Florence

Our last stop: Florence.  We were here a whole month, I had planned in day trips and a week trip to Rome at the end of our stay, though I sort of burnt out on some of those plans, more on that later.  In Florence we had a roommate, which was interesting.  She was actually Canadian, but had spent about ten years living in Florence.  She was nice, we sort of kept to ourselves.  Our apartment was in a fantastic spot, we were close to everything, within walking distance of the Duomo, restaurants, and the market.  The down side was that Florence was HOT while we were there, our room of course didn't have ac, but we didn't even have a fan.  Also, we had to keep our window closed at night, otherwise birds might fly in, which I was terrified of.  It doesn't cool down at night either.  Our apartment was so old fashioned, there were actual shutters on the window, and no screen, it was sort of perfect, it really added to the experience of living in Florence.

And that's what i love about Florence, how diverse it is, meaning no two buildings are the same, everything has a handmade feel to it.  The tiny sidewalks and streets have what look like hand made stones, and what looks like was hand placed.  Everything is so unique, so old.  We really didn't do all that much sightseeing, we saw the duomo, some cathedrals, the David (which was fantastic, even after the 40 minute wait) and the Uffizi gallery, which was all renaissance art (what else?  We were in the heart of the renaissance after all).  Other than that, we just lived, we walked the streets, got gelato, fresh fruits and veggies at the market.  We shopped, both at H&M and the huge Florence market which was full of good stuff.  We people watched, and most of all, we ate.  The best restaurants are in Italy, I'm sure of it.  How is the pasta so good?   It doesn't even make sense, it seems so effortless, but it is SO good.  Same goes with the pizza, it wasn't fancy, it was just simple, fresh ingredients.  I could go on, and let's just say it was hard to go back to american pasta and pizza after that.  However, in Seattle we found an AMAZING pizza place in Capital Hill that imitated Italian pizza to a perfection.  Now I miss that, this is how things work I suppose.  Still haven't had pasta anywhere as good as the pasta there.

I did start to get homesick, and I had a bout of anxiety while there, but looking back, it was a really great time.  Good food, long walks, and shopping.  Before I show you the photos, you should know that I had been there only a few days when my digital SLR camera broke.  What else broke?  My 35mm film camera only a couple days later.  I realized this on top of the Duomo, after climbing ALL those stairs, I had no way of recording the amazing view from the top.  Needless to say I was not a happy camper.  I realized that the roll kept advancing after way too many shots, I opened the back of the camera, only to find the film wasn't advancing that whole time.  Bummer.  So all I had left was a holga and a 35mm toy camera, not very reliable cameras.  We had no choice but to buy a cheap little digital camera.  The silver lining is that it had video, so we were able to get video of our trip, instead of just pictures.  Seth did most of the filming, and I put together a dinky little video of all the clips.

The few shots I was able to get on my SLR before it stopped working:

The rest are from the little digital camera or one of my toy film cameras

Sometimes when we wanted a snack, we would walk a block down from our apartment to a room full of vending machines.  For some reason, these chips were so good, they tasted kind of like lays, but way better.

I can't remember where this was:

Spent one day at the gardens of something something...forgetting a lot of things, sorry.

Duomo:

Lovely details of Florence, hand painted signs, so cute.

This is the meal that changed Seth's life forever. Gorgonzola cheese with honey and bread.  It was amazing, and Seth still talks about it.  I will say eating in Europe did change some of our eating habits, and honey with cheese?  That's become a staple with us.

And lastly, a little video:

Florence from Maddy Lucas on Vimeo.

Switzerland

We had planned to spend 5 days in Switzerland, since it's in between Amsterdam and Italy, and the apartments we rented out were for specific days so we had some time to kill.  While in Russia, one of Aunt Glo's friends, Paula, offered us her house in Switzerland to stay at for free.  They lived there for a while and the house hasn't been used much since.  Paula was really sweet, while we were in Russia she  made us dinner while Aunt Glo was away in Germany.  She also said we could use their really nice Mercades, we were too scared of wrecking it so we never did, but what a nice gesture!  As a thank you, I took graduation pictures of her son and his friends.

When we got into Suiss, we came in on the train very late, and could not figure out how to get to the little town we were staying.  Two very nice guys helped us with their phone, and we got on the train.  At this point it was one in the morning, and we kept passing stops that weren't our town.  Then, the train stopped completely.  It wouldn't start again until 4am.  We didn't know what to do, we thought about staying in the train station until 4 and then trying to find it then.  Finally, we decided to take a taxi.  It costs us $100 euro, which sucked, but at least we made it, and the driver took us right up to the house.  From the train station, it's a long walk uphill to the house so in a way this was good.  We might have gotten lost since it was so dark and with all our suitcases that would have been no fun.

The house was awesome, we totally got hooked up.  When we got there there was a little gift waiting for us too, with bread, chocolate and fruit, and the fridge was stocked with some essentials (Paula had the company her husband works for come and set the place up for us).  The house was 3 stories and fully furnished.  We had been traveling for about 2 months now, and we were tired.  So, we spent pretty much the whole time relaxing in this house and it was awesome.  We had planned to go to Bern, but since everything is insanely expensive here, we just sort of hung out.  We got groceries, caught up on etsy, walked around the town.  It was great.  The town we were in is in is a quant, green hilly place, and I can not remember the name of it.  It was something like Groschototten, we'll call it Gro for short (edit: it's called Grosshochstetten, I was close!).  Gro is not a touristy place at all, it's just this small little farming town about 20 minutes away from Bern.  So we did get a few looks from the locals walking around.  But it was nice to be in a place that wasn't overrun with other tourists.

One thing we did do however, was go to the Swiss alps, how could we not?  We took the train to Grindelwald, and it was breathtaking.  Switzerland isn't my favorite country, from what I saw, not a ton of personality, but I think you go here for the scenery.  It was pretty unforgettable.

Ooh, I almost forgot, the train ride from Amsterdam to Suiss was freaking gorgeous.  We stopped in Germany to switch trains and it made me wish we had planned Germany into our trip, it was so cool.  From the train we'd see a church on a hill surrounded by little houses and it was just too cute.  I didn't get any good pictures but here are some anyway...

Groschototten (sp?)

This was the view from our window in Gro, so gorgeous, I kept trying to get good pictures of it but none of the pictures I took really showed how pretty it was.   Ah well.

Pictures from our walks around the town:

One of our friends from college, Harper, posted on Facebook how to make homemade peanut butter cups.  We thought that looked pretty good.  So we went down the steep hill to the grocery store and got the ingredients: chocolate, powdered sugar, and peanut butter.  Well, what actually happened was when we got to the store, I told Seth we already had powdered sugar, that I had seen it earlier.  He said, are you sure??  You promise?  I told him I was sure of it, and if I was wrong, I would walk all the way back and get some.  Turns out, I was wrong.  It was just sugar I saw.  So I walked all the way back to the store to get some powdered sugar.  I have no idea why I was so sure it was powdered sugar, but I lived up to my promise.  These were super good, and really easy.  You just melt the chocolate, then fill a cupcake liner up halfway, add the peanut butter mix (it's just peanut butter with some powdered sugar mixed in), fill up the rest with chocolate and refrigerate.  So good!  We tried to make this again in the states, but it wasn't as good, you gotta get that suiss chocolate I guess.

Treats from the bakery (love me some citron):

One of our train stops on the way to Grindelwald had a really pretty lake, I took some pictures while we waited for our next train.  I believe it was here that we found tons of ritter chocolate bars, and we bought almost every flavor.

Grindelwald

And now Grindelwald!  Not much to say about Grindelwald, except that it was simply gorgeous.  We took the rail up to one of the mountain tops, not the highest one, and did some exploring.  It was like The Sound of Music up in here, so picturesque.

Cute little Grindelwald at the base of the mountain:

awww, seth makes a new friend.

These are the carts we rode up the mountain, pretty cool.

Photo shoot time

Seth picked me these flowers.

I love how the houses are speckled throughout the hills, this is at the base of one of the peaks.

Mountains, clouds were big and fluffy that day:

Photo shoot time again, being really awesome this time.

Switzerland!

This is how high up we are, (thank you Grindelwald for accommodating us americans).

Interlaken

We made a quick stop in Interlaken on the way back.  Not much to do here unless you want to go hang gliding or skydiving.  We also paid way too much for bad fondue.  There was some good shopping, we bought some chocolate here and almost bought a really cute cuckoo clock, sort of wish we had gotten it looking back.

I love the detail in these buildings (a lot buildings in Suiss had painted words on them, as you might have noticed, and I just love that, it gives it such a handmade look).

This fountain, the cutest.

Bye to Switzerland, you were lovely.  Next stop: Italia.