Among rows and rows of tea, I was in heaven. They didn’t have Ginger Peach, Blueberry Green Tea, or Blackberry Sage (I am just going to have to wait until I get home for those), but they did have a very inviting red tin box of The de Noel, a French Christmas Tea. Without looking at the price, I grabbed it. This was what I wanted. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you the price. And as good as it is, I am shocked that they sell any of it at its price. Note to self, always look at the prices on the shelf and don’t be fooled by packaging.

On our way to San Lorenzo’s leather markets, we passed a place that I have been longing to go in. It supposedly has the world’s best cioccolato caldo, or hot chocolate. And I think we all agree that it was the world’s best hot chocolate….though its consistency was closer to pudding that a liquid.

Finally the time had come for dinner. Dinner at my favorite restaurant in Florence: Trattoria Anita. I always get lost, trying to find Trattoria Anita, so it didn’t help that we were coming from a direction that I had never come from before. I knew the general direction and the approximate street that we needed to be on, but I wasn’t completely sure about much. We turned right onto another narrow cobblestone street, so narrow that though it permits cars, there was no sidewalk. The street wrapped around buildings in the near distance, so I couldn’t see around the corner. Turning around the bend, there was Niccolo, standing outside on the cobblestone, smoking a cigarette. I took a deep breath, I had found it.

“Niccolo! Come va?”

“Ciao Megan, va bene! E tu?”

“Bene, bene, grazie. Questo e mia madre et una della mie sorrelle. Mama, Abby, this is Niccolo.”

After handshakes, kisses, and many piaceres (“it’s nice to meet you”), Niccolo led us into the restaurant and sat us at my favorite table…next to the heater. Niccolo brought us a plate of bruschetta that he had made and a half liter of the house white wine. Niccolo wasn’t surprised when I ordered this, because it was what my friends and I always get. Mom and Abby liked the bruschetta as much as I did, so we ordered another, telling Niccolo that it was “molto buono!!”.

Niccolo has been working at the trattoria for years. He is middle-aged and thin. His crooked smile is often plastered to his face, revealing his missing teeth. And of course, like most Italians, he has brown hair and brown eyes. What Niccolo is most known for though would be his humor, he is brutally honest, and that combined with a poor English translation, makes him very funny.

He came up to the table after we finished our meals and began talking to Abby. Not expecting this, she was taken aback, and I laughed at the surprise in her eyes. He said to Abby, “you are crazy.” Wide-eyed, she stared back at him. As if realizing his mistake, he quickly corrected himself, and said “I mean, I mean, you loook crazy.” We all began laughing and were even more confused because of the lack of clarity he had meant his clarification to have. Half in Italian and half in English, he began to tell us about a show that he used to watch where the main character was a girl that looked like Abby. Apparently this girl was crazy. She would jump on tables during class and put a “Kick Me” sign on the back of the teacher’s shirt….although I would say that Abby is crazy, Niccolo’s story was funny because Abby is not that kind of girl at all.

We left still laughing about Niccolo’s many stories and funny comments.

Day 86: My school week this week ended after Tuesday. Today was Wednesday and we had a busy day planned. We woke up early and were some of the first people to climb the steps of the Duomo at 8:30 in the morning when it opened. Afterwards we went to the Bargello and saw Donatello’s David, Brunelleschi’s doors, and a few Michelangelo sculptures (to name a few). We went to the History of Science Museum and saw Galileo’s middle finger along with some of his early telescopes. We ran through Mercato Nuovo, another leather market, in a beautiful historical loggia, that was given to the people during the Renaissance to be used as a market space- it has been used as a market space ever since. We walked by a number of famous palaces and historical buildings as well. Finally, we had to be at the train station to catch our bus for a wine and olive oil tasting tour in the beautiful region of Chianti.

We returned by the early evening because we had a dinner date at Gianna’s.

Day 81: Mama and Abigail arrived in Roma. They pulled up outside the hotel to find me standing there. I could have waited in the room, but I couldn’t sit still, so I paced back and forth in front of the hotel for about 30 minutes awaiting their arrival. It was dinner time by the time they got there so we took a quick walk to Capitoline Hill (which is amazing during the day, but even better lit up at night) while we waited for a good restaurant that I had been to to open. We toasted our reunion with a glass of wine.

Day 82: We got up at 6 am! We had breakfast at the cafe below our hotel and began the short trek over the river to St. Peter’s Basilica. The sun was rising as we also rose up the steps of the dome, finally reaching the top of St. Peter’s to see the first rays of sunlight strike the city. By 10 am, we had climbed the dome, visited St. Peter’s Basilica and (since the Sistine Chapel was closed) were in a cab on our way to the Coliseum. After the coliseum, we sat amongst the ruins of the Roman Forum, trying to imagine the people of Ancient Rome walking around us.

We were exhausted by midday and had to take a quick nap before dinner. I made Abby, much to her excitement, watch Mary Kate and Ashley’s When In Rome with me.

Day 83: We visited the Spanish Steps and Piazza del Popolo. We window-shopped at Gucci, Chanel, Burberry, YSL, MaxMara and Ferragamo as we made our way to Trevi Fountain for a second time. We jetted in and out of the Pantheon. And finally made our way to the train station to catch a train to Florence. Arriving in Florence, we weren’t more than a 12 minute walk from our hotel and knowing that the sights on the way would be well worth the walk, we started our trek. With a few minutes we were beneath Brunelleschi’s Duomo, and I felt as if I were seeing it for the first time again as they took it in in awe. We checked into our hotel and walked a short ways to a good restaurant that I wanted to take them too.

Day 84: I had a site visit with my architecture class at the church of San Lorenzo and my professor invited Mom and Abby to come along. We left a few minutes early because there is a great leather market outside of San Lorenzo that I knew they would want to walk through. Unfortunately after this site visit, I had to go to Italian and Creative Writing alone. I gave them a possible itinerary and a map and we planned to meet in the hotel at 4:30 before the cooking class began at 5:30.

We walked back to school together, went in through the back gate, and walking through the garden, found Iacopo, the chef, waiting to make sure we knew where we were going. He pointed us down the narrow stone steps, below ground, into the warm kitchen, where I had been before. He told us the menu and gave us each a task. We were going to make two types of pasta (pasta alla carbonnara and a pasta with a spicy broccoli sauce), an artichoke and celery salad, meatballs, and a yogurt and fruit desert.

After a very long meal, typical of Italian culture, we said goodbye to our new friends and Iacopo and made our way back through the narrow cobblestone streets to our hotel. It was 10 o’clock. We had been at school for nearly 5 hours…about 2.5 hours cooking and 2.5 hours eating. The time had flown by.

Day 85: Unfortunately I had to wake up early to go to my watercolor class alone and gave Mom and Abby some possible ideas of things they might want to see. We decided to meet at the hotel after I got out of Italian at 3, in order to go to my site visit for my Michelangelo class together. We were going to the Academia. We were going to see Michelangelo’s famous David.

…to be continued.

On the first day of watercolor, we were asked to briefly introduce ourselves. When it came to me I said “Hi I’m Megan, and I’m afraid.” My professor was a little bit angry, and he looked at me shocked, “you are afraid??”

“Um, well, yeah, kinda?”

He assured me that this class was only meant to be fun and to teach us the basics of painting with watercolors. He affirmed that watercolor was a difficult painting medium, but he also told me, somewhat to my embarrassment, that I had nothing to be afraid of.

3 months later, this morning, I had my second to last watercolor class and have done the most work out of my class. I filled two large watercolor pads, while the rest of my class only filled one. (Yes, one reason for this was because I would start something, hate it, tear it out, and start again…but still, I have done more work than anyone else.) We framed two pieces this morning to put in the student show and while I was framing mine, my professor came over and said, “So, are you going to put this one in for competition?”

“Um, I don’t know.” I replied, afraid to answer yes or no.

“Well, I think you should put it in.”

“Yea? Really?”

“Yea, definitely.”

I returned to my seat beaming and nearly skipped out of class. He wanted me to put one of my paintings in for the competition. This was enough for me. I didn’t even care about winning. He only asked a few other people in my class to enter work into the competition and I had looked up to them and their work for the entire semester. I couldn’t believe that he asked me to put in one of my paintings as well. The Art Gallery opening and announcing of awards is going to be next Wednesday, December 9. And while the prospect of winning is always something to be excited about, I am mostly happy to be a part of it.

I dried my tears and washed my sorrows a way with a shower. Clean and refreshed, I sat down on my bed, took a few deeps breaths, and tried to remember the initial excitement I felt in coming here. Luckily I had kept the one thing that I reread and reread late on hot nights this summer, when I was anxiously awaiting my departure date. Having not touched it since I unpacked all those weeks ago in September, it was lying where I had originally placed it, atop my desk, among my other books.

A cobblestone street is the floor of this narrow marketplace. Vendors spill out onto the street with baskets of color. The narrow street is merely big enough for two people side by side to walk down. Salumeri, Pasticerie, Gelaterie, Formaggeri, Peschierie, Carne Fresche: signs such as these hang above eye level, one for each type of shop. It has a similar feeling to the walk I used to take through Whole Foods…each product has its place in its own section. But rather than being in one enclosed space, this street is blanketed under Emilia-Romagna’s bluest Italian sky.

La citta di Ferrara. The image of the Italian market place in Conde Nast’s Traveler magazine captured me a second time, portraying one of the many Italian beauties. The article grabbed my heart strings and pulled me in. Depth rather than breadth. An authentic piece of the Italian Nation that has not been squeezed through a tourism machine. Ferrara lies ignored by all but the most discerning travelers. This was the place I had to go.