Wednesday randoms.

Some Italian lessons:

Kira and I are culinary wizards...and resourceful too. But despite being able to whip up dinner for under 2 euros, we never did figure out what to do with this little guy:

An octopus! Cool...but how are you supposed to cook it?

Feeling down? Don't worry, just walk past a random Italian guy, and you're almost sure to get a creative compliment. Shameless, hilarious, and always entertaining.  

The cherries. Oh my gosh, the cherries. We ended up buying a huge bag of them in the mornings and then just devouring them all day.

Lemons can grow to the size of my face. 

And this was one of the smaller ones.

The perfect combination of gelato? That would be dark dark chocolate and coffee. Without a doubt.

Boardshorts over Speedos...always. Seriously, guys.

I was certain popped collars died in the 90s, but [unfortunately] they live on here.

Street bands are exponentially cooler when there's an accordion involved. 

Best ever.

I could eat Brie with breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

Open air cafes are the best place to watch the Euro Cup. Especially when Italy's playing.

And finally, you don't need to speak Italian, you just need to know how to gesture animatedly. (Thanks to Francesco for that one. It proved to be so very true.)

  

I don't understand accordions, but I love them.

We stumbled across this wonderful band of street musicians, and promptly fell in love.

And, just when we thought it couldn't get any better, this guy jumped into the middle and did a little dance. So fun. We were so enamored that we missed kickoff for the Euro Cup game we were on our way to watch. That's how you know it was good.

 

Friday photo frenzy.

A look at Italy, so far.

Yes. I've taken a ton of pictures. And this is only like half of them. But I can't help it.

This place is just so photogenic.

 

Pompeii.

It's beautiful, but it's also kind of morbid.

Pompeii is an ancient Roman city that was buried under 20 feet of volcanic ash in 79 AD when Mount Vesuvius erupted. It wasn't discovered until 1748. Now, it's a popular tourist attraction. Not only do you get to see the ruins of the city, but there are also plaster casts of the victims. Apparently, the bodies were buried and decomposed, leaving a space in the ash. So they filled them with plaster, and bam -- we get to see what these people looked like at the moment they died. Creepy.

Anyway, it was a beautiful day to be outside, and after trekking through Pompeii all afternoon, we rounded out our evening with coffee and some more gelato (this time tiramisu flavored) and watched Spain beat up on Ireland in a little outdoor cafe.
  

Wednesday randoms.

Thoughts on getting to Italy:

Airports are great. There's a never ending stream of people to watch, which is probably one of my favorite pastimes.

My plane didn't have a row 13. Guess they were superstitious. But just because you don't label it doesn't mean it's not there. So even though I was seated in row 14, I know what row it really was...

The Linate airport at Milan is more of a shopping mall than an airport. I know that all airports have little shops things, but this takes that to the extreme. You legitimately have to walk through stores to get to the gates.

The flight attendants would make two sets of announcements, first in Italian, then in English. But sometimes their accent was so thick that I wasn't sure which language they were speaking. Italian English just sounds like Italian.

Gnocchi is delicious.

We met up with my friend's classmates, and all they wanted to do was go to an English pub. On my first night in Italy. Seriously?

It's got little English flags and a sign for fish and chips.
So you know it's legit.

When you think you're too full for gelato, you're wrong. There's always room for gelato.

 

Irrational insomnia.

I'm going to Italy tomorrow.

I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight, due to a mixture of excitement about the trip and sheer terror that I might somehow oversleep and miss my flight. I never ever oversleep. But whenever I've got something important, I still manage to convince myself that this time it will happen. So I set like 3 different alarms and wake up every hour or so, panicked that I'm late.

I realize this kind of worry-induced-insomnia is irrational. But I can't help it.

Anyway, I'm super excited. One, because it's Italy and it'll be sunny. And two, because I'll be staying with a friend I haven't seen since May of 2010. I can't even wait. I'm smiling as I write this.

(This Sorrento forecast also makes me smile.)

So long, rainy London. I'll see you in a week.