Cheers to London

This past weekend I headed to London to celebrate an early 21st birthday with Kai. Kai and I both booked our tickets to arrive at the same time on Thursday, however he found out he had a midterm that day worth 30% of his grade and had to come to London on Friday. So.. on Thursday I got in to London and figured out how to get to my hotel from the airport (I am starting to get good at this whole solo traveling thing.) Since it was my birthday, my parents booked us a room in the Marriot and I was able to order "Eat, Pray, Love" as well as some delicious room service (delicious isn't sarcastic, it really was delicious.. Tabouleh and Sweet Potatoes.. my kind of meal.)

Friday, I woke up and headed to the tube, to meet my Fat Tire Bike Tour. I figured this was a great way to see the city while I was by myself, and it was! I had a very cute tour guide named Liam who was born in South Africa, moved to London, then Amsterdam, then Southern California, and back to London. He did a great job about teaching us about the history of London. This bike tour was very different than the one in Paris because London is full of beautiful and huge parks, so we had to do less "Street Domination" as my Paris tour guide called it, and more easy riding through the parks.

My Tour Guide showing us that this is where they will play Beach Volleyball for the Olympics

By the time I got back, Kai had arrived at our hotel and we headed out to a fantastic Indian Restaurant in the city. *Fun Fact- London has more Indian food than fish and chips! We took our time because we were headed to a musical called "Thriller-Live" at 8:30 and it was extremely close by. We finished by about 7:30 and decided to get a coffee at Starbucks while we waited (I will admit, even though Italian coffee is good.. I REALLY REALLY MISS STARBUCKS!) As we sat in Starbucks at 7:45 I pulled out the tickets. As I glanced at them I blurted out to Kai, "Let's go, the play started 15 minutes ago!" Yup thats right.. the play started at at 19:30, not 20:30. STUPID MILITARY TIME! We ran across the street and into the theatre. Luckily, we only missed one song, and we were in the 4th row! This musical was more like a concert than a musical full of all of Michael Jackson and Jackson Five music. It was extremely fun and put a smile on your face throughout the entire show. Th characters also had fantastic voices and great charisma. We finished the night of by playing a few games of my travel yam slam (my favorite game ever) and me killing Kai every game we played :)

Saturday morning, we woke up to the pouring rain and 40 degree weather. Our plan was to walk to all of the sites that I got to see on the bike tour Friday, but that plan quickly changed when we saw the weather. One of the benefits of staying at a hotel is you have a great concierge, he recommended we go on a double decker bus tour, that way we could see everything and still stay dry. The bus tour was perfect for a rainy day and I got to see a lot more than I had seen by bike, such as the London Bridge (which is not actually called the London Bridge, also I always thought the song went "London Bridges falling down" but Steph burst my childhood knowledge yesterday and informed me that it is "London Bridge is Falling down" makes so much more sense now.) When this was over we hopped off at Buckingham Palace and got to see the Changing Guards which was really cool and pretty crazy to me that people do this everyday. We headed to a typical British Pub where Kai got the fish and chips he had been craving all weekend, and we got a huge platter of very very fried food.

On the cold/rainy bus tour!

Lunch time! (not Boulderhealthnut worthy)

 After lunch we went to go see "Wicked" (for my 6th time, but Kai's first) and I made sure to check the tickets about 5 times to make sure we weren't showing up late this time. It was really fun because although I could probably quote 75% of the lines in this play, I have never seen it in a British accent. The Glinda was the best Glinda I have seen in Wicked, besides Kristen Chenoweth of course. Of course, I really enjoyed the play and so did Kai (but even if he hated it, I think he would tell me he loves it because of my obsession with this musical)!

We went to an amazing restaurant called "The Goring" for my birthday dinner where we were treated like royalty. The food was fantastic, and the atmosphere and staff were even better. When we got back to the hotel, I had chocolate covered strawberries, champagne, flowers, and a birthday card waiting for me from my family. The weekend was the best birthday celebration I have ever had and unlike any birthday celebration I will probably ever have again. I guess turning 21 in Europe isn't so bad after all. Thanks Mom, Dad, and Kai for making my birthday the best one ever! Love you!

My Birthday Surprise!

Paris for Valentine's Day

Well folks, I did what every girl dreams of doing, I went to Paris for Valentine's Day (at least an early one.)  It was one of the best weekends I have ever had, the only problem was it was way too short!

I headed to Paris Friday afternoon. This entailed taking an hour and ten minute bus to Pisa and then after that the flight was only an hour and twenty minutes! I quickly realized that traveling in Europe is the easiest thing ever. Kai met me at the airport and we quickly hopped on the metro and headed to the Eiffel Tower. It was unbelievable and I couldn't believe that I was actually seeing it in person! Kai and I were very eager to go up, but the line was about a 3 hour wait, so we figured we would wait until Saturday.

Instead we headed to a restaurant where we decided to order some Bordeaux. Dad, I am starting to learn differences between Wine, I have realized that I love Chianti, but Bordeaux is too heavy for me. Aren't you proud?! I then saw on the menu they had Escargot. I told Kai we were ordering some and he said there was no way he would eat them. I had, had them on a Carnival Cruise when I was in fourth grade and even Carnival made them taste good, so I figured in Paris they had to be amazing. I finally convinced him that we had to order them. The Escargot came covered in butter and pesto, what could be better. When Kai tried one he loved it, and we had officially began our French experience.

We headed to the place we were staying, a room in a couple's apartment that they rent out. It was in Nanterre, an adorable and quaint suburb of Paris. Kai had been there earlier that day and so he knew where the apartment was, or so he thought. We ended up walking around in circles for about an hour, looking for the place while Kai kept saying "this looks familiar" in a very unsure voice. Finally, we were able to get ahold of the man who's place we were staying at, Randall, and he walked us home! We were so far away from it, we could have been walking all night.

Saturday we woke up and headed to the Eiffel tower once again. We got breakfast at a cute little restaurant; an omelette and croissants. Finally, eggs for breakfast!!! The Italians eat them for dinner and I have been dyeing to have them for breakfast. Then we went to go meet our Fat Tire Bike Tour. Lisa Danis told me to do one of these and since Kai and I were short on time we decided it would be a great way to see everything. It was a blast! Our tour guide, Sadie, was very fun and entertaining, and the people were on it were either young couples or students. We got to see and learn about the Eiffel tower, Napoleon's Tomb, The Louvre, Ecole Militaire, Alexander III Bridge, and the most expensive hotel in Europe where the winner of the Tour de France gets to stay! I highly recommend doing a Fat Tire Bike tour if you are ever in Europe, it was so much fun and the perfect way to see the city.

When we finished the bike tour we decided to walk 669 steps up to the second floor of the Eiffel tower! This was harder than I thought because there were some people that looked pretty out of shape inline so I thought it would not be too tough. Well, 669 is a lot of stairs, but we made it! There was an iceskating rink on the Eiffel tower too, and of course beautiful views of the city. We headed to the very top by elevator and when we got there it started pouring rain, which actually made it a really cool view.

By the time we got back down the rain had stopped and the sun came out. We went to go check out the high end shopping. It was ridiculous. Every designer you could possibly think of were all on the same street in Paris. We went to an overpriced dinner near there, where we enjoyed the best french onion soup I have ever had and the worst nicoise salad I have ever had. We made it safely back to our apartment that night without getting lost.


The weekend was very fun and romantic! It was so great seeing Kai and it made me wish we had studied abroad in the same place, but I am headed to London to celebrate my birthday this weekend and get to see him once again!

Cooking, Pisa, Lucca, Wine tasting, and Chocolate Festivals.. I love Italy!

Well the title gives you a quick update about my week here in Italy. It was amazing! I guess I will jump right into it and tell you about the first thing. On Wednesday night my friend Angela and I did a cooking class. One of the great things about Syracuse University in Florence is that they offer all kinds of extra-curricular activities for students to do. So Angela and I thought we would take advantage of it and sign up for a cooking class. We went to the cooking class at 6:00 and started the long process. First I learned to make tiramisu, one of my favorite desserts and is so simple to make! The ingredients are simple just like every Italian dish. We just used eggs, sugar, marscopone cheese, espresso, amaretto, and biscuits. After the simple part was over I learned how to roll pasta. We made ravioli from scratch! This is something I never thought I would do. To be honest, I don't know if I will ever do it again because it is a lot of work. Luckily I didn't get put in charge of kneading the dough because that looked way to difficult. But I got to roll out the pasta, and then we stuffed it with our spinach, ricotta and parmesan mixture, and sliced it. Yes, that sounds easy but it was actually a lot of work. We also made homemade butter sage sauce, tomato sauce, roasted red pepper sauce, angel hair, and linguine! After our hard work of cooking for two hours, we all got to enjoy our creations. My favorite was of course the ravioli and tiramisu, but I tried the other pastas at that sitting. I was so full after! What was so great about the class, was that our instructor taught us a lot about the food that made us appreciate it and made us more knowledgeable with Italian food.

Some fun facts I learned from our cooking instructor..
-The word Salary comes from the word salt because people used to pay each other in salt
-Ricotta is not actually cheese because you have to have at least 30% fat to be considered a cheese and Ricotta is only 5% fat. Riccotta comes from the leftover fat from Pecorino cheese. It is called Riccotta because it means re-cooked! Pecorino is called Pecorino because it comes from sheep's milk and the word for sheep in Italian is pecore.

Angela and Me rolling the dough

Making the Ravioli

Here are mine and Angela's, not perfect but not bad!

The final product!

and of course the Tiramisu

Friday, I was able to go to Pisa and Lucca with my art history class. Pisa was fun because I got to take a picture where I looked like I was holding up the leaning tower of Pisa, but besides that it wasn't too exciting. Lucca on the other hand was amazing. I want to live their someday. Apparently so does Tom Cruise because he is possibly buying a Villa there soon. Lucca is a place I want to go back to and run or bike around the walled town.

Holding up the Leaning tower of Pisa

Jumping for joy in Lucca

On Saturday, I went Wine Tasting in Pazano in Chianti, another place I wouldn't mind living. I went with a student tour program called Florence for Fun. We had two Italian tour guides that spent the day with us by taking us on a two and a half hour hike all over Chianti. This was my favorite part of the day. The weather was perfect and Chianti was gorgeous. It looked very similar to Northern California! After the hike we got to go to the Villa of the wine maker and have a fresh meal with different types of wines. Lorenzo, the man who makes the wine explained to us in Italian what each wine was like, then we had it translated to us by our tour guide. We had three different types of wines with parts of our meals. Then we finished with their dessert wine which was disgusting. After that they told us we had to try grapa because the Italians think it helps people digest their food. So we took it like a shot and it was probably one of the most disgusting things I have ever had in my life. I think if you gave me that and rubbing alcohol, I wouldn't know the difference between the two.

Sampling the Olive Oil.. I bought a bottle to take home

Danielle, Carly, and Me..All from CU

Lorenzo telling us about the Chianti Classico

A fun fact from Lorenzo, the winemaker..
-The most expensive part about producing Italian wine is the cork!

Today, I went to the Chocolate Festival in Florence. It was unbelievable. About 10-15 vendors come and set up huge displays of chocolate in Santa Croce. It was amazing how much chocolate there was! I tried arrancia ciocoloto, ananas ciocolto, truffle di coco, e truffle di pistacchio (Chocolate orange, chocolate pineapple, Coconut truffle, and Pistachio truffle) all which were phenomenal and so different than the types of chocolate that we eat in the states.

So much CHOCOLATE!

Chocolate tools

"I Love You"

This week was a great Italian experience. I learn more and more about the place and culture everyday and grow to love it more and more everyday. On Friday I am off to Paris to see Kai for Valentine's day!