Heart-shaped pizzas and future European trips

Okay guys, nothing important happened on Tuesday except that I ate a burger.  In my Italian taught "Understanding Modern Italy" class, I gave a short presentation on the linguistic disunity in a politically unified Italy and the eventual dissemination, teaching, and dialects of Tuscan Italian. As a linguistics and Italian double major, it was probably the most interesting topic I could have covered!

My Wednesday was much more eventful and definitely one of my favorite days here so far! After my class at the CCF, I went to lunch at Gusta Pizza (which in on the other side of the Arno river) with Catie and Julia. This is probably the closest I'll get to neopolitan pizza before going to Napoli! The guys who run it are from Naples, so it's definitely legit... buffalo mozzarella and everything. Not only was it the best pizza I've had in Italy so far, it was shaped like a heart... I was sold!

Margherita pizza and a beer for lunch... so italiano!

And in the usual flow of things in my life, lunch led to dessert, and in Italy, dessert means gelato. I ate at Perché No for the FOURTH time... I just can't get enough of their fiordilatte con amarene (blackberries and cream) flavor! I could eat there every day of my life and be perfectly content.

We then explored the city looking for vintage stores, but no luck! The 2 we did find were closed in the middle of the day, but I'm definitely going to be trying again soon. Hopefully I can snag some cool, vintage Italian threads.

I guess it doesn't really sound like a crazy exciting day, but I think it felt so great because the sun was finally shining almost all day long. I can already tell that once the weather changes, Florence will be even more of a blast! It was beautiful walking around without worrying about puddles and wet socks and umbrellas in my face, so I can't wait for more days like that.

In other news, I booked a train ticket to Bologna for this Saturday. It'll be a day trip to... FOODIE CENTRAL- butter and cream on everything. I'm all about it! Apart from the food, Professor Looney said that this weekend Bologna will be having a modern art festival and so it's a really good weekend to visit.

IN EVEN BIGGER NEWS, Tylar, Vips (her homestay friend), and I booked a flight to BRUSSELS... guys, waffles. WAFFLES. During that trip, I'm planning on hitting up Amsterdam too. I'm really excited to travel around Europe because it will definitely be a really fun time.