Nona Settimana

Ciao my friends, 

I am finally feeling well rested after a week of recovery from spring break. I am definitely missing our fake British accents that we picked up in London and pub hopping with my mates but I am happy to be home in Florence. We decided to stay close to home this weekend and go on two day trips to Lucca and Pisa. 

The Lucca trip on Saturday was planned with our program. We started the day touring the city center of Lucca, known as the "City of 100 Churches," and although there might not be exactly 100 churches in the small city, there is just about one on every corner including San Michele Church, San Giovanni, and St. Martin's Cathedral. Since the sun finally has started to make an appearance in our lives, we were able to eat lunch outside in Piazza dell' Anfiteatro. 

Lucca is well known for the surroundings walls that enclose the entire city. Since we had the afternoon, we decided to rent bikes and ride them around the city walls. On top of the walls is beautiful pathways for walkers and bikers. I saw the most Italians working out there than I have since being abroad. Cities like Florence have very little running trails and parks so its rare to see people exercising outside. Being a small city, it only takes about a half hour to ride all the way around Lucca. 

After our bike riding adventure, which might have been the most physical activity I have done here, we went to a local Tuscan vineyard for olive oil tasting and lunch. The whole experience made for a great Italian day full of culture. 

The next day we took another day trip to Pisa. Although I have been there a few times to fly out of the airport there, I have never explored the city. It turns out there isn't a lot to see besides the leaning tower haha but that was definitely a sight worth seeing. We felt like very tacky touristy taking pictures pretending to hold the tower in place but after seeing all the obnoxious poses other tourists were creating we realized that was exactly why people come to Pisa. The tower is a lot shorter than I imagined and is leaning a lot more than I thought too. It actually looks like it could fall over at any minute but the fact that they let people climb to the look of it still must mean its stable.

One of my roommate's mom is here for the week visiting which has been a nice change of pace to have a mom around and traveling with us. Not to mention she became our personal photographer instead of us having to pass our cameras off to random tourists in hopes that they don't run away with them. Having her with us for the week definitely made me miss my own parents more than I already do because there is so much of this trip that I would love for them to experience with me. I guess that just means we will have to travel around Europe in the future together :)

The beauty of our day trips was that we were home at sunset in Florence both nights to hike up to the look out point with a bottle of wine and enjoy the view of our new home. It's certainly true that being surrounded by good company cures any homesickness I may have. This entire traveling experience has made me realize how important it is to be surrounded by people you love because it is those people that make experiences like traveling Europe worthwhile and memorable.

Back to my homework for now, it seems like I have so much to do now that the semester is winding down and all my final projects are due at the end of this month. How crazy it is that I only have 6 weeks left!!

Ciao for now :)