buongiorno italia

spring break 09 baby. and i am in milan :) rough life, i know. traveling is just so tiring... hah. exam friday morning, drove to DC, hung with mama and e, din with daddy-o, airport friday night- got to madrid in the afternoon (got my cell phone swiped- oops. i left my purse unzipped for too long- aka like 4.5 minutes) and then got on a plane to milan! i took the train into the city from the airport and walked to ruth's sweet apartment. i must have just missed her and lindsay (friend from UVA who i had met before and is studying in florence for the semester.. she was up for the weekend! so fun) on the way to meet me at the station but i got into the apartment by her RA and we called ruth so we finally found each other. the three of us went and got amazing gelato - coffee and dark chocolate mixed. yes please. we just hung around the apartment- its so beautiful. in such a nice part of town, RIGHT next to the santa maria de la grazie where The Last Supper is kept. 5 of them live here- the RA, her roommate Allie, and Megan and Cambria live in the other room with her RA Stefania at the end of the hall in her own room. there's a living room and a kitchen and its so adorable. that night we went out for aperitivo - which is like a typically 5 to 8 euro all you can eat buffet and drinks around happy hour which lasts until 9:30. it was so yummy. then we wandered around the nivigle - canal - and looked in restaurants and bars. we sat in another bar to get a drink and people watched and chatted for a while until we decided to go to this club called Rocket that Ruth had gone to. it was kinda far but not really and walking here was (is) so exciting for me cause i cant believe im actually here.. when we got there it was hard to get in and we were told we had to buy a drink by this large man who was blocking our path to the dance floor. he finally turned his back and we RAN through the crowd only to find ourselves in the middle of a Noah and the Whale concert (this random american band.. ha) which explained the importance to beverage purchases. we only saw them for a few minutes and it was over but we were pleased.

on sunday lindsay left and ruth and i wandered around. she took me to get delicious sandwiches and we walked to the duomo and sat around and people watched all the euros and tourists (aka pointed out how unfortunate American tourists can look) we then proceeded to wander the entire city and looked at everything. we sat at a cafe and got coffee and stared at all the beautiful tall women with their handsome men and adorable dogs. it was a pattern. we went to the grocery store, came home, and ruth made a delicious feast. it was lovely :) ruth's other friend Cinnamon came over and the five of us decided spur of the moment to meet their friend Anthony at this bar/club called Atomic to meet his Italian language partner and her friends for a James Yuill show. obviously none of us had ever heard of him because his genre is folktronica (um awesome) but now we are fans. hes adorable and british and kept being like "thanks alot" in english and everyone understood about zero english so they would just clap randomly. it was so fun.

this morning ruth and i wandered around again- in the "square of gold" where all of the expensive designers are located. so weird. then ruth went to class so i wandered around, looking in stores, grabbed a cafe pretending to be a local (as if) and then got on the metro. i went from the yellow line to the red line to the green line back to the nivigli to see what it was like in the day. everything was pretty much closed so i got back on the metro and headed to ruth's place. i got a big block of gorgonzola cheese and a baguette and ate my heart out and read. its sorta cool here cause its much more of a living city than a touristy city so people leave you alone. there's obviously tons of people here but you can walk down a street and be almost completely alone. it makes it feel safe almost cause there's no one to bother you. its way different than the other cities i've been to..

i think tomorrow i'm going to take a little day trip to genoa while ruth has class from 9 am to 7 pm, wednesday i'll climb the duomo with megan and see the last supper, maybe pop in the aquarium? thursday i'm going to go to lugano to see mia and then on friday me, maria, ruth, and some of maria's friends are headed to venice! so fun. on sunday i have a fligh to madrid and since my flight home on sunday got cancelled for no reason and switched to monday i'm going to spend sunday night in madrid with colin's friends which is going to be so sweet.