Sorry it has been so long since I’ve updated this! I’ve been trying to get pictures up but I’m not sure if it worked. Since I last posted, I’ve been all over! Three weekends ago, I went to Madrid to visit friends from home and from school. It was a spur of the moment trip and very chaotic, but definitely worth it to see Mollie and Kristen and of course, to see a little bit of Spain. I got to Madrid and Kristen met me at the airport and we took the metro back to her apartment. We spent the afternoon walking around the Royal Palace gardens. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get into the Palace because it was closed for the day for a private function. We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the city since they had only been in Spain for a week. At night we went to a few of Madrid’s famous discotecas. One was built like a cave with stalagtites from the ceiling while another was 7 stories high–definitely a different scene than Florence. I got up early with Kristen the next day and we went to Madrid’s famous market. It spanned every direction for as far as I could see, and the locals sold everything from food and jewelry to power tools and batteries. After a little over 24 hours in Madrid, I headed back to Florence.
In Florence for the past few weeks I have still been exploring. We are finding local restaurants and cafes every day. Our new favorite is a fruit stand that sells dried fruit that the lady makes herself. I also bought a pass that lets me have unlimited access to all of the museums of Florence for an entire year. It is so great to be able to walk into a museum free of charge and has made me a lot more inclined to go to the museums. For my Leonardo da Vinci class, I was having trouble seeing the image in my book, so I went to the Uffizi for the afternoon just to get a better look. Still, one of my favorite activities is going to the grocery stores and local markets to pick out food for dinner. I love Italian food and it amazes me how cheap it is to make dishes like eggplant parmesan. It is also one of the best ways to practice the language since most of the smaller business owners don’t speak much English.
This past weekend, all ten of us went to Interlaken, Switzerland. We left Thursday night and came back late last night. We took a bus through the Alps and arrived around 3 am on Friday. Friday morning, we got up early and went to book our activities for the weekend. That day, we rented go karts and the man told us how to get to smaller villages in the alps. We drove to Grindlewald and Lauterbrunnen to see the cliff village. Unfortunately, the waterfall within the mountain was only open from April to November, but it was still a fun and scenic activity. We stopped at a small restaurant in the foothills and had some coffee to warm up. Later that afternoon, we returned to our hostel and got ready for night sledding. We took a bus to a gondola and went to the top of the mountain where we were given a glow stick and a sled. After that, we went sledding down a path that looked like a bobsledding trail. We stopped to take pictures at frozen waterfalls and took regular breaks, but we still got a good hour of sledding in. At the bottom, we had a swiss cheese fondue and some sort of hashbrown and egg dish. After a long day, I was exhausted and went to bed early so I could get up and ski the next day. On Saturday, I got up early and went to meet my roommates who were staying at another hostel. We took a bus and a few trains to the bottom of the slopes and took gondolas from there. The skiing was great because it was so powdery, but the visibility wasn’t good because it was snowing. I had a blast and once again was exhausted. On Sunday, I spent the day walking around Interlaken. Interlaken literally means “between lakes” and there are glacier lakes all around. We took a walk by the river and just enjoyed being outside. After a long weekend, we headed back to Florence. Unfortunately, a landslide took out the road that we were supposed to come home on, so we had to detour through Zurich and Milan. It was a long weekend and I am exhausted, but it was one of the best weekends of my life! I think it will be very hard to top.
