Che bella vacanza!

This past weekend definitely ranks among my favorites this fall. The festivities started on Thursday night, when we all went to Teatro Del Sale, a dinner-theater in Florence, for Emily's birthday! On the way there, Nell and I stopped several times to admire the Christmas lights that have gone up all over the city!


The dinner part was completely bewildering. It was a buffet (Italians can't even wait in line at the post office, did anyone REALLY expect them to line up when food entered the equation?) with a chef famous not only for his delicious food but his propensity to yell (I personally was yelled at twice, once for being American and once for drinking coffee; people tried to assure me it was because he liked me, but it was LOUD). Needles to say that was fun, and the show was GREAT--it was a series of funny songs, most of which we couldn't understand but liked anyway. The lineup also included an Italian version of "I Will Survive," which we were VERY excited about. The chorus translated to "When I imagine for myself a life without you, I will miss you, but you know that"--not quite what Gloria Gaynor was going for, I think, but it rhymes in Italian. As this picture will attest, we were all very jolly:


We couldn't stay out too late because Amanda, Carolyn, Meghan and I had an obscenely early flight the next morning to Paris--making it perhaps the only time I've set my alarm for 4am without resentment. In Paris we met up with Nana, Jenna, and Carly--as well as various people we knew from school studying in Paris--and did/saw as much as we possibly could in about 48 hours. One of my favorite things we saw was Notre Dame.

The Italian cathedrals are beautiful, but Gothic never really found its way to the peninsula, which means Italy is severely lacking in stained glass. I went a little overboard with window-pictures, so here's just one (my favorite):

As we were leaving, we ran into Nana and Carly a couple hours before we expected to, and were so pleased we immediately took a picture with the cathedral and its Christmas tree:


Later that afternoon we went the Louvre...

...and did what would have been one of the fastest tours ever (we'd already been to a museum that day, in our defense, and even a fast tour of the Louvre is pretty long) if we hadn't gotten COMPLETELY lost trying to find our way out.

After that, we went to the Eiffel Tower to see the light show (at night, it's lit up every hour on the hour). Unfortunately, we got there at 8:15 and had to wait until 9:00, but it was worth it!


While there was more to the weekend, I have two papers to write by this time next week, so I need to get going. There may be another entry or two, but there may not--I guess you'll just have to sit through all my stories in person after this!

Bacioni, bacini, alla settimana prossima!