After my sister and I returned from Florence and Venice, we just had a week left in Italy before we were both going home to the US. And it was my chance to show off my knowledge of Rome as I played tour guide to my sister, taking her to all the best spots in the city. It was fun to revisit a lot of the big monuments and try to remember everything I had learned in my classes. It was frustrating at some points, though, having to deal with the crowds of tourists all over the place. You’d think it would be off-season in December, which I think it technically is, but the crowds say otherwise! I don’t think there is ever a true off-season in Rome. Which must suck if you live there—to never be able to see some of the major sites in the city where you live without being surrounded by thousands of tourists.

Anyways, in addition to taking my sister around Rome, I had finals this week. I had already taken my Italian finals in September and October, which meant I only had to write two final papers for English class and take a final exam in Theology. It was a bit of a stressful week with everything I had going on, but I made it through. We even squeezed in a trip to the Opera Ballet at the National Theatre. It was gorgeous and the music was amazing! Definitely recommend seeing an opera or play if you come to Italy!

The other thing I liked was that because my sister was here, I took her to all my favorite restaurants in Rome, which was a great culinary send-off my final week there! She of course agreed that the food here is phenomenal! And she couldn’t believe how much food my host mom forces down us! She said she’d be sick if she ate that way every night. Now she understands what I’d been talking about. The food is amazing, don’t get me wrong, but the portions and number of courses are out of control! It’s not this way with all the host families, I just got the host mom that’s trying to plump us up! I will definitely miss her cooking, but I will be glad to be able to eat more reasonable portions back home.

Well I was so glad my sister was able to visit me and share this wonderful experience of being in Italy. Venice was her favorite place too! It was cool that she got to see three great Italian cities, and she was glad to have an insider’s tour of Rome. I think that’s one of the best things while you’re studying abroad—to have your family visit so you can show them around the city and/or country you’ve come to know in your months abroad. Playing tour guide can be a lot of fun, and it shows your family just how much you’ve learned and how valuable this experience has been for you. I can’t believe how well I’ve gotten to know Rome! It’s like a second home to me. I hope to return to live there someday. In fact, I know I will. It’s a part of me now, and I will greatly miss Rome—even with all its craziness!

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My sister’s and my favorite activity of the day was feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s square. It was a little disgusting, but mostly fun. And we laughed so hard throughout it that we cried and had black eyes from our smeared mascara. See, what you can do is go up to one of the pigeon feed stands and buy a packet of corn in a little white envelope for 1 Euro. As soon as that envelope hits your hand (or glove, in my case), the fun begins. There must be about a thousand pigeons in that square, and I don’t think any of them fear humans. And when they see that white envelope, they know what you have. I was up first, with my sister videotaping. The pigeons swarmed and started landing on me as soon as I moved away from the feed stand. I started freaking out, bending my head over and swatting at the pigeon on my head. I hadn’t even opened the envelope or revealed any corn and they were already all over me! Once I managed to get through the pecking to open the bag of corn, it got even crazier. I didn’t mind them all being on my arms and such, but I didn’t let any stay on my head for very long because I really didn’t want to end up with any little reminders of pigeon in my hair. I played around with the corn, letting the birds eat it out of my hand, throwing some, and then decided to entice some and try to catch a pigeon. It was too easy. I caught a number of them and held each in my hands for my sister to see. It took the pigeons a few minutes to realize I had run out of food; some were still attacking the white envelope in search of more.

I went to take the bags and camera from my sister and told her “Your turn” as I tried to brush the pigeon feathers and residue off my fleece jacket. I had just as much fun watching my sister get attacked and catching it all on video. I was laughing so hard sometimes, I couldn’t keep the camcorder still! Especially when she started freaking out when they were pecking her hands and asked me “How did you feed them?” I was like, “Just put your hand out! Flat—like this.” I showed her. “No, I know! But it hurts!” She replied. “Oh—I had gloves on,” I realized what she meant. After being thoroughly mobbed by pigeons and trying her hand at catching some too, my sister threw her final handful of corn—at me. That was fun. A brief swarm of pigeons in my direction. Then we walked out of the center of St. Mark’s square with what dignity we could to the sidewalk where we attempted to clean up some. Even as we walked away, my sister and I each had a pigeon friend on our arms; they stayed until they finally got the memo that we were out of food. Then they departed. As we cleaned ourselves off with napkins and Wet-Ones, we realized that maybe we should have eaten lunch before feeding the pigeons.

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Our second day in Venice was a wet one, unfortunately. At least up until the point when we bought an umbrella from a street vendor. Then the rain stopped. How convenient. It was still a good and full day, though. We started the day at the Gallerie dell’Academia, which houses some beautiful art, mostly religious themed. Then we hopped on the waterbus to go to a church that we thought was described as a “grotesque Baroque monstrosity” by one of our guide books (although we later discovered this was not the correct church). Naturally, we had to see it. It was quite ornate and busy on the outside, although the indoor décor was a bit more tame. The church is called La Chiesa della Salute, meaning the Church of the Health (of Christianity). After being harassed by a beggar woman who thought she owned the place and demanded that Mary (“Santa Maria”) requires that we give her 2 Euro to enter, we made it inside.

We wandered around in the rain (this is pre umbrella purchase) to find a coffee bar, which we did. The owner was very rude although he let us have our espresso for free because he didn’t want to break my 20 Euro. Yeah—if you ever go to Italy, try to carry nothing larger than 5 Euro bills because Italians really hate to give change! Once when I bought a cappuccino and pastry at the Snack Bar by my school, totaling 1.60 Euro, I tried to pay with a 10 Euro bill. The cashier woman looked in my change purse, pointed, and made me scrounge up all my 50, 20, and 5 cent pieces to give her for the payment rather than just giving me some change (which she had plenty of in that open cash register). And if you ever have one of those dreaded 50 or even worse 100 Euro bills, well you’ll find yourself cringing and saying “Mi dispiace” (I’m sorry) all over the place when you see the glares you get when you try to pay for something under 10 Euro.

Anyways, enough of the tangent. After the angry coffee bar man encounter, we tried to find our way back to the bus stop a different way than we came. Big mistake. There is pretty much only one road to any where in Venice. Unlike Rome where you can wander through millions of crooked little alleyways and get completely lost but then still end up where you’re trying to go, in Venice you get a lot of dead ends, bridges, and canals. We were walking along this one canal—in the ever-strengthening rain—that looked like it would hook back up with the bus stop piazza, when a couple passed us on the way telling us that it dead ends. So, we turned around and trudged back the way we came, getting more and more wet.

The bus took us to La Piazza di San Marco, where we ducked inside another, more friendly (albeit more expensive) coffee bar for snacks and warmth. Then we bought an umbrella and headed into St. Mark’s church. The church was gorgeous and covered in beautiful mosaics. Although entrance into the church was technically free, it cost a couple of Euros here and there to see any of the side things (the treasury, the artwork behind the altar up-close, the upstairs). We decided to go upstairs, where we could walk around an indoor balcony circling the church and providing close views of the ceiling mosaics as well as go outside on the balcony with the four horse statues (although the real ones were indoors to save them from the elements and the ones outside were just replicas). After looking out onto the square from our lofty position, we descended into the now rain-free square to check it out. And then we fed the pigeons (see “The Birds” blog for this tale).

Still laughing from our pigeon adventures, we window-shopped at all the cute gift shops as we wandered looking for a place to grab lunch. We found a cute place, and although it was a little expensive, decided to go for it anyways since that would mean they would probably have a nice bathroom and the place would be heated. It felt sooo nice to defrost in the warm restaurant; we had a strategically placed table, right under the heat vent. After cleaning up in the bathroom from our pigeon experience, we ordered some pasta, and enjoyed a tasty final meal in Venice! I got delicious cheese gnocchi and my sister got a hearty pasta bean soup. We didn’t want to head back into the cold, but we bundled ourselves in our jackets and scarves and traipsed outside.

The afternoon was all about jewelry and glass shopping! We found a shopping area (away from the pricey St. Mark’s square shops) and went door to door looking at all sorts of Murano glass products, which were gorgeous! A few purchases and a couple hundred Euro later, we gathered our bags of gifts (for others and ourselves, naturally!), and started to walk towards our hotel, hoping we’d be able to easily navigate the way. It took us a lot less time than we thought to find our way back, which was fortunate because it allowed us some resting and defrosting time in the hotel bar and lounge. We grabbed some free tea and cookies, and then we collapsed in two comfy chairs in the bar. It felt great to just sit and be warm. We were exhausted and killed the next hour in the hotel until we finally asked for our luggage and then proceeded to the dock to catch the waterbus to the train station. As we walked up the stairs from the water, we said our goodbyes to Venezia, promising to return to the beautiful city again, together, someday.

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I think Venice was my favorite place in Italy. It’s a tough decision, but the city was so beautiful and unlike anywhere I’d ever been. I had heard it was beautiful and that there was some great Murano glass gifts to be found, but I had no idea how much I’d love it until I finally visited it. My sister and I traveled to Venice from Florence early Sunday morning (managing to catch our train despite a rumored train strike for the day!).

We arrived at the train station, right on the water, and bought some tickets for the water-bus. That’s what struck me the most. The no cars, no motorized vehicles thing was absolutely amazing. Just boats, waterbuses, water-taxis to get around the city on the canals. So we hopped on the public transportation of Venice aka a boat, and took it a few stops down to the Ca d’Oro dock, which was conveniently just a couple of blocks from our hotel. We rolled our little suitcases down the non-crowded streets to discover we had booked a room in the cutest hotel in Venice! My sister and I fell in love with it! It just had the cutest décor inside, with a little lounge, bar, tea room, and breakfast room. They had complimentary afternoon tea, coffee, and sweet biscuits/ snacks. And breakfast was included in the morning, which was delicious. It was rather reasonably priced as well, so if you ever need a hotel recommendation for Venice, just ask me!

Anyways, after settling in and defrosting a bit, we explored the hotel and had some tea and coffee in the tea room. Then we decided to just wander from the hotel and see what we found, with the hope of grabbing a bite to eat somewhere. In the area closest to the hotel, there were some touristy places and restaurants open and people about, but as we walked further away, it was like a ghost town! There were no signs of life—just quiet, deserted streets. It was so weird and different to be somewhere like that in Italy! But we just kept wandering, crossing back and forth over the random bridges everywhere. And when we thought we were totally lost, we decided to try to head back from where we came, and surprisingly somehow we made it all the way back to our hotel without even breaking out a map! We impressed ourselves.

In our wandering, we managed to pass through the square of the church of Sts. John and Paul, which is one of the major churches in Venice. We also found a little gift shop where we bought some inexpensive glass ink pens (they were quite reasonable because it was a shop away from the real touristy areas). We also stopped by a snack bar for some mixed bruschetta before heading back to the hotel. After mass at the Ss. Apostoli church (right next to our hotel), we went in search for dinner. We stumbled upon a place just a half a block away down a tiny alley that turned out to be a pretty good dinner. I tried some gnocchi and my sister got a seafood pasta dish. We topped it off with a really good white ice cream cake.

After dinner, we caught another waterbus and took it to the St. Mark’s stop. After seeing the popular square, we found our way to the famous Harry’s Bar, where the Bellini cocktail was invented in 1948. Naturally, we both tried these pricy peach champagne concoctions which were delicious. We slowly sipped our Bellini since we could only afford to enjoy one a piece! Then we returned to the cold streets to window shop in the dark at all the gorgeous glass and jewelry stores lining St. Mark’s square. After we were sufficiently tired and cold, we took the longest waterbus ride of our lives when we got on the bus going the wrong direction aka the scenic route back to our hotel stop. Finally we arrived back, exhausted and cold, and were glad to have our cute, warm hotel to retreat to and rest before another long day in Venezia!

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Saturday was all about seeing as much as Florence as we could in one day. My sister Heather and I visited a number of the places I had been to with my class trip, but also got to do some things I hadn’t done before. One of my favorites was climbing the 463 stairs to the top of the dome of the cathedral! Not so much the climbing part, but the view from the top, is what was amazing! Also, we could see the art on the top of the dome from the circular balcony around it on our way up. It was interesting and different to be able to see ceiling art from that close in one of these big Italian churches. We could see so much more detail than we could looking at the dome from the ground level.

As we hiked up the long and winding staircases, there were windows along the way on the side of the cathedral of different shapes and sizes that provided awesome views of the city and great pictures (when we could get the lighting right and manage to snap a shot between the lines of people going up and down). And then, at the top of the dome, there was an amazing view of the city of Florence! We braved the cold and wind at the top for a few minutes to take in the view and get some pictures. Then we descended those 463 stairs back to ground level.

As if we hadn’t had enough climbing, my sister dragged me up a never-ending hill of inclines and stairs to the Piazzale Michelangelo for another great view of the city. We grabbed some snacks at a coffee bar and then sat on the steps of the piazza to take in the sunset over the city. On our way back to the city, we crossed the Ponte Vecchio, which is the bridge that was the only one spared in Florence during WWII because Hitler thought it was too beautiful to destroy. We watched the bridge change colors as we approached it, walking along the river. The Ponte Vecchio is lit with lights from the sides of the river that go through a changing sequence all throughout the evening—the purple and red were my favorite colors of it!

We also stopped in the Uffizi to check out some amazing paintings and sculptures by artists such as DaVinci (they had a special exhibition on his art and scientific work), Caravaggio, Tiziano, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Unfortunately we were a little pressed for time because of the early closing hour, but we could have wandered around that place for hours. The exhibition on DaVinci was especially amazing—with all sorts of information on screens and computers as well as replicas of his experiments and breakdowns of his artwork and processes. There was a lot of interesting and beautiful pieces of art; I even bought a couple of prints in the gift shop to take home with me!

After the art museum, we crossed back over the river to search for dinner. After getting a little lost down some side streets with no signs of life, we stumbled upon a trattoria tucked away in an alley. The prices and food looked good, so we took a seat. Turns out we picked a great place because by the time we left, there was a line out the door for tables at the restaurant. Not to mention the food, and especially desserts, were delicious!

With full stomachs, we strolled back to the river, one bridge over from the Ponte Vecchio. It was a bridge my dad and I had been on during my earlier trip to Florence in the semester. I remembered how you can climb over the sides of the bridge and sit out on one of the four triangular cement ledges that jut off the bridge. So my sister and I climbed onto one of these to sit and chat while watching the Ponte Vecchio change colors in the cold, dark night.

It was a beautiful night, and after we’d had enough of the cold, we decided to slowly wander back towards our hotel. Our walk back was slightly eventful as we made our way down the streets lit with Christmas lights. In the Piazza della Republica we caught a musical group performing and a spray paint street artist putting on shows for the crowd. We stopped for a little to watch both. Later we were chased down a street by a crazy homeless man with a broom, who almost knocked down another woman passing by on a bike. There were some colorful characters there in Florence. We made our way back to the hotel eventually and were glad to be in the warm indoors! After learning from a sign in the elevator that there was a national train strike scheduled for the next day, we went to bed wandering if this would indeed be our last night in Florence or if we wouldn’t make it to Venice as we had planned.

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