Barcelona!

I got back from 5 days in Barcelona last night and it was an amazingggg trip. It was me, amanda, sarah, alyse, and marianella. We had so much fun together. Barcelona was such a different city than anything I had ever seen before. The architecture was so crazy, lots of the buildings were designed by Gaudi. The hostel we stayed in was in a great location right in the center of the city and also about two doors down from one of Gaudi's super famous buildings the casa batllo. Here are some pictures:

The first day we were there we did a hop-on/hop-off bus tour, which is one of those tours that takes you all around the city and has a stop at every major tourist attraction or main sqaure/area and a bus comes to each stop every 15mins so u can spend as much time as you want at each thing and than just get on a bus to the next stop whenever u want. So that was super convenient and made it easy to see all the things we should see in barcelona! The first stop we made was the Sagrada Familia Church. Originally a Gaudi design but the church has been being worked on for hundreds of years and people think it is just never going to be completed. I have seen alot of churches being in Italy this semester but this one was so cool. Hayley calls it the "drippy church" hahah because the towers look like like they're dripping, here are some pictures:

 Sarah and Me on the hop-on/off bus!

 All of us on the bus!

 me in front of the church!

 Me Amanda and Alyse staring in awe at the church! haha

The second stop we made on the bus tour was Park Guell, which was a park also designed by Gaudi. There was lots of stuff going on in this park, live music and hiking and all sorts of cool things. There were lots of mosaic statues and weird buildings everywhere.

We did the bus tour all day and went through the Gothic quarter which was really interesting and saw everything we possible could. It was so much fun. Later that night we went out for our first night on the town in barcelona. Hayley was in barcelona also visiting Kim and Kailey from richmond (which is so funny too bc theyre now like best friends with some of the bentley kids who are studying in barcelona who we met up with towards the end of our trip, small world) who we went to oktoberfest with so we all met out to go to the clubs, which are all along the beach and absolutely gorgeous! The next day we got up and went to the picasso museum which was a really interesting art museum. They also had a lot of Degas stuff there, so lots of famous pieces of art. Picasso is probably one of my favorite artists so this muesum was super cool. We werent allowed to take pictures in the exhibits but it was so cool to see these amazing works of art in real life. Sometimes famous art work can be disappointing after hearing so much about a piece and than actually seeing it can be a letdown, but nothing in the museum was disappointing. We went to this restaurant called Tapa Tapas across fomr our hostel and it was decent but they didnt have meals, considering tapas is basically appetizers in spanish so u order a ton of little plates and the food was okay. Not the best restaurant we went to there. Later that night we went to an ice bar, which is literally a bar made completely of ice. They give u big puffy jackets and gloves before entering because its SO cold. I wore a dress and wish I had worn a snow suit even with my jacket haha but it was still a really cool experience even the cups were made of ice. The next day we went to the shopping district and all these famous spanish deisgner stores, which was pretty cool and we just watched marianella try on all these outrageous clothes and were laughing so hard hahah Marianella was so excited to speak spanish in barcelona but actually they speak Catalan which is pretty different than spanish so some ppl understood our english better than her spanish and she was not happy hahah That night we went to a restaurant called Egipt, which was sooooo delicious. I got fresh salmon and potatoes and veggies and a salad. Also our other roomate from our hostel who was from austrailia came out to dinner with us. Her name was Kate and shed been travelling aruond with her mom but her mom went somewhere else that weekend while she went to barcelona so she was by herself so we adopted her into our group for a few days haha later that night we met up with some bentley kids who are studying in barcelona. They took us to all their favorite bars like chupitos and dow jones. Dow jones was very funny it was like a "stock market", the more ppl you get to buy a drink or shot the price fluctuates with the market. That was hilarious. Chupitos was a shots bar and they have hundreds of crazy shots like the "boyscout" where they light the bar on fire and u roast a marchmellow than stick it in ur drink and eat it hahah it was so much fun! here are some more pictures:

 picasso museum entrance

 ice bar!

 Boyscout! (above), Marianella and her ridiculous jacket haha (below)

 Me and Sarah at Chupitos! (I wore a headband that night and everyone said i looked like a Manhattan socialite from gossip girl for some reason soooo never wearing one again hahahah)

dow jones bar!

All in all the trip was amazing. Only bad thing that happened on the way back was i was forced to check my carry on bag and had to pay 50dollars on the plane because this airline lady was ridiculous! But besides that all the traveling went smoothly and I got back to florence last night and am about to pack for greece now! so excited! Leave tomorrow morning :)

Pictures!

More pictures from Eurochocolate and christinas visit to Florence!

The progression of me getting my chocolate kebab...

1. ordering it! They shaved the chocolate off that giant thing that looks like the meat they have in kebab shops (which are actually super popular in Florence, soooo yummy)

 2. Super happy to get my kebab!

 

 3. devouring it and making a mess of course!

 Me, Alyse, Christina, Sarah, and Amanda at our favorite bar shots :)

 me with my amazing daquiri at the mexican restaurant Tijuana...which christina is still talking about and is excited to go back when shes in Florence again hahah

 The whole gang! (left to right) Alyse, Sarah, Christina, Me, Amanda, Nil, and Lauren

 

Me and Amanda!

Eurochocolate YUM

So this past weekend i went to the eurochocolate festival in Perugia. It was delicious haha i ate way too much chocolate but totally worth it. I went through a program called "Florence for Fun" they help organize trips for florence abroad students. I am also doing my Greece trip through them. We got up at 730am on saturday to meet the group at the station and get on a train to Perugia. The train ride was about 2 hours so got to sleep a little more on the ride there which was nice. Once we arrived we had to take a 15 mins or so bus ride to the festival. The festival was packeddddd. It was like oktoberfest but with chocolate haha We got a "chococard" which was this card that had all the tents listed on it and what free things you could get at each tent. We also had a map of where all the tents were so that was very helpful. We started from the beggining of the festival and worked our way through every choclate tent there was haha It was a really fun group of girls too it was me, lauren, amanda, christina (she was visiting from Rome for the weekend!), marianella, and alyse. So we always all have fun together. We missed sarah bc she was with her parents in cinque terre for the weekend. I had a chocolate kebab which was pretty delcious instead of meat it was shaved chocolate and the "pita" was like a cookie/cake type thing and i got strawberry jelly in it for my "sauce" it was deliciousss, but also probs contributed to the stomach ache later that night hahah the hot chocolate i think was my favorite part, we got a free cup of this hot chocolate from Ciobar, which is an austrailian chocolate company and it was sooo warm and thick it was sooooo good. i wish i got 10 free cups hahah it was a pretty cold day too so hot chocolate really hit the spot. The city itself was gorgeous and id love to go back and see the city without all the crowds and tents.

we left around 6 and got back into florence by 8 so we went home and changed and took chrsitina to one of our favorite restaurants Tijuana. Its an amazing mexican place (on the weekends we dont mind having non italian since we have it everyday during the week! as delicious as it is one can only eat so much pasta haha) and christina loved it of course bc its delicious! I had a big nacho plate and a strawberry daquiri that was super pretty in a huge cup with lots of fruits in it and stuff. Later that night we went to Club Space, which was super fun but it poured rain on our walk home and its about 25 mins from our apartments so that part wasnt too fun haha Now ive just been studying for midterms and cant do anything else until thursday at 415 when my tests are all done! haha i have all 3 midterms on thursday in a row so its going to be a brutal day (well i have one midterm on wednesday but its my sculpture midterm and we just have to sculpt a monkey so cnt really study for that hahah just gotta bring my artistic brainwaves that day haha). although i cant complain too much bc as soon as my 3rd test on thursday is done i get on a train and go to the pisa airport to catch ym flight to BARCELONA!!! wooo!!!! i am sooooo excitedddddd!!!!! i cant believe fall break is finally here! Barcelona for a few days than greece for a few days, its going to be AMAZING. ill definitely have lots of pictures and stories to share after this next week or so :) On another note lauren posted some pictures she took with her camera of our dinner table when the austrailians and a few other ppl were here sooo im gunna put them up to give you an idea of what our dinner tables look like: (dinner is the best, the food is amazing and its always hilarious)
In this photo (from left to right) is Kyle, Kinglsey, Doris, and Alex (than me of course!) - the three boys were the 3 from Australia and they were so funny i wish they could stay the whole semester but they were only doing a short program with their high school. Doris was also quite the character she was from Switzerland and spoke like a billion languages but sometimes u couldnt understand her in any language hahah

In this photo its liz (shes french and good friends with anna), Anna (my host mom!), the japanese couple (never learned their names haha), kyle, kingsley, doris, alex, me!, and darlene (going back to school for art, but she worked on wall street for a bit for Lehman Bros. and shes so funny)

im slacking on the posting...

I have been super busy this week with lots of work and midterms coming up next week so i havent posted much! This weekend ill will post about my trip last weekend and put some pictures up :) here are some from the wine tasting last friday:

Chianti - Wine Tasting

I went on a wine tasting tour today in the Chianti region and it was amazing. we left at around 8am and took a bus from a hostel in florence (the hostel sponsors the program) and actually very funny story lauren kronenberger from LV was staying there and i saw her this morning so weird! it was good to see her and we were just laughing about how we see more people from home in florence than we do at home hahah but anyways so we took a bus and we had the best tour guide she was the cutest grl who knew so much about the area so learned alot of fun facts about florence and chianti. the first place we stopped was a farmhouse on this HUGE farm. they gave us bread, cheese (which was amazinggggg, the best cheese i ever had, and they put jam on their cheese which was a lil weird but so delicious and they make all the jams also there was strawberry peach and some weird green one idk wat it was haha), meats (proscutto, salami, etc.) and of course wine (red and white, both were pretty good but its our next stop taht i tried the best wine ever). The farmhouse was adorable and the grl running it was very welcoming and we sat at these picnic tables munching on delicious fresh food. it was me amanda alyse and alex (another bentley grl) and their new roomate who is a lil older that went on the trip, and also at our table we met this really interesting guy who was probably around 35ish works in amsterdam but is travelling around europe for a couple weeks and is originally from India and he just seemed like he had the coolest life ever haha so the farmhosue was our first stop and that was pretty cool than next we went to a giant vineyard. the vineyard was amaznig and we got a tour of the whole wine making process (its so intense! it takes forever to make). They produce different types of chianti. Chianti classico is the expensive delicious one and theres all these regulations and things in order to be able to call it chianti classico. If it has a black rooster symbol around the neck of the bottle that signifies its real chianti classico and it will also have a serial number type thing and if you wanted to check you could call the vineyard and they could tell you everything about tht specific wine even wat barrel they aged it in. the barrels were amazing they were these giantttt wooden barrels. they had some metal vats they make wine in but those are the cheaper wines, the wood gives the one a certain taste and has to be very specific if the barrel is too new the wine will taste too much like wood but if its too old it wont give the wine any flavor at all. the woman who gave us the tour lived in new york for about 40 yrs so wen she spoke english she had a bit of a NY accent hahah the vineyard itself was just beautiful, the views were incredible, huge rolling hills filled with grapes. we sat down and got to try all the wines, SO delicious wowww. it was so flavorful. after we were allowed to buy some and it was unbelievably cheap to get from there about 4 euro for a bottle so I got allison one bc she wanted some real italian wnie and this was about as real as it gets haha and i got a bottle for matt, and one to bring home to my family :) they taught us how to tell good wines from bad ones and that wen people swirl around their wine it actually does do something! if you dont let it sit for an hour open before drinking your supposed to do that to let the oxygen in and see how thick it is and all this stuff. it was pretty cool. Our last stop was a medieval village called monteriggerno, which was pretty cool it was the smalled town ever it was all gated in by huge walls and only 45 ppl live there! we got free gelato and it was very tasty. we walked around the town, we had the most perfect day ever couldnt of asked for nice weather which made it all the mroe enjjoyable. it was just a very relaxing fun day. we went back to florence by around 5. now its time for me to go to bed bc im exhausted and have to get up early for my trip tomorrow!

parlo italiano!

This week was pretty long, had a lot of work and im exhausted but made it through! haha almost felt like actual school this week, not just the extended vacation it felt like the first few weeks! but now i have a lovely 3 day weekend to relax :) I will go out for a lil but tonight but nothing too crazy, i think we will do a wine tasting in Chianti tomorrow for the day which should be alot of fun and than saturday i leave for the school trip to Arrezo, Cortona, and Montepulciano which should also be awesomeeeee. Also cant wait to stay in a nice hotel, who doesn't like staying in comfy hotel beds? I just finished up dinner a few minutes ago and it was delicious it was pasta with a mixture of seafood, than tomatoes with mozzarella and tuna, anddd anna made some leftover chicken for me too haha and of course bread and olive oil. it was delicious. Im so happy im really starting to understand and be able to speak enough italian to communicate with Anna. I can tell shes loving it hahah she hates wen we speak english at dinner, even though we actually have convinced her to sign up for a course to learn english! which is amazing bc shes been hosting students for years, she said shell still pretend like she doesnt know english if she learns it hahah italian is such a cool language, knowing a lil spanish is helping but sometimes makes it more confusing. the only hard part about italian is the grammar, it makes NO sense and even italians admit it! its just all these weird rules and stuff but as long as i have the verbs dowwn they can usually understand me. its just so cool being able to understand it too, speakings harder, but still we can have conversations at dinner besidesss what is your name and where are you from hahah and worst comes to worse i say Come se dice...? How do you say...? and i try and explain the word im looking for through some charade act and Anna gets it hahah or if i dont know a word she said i say Que significa....(the word i dont know)? and she can help me understand it. its just so cool. im so happy i did the homestay. also the new turkish girl that is living with us, Nil, she is really funny. She speaks such good english and idk how bc she said she did an exchange program in the USA in high school for a year in minnesota (whyyyy minnesota i have noooo idea?! of all places in the US! haha) but thats how she learned english and its amazing bc she speaks perfectly. its so impressive. she just says a few phrases weird. and also wenever she says "im sick" she says "im ill" bc in turkey "sick" is actually the F curse. me and lauren were dying wen she was telling us the story of how it was so hard for her to get used to saying the word sick in the USA ahahah shes trying to learn italian and go to architecture school IN ITALIAN! and she doesnt even speak it yet, i think thats a bold move, shes strugglign right now but well see how goes i hope she learns fast! but judging by her english i guess she does hahah

Going by so fast...

I cant believe it is october already! These weeks are just flying by now...teachers are discussing midterms and fall break trip planning is all completed. I got another italian quiz back today and got a 95 so that was nice :) I really want that 100 though i keep doing 1 small thing wrong on every quiz but ill get there haha (not that i should complain about a 95 im very content with it). I dont have too much work this week which is nice so yesterday me sarah and amanda went out to this club called Club Yab. It was pretty fun and we got in right away bc the guy working the door I had met a couple weeks ago at a bar and hes from new york also but now lives in florence so he obviously always helps out a fellow new yorker. we also got to sit at a VIP table so that was pretty cool. Today i just went to the gym in the morning as usual for about an hour or two, and tried to teach Marianella how to bench press. It was hilarious, shes super tiny and latina and in her super latina accent was like "Oh i thought i was so strong! ohmygosh! this is so hard!" Sarah and i were dying laughing, shes too funny. after that i came back to my house and made my own lunch of prosciutto, mozzarella, and tomatoes on a wrap which was delicioussss. I also had some yogurt and a few other things. Anna is  too funny about how much i eat, last night she made pasta and than hamburger type things (but they dont eat them with a bun so basically just meat) and she made extra hamburgers just for me! she gives everyone else 1 on their plate and is like these are all yours and gives me three "mangio! mangio!" "eat, eat!" hahaha and of course i eat it all, im a growing grl :) Anna is a great cool which is nice bc i heard about a couple homestays that bentley students have and the food is not quite as delicious, so i lucked out. we eat ALOT of pasta buttt thats teh itialian way haha tonight im just staying in having dinner here and doing a lil research for a paper thats not due for awhile but want to get done what work I can while i have free time so i dont have to worry about it when the time comes and im jet setting to barcelona or greece or somewhere. Im so excited for my trips we just booked the hostel that were staying in while were in Barcelona. Theres a guy from bentley, James, whos studying abroad there and he told us what hostel is the nicest and sent us a whole list of all these places to go and sights to see while were there which was super nice of him. unfortunately he wont really be there while were there bc its his fall break too so hell be traveling around as well but might get to see him for a night or two. Hayley will also be in barcelona while we are there so tahtll be super fun, Kim and Kailey from richmond are sutdying there so maybe theyll be able to show us around a bit. The hostel were staying in is called EquityPoint Centric in Barcelona. Its looks super nice on the website and i had some correspondence with the owner about a few questions we had when booking and he was so helpful and nice. I think its going to be a great place to stay. I cant wait for fall break! Just have a lil work to get down before than...My paper i have to write is for my MG Global Business class and its on the changes in the policing of Hong Kong under chinese sovereignty...only the outline is due before break but i pretty much want to have the paper written in the outline. it makes putting the whole paper together so much easier and shes going to give us feedback on it so i want to make it good.  After class today i went to go to the ferragamo shoe museum which ive been dying to see, but turns out its closed on tuesdays, who knew? haha it didnt say on the website but on the hours sign on the museum it did so that was kind of a bummer, but Ill try going again tomorrow after class. I just wanted to go today bc i only had one class so i wasnt tired and was ready to see it, tomorrow i have my superrrrr long art class all day which is fun but exhausting and than i have italian and thannn ill go to the museum but owell. im going to bed early tonight i think i can handle it hahah i also want to go to the acadamia museum this week so hopefully ill get there its not far from my hosue its just super touristy so always crowds and long lines which are annoying sometimes. Friday i am doing a wine tasting thing just outside of florence and than saturday i leave with the school trip for Arezzo, Cortona, Pienza, and Montepulciano. i think were just going to be eating lots of amazing food and meeting some chefs who will give us cooking tips and things like that so thatll be AWESOME ahahah and were going on 3 walking tours of different cities so should be really cool and a nice lil workout. were also staying in a hotel thats supposed to be really nice so we are just going to be taken well care of this weekend haha anyways i should do some work before dinner, but ill post again soon! :)

Florentina!

today i went to a florentina (the florence MLS team) and they played Palermo. the game was pretty fun but florence lost, and they werent very good haha we dont have the best team in the league apparently. They were pretty slow and didnt look super motivated, their fans seemed way more into the game than the players! but it was still a fun atmosphere and met a few new ppl and we hungout with this grl who was on her honeymoon but her husband got super sick and has been in the hotel for 2 days not able to come out and they had bought these tickets awhile ago and she went by herself the poor thing! so she came over to us and was like i heard u guys speaking english mind if i hangout with you? hahah she was too funny. its a very local team so at the stadium is pretty much all italians no americans or tourists, so that was pretty cool. we outfitted ourselves in florentine gear and headed to the stadium. we didnt take any pictures at the stadium unfortunately but heres me in my florentine hat!! representin the violaaaaa (purpleeeee!)
the stadium was like a 30 minute walk from my house not the worst thing ever. and we got to see a whole new area of florence we didnt know existed. It was in a much more relaxed less touristy everywhere. and whenever theres a soccer game EVERYONE wears the team colors which are purple. you always know when theres a game just by all the purple everywhere, im glad we finally got a chance to go to one. When we were buying our tickets we were just asking for the cheapest section and the guy at the ticketbooth was really nice and was like you guys are asking for the away team section you know tht? were like omg no! we want to sit with florence! so we paid the few extra euro not to be the only florence fans in that section, that couldve been bad hahah it was still only 17euro for the game which isnt bad at all. they lost 2 to 1. they had a lil glimpse of hope second half but it faded fast. after the game we went and got kebabs bc theyre amazingggg and so delicious. Than i did a lil grocery shopping and came home. It was a fun relaxing weekend, which is definitely necessary sometimes. Were constantly doing things here and making the best of our time! which is good obviously just exhausting, need a weekend like this sometimes. :)

Weekenddddd

I had a super long week of work, which i cant really complain about because its the first week I've been overwhelmed with school work since I've been here haha but it was still brutal. i had to write a paper for my Medici class and the topic and what to do was so unclear (at least i wasn't alone i called about 5 people in my class and nobody had the same answer or had much of clue what the assignment was) it was so frustrating! I usually enjoy writing papers but its hard when you don't even know what your supposed to be exactly writing about. She basically said write about 4 conspiracies using two chapters of this book and don't summarize but explain who was involved, what the conspiracy was, where it occurred etc. Within the two chapters of this book there were only 2 conspiracies discussed...and saying who, what and where is basically a summary....see how this could be a confusing/difficult task? haha but did the best i could and handed it in today so that's over and done with. also had an Italian quiz that i was a little nervous about because there was a lot of information on it but i think i ended up doing very well and was very confident when i handed in the quiz. Just alot going on in all my classes but keeping up and doing my work so thats good. Glad this week is over though haha now the weekend woo!...I wrote that on thursday than took a break and never came back to my blog haha so it is now saturday afternoon. I went to pisa today! me and alyse took a 945am train to pisa and got there in about an hour and we met christina and her italian cousin there. amanda was too sleepy to get up and go and sarah is seeing pisa with her parents when they visit so she passed haha but it was super fun, the tower is absolutely gorgeous and its called the leaning tower for a reason it looked like it was gunna tip over! more than in the pictures! we got to climb to the top of it (which was ridiculously expensive we had to pay 15 euro to go inn! so insane, but it was cool) and climbing up the stiars was hilarious it was so small and disorientating bc its sooo slanted and weird, heres me on the stairs making a weird face haha:

And all the views from the lil windows and the top were amazing. Pisa was a cute little city. there wasnt much else to see besides the tower and the really cool church next to it. Here is the view of the church from the top of the tower. It was gorgeous.

 

It was also really funny because my name is Torre and that is the word for tower in itlalian so my name was everywhere! i got a postcard with my name on it pretty cool hahah me and alyse had a really fun time trying to take the classic tourist picture of us pushing the tower, it is WAY harder than ppl make it seem. we could not get it to look right at all. here is all our failed attempts and than one sorta successful picture...

laughing at how dumb we look trying to do this hahah

Success! (sort of...)

So we stayed in Pisa till about 4. we got lunch at a lil pizza place that was decent than had amazing gelato. than we took the bus back to the train station and the train back to florence. got back and went to the gym for a bit, proud of myself for being productive haha than showered and am now in my room! we are all going to go out to dinner around 8ish to a nice restaurant bc we havent eaten out much at all so im excited to do that. have a good meal for dinner and than im going to stay in and relax. i was out late last night and had a really good time but even though its saturday night im exhausted and need to sleep haha and were going to a Florence soccer (football!) at around 2 so going to get up earlyish and get kebabs and walk over to the game which should be sooo much fun so i wanna be rested for that. its been a really fun weekend so far :) i cant believe its october already the time is just flying by! i have midterms in like 2 weeks! ah!