Our last night in Sardegna we made a home cooked meal, it was one of our best:
(Chicken fried steak, salad with mozzarella and bits of
prosciutto, deep friend eggplant, peppers and onions, and of course bread with
olive oil and balsamic vinegar, droool)
We called Alessandro for one more beach adventure. We went to the beach
that Alessandro called "Picture Perfect"- I beg to differ though. I
think this was my least favorite beach. It reminded me a lot of the beaches in the PNW. There were a ton of rocks and seaweed in the water where you could
barely walk, although the water was still crystal clear.
[Our umbrellas are the green ones, Danielle is on the left :)]
Danielle and Alessandro
Alessandro and myself
It was so hard to focus that morning, I was trying to start a new book but I was just in disbelief I was leaving paradise; let alone Italy. The emotions were running full sail. As we were in the car driving back Alessandro played Jack Johnson and I remember driving along the coast in awe- I’ll never forget what I was feeling at that moment.
When we got to the guest house there were three new girls waiting in the living room, they were from Houston, Texas that were studying abroad in Germany. Apparently the people who ran the guest house overbooked them. Danielle and I were waiting on a taxi to take us to the airport and we watched as they tried to shove the girls and their luggage in a smart car, it created quite the ruckus. Our taxi never came so the man who owned the guest house drove us. This was a ride that I will never forget. He didn't know a lick of English and he was definitely the epitome of a gay Italian man. He drove a bright yellow bug and was swaying in and out of the lanes. When we would hit traffic he would yell in Italian and we had no idea what he was saying. During the whole car ride there was crazy, circus, Italian music playing; it was outrageous. I was thrilled while this was happening, meanwhile Danielle was having a near panic attack. Another moment I will never forget..
The flight took forever but we finally made it back to Pisa and
caught the bus. The drive reminded me of home, driving on I-90 back to the West
side. The roads and hills looked all so familiar. The sun had started to set
and there were sunflowers everywhere.
Once we got back to Florence, we walked back to Ganzo where we stored our luggage. Luckily, we got back in time right as the soccer game was coming to an end and Ganzo was closing. They handed us a glass of Prosecco (I miss all that free Prosecco) and let us relax a bit before we took off to a hotel.
The
one on the left was taken the first day we arrived in Italy, and the right side
is our last night. We stored our luggage in this phone booth inside the hotel
with the creepy old man that loved Danielle and I so much, I remember he
kept on trying to kiss us, yuck! We then roamed around Florence one last
time. We went to our number one restaurant where our favorite server, Laapo
gave us our last Italian meal.
(Danielle, Laapo and I)
After
dinner we walked around Florence. It was crazy to realize that everyone in our
group wasn't in Florence with us anymore and it was just us two there. It had a
whole different feeling to it; I actually felt like a tourist and was in a deep
depression that I was leaving. Of course I visited my main gelato man Roberto! Had
to get one last scoop of gelato, boy do I miss Bob :(
He loved me :)
As
it began to get later in the night, Danielle and I headed back to our hotel.
I'm still in awe to remember the first day/night in town in Florence compared
to the last. We were extremely lost trying to find our way to the Outside Bistrot
to meet Chef and everyone for dinner. It took us forever to find it. Comparing that to our last night, we knew Florence like the back of our hand.
Galileo's Museum
Down the walkway on the left side of the Ponte Vecchio
Duomo
Duomo
Italy seems like such a daze now. I cannot
believe that it has been over two years since I lived there. It literally feels
like a dream. In my life, dreams seem to stay dreams. You dream it up, you make it
happen and if you are not continuously living that dream every day, it goes
back into the dream category where you are wishing you could go back. There is
nothing that compares to the richness of traveling and exploitation of the
diversity in cultures that we don’t come across in our daily routine. I have paid a large penny for all my travels and believe that there is
not one car, no pair of shoes, or house that compares to what I have received out
every experience.
In the past two years since Italy, I’ve
done a fair amount of traveling in the US but none overseas. Visited family in
Texas, visited LA a few times, helped move a friend to Arizona, and this past Labor Day weekend I visited an old colleague in DC- first time on the East Coast and definitely not the last! It has been a full plate for me but I always manage to fit
traveling in. I have a few trips under my belt these next couple months, hopefully I can make time in between travels to share more of my experiences. Until next time, Ciao Ciao!
No comments:
Post a Comment