firenze

yesterday frannie and i took the train into florence for the day. it was a quick trip but i managed to have a successful shopping day and florence is great. i still prefer rome, but it was interesting to see florence as very much a city atmosphere, but is cleaner and definitely more peaceful than rome. found the roberto cavalli cafe, which of course was right up my alley with walls plastered with past RC campaigns and the best cappuccino in town. can't beat that!
this morning i bit the bullet and awoke in time to walk to saint peter's for mass, and afterwords saw pope benny give his blessings to the masses.
this week shouldn't be too bad with only 2 1/2 days of classes and then pariiiiiiiiiis!

vespas and dierdre

how could i have forgotten two important points of interest? a few weeks ago i had the privilege of seeing rome from the vespa of my italian boy, massimo. nothing quite like getting a comprehensive tour of the city of rome from a real italian. definitely an experience of a lifetime! my only complaint was that a helmet is mandatory - i certainly would not want to go without one, but my hair just wasn't looking too good! his last words to me as he dropped me off at the tiz were, "and next week i take you to chanel!" i'd say he knows me well. not that i need shown around via condotti and its surrounding areas!

also, dierdre shot with italian vanity fair and again with seventeen, and solo this time! she also shot for - drumroll please - teen vogue! that was her dream job, and i am overly excited myself. she had recent castings with versace (donatella's my idol) and stella mccartney as well which is, you know, NO BIG DEAL. she's headed to tokyo for 6 weeks in january to build her book!

CIAO xx

southern italy and london

finally got my blog to work after a few technical difficulties. anyways, where to start? the past few weeks have been quite busy with midterms, a week in southern italy and a weekend in london. in southern italy we visited naples, pompeii, amalfi, cuma, paestum, a few museums, and my absolute favorite, capri. naples was the youngstown of italy if you will, so yeah it was basically a craphole filled with a bunch of creeps. it was just one big trash receptacle. not much else to say. our "hydrofoil" to capri caused numerous issues involving seasickness among the group which was just ever so pleasant! but it was well worth it because it was by far the most beautiful place i've ever seen. i even stepped above my fear of heights and took the chairlift to anacapri where the views were absolutely breathtaking (i figured if jackie o could survive it, so could i!) upon our return in home sweet rome, room 405 became filled with holiday spirit as november 1st begins the christmas season for us. christmas music, elf, and christmas vacation are the only things to get us through the stress of midterms!

this weekend we flew to london for the weekend. we, against my complaints, stayed in a hostel. i knew i'd hate it. it was in an awesome area, the best shopping was just a few blocks away. but i am not too peachy keen on sharing a room with 4 foreign men and a south african cat dog. accommodations aside, i loved london. it was fabulous to be speaking english again and get a break from the constant harassment of italian men. the weather was really chilly, but i couldn't complain considering it's been almost 70 still in rome and that doesn't encourage holiday spirit! not much of a harry pothead fan, but we found platform 9 3/4 which was pretty neato. probably the highlight of the weekend (aside from holiday starbucks!) was getting to see wicked which absolutely knocked my socks off.