I could get used to this. Yep, I'm used to it. Guys I want a Vespa.

To start things off, here is a medley of pictures of a vegetable medley that Mary and I made for dinner last Wednesday.

Frying pans: who knew right?

Be proud. And Jealous, cause this was delicious.

Word. Thanks to a train strike from Thursday to Friday and another public transportation strike on Saturday, we were “stuck” in Perugia. Awesomely enough, there was la Festa di Salento this weekend. It’s an exchange between a city in the Puglia region (the heel of the Italian boot) and Perugia in central Umbria.
There were all sorts of little things going on like food tastings and traditional dancing and music and such.



It was cool.
So after that it was time for (yet another) adventure to Florence to get ready for riding a Vespa around the Chianti region.

But first, we had to spend the night in Florence. After an unsuccessful attempt at getting Gluten-free pizza (we would have had to make an order a day before...) we ordered other stuff and had a wonderful dinner. Then we went to this cool place called Art Bar that Jen new about.

Disclaimer: Jen found the bar all by herself from memory and with a little help from a map. She wanted everyone in the world (or basically my family...) to know that. I was proud of her.

At first I was iffy because the drinks were all 9 Euro, but Jen assured me it was worth it.

It was.

I mean, look at those.

Kara got white wine. Lame.

It was so good. We're real cool. But it was delicious.


So anyway, after that we walked back to our hostel and stayed the night. The next morning we found our way to the agency, but they didn't have enough room in the van for us. No problem. They were gonna just call a taxi to pick us up.

EXCEPT THERE WAS A SURPRISE MARATHON IN FLORENCE.

And by surprise I mean that the Vespa company and the taxi company didn't know it was going on and that it blocked off the city. So we wandered around for an hour trying to get to a spot where the taxi could reach us.

After getting to the starting point an hour late, we learned how to ride the Vespa. Not gonna lie, it's harder than it looks.

Kara makes it look easy. There are like no action shots of the day since I obviously wasn't going to take pictures while driving my Vespa.

At about every stop we made the instructor asked us if we wanted pictures. We took every opportunity.

We look so fly.

The day started out cloudy but got really amazing as it progressed. We went to a cool villa where we had a tour of the wine and olive oil making stuff (even though it wasn't running) and then had a wonderful meal with 2 really great wines. I wasn't too keen on drinking wine and then having to handle my Vespa, but the meal took so long and we did enough that by the time we got back on them everything was fine. Plus, I figured they wouldn't offer it to us if it had ever been a problem.

Here's our instructor! He was awesome and spoke really good English.

It was so much fun. Scary, especially since we had to deal with traffic and real cars and were handling machines none of us had ever used before.

But we were fine. Apparently people have gone to the hospital before. Still, we all made it. I kept finding myself smiling stupidly as I drove, thinking "I'm freaking riding a Vespa through Tuscany. This is my life."

So who wants to buy me a Vespa in the US? No one... all right. But it was still an amazing experience, and all sorts of people from school have been asking about it since the weather's super nice here.

I loved it and would absolutely do it again. This is one of the top ten things I did in Italy. When I figure out the others, I'll let you know. Ciao for now!