Italy!!

wow. what a week. i'll try to break italy into a couple posts, but whow knows.. i might just go on forever.

needless to say, all the people that told me that i wouldn't want to come home were right, the ones that said that venice was going to be my favorite were wrong and the idea that i would love the food was completely spot on. the only bad thing about the entire week were my allergies. The part of Italy I was in is incredibly agricultural and therefore sneezy and crazy for me. oh... and the rain. so much rain, thunderstorms, lightening, everything. I was lucky that it didn't flood. When I was flying in from Madrid, we passed over a storm, and I saw the lightening but didn't think it would end up affecting much of my trip. Luckily it didnt. It ended up pouring friday and part of saturday but overall, rain is just water and it dries eventually

I landed on Wednesday night after an insane day and a half of traveling and flight connections. luckily all my luggage made it and we ended up landing 10 minutes early in venice..Thursday was spent getting registered on the army post, running errands and making sure that i had everything that i needed and getting food for the week. Part of my payment to Jen and Scott was that i had to make mexican food at some point, which happened. We went to dinner at a place called La Vecchia Fattoria that night. I had oricchette pasta with cherry tomatoes and broccoli. it was a great first meal and the food of Vicenza spoiled me, almost for the whole week! We also went to the fresh wine store and got three liters of wine from the tap. I had heard of this, but I'm still pretty sure it's magic. It was delicious wine and fairly cheap too. It was just over 5 euro for all the wine. Bring your own bottles, they fill and seal it for you, amazing.

Friday was spent resting and sleeping and then sleeping some more. My allergies had me incredibly congested and subsequently exhausted because of the inability to breath and sleep or just be comfortable in general. The different pollen was attacking my eyes and for 4 of the 7 days in Italy, i wanted to rip out my eyes. I fought through it though, no way i was going to miss out on such an amazing place. Friday night we went to dinner at a place a little further out of town. i don't remember the name, but I remember the food. I had the Bigoli pasta with duck ragu and had to take a moment while i had the first bite. It was heavenly. So good. Scott had penne with a pistachio sauce, and sliced chicken with mushrooms as his second course which was delicous and Jen had truffled fettuchini. All of us thoroughly enjoyed our food and I could have eaten that same meal the entire week and been happy. I am so grateful we didn't have a strict agenda and were able to move around plans so that i was able to get acclimated. The wine there was great too, I'll miss good house wines and the quality of the fresh wine available all over.

I never thought I would be so excited to not be in a plane for a week. Once I landed in Venice, this whole trip finally became real. All the work, the internet scouring for ticket prices, the stress and budgeting, everything was finally real and more than worth it. Seeing my friends was even better and knowing that they would get to show me the cool places they had found over the past couple years was ever exciting. After friday, I was almost back to normal, the swelling in my feet from the hours of traveling was about gone, the blisters were getting better and my allergies were calming down. I had scheduled a skype date with my family for Sunday afternoon (early morning back home) and was looking forward to the rest of my time in the Veneto area.