Big Ben visits Italy!!!

Well, I guess I should tell everyone about Ben's trip to Italy...I am sorry this took so long! The day he arrived, I woke up early to clean the apartment (or at least my areas of it) and try to get stuff out that I was going to send back with him. I also was really nervous. I see him everyday on Skype, but it was weird to be seeing him for the first time in four months! We had planned on him taking a cab to my apartment, but I told him I had a surprise for him and decided I was going to meet him at the gate in the airport instead. His flight came in around 3:00 and the Florence airport is about 20 minutes out of the city, so I left my apartment around 2:00 to make sure I had enough time to get there early. Well, there is a cab stand in front of the Duomo (right near my apartment) so I walk out there (in 4 inch heels…) and the drivers all refuse to take me and drive away. So, I am now freaking out and angry as I walk 15 minutes to the train station (where the other cab stand is…) in my tall shoes. I made sure that I looked very nice before I left the house—I didn’t want to look like a schlub the first time I saw Ben in 4 months, but by the time I got to the train station, my hair was messed up and I felt like my makeup was melting off of my face. So, I get to the train station and there is the longest line I have ever seen waiting for cabs and not one in sight. So, I figure I don’t have time to wait, as it was almost 2:30 by this time, so I hike over to the bus station to see if there was a bus going to the airport. Well, of course there was, but not until 3:00. Seeing as how that was when his plane came in, that also did not work. So I call my roommate, Tracy, and am freaking out and upset because all I wanted to do was be nice and show up at the airport and Florence was making that impossible. But as I am talking to her and walking back to the train station (just to check) the line for the cabs is gone and there are 4 patiently waiting for me to get in and take me to the airport. So, I get into one, and tell the driver “Aeroporto!” and he speeds off.

As I am sitting in the cab, I catch a glimpse of my reflection, and as I had suspected, I looked awful. I was a hot, sweaty mess, so on the way I tried to cool down and fix my self. By the time we got to the airport, I think all was well and I hopped out and patiently waited for his flight to land. It finally landed about 20 minutes late and so I knew he should be coming out soon. Finally there he was, looking pretty tired from his long journey, but still excited to be there. It was great that he was here!!

As soon as he came out, we got in a cab and headed to my apartment. I introduced him to Tracy; we dropped the bags and headed out to the city. We were both starving, so I took him to a place that supposedly had pizza like Naples, and I figured that would be a good first meal for him. Well, we wouldn’t know how good their pizza was because like most of Italy during the hours of 3:00 and 7:30, it was closed. So we walked back towards the Duomo, where it’s a little more “touristy” and I knew something would be open and ate at a little place in front of the cathedral. It was pretty good and I had already started making him try new things (eggplant on pizza!! Yum!) which he said he liked, but he lies a lot about those types of things…haha. After that we went back to my apartment, so that I could pack for the weekend and get ready for the evening.

By the time I finished packing it was time to go to Thanksgiving dinner!!!! I had made plans for us to have Thanksgiving dinner with everyone at a place called “Angels.” It was cooked by two American chefs and was a full spread. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the quantity of a real Thanksgiving, but I think we definitely got enough to eat with Butternut Squash Soup (delish!!!!), turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and veggies! We then had pumpkin pie and spiced cider for dessert!! After dinner we went back to my apartment to play power hour with the roommates. Ben of course out-drank all of us, but he’s also twice the size as well. We had a table reserved at the club we frequent, so after drinking at home for a little while, we headed that direction. It was pretty fun, except the table service sucked and there was, of course, drama. Actually, the level of rudeness from a few of the club’s employees has caused us to never go back, but that’s neither here nor there. We accidentally closed the club (i.e. we left sometime after 4:00am…) and made our way back to our bed and breakfast. Which, by the way was really nice and located next door to my apartment! Ben and I had planned to take an early train to Venice, but we of course slept through my alarm and didn’t get there until a few hours later than planned. The train ride wasn’t too bad, I slept most of the way, but when we got to Venice, it was raining…a lot. It actually rained so much that weekend that it caused record floods! But, we figured out the water taxi situation and found our way to the hotel. The original one we were supposed to stay in was damaged or something, so we stayed at another place (per the first place) and it was pretty nice. The room was very green and full of jacquard, but the bathroom was great!! It was so nice to take a shower in a nice, clean shower with a towel warmer! So, we dropped our stuff and decided to go site seeing. I should mention that at this point my umbrella had broken, and poor Ben used it and let me use his nice, non-broken one. Anyway, we went to the Rialto and walked around there, by this time the rain was coming down steadily and my shoes/socks were soaked…but we were there to enjoy Venice, so we kept moving. Its odd that people say Venice is the most romantic city in the world, because being soaked to the bone and fighting off hypothermia together is great and all, but not actually “romantic.” However, we did find a gondola for hire that took us on a tour and told us a little about the city. It was nice to actually take a gondola ride, but next time, I’ll wear a poncho and bring a blanket!! After the gondola ride (which I want to add was still great despite the crappy weather) we headed over to St. Mark’s square, which was really cool and full of very tempting shopping! Fortunately for Ben, I decided to spare him the pain of going in every store, so I kept it to a bare minimum. We roamed around there for a while buying a few souvenirs and decided to start heading back. Venice is a beautiful and interesting city, as there are no streets. I’m sure that you (the reader) know this, but it’s very strange when you are actually there. I was afraid that at any moment, I would find myself in a canal if I wasn’t careful. There are little steps (like a pool) leading into the water, which makes it even more deceitful and tempting to walk in! Thankfully, I was wet and cold enough to not go for a swim and we got back safely. Once back at the hotel, we were both frozen to the core, so we each took verrry long showers to thaw out. By the time we had both showered and got ready, we realized we were starving, so we headed out to find a place for dinner. Considering Ben’s Italian is horrible, I had to figure out the menus for him, and he was so picky that night. (haha….joking.) But we eventually found a place that I deemed worthy (I wanted him to have good Italian, not tourist Italian food) and it was actually pretty good. On our way back to the hotel, we decided we were going to bed early because we were catching the 7am train to Rome. But, then we decided that maybe we should just get a drink and enjoy our night out. So, we found a cute little lounge and stopped in. A few hours later, we made our way back to the hotel (and luckily didn’t fall into any canals!) in order for our 5:30 wake up call.

On the way to Rome (it was still dark, mind you) we had basically the whole car to ourselves, which was nice because we could then sleep. However, about an hour in, of course, we had to move because we were in someone’s seat and then we had aisle seat the rest of the way. I don’t know about you, but I cannot sleep on the aisle, and poor Ben couldn’t either. So by the time we made it to Rome, we were exhausted and ready for bed, but we figured we would check in to our “hotel” and get some lunch. I try to stay optimistic about everything, but sometimes I don’t book the greatest accommodations (i.e. our horrible hostel in Dublin…ughh) As we got closer to the location of the hotel, it seemed to get a little shadier and sketchier by the block. So, we get to the place we check in and we walk down the street with this lady and she takes us to this, what seems to be, apartment. And she opens the door to our room—yellow nightmare. Not only was it a yellow nightmare, but the door to the room was frosted glass covered by a piece of black fabric. I had definitely failed on this “bed and breakfast.” Ben, of course tried to make it better than it was, but we both knew it was awful and were glad that we only had to sleep there! After we dropped our stuff, we headed for lunch at the very authentic Italian restaurant, McDonald’s.

After McDonald’s we went to the Coliseum, which was just a train ride away. Once we got there and inside we took the audio tour. It was so cool to see it. It was huge and I could just imagine it as it was. After we walked around the Coliseum, we went to the ruins across the street. They were also beautiful and full of cats! This, of course was very exciting for me…haha. After the ruins we (quickly) headed over to the Vatican, which was very interesting as well. Unfortunately, we did not get to go into St.Peter’s because there was an enormous line and we only had one day basically to get through Rome; but we looked around and took it all in. There were nuns and priests everywhere and of course, the Swiss guards in their funny outfits. After the Vatican, we headed down to Trevi Fountain. When we got off the metro, there was a tiny little fountain, about where Trevi should be. But, I knew this was not it…so we finally figured out that it in fact was not, and that the actual fountain is enormous! It was so pretty, and it was about when the sun was going down and there was an interesting glow to the whole area. We made a couple wishes and then off we went to the Spanish Steps. When we got to the steps, we realized just how many there were, but climbed them anyways. It was definitely worth it for the cool view of the street. After that, we had decided that we had seen as much as we could that day, so we wandered around the streets just taking it all in. Finally we decided that we should go back to the “hotel” and get ready for dinner. We asked the guy at the desk where we should go, and he wasn’t much help, so we decided to go to an area that another person had told us about for dinner. So, we had to get on a bus and get off at a certain stop, or so we thought. While on this bus we realized that we had probably missed the stop and had to walk back, but during us passing the stop I had seen a couple of restaurants that looked cool, so that is where we headed. We ended up (finally) at this cute little place that had great food. After dinner we didn’t do much, just got a bottle of wine and hung out before passing out for the night, which was rather early considering our exhaustion from the previous day.

Sunday morning, we woke up pretty early, checked out and headed to the Pantheon and the Sacred Area. Both of which were amazing and beautiful. I particularly liked the Sacred Area because it was also full of kitties!! After seeing both of these places we hopped on the bus and headed to the train station to go back to Florence. Unfortunately, we thought we had 24-hour bus tickets, but apparently we did not. One of the employees of the transit authority decided to board our bus and so kindly (ha!) inform us that our tickets are not 24-hour tickets and that we needed to promptly hand over 50€ a piece to her. So, we reluctantly did and went into the train station. We waited around for a couple of hours for the train, because we missed the earlier one by about 2 minutes.

Once we got back to Florence we went back to my apartment and got everything packed up to go to the final bed and breakfast. It was close to the train station, but unfortunately not close to my apartment. So, poor Ben rolled the suitcase full of all my souvenirs 20 minutes across town...he’s so nice. Once we got there it was already time to get ready for dinner and that night I had made reservations at Il Latini, the best restaurant I had eaten at in Florence. I had gone there with one of my roommate’s parents and knew that it was the place to show Ben what eating in Italy is all about: quality and quantity. So, by the time we got ready to go it was raining a bit (as it had all weekend of course…) but it was nothing too serious. By the time we had walked down the street it was hailing golf ball sized hail! So, we ducked into an overhang to wait it out, but we were running late so we had to hurry. Finally we get to the train station (one of the only taxi stands in the city…) and because of the weather, there is an enormous line for a cab. So, of course we are late…but we finally get a cab and head over to the best meal ever!

We arrive at Il Latini and the restaurant is definitely not fancy. It looks like someone’s basement, there are bare white walls and meat hanging from the ceiling and a couple of pieces of furniture here and there along with rows of tables. The seating is family style, meaning if you don’t know the other people at your table, you will by the time dinner is over. You don’t necessarily share food with the strangers at your table, but you don share bread and wine…and honestly what more do you need anyways? Also, there are no menus, so a guy comes out and asks if you want to start with an antipasti and then he tells you what your choices are. We chose the tomato and mozzarella salad along with proscuitto (standard…), and crostinis that had new olive oil on them as well as chicken liver pâté. It was delicious, although I am not a fan of liver, but Ben ate it and claimed he liked it! So, points for that (he tends to be a picky eater, so I try to make him step outside the box…) As for the next course, which was the primi piatti, it consisted of pasta and soup. So we got one of each: tomato and bread soup (delicious and hearty) and fresh homemade pasta in a wild boar sauce (my favorite thing …ever.) Ben also gave those the thumbs up and I was feeling that even if we stopped now, I had succeeded in making him try new food and he actually liked it!! After we got through that course we headed into the main course of meat. We ordered lamb and rabbit, but unfortunately they were out of the rabbit, so we got beef in place of it along with a side of their roasted potatoes and Tuscan beans. It was delicious and he also liked all of that (minus the beans…which is fine, he was doing well otherwise…haha) Lastly came the desserts!! They brought us this Vin Santo (a type of “wine” which I find repulsive..I have had it in many other Italian restaurants..) and biscotti and then they ask you what dessert you want. So we decided to go with pannacotta (which is delicious) and I can’t remember what Ben ordered…but it was delicious as well. To top off all of the desserts they bring you Limoncello (also repulsive…but Ben seemed to enjoy, it is like a lemon infused vodka) so as we sat and reflected on the giant meal we had just devoured we ended up talking to the people next to us. They were Russian, but from New York. The younger woman was actually a fashion designer who had just finished working at Ralph Lauren and gave me her contact information to meet with her when I was in New York (whenever that will be?) It was a great way to not only end our night, but our few days together in Italy. We hobbled back to the bed and breakfast and passed out for a few hours until Ben had to leave for the States the next morning.

It was so great to have him there visiting for those few days. I felt like I was an actually resident of Florence and it was nice to show him around and to show him what I had been doing for the last few months. I will always remember that week of my trip as it meant so much. We had such a fun time and I look forward to our next adventure!! (Although it will probably not be in Europe…haha)

P.S. I am sorry this took me so long to post… L