karin showed us the city she studies in! gand! very very very cold city with lots of spaghetti restaurants!
the belgians! karin and jeroen in front of a red belgian door.
and one of the hundred or thousand bike parking lots in belgium.
the only wall where graffiti is allowed.
typical belgian cakes.
typical way too big belgian spaghetti. viola was terrified.
do you see it?
everyone, and that was it for gand.
the first three or so nights viola and i stayed in the apartment of the sister of jeroen in antwerp. and so we more or less saw the city and i took a few photos.
in belgium, everyone is happy. it is the truth.
unbelievable, no?
even when i think i am taking pictures every second, i come home with five photos. ridiculous.
here we will start the first of a hundred posts featuring photos of a five day long stay in belgium. and where else to start but the fashion of jeroen, the belgian?
belgian slippers.
belgian shoes.
belgian scarf draped over belgian chair next to a belgian table.
and then, belgian meal: fries and mussels.
in montpellier. after belgium, and paris, and chamonix. here are three nice photos of viola and i in belgium.
in chronological order, of course. the former two in antwerp and the latter in brussels.
hey only two weeks too late! but it’s bologna! a very pretty town, where the weather is not always the greatest, but i know that doesn’t mean anything.
vioooola. i stayed with her and her mother and brother.
in the middle, there is the tour of bologna, which has a more specific name than that. we paid 3 euros and hiked to the very top… many, many steps.
typical bologna street, because of the covered walkway, which has a more specific name in italian.
this is a library in bologna and when they started building this library they discovered ruins where the foundation was supposed to be. they built the library anyway, but made the floor transparent so that you can see the ruins beneath your feet.
for the most part, as maybe you can see from these photos, bologna is a very red/rust colored city.
of the cities i’ve visited so far in europe, i think bologna is where i would prefer to live.
i am a little bored of the photos from the holiday vacation spent in italy. so i will take a break and show you photos from something as recent as this afternoon: a trip to the snow covered mediterranean.
gioia and myself. i spent most of the afternoon trying to decide if my feet had ever been colder.
i must hurry! it’s already been two weeks since i left milan. so here are all the pictures left over from the week in one big clump.
aaaaaand olimpia:
it is true that italian pizza differs greatly from american pizza. although italian pizza is light and fresh tasting, i still think the greasy pizza served by places like hot mamas is yummy, yummy. federico told me that italians would never put cheese on a pizza because that makes the pizza too heavy, when pizza is usually light. They still put mozzarella on their pizza but apparently that is not cheese but something else.
a typical napolitan restaurant, though it is found in milan.
turns out, i forgot to take pictures of the pizza. but here is a picture of the dessert! a shot of some sort of citron/alcohol and baba al rum (dessert from napels), both of which were a little bit strange. i found the evening mostly so enjoyable because i was in a real italian pizza restaurant, no matter how many americans had done it before me, and i was surrounded by italians enjoying the pizza, not exactly because the pizza was incroyable.
for one day. alot.
and traveled by foot even so. i usually hate the snow, but this time it was all right, probably because it wasn’t threatening my life like last year.
this is the duomo! i think it may be one of the only monuments to see in milan. it is quite pretty though. apparently right before i was in milan the prime minister of italy was doing some sort of political rally and someone in the crowd threw a mini statue of the duomo at his head injuring his face.
i really like this floor pattern.
everything was frozen over and i didn’t even own a jacket.
i don’t exactly understand what this place was.
the only church ever constructed on italian soil.
an afternoon finished with heavy italian hot chocolate.
olimpia invited me to spend christmas with her family, so i spent the week of christmas in milan! her apartment was so nice and cozy that i hardly went out, but here are some pictures of the week:
i forgot to mention that we drove from montpellier to milan. this is arianna, from rome. the drive into italy leaving nice is soooooo beautiful.
the first gas station after the italian border and one finds a wall full of pasta.
a bar in milan, where you can order a drink during happy hour and eat as much food as you want. apparently this idea is very common in italy. why isn’t in the united states? wouldn’t americans go crazy about it?
arianna and marco… marco speaks incredible english.
dianna and olimpia.
