Italia: Day 4 - Florence Adventures [hiking, cooking, haggling]

{heads up and half-apology: this blog is way too long. but i didn't wanna split this day!}

Wednesday was our second and last full day in Florence. And we sure made the most of it!

Today at 10, we were taking a cooking class by a gourmet Italian chef!

Before our cooking class, we decided we were going to go shopping at the market. 

But then we got to the market, and turns out they weren't open yet.

So we made the spur of the moment decision to take our two hours and hike to the Piazzale Michelangelo.

[this is the street right by our b&b, but this is what a lot of streets looked like :)]

We of course started off the morning with two caffe lattes and pastries to go.

The whole 'to-go' thing is a totally American thing. And so is the whole 'coffee shop' thing.

Here's what Italians do. 

Find a coffee/espresso shop. 

Stand at the bar. Order {strong} espresso drink.

Drink said espresso drink {served in the equivalent of a Starbucks 'short' cup}.

Leave cup and continue on your way.

Fortunately {?} Americans frequent the city, so they are familiar with our concept of taking coffee and actually savoring the coffee. So they gave us two cute little paper cups. Carly actually fits in well. Turns out she drinks coffee in like three sips. I on the other hand, take forever to drink coffee. I like to enjoy it and make it last, I say. Turns out it was kinda difficult to carry and drink hot coffee while walking and reading a map, so we both ended up drinking it fairly quickly. It was sure tasty though!

Then we continued along through the heart of the city and across the Arno River and up the hill.

These stairs were at the end of a 20 minute hill. They went on forever.

But the view at the top was beyond worth it. God is so stinking awesome!! We were so excited because this morning we had the best weather of our entire trip, so we could actually see the whole city.

 I love my sister so much!

 I wanted to hike up just a little further to this beautiful little church. So I did. :)

And then I took a picture of Carly taking a picture. :)

It was about this time that we realized we better start walking back if we were gonna make it to our cooking class. I think it was like 9:15. And it takes like 45 minutes to get up here. So we started walking back. Such a fun morning and one of my favorite parts of Florence. Definitely.

 We were excited to find the apartment that my friend, Natalie Taylor, lived in back when she lived in Florence. {because you know, it's the cool thing to do :)}

  

We walked back along the river and then took a different bridge across to try to see some new things.

like these cute shutter windows and rooftop terraces on so many of their buildings,

and the Uffizi Gallery. This is as close as we got. But I was glad we at least saw it!

and these pretty horses. We were so bummed we didn't have a chance to take the horse-drawn carriage!

Oh... I forgot to mention I forgot my phone in our room. {of course I forgot something} Which I had to have to take pictures at our cooking class. So by this point we are practically running back to get it. Carly is not happy with me. It is like 9:45 and I'm saying "oh we'll make it! don't worry" ... knowing full well we are totally gonna be late but I needed my phone! So we run back, I find it, and we head back to the center of town. We arrived five minutes late, and I was pretty impressed with us! Besides, we're on vacation! What is time! Carly didn't really feel that way, and neither did Chef Giovanni.

And so begins the story of the cooking class. Da Da Da.

 So we walk up to the place where we were meeting and the chef is ticked. I am of course oblivious to this. Carly is all quiet and knows he's mad we were late for his class. As soon as we got there, we all started walking {like 20 of us... oops! ah well, we paid for the thing.} to the central market to get food and have a little food tasting. Awesome food tasting! But on the way, Chef Giovanni takes off into some random hotel. So now Chef Davide is leading us. So Carly goes and buddies up to him in the front of the line and they bond while I'm chatting with my new Canadian friend. 

A couple pictures of our tasting in the market...

 cutest and yummiest mini apple juice I got!

After about 1-2 hours, we head to the cooking school with our supplies to cook with. Here, we meet up with Chef Giovanni. So he's really quiet, just says "put your stuff down and pick a spot around the table. Wash your hands." We follow directions and then pull up spots around the cooking table. Well turns out Carly picked Chef Giovanni's spot. So Davide whispers to her, umm thats for the chef, slide over. So Carly ends up next to Giovanni. 

Long story short [because I'll lose all three of my followers if I went through every detail of it]... it started really rough. We were both like, what the heck is his deal! We paid for this class and he's all mad at us! Carly took the role of class clown/smarty pants and talked right back to him. And this is how the first 30-60 minutes went.. awkward exchanges of conversation and Carly slowly loosening up the class and making people laugh. And pretty soon, Chef Giovanni and Carly are best buddies, he's in his element cooking {and he is SO good at it!}, we make some amazing food, and Carly wins "worst chef" award, which actually means "best chef." It ended up being a totally memorable six hours and we made the best food I've ever eaten. Just goes to show you can't judge a book by it's cover. :)

My instagram posts tell the story the best. 

We made tiramisu [notice top left photo... this was Carly mad at Giovanni after he gave her a hard time about whipping the eggs and some other things]... 

homemade pasta (tagliatelle, ribollita, and ravioli)...

bolognese sauce and butter and green sage sauce... 

and bruschetta.

Our finished dishes!

Award time! He ended up liking me, not because I can cook [because he said I wasn't very good at it] because I'm a NICU nurse [which he said he betted I was great at]. He just had a baby. We bonded. :)

He liked Carly because she's a good cook, she's hilarious and she gave him a taste of his own medicine. He told her at the end when it was just us, 'this class would have been so boring without you. I'm so glad you were here!' And she got her "worst student" personalization note.

Our awards! Unfortunately, I left them somewhere in Florence. 

Still a sore subject with my sister. 

So this is our memory. :)

After our class/meal ended, it was like 4pm. We did quite a bit of shopping/haggling [which initially drove Carly crazy until she jumped on board and started haggling with me!] and I bought a lovely orange suitcase to bring our extra goods home in. Can't miss me!

Wednesday was a fun day. We both got to be ourselves and felt like we were finally getting the hang of Florence. We walked the streets at night like pros and had a ton of fun. I'm telling stories that aren't super flowery and sweet because they are funny and give a great picture of the reality of our trip. But really, we made such great memories. And the best part was, we were together!!

Italia: Day 1 - Venice!

Once we landed in Rome, we had to figure out how to exchange money.

Which turned out to be ridiculously difficult in the airport. We must have walked from one end of the airport to the other 10 times between currency machines. 

Tired. Not really understanding anything anyone was saying.

All part of the adventure!

Once we finally found an ATM that worked, we managed to track down a shuttle to Termini Station in Rome, where we caught our train to Venice. 

This process of currency exchanging, shuttle riding, train catching {really, this entire day} was quite the reminder we are indeed in a foreign country and they do things a lot differently than we do. Even with all the research I did, there are still holes and things you have to just figure out.

Oh, and you have to pay to use the bathroom in the train station! 

Which I knew about, but it was still funny. We decided against a picture there. :)

But we did it! Carly was such a trooper!

The train ride was great. 4.5 hours. Through lots of tunnels. Pouring rain the whole time.

But seriously, we loved it. Italy is beautiful! And fun. 

{ps: thank goodness for Rick Steves!}

Our arrival in Venice was so fun. It is SO pretty. 

And was SOOOO FREEEEEZING. 

We forgot to pack gloves [well, we didn't think we would need them. wrong.]

so our hands felt like they were gonna fall off as we lugged our luggage onto the vaporetto as fast as we could [you have like 15 seconds to get on and then it's gone!]. 

We shoved our way off when we got to our stop. And began the short trek through cobbled streets over bridges to our bed and breakfast. 

{ps: For not being a map-reader, Carly ROCKED the navigation on this trip. I started just following her after awhile. :)}

We made it to Ca' Bonvicini, and let me tell you, the moment we walked through that little door and were welcomed so sweetly into the heated room was the best moment ever.

We took a couple pictures of our room, which ended up being our favorite of the whole trip.

Then we headed out into the cold. Our first stop was in a cute little shop to purchase gloves and hats. Which we wore for basically the whole week. :)

Our second stop was the first gelateria we saw. Even if it was pouring rain and freezing. We're in Italy, for goodness sake! We had to get it!

Then, across the Rialto Bridge to see St. Mark's Square.

By the time we got to St Mark's, it was pouring rain, getting dark, and everything was closed and flooding. So our pictures are a bit sub-par. Since we had to take off our gloves to use the camera on our phone. ;) So the pictures may not do it justice, but Venice is BEAUTIFUL. And St Mark's Square is amazing!!

They have these big tables that they push together to make walkways, and this is what people walk on when it rains, because Venice floods. Especially St Mark's Square. We walked on them and quickly discovered their purpose. :) It wasn't flooded yet, but by the morning it had!

[in front of St Mark's Basilica. this is as close as we got]

After our few pictures, we walked back near our B&B to have dinner. We only had one night for dinner in Venice and so we took Sabina's recommendation. It was good. Cute. Fun.

 So here's my "we are so-NOT locals and it was obvious tonight" story.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So I had read all about {and experienced in my own Italian family} that dinners are multiple courses. They are lengthy and you order all the courses and stay for a couple hours for dinner enjoying everything. So I of course have told Carly about all that I have read and when we get to this restaurant, I'm telling her, "ok Car, let's each pick a dish from the different courses." So we do. We've got our whole meal mapped out down to dessert. We're gonna start with this shrimp and avocado thing and caprese. So we order these two things. And the waiter walks away. {there's only one waiter for the whole restaurant of 12 tables, all of which are full.} And we order wine. So, we look at each other and are like, "oh maybe they don't like to get the whole order at the same time." So finally these items come out, which were good.

 But we're hungry and ready for the next course. So there's the primeri course which is pastas, and the segundi course which is more meats. So Carly's all excited about something substantial in addition to pasta. But I can't get our waiter's attention to order the rest of our meal. So finally, I flag him over. So he comes and I say "we're ready to order the rest of our meal." And he just looks at me. So I order this spinach ravioli thing. With cheese sauce. Which apparently we learned later is NOT an Italian thing - it's an American thing (the cheese sauce). So he had recommended fish and red sauce, which I was planning to order with the next course right after I ordered the ravioli. And Carly is ready to order her next course. And he looks at me after I order the ravioli with this look that said "I can't believe you're ordering all that" and walked away. So I look at Carly thinking, we weren't done, we had three more things to order! And Carly is cracking up. And she tells me this table right next to us of locals (clearly) was watching me order and was gasping to each other about all the food I was ordering. {I didn't even order everything! They had no idea!} So Carly decided in her mind she wasn't ordering any more. So I can't figure out what I did wrong and she is just looking at me laughing as we realized, you don't actually have to order from every course like I thought. That is considered excess. And you don't order all at the same time. Like we do in America. {well, like I do}. So, Carly didn't like the ravioli. So her dinner was that avocado shrimp thing pictured above and I ate the caprese and ravioli. {seriously, there were like 15 tiny little ravioli on the plate}.

And we were still kinda hungry but didn't dare order anything else. So then we had to track the guy down again for the check as we realized we were overstaying our welcome, it seemed. And Carly really wanted this dessert they had and I really wanted gelato, but we were kinda afraid to order after all the looks of horror we had received. So we ended up leaving and trying to track down an open place for dessert. But the only thing is that things close early. So nothing was really open. So we just kinda wandered through the streets of Venice late at night. But that was the fun part. 

Lessons learned:

1. Don't order all at once

2. Don't order from every type of course

3. Don't expect your waiter to ask you if you need anything else

4. Don't ask for recommendations if you're not prepared to take them at that moment

5. Don't laugh too loud in the restaurant

We still laugh about our first dinner in Venice and how all my attempts trying so hard to be a local ended up screaming "I am NOT from here."

All part of the adventure!

And this was our first day in Italy. Palm Sunday. :)