My Bologna has a first name...

Ciao everyone!

Today, Maggie R and I took a day trip to Bologna. We were getting pretty antsy being in Florence with nothing to do. Plus, we've been needing to look into buying some spring clothes, and Florence is way too expensive to do that. So, Bologna was the perfect place. We took a train this morning at 10am and arrived around noon. We shopped for a little while, and then grabbed some lunch at a great restaurant that we found. I had pizza because I wasn't in the mood to try Bologna's spaghetti bolognese, even though I probably should have. After lunch, we did some more shopping around and found lots of cute, cheap clothes. We were very excited!

We found the main piazza which was very picturesque, and swarming with street performers and civilians. There were the spiritual, Native American-type people playing the wood instruments (my personal favorite), and then there was a strange duo that drew an enormous crowd. Like everyone else, we checked it out and discovered that it was 2 weird men who were probably tripped out on something. One man was playing the drums, while the other guy had a huge stuffed monkey raised on a pedestal, a lit tiki torch, a red area rug, and juggling batons. I thought that they were going to do something death-defying but instead, the one guy just ran around the circle like a crazed idiot, taking children's soccer balls and kicking them into the crowd. Not amusing.

We checked out the Duomo because it was free, and it was absolutely gorgeous. Maggie lit a candle and said a little prayer. Afterwards, we got tea at a bar and chatted until it was time to head to the train. On the train, we were coincidentally assigned seats next to this nice American girl. She knew immediately that we were American and started talking to us. Her name is Heather and she is a human biology major at Stanford. She also plays on the field hockey team. Whoa. Since I've been home, she's already found and friended me on Facebook, so maybe we have a new person to hang out with! The funniest thing about meeting her was that her host mother is really good friends with Maggie's host mother. We figured this out when Maggie said the name of her street. What a small world.

In more news, I'm going to see Dave Matthews in concert on Thursday night! He's playing in Padua! This came together so quickly and I'm really excited! Yayy! Classes start tomorrow and I have a lot of work to do before then. So, more soon.

Ciao!