Flor-ienna

I travel so many places in such a short amount of time, I can't keep up with the blog post per city like I was hoping. Hence the creation of my city hybrids.

Last night I got home from 10 days of traveling. Two fridays ago we had Easter break and my roommate and I left at 4 in the morning to catch a bus to the airport. We went through Milan with just enough time to grab a slice of pizza and then finally got to Florence, our final destination, where we met up with our other buddies who we were traveling with.

If you have never been to Florence, pack your bags right now. But maybe pack a few pairs of elastic waist pants while you're at it. I have never consumed so much consistently delicious food in such a short amount of time.

Saturday morning we slept in a little bit and then spent hours wandering around on the crowded streets, drinking coffee and eating pastries, dodging persistent vendors in the leather market and dragging the boys through every jewelry stand on the street. It's hard to give a full run-down of what we did each day because we did so little, and I mean that in the best way. If there was a sun soaked bench, rock, other sit-able object, we sat on it. We ate gelato, laid in the sun. Ate pasta, laid in the sun. Ate pizza, laid in the sun. It was perfect.

We did take a break from this lackadaisical lifestyle to visit David at the Academia. While the Mona Lisa in Paris was somewhat underwhelming, the David didn't disappoint in the slightest. My friend Rae is an art history major and was telling us why he was sculpted the way he was. The rest of the museum was quick to get to, which I appreciated because I was itching to get back outside.

On Sunday we went to an outdoor Easter mass that included the Florence tradition of "The Exploding Cart". It is exactly what it claims to be. Essentially a huge crowd gathers around and watches fireworks shoot off of a beautifully painted cart. While I didn't understand the religious element to it, as the mass was entirely in Italian, it was still an exciting experience.

On Monday, I took a 5 hour car ride, arrived in Milan at about 2am, slept in a Holiday Inn for approximately 2 hours before I woke up to catch a 630 flight to Germany, where I would eventually take a train to Salzburg.

Then this entire past week I spent with my music class in Salzburg and then Vienna, Austria. We toured Mozart's house (three of them actually), Beethoven's house (two of them actually) and Schubert's house (just the one). We attended an Opera at the famous Vienna opera house, dined at traditional Austrian restaurants which had us all singing American Pie in harmony on the train to the hotel. Our professor watched on proudly as his students, who normally cringe when asked to sing in class, willingly belted out song after song.

The weather was beautiful, the people were amazing, and while our professor had a tendency to be quite strict with us and just in general sort of unpleasant, all in all it was a great week where I experienced a lot of the city.

I'm relieved for a few days on no traveling but I leave Friday for Barcelona. I only have three trips and a few weekends hanging out in Luxembourg before I'm taking the ultimate trip back to America. I have mixed feelings about my return, I'm excited to see my friends and family, my bed, my shower, and just rest a little bit in general. But I'm nervous for the first weekend I realize every weekend isn't going to be a new exciting adventure. Hopefully I can make my own adventures in Cincinnati to hold me over until the next grand one.

But I'm not leaving yet, so for now I'm just gonna soak up my remaining time.