First let me recap our fun day trip to Arezzo, a small town just an hour south of Florence. While reading up about Arezzo I can tell you that it is thought to have been one of the twelve most important Etruscan cities and it is the birthplace of scholar, poet, and the "Father of Humanism" Petrarch; artist and historian Georgio Vasari; inventor of the musical scale Giudo Monaco; and renaissance masters Piero della Francesca and Michelangelo (well he was born just outside of Arezzo, but it still counts!). The Piazza Grande is also famous for being the backdrop for Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful, one of my faves. There is a plaque in the Piazza commemorating the film. This also prompted us to look up Roberto Benigni's awesome acceptance speech from the Oscars when he climbs over the chairs, one containing Stephen Spielberg no less, to get to the stage. Here is the video for anyone interested to relive the moment!
Ok back to our trip...our first stop was the Basilica of San Francesco, which houses one of the most famous fresco cycles by one of the greatest Renaissance artists, Piero della Francesca. The Legend of the True Cross is a series of frescos starting with the tree planted at Adam's burial with a seed from the Garden of Eden and ending with Christ's crucifixion on the wood from that tree. The series walks you through various stages of the cross, from when the Queen of Sheba tells Solomon that the savior will hang from that tree, thus dismantling the Jews, to Constantine's dream before battle of angels showing him the cross in heaven, which prompted him to go into battle with a cross on his shield and he won. He also later converted to Christianity. Then there are some other frescos of battles depicting the triumph of Christianity over paganism. It was actually very pretty, but at the time none of us had any idea what the frescos meant so I'm glad this blog gave me a reason to look it up and learn a little something!
Our next stop was the aforementioned Piazza Grande then up to this really cute park with so many trees with yellow leaves! One of my favorite things about fall is the leaves changing so I of course was in love.
Next we headed to a couple other churches and Georgio Vasari's house, which had been turned into a mini museum. It had some nice paintings, but other than that it wasn't much. We then went to a couple more museums and the Duomo. It was a wonderful day in a really cute city!
Now onto Halloween weekend! Saturday during the day I had a huge craving for chocolate chip pancakes so we all went to The Diner (real name) for brunch. We were all pretty hungry and weren't sure about the portion sizes so each of us ordered a main dish and then ordered a side - I also needed something salty because even though I wanted pancakes, I usually can't eat a lot of them since they are too sweet. So both Court and I got home fries and Caroline got an egg - literally the description said ONE egg so we assumed they would be small portions. Fast forward 10 minutes later and we literally got 6 giant plates of food. They didn't even all fit on our table, but luckily we were sitting in the corner and had space to put the extra plates down on another random table next to us. The other thing was that Courtney got a bagel and a side of home fries, but unbeknownst to her, the bagel actually came with fries too. Oh and lastly, Caroline's ONE egg had to have been at least 4-5 eggs AND it came with toast. I mean, that's a meal in itself! Basically we had our work cut out for us. I had maybe 1/3 of my pancakes because the sweetness got to me and maybe 1/3 of my side of fries, not a great showing. Courtney fared about as well as I did, but luckily we had Caroline there. Now Caroline is a phenomenon to both Courtney and me. She can eat so much it's actually super impressive and I find myself telling random people about her amazing eating ability. She's also so little so I have no idea how she does it and where that food goes, but both Court and I were glad she was there in our moment of need. Caroline was able to finish the rest of my pancakes and all of her plate - though I did help her with her egg(s). Needless to say she did us proud and we sat for a good 20 minutes after the meal trying to not pass out from food coma and not barf from the copious amount of food we just took in. Saturday night we went out with our friends Kate and Jess and met at Sei Divino, a wine bar close to our apt. We were able to get a table in the main bar area and decided to get the cheapest wine on the menu because, let's face it, we have no jobs and don't have much money. So the bottle comes out literally with dust on it...not great. When we finally finished the bottle, Jessica headed up to the bartender to ask for a menu.
Sidebar: this bartender also had giant sideburns and a mustasche that curled up at the ends. He looked awesome.
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| I was only able to catch a little of his mustache |
Ok so back to the story...The bartender told Jess that he wanted us to try a bottle that is normally 25 euros, but he will give it to us for 20 so we don't have to get poor quality wine. He was right, it was much better than the first bottle. THEN he gave an even nicer bottle for free! Jessica was definitely the MVP of that night and we are going to make her do that more often :) I also decided to finally take my camera out with me, which resulted in me somehow taking over 50 pictures! There were a ton of funny ones with Caroline, Court and Jess, but I'll just choose a couple to post here...
Sunday was rainy so we decided to stay inside until our big festivities that night. We headed to Moyo for aperitivo with the girls and it was awesome! Moyo is a very hip bar with a dj and everything and the food they had laid out for aperitivo was amazing! Little pizzetti, fried bread balls, tons of different pasta salads, cous cous, and a few other things. Everything was delicious and it was free! You just had to order a cocktail, which we were going to do anyways. I got a Cosmopolitan and it was the best one I have ever had. I was nervous because those things can be hit or miss and this one was so good I even got another :) We then headed over to the girls apartment to get ready for the night. Everyone had something to wear except me, but that was soon about to change. Courtney and my friends from work had sent a package to us, but sent it to Jessica's school so we could make sure it got here. Luckily Jess told us that she had it so we opened it and surprise!! It was a Halloween package with tons of goodies for me to choose from! It literally couldn't have come at a better time! I didn't have a cohesive costume so they just dubbed me the spirit of Halloween.
Thanks Ana and Rabiah!!!!! You are the BEST!
So after we got ready we headed to Astor, Caroline's favorite place here because they play the best music. We were able to get a great seat before it got too crowded. Then all of a sudden Thriller came on and 4 zombies came marching in and did the Thriller dance. They had forreal looking costumes too and the makeup was so real it was disturbing. But their performance was awesome and it was right in front of us. We then spent the rest of the time enjoying the awesome music, the dj honestly didn't play one bad song and Caroline was officially obsessed. Halloween was definitely a success!
We stayed inside all day today mostly trying to recover from our big weekend, but also because it was raining all day. It's supposed to rain the next few days so we are going to have to think of more indoor things to do until our trip to Valencia and Barcelona on Thursday!!!!! I am so excited to go on our first far away trip, yay!!!
I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!!
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