town and they are wearing me out! Since they arrived we've been for Venice, Sienna, Verona, Lake Como and today we are leaving for Rome. They have been more places, but I had class. I tried to get a slide show on this post, but it didn't work so instead it is on the sidebar next to this post. You can click on it and it will take you to the album where you can click through the pictures and read the captions.

A quick rundown:

1. The first weekend we spent in Verona just seeing the sites. They learned all about Romeo and Juliet!

2. Me and some friends went to go meet up with them in Venice and we checked out lunch with them. :)

3. Over the weekend we went to Lake Como to find George Clooney. Instead we found some good shoes, and rode in a miniture train! Whoo! The weather was gorgeous and the lake was beautiful!

4. On Tuesday my friend and I met my parents in Sienna where we visited the Church of St. Catherine and saw her preserved head and thumb. We also when to the Duomo and saw a statue by Michelangelo!

5. Today I am going to meet them in Rome for the weekend and they are flying out on Sunday :(. It's been a whirlwind 2 weeks and this post didn't do it justice, but check out the slide show and I promise next time will be better!

Love & Miss you!

Heather