A Glorious Reunion

Sorry it has been so long, but it has been hard to find extra time here. But, here I am back at updating. Last weekend I went to Florence to meet up with my friend, Ted, from Bowdoin. (He is studying in Orvieto, which is a city about halways between Rome and Florence. I rode the faster train, which is more expensive, but it was worth it. (You can get there in about half of the time) Once I got there, I walked around for a while, exploring the city on my own. (Ted missed his first train and did not arrive until about an hour after I did) I walked around the historic district at first and into the commercial section as well. Florence is a very nice city. It is great to look at and there is always a lot going on. The reason why I didn't want to study there was because it is like a little America. There are so many American students studying there and almost everybody speaks English. You are not exactly getting the "Italian experience". It was an amazing place to visit though. So when Ted finally came to the city, we went to our hostel to check-in and see where we would be staying. It was no ordinary hostel. It was in an apartment building with random rooms that you could rent. (It was very cheap though) It was a very nice and safe place though so no worries. We then went out to get a kebab and walk around the town. Our hostel was in a great place in the city. It was near all of the historic district buildings and the more "commercial" area. It was already getting a little late so we didn' really do much that night except walk around and get acquainted with the area in which we were staying. On Saturday, we walked up (basically) a mountain to go visit a fort/the famous Boboli gardens. We walked all through the gardens, saw the museum that they had there and a roman gate. We then proceeded to head back to our hostel (after getting another kebab, of course) and decided to go check out the duomo in the city. The duomo in Florence is a lot bigger/nicer-looking than the one here in Milan. Ted and I walked up to the top (many, many stairs). The view from the top of the duomo was incredible. We were one of the last groups up there so we were lucky enough to have some of the light of the day still left. We could see the entire city and the landscape. It was awesome. For dinner, we went to this incredible restaurant called Il Latini (http://www.illatini.com/) It was high on the list of "things to do/see in Milan". It was one of the best meals I have ever had. It was a very unique place because they sat you/your group at a table with other random people. It would have been very interesting but the two chinese girls that sat next to us spoke NO english. Also, there were no menus at this restaurant. They have set courses that they are going to serve and you can pick between certain 1st plates and 2nd plates. The appetizers that they served were prosciutto, brushetta, and anchovies (not my favorite). They also had bread and very large bottles of chianti. For my first course I had a Pappardelle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pappardelle) dish with wild boar. For my second course I had grilled rabbit. The portions at this place were incredible. They gave me the entire leg of the rabbit. I basically ate 1/4 of a rabbit. Ted had some ravioli for his 1st course and a steak for his second. This was the largest steak I had ever seen in real life. It was actually 2 inches thick (at least). We ate until we could eat no more and then they brought out some dessert wine and biscotti on the house. It was incredible. That night we went out to a club called Space. The next morning we both got on our trains and went back to our cities. It was a really fun weekend and I am glad that I got to see somebody from Bowdoin. News in Milan for right now? FASHION WEEK.

Luke