"Somethin derci...."

Lots goin on...and not all of it is good! Of all my years of playing multiple sports both indoors and outdoors, and in gyms with terrible or no air conditioning or ventilation, during every season and particularly summer in the typical hot scorching OK weather, I have NEVER gotten sick from the heat!! WELL, today marks that new milestone. Woke up this morning with the classic symptoms....dizziness, nausea, vomiting, weakness, headache. All of this at 8am, and i was supposed to meet with my counterpart at 10 to go over project ideas, I thought I might be able to meet her, especially since we were meeting just down the street from my apt. Yeah I was stupid to think that, but I met her anyway but I came home quickly after buying more water and slept and I took two electrolyte pills that the PC supplies us with in our Med kit!! How's that for self diagnosing and treating!
This heat is just terrible and with no kind of AC!!! Some pcv's have some kind of ac....климатик, we call them, but I obviously don't! Oh and my flowers are officially dead, but it's okay, it's b/c I was gone a week in Italy!! Yep, a week of fabulous food, fabulous weather, great sights, good times and laughs, authentic Italian experience!

So got back last Sunday night from being in Italy from the previous Sunday. We had a great time! Our first two nights were spent in Rome after "sleeping" in the Sofia airport for our 6am flight. We spent the early day out looking around seeing some of the sights...we took our time to see the city avoiding any kind of tight schedule of things to see places to go, we didn't make it to all the places some of us wanted to go, but this is the best way to do it! Monday was the Roman Forum (the old original center of Rome), the Colosseum, and everything in between. That night we headed out for dinner at a cafe with great pasta by the Spanish Steps but spent our evening hanging out at the Trevie Fountain....great people watching, kept us entertained for hours. Next day was the Pantheon, Vatican, best pannini sandwich in all of Rome for lunch and all the little stops in between....found the best little store in a random street with the coolest glass jewelry we all bought from! You don't find those kinds of places unless you take it easy and just go with the flow instead of sticking solely to a map and a watch! That night was our picnic night at the Spanish Steps. In efforts to save money but still have a night out on the town, we went to a store close to our hostel, stocked up on all Italian essentials...wine was replaced with cheap Italian beer, budgets may i remind you. We got on the Metro with our dinner and headed to find a spot to sit on the steps. Another great spot for people watching and again were entertained for hours. Unfortunately, a lot of the crowd around us was young traveling college students and/or HS students but some of them had guitars and played for the crowds so it equaled out, I guess :) (Roma accomplishments: found best panani shop and the best cafe by train station...what better place to start drinking coffee than Rome :)

Next day we caught a train to Florence! Florence was just an afternoon stopover on our way to Milan. We checked our bags and headed out for a 5 hour look at Florence. Florence consisted of: another great pasta lunch, stopping at multiple open air street bazaar/markets, saw the famous Duomo (the church in the center), walked over to see the David...a replica, since the original you have to pay to see, the oldest bridge in Florence with all it's shops that have been there for a very long time, of course a round of gellato (ice cream), then took our time walking through the city stopping whenever we wanted, and off to catch our next train to Milan.

Now this is where it gets better...see Melanie is Italian, and she still has family in Italy, so she has taken it serious to learning Italian...some of the deciding factors for me when I decided to hop on this trip, who doesn't want to get a taste of real Italian life from the locals! SO, we arrived in Milan where her cousin, Gianni (her grandma's cousin), a 70 something year old with the spunk and a heart of a 20 year old, musician picked us up and drove us to his apartment. He lives in a beautiful apartment just outside of the city. We arrived where we ate again pasta, killer Italian roast, potatoes and green beans...it was great. We're not used to eating foods with much flavor other than salt, so, we "mmmm'd" at everything the whole trip!! (don't get me wrong I do have Bulgarian favorite dishes!) His apartment is a wonderful blend of his global eclectic style....I saw that there is hope for my eclectic style one day when I have my own place, lol. It was very homey and comfortable and was great for resting after we spent either a day on the train or shopping downtown Milan. Next day we set out for a full day of shopping and sights of Milan. Gianni dropped us off at the Metro by his apartment and we headed into the center. We walked up from the metro to be right in front of the Duomo which is amazing and the largest Gothic church in the world. Along the sidewalk there were all of these posters of some of Versace's design sketches to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his death. So we all found one and posed by it. Then we headed off to the stores just in time for the doors to be open...the other girls were a little bit more into this than i was, though of course I found a few bargains :). It was the perfect time to be in Italy, it's sale season, so they can clear out and bring in the new fall lines. Ate lunch with some Italians Crystal had met in Estonia. Then we were off again to hit the rest of the sales in a hurry before we had to jump back on the Metro to meet Gianni at the Metro stop in his neighborhood in his Mercedes (sugar daddy #1). He then took us to grab a few aperitif's then it was home for dinner!! Melanie played some for us on the piano and then we were off to be treated to ice cream. He insisted. Next day we arose to the usual, "Pronto, ready" by Gianni in the morning, our cue that breakfast was ready. Then we off again to the metro where we said our goodbye's and thanks, hopped on and headed to the train station. Next stop, Ventimilgia, cousin #2 and sugar daddy #2, haha :)

Here we got picked up by Reddy, the younger brother of the cousin in Milan, also a musician and has his own big band music group! He and his wife and their daughter fed us a great lunch overlooking the valley and the sea in the background. After lunch we were driven out further into the valley to the village Pigna by another cousin, the youngest and the sister of the three boys. This village is where Melanie's grandma Nonna and the other cousins are from. There, the 4 of us stayed in the downstairs apartment of family friends. It was awesome and such a great place to stay. They were a very cute young family and the wife voluntarily fed us lunch both days we were there (of course we said, "oh no you don't have to do that" with big grins and of course we meant sure, wonderful). This village was pretty much built ON the mountain and the houses were just stacked on each other and along sides! The windy, twisty and cave-like, walkways in and between the whole place was just fascinating and beautiful....really took you back in time.

We spent one night watching a free open air concert of Glenn Miller music that Reddy's band put on. That is where we met the final sibling and the youngest of the three brothers, second to the youngest, youngest being the sister. He ALSO is a musician and is the bass guitarist in his this band. This is where Gracie tells an older gentleman sitting in front of us and who had turned to us rambling on about something, that "you don't speak Italian" thinking she was doing so well with the little she knew telling him that she did not speak Italian....he was a sport and laughed and of course continued to turn to us saying who knows what and smiling at us.

With our location, being around 40 minutes from the French border and of course off the coast, we decided to travel in for a few hours to Monaco which was 20 minutes by train. The location is very beautiful (the water and beaches!!), though in general, Monte Carlo seemed and looked too fake and made up for flashy appearances and for the tourists. When Mel and her Nonna made a trip back here a few years ago before she passed away Nonna was very disappointed how Monte Carlo had changed, a place where she had worked for many years making hats for the locals and even royalty.

We topped off our last night in Pigna with their village festival which included food and drinks from locals and a concert, and off we were the next day for our night train back to Rome (the night scene of the towns and villages off the coast was just beautiful!), caught a bus to the airport and off we were to Sofia....where it was stifling hot (we've made int'l news for our unusual heat this summer, ugh!!) We were spoiled in northern Italy!
Italy was everything I remembered and then some! It was a fabulous and relaxing trip with some of my girls!
*sorry the pics are scattered like they are, can't quite figure out all this programs upload shiznat for pics!