Oh my gosh - I LOVE Italy!!!!! Ok, backing up for a moment, I need to give my last day in Paris it's proper dues and report on it first.
So, Sunday was my last day in Paris. Most of the group who came for the Paris Photo Workshop left in the morning and those of us who were continuing on for the Europe Tour enjoyed a lazy day around Paris. We started off with a slow breakfast, or brunch...which turned into a lunch. We started around 10:30 and didn't finish until 1. Then we attempted to go see the Catacombs, since it's one of those standard Paris things to see and we hadn't had a chance to see it yet. Unfortunately, the line was about 4 hours long and we didn't feel like standing still for quite that long.
Instead, we took off to see the Luxembourg Palace - or rather - the gardens around the palace. But we found a beautiful fountain in the gardens and you could rent little sail boats to push around the fountain. Each sail boat had a different country's flag and came with a long stick to help you retrieve your sail boat and push it back out into the middle of the fountain. We rented a boat ourselves, but spent a long time just watching the kids play. The day ended with a wonderful french meal, a train ride out to our hotel for the night, and preparing to fly off first thing in the morning.
On to the part about Italy! I've been here for barely 12 hours and I love the place. I've always found those I Heart Insert City Name Here shirts and bumper stickers and whatever to be kinda silly, but I might actually by myself one of those shirts in regards to Italy. We are staying in this adorable little apartment. The owner is this kind older gentlemen who did his best to explain everything in English and left a table full of Italian snacks for us and little Italian chocolates on each of our beds.
The moment we finished checking in, we headed to the street corner for pizza. There is a good chance we will return there every day. The piece of pizza was about $5 and was bigger than the average dinner plate.
After letting lunch settle, we headed to the Duomo di Milano, or Milan Cathedral. This cathedral is this incredibly huge, white marble building with some of the more intricate carvings and statuary I have ever seen.
Now - I saw a lot of cathedrals in Paris, and they are all gorgeous, but I happen to own a puzzle of this particular cathedral, and it's this really cool aerial view of the roof. The puzzle took me forever because it was half blue-sky and half white stone statues. Anyways - Do you have any idea how excited I was when I learned we could climb up to the roof. Not only that, but the tickets are good for 3 days, so I can go back if I want to. I was going to take a picture that looked exactly like my puzzle, but they are doing some restoration work, so there is scaffolding over that part of the building. But I got this cool picture instead of the city spread out beneath the cathedral.
Our last event for the day was an Italian cooking class. It was held at the teachers house in her own kitchen. We began at 6 and finished around 9. Working with her, we made (and then of course ate) our own 4 course dinner. It began with Tagliatelle Bolognese, then spinach Ravioli, followed by stuffed bell peppers, and all that was topped off with Tiramisu.
K- I'm totally stuffed, but in heaven. As much from having the chance to cook it all as from having the chance to eat it. We made the pasta, both the tagliatelle (a ribbon like pasta) and the ravioli by hand and I discovered that all I really need is a pasta press and it's a super simple process. I got to make the tiramisu while others in the group prepared the spinach stuffing, bell peppers, and bolognese sauce. Then we sat down and the kind woman who taught us each recipe transferred everything to beautiful serving dishes and brought each course of the meal to the table. Good food, great people, and all of us being way too tired resulted in some priceless memories (I'm counting that as miracle #35). I could be happy staying here forever.
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