Santa Brigida With The One And Only Simon Young and SPONTANEOUS TRIP TO VENICE!

Last week's school week was pretty uneventful besides the fact that we started booking trips. I have to say it's a lot more stressful than I would have ever imagined. Trying to coordinate with everyone's different schedules is one problem and then there's the whole problem of trying to figure out places that everyone wants to go...since everyone has a different list of the places they want to hit. Our trips thus far are:
Amsterdam next weekend for our roommate Amanda's birthday, and spring break where we're going to go through Barcelona, Ireland, Scotland and Belgium ending with Sensation White in Belgium -- google it. It's  Europe's biggest rave HOLLA!

cuhrayzeeee

So nothing happened last week...until Friday where Simon Young showed his fabulous face once more. For any who have short term memory loss, Simon Young is my History of Florence teacher, a bizarre little English man that walks at the pace of a running cheetah and has hair that legitimately sprouts from the sides of his head. There's no better word than sprouts to describe his hair.

Simon Young preffing us for our climb

Anyway this past Friday was our field trip for History of Florence: Story of a City. Simon Young took us to the top of a mountain in Santa Brigida. He told us it would be a nice walk outdoors and not to worry. Let me put it this way. One girl in our class had severe asthma and legit was as red as a beet and had to sit down gasping for air. IT WAS IN NO WAY A SIMPLE WALK. It was a hike if I ever saw one....and a hard one at that. Simon Young kept telling us we're only as fast as our slowest person so me, Christine, Jamie and Anne had a great time bringing up the kaboose.

the whole class in front of us...seriously struggling

There was a church at the top of the mountain (which really didn't have much to do with anything we've learned about in class so I'm pretty convinced Simon Young just scheduled this field trip to hang out with us on non-school time) and the view was B-E-A-UUUUTIFUL. It really was. Check out the pictures of us at the top of the world....or just at the top of Florence.

Oh - at the top when we finally got to sit down and breathe Simon Young pulled out his satchel of paninis for us for lunch. They were from I Frattelini...this ahhhhhmazing sandwich shop on the streets of Florence. It was opened in the 1800s and has remained a family name ever since. It's so European and chic! Basically it's this little booth on the side of the street. It has no door and you can't walk anywhere it's legitimately these two guys standing behind a booth serving paninis and wine. If you walk by during lunch time the street will be packed with italianos standing on the sidewalk panino in one hand, glass of wine in the other. SO CHIC! The sandwiches were unreal. Look how happy we are in the grass in the sun with sandwiches! This is really the life.

yummmmm

So we got home from our trip around 3 and decided it was too nice out to not take advantage of it. So Christine and I walked to Piazza di Santa Croce where an international chocolate festival is on for this entire week! It was incred. We shared fresh strawberries doused in warm chocolate, some chocolate peanut butter fudge and a sip of chocolate rum. I plan on going back every day this week. We got home around 4 and found Jess back from her field trip. After an hour of facebook stalking together on the couch someone mentioned Venice. We debated for a few minutes and then decided to take a spontaneous trip to Venice for the night! We weren't doing anything else, right? We contacted our good friend Joe and he was in so we threw some stuff in a bag and headed to the train station to catch a 6:40 train.

so excited for the train ride!

We arrived in Venice at 10pm and after taking some pics (in complete darkness and of nothing visible) we tried our hand at the boat taxis. We bought our tickets and boarded all excited for our first boat trip. After two stops we realized we were headed in the wrong direction so we jumped off and switched lines. We got off at the Rialto stop -- what seemed to be closest to our hostel and started on our journey to find it. Having a map might have been a big help but our spontaneity prevented us from getting one before we left and once we realized...all the stores were closed. We wandered around Venice the four of us for two hours with our bags trying to find this stupid building. For anyone planning on traveling to Venice in the near future let me give you a tip --> Venice does not have street signs and the numbers are completely out of whack. I actually had to dial up Daddy Tim in NYC on the phone and have him googlemap us and lead us to the hostel. It was that bad. Also there were no police in sight. Thank god Joe was with us or I would have been a leeeeetle nervous for our safety. But Daddy-o came through as always and we finally arrived at midnight. The building was a sketch-parlor to say the least but we had a room the 4 of us alone together and it had its own bathroom and we were only there for a night so it was fine.

how sketch it looked in the day time

After checking in we grabbed some chinese food next door cuz we were too nervous to wander farther. It was surprisingly good!! Brought me right back to ChopStix in Scarsdale. Missssss thattt placeeee.

The next day was much  more successful than the previous night. We woke up, had breakfast at the hostel and headed out. Weather.com told us it was going to be 53 and sunny in Venice and it was most definitely not. I had to pull out all the clothes I brought and put them on in layers to keep me warm. Plus me and Christine bought gloves at a small shop for 5euros so those helped too.

Let's see....Thanks to my ever-trusty walking tour book we had a great route set out across the different venues of Venice. We started out in San Polo where our hostel was and worked our way to Santa Croce and San Marco and into Desoduro. After checking out the sights we took a 20 minute boat ride to Murano the GLASS ISLAND. Hopefully all you know that Venice is known for its blown glass. We got to go see a glass blowing factory in action and then browsed the gift shops with the million dollar gorgeous chandeliers. I was thinking about charging one to my dad's credit card and shipping it home with a note that read happy belated birthday!! but i decided against it. YOURE WELCOME DAD.

walking tours are what we do best! SAN MARCO

glass blowing in action

look out for it in the mail dad!!

We had a delicious pizza lunch and then stopped at a small store that allowed you to bring empty water bottles and fill 'em up with delicious good venetian wines for 2 euros a liter! Then on to a carnevale mask shop. I got 2 liters of pinot noir and a great mask and came home a very happy girl.

water bottle wine!

so many masks

The rest of the weekend was a normal weekend here in Florence. We went out and had a good time and spent Sunday wandering the streets of the chocolate fair. All in all, being spontaneous in Italy turned out to be a great success.

CIAO FOR NOW REGAZZIII