Giulia's Continental Adventures

      Siena We went to Siena for a day trip And met my grandfather and his friend there. Owen and I did not know that the entire city was divided into 17 neighborhoods. Each neighborhood has its own flag and its own team in this really big horse race every year.  The flags are mostly really cool. The coolest one is the wolf one which I have now. (picture below.) :P We went into five neighborhoods: Unicorn, caterpillar, giraffe, wolf, and I think rhino. We were in caterpillar the longest so I think that it was the largest but I do not really know since we were only in five neighborhoods out of seventeen. The horse race that I mentioned earlier is supposedly about ninety seconds long. My dad went to one and said that after the race is over the team that won’s neighborhood runs out onto the track and crowded the horse and rider. Then after the race they carry the jockey back to the neighborhood and have a feast. I decided one day I want to go to that race.  ...

  We went to a cooking class to learn to make pizza and gelato. The teacher was a man named Giorgio and he used to own a restaurant. The first thing we did was make Gelato. The first step was to measure out the ingredients: sugar, cream, egg yolks, milk, a pinch of salt, and a touch of vanilla for flavor. It really did not have a flavor but that was fine.  Then we started working on the cat tongues. Cat tongues are a type of cookie in italy. In italian they are called lingue di gatto. The ingredients are: sugar, butter, flour, and egg whites. We used an icing bag to squeeze them into straight lines which made them look like cat tongues after they baked. This is why they have the name that they have. They tasted like sugar cookies.  They were really good with the plain gelato. The next thing we made was pizza. We made a batch of dough but then Giorgio gave us some of the dough that he had already made because the dough needs to rest overnight to be really good.  We ma...

         Gelato week    Even though we have gelato daily when in Italy, this week we decided to map gelato places in our neighborhood in Florence.  This meant we got to go to different places every day and call it homework!!  Our goal is to go to five places, try flavors, rate them and write about it.   Our first stop was pasticceria Batoni. I had a cup with two flavors: chocolate and stracciatella. In case you didn’t read my blog where I define stracciatella, it’s like chocolate chip, but it has slices of chocolate throughout.  It was really creamy and the chocolate chips were huge! Overall it was pretty good. There were a good number of flavors and the outside seating was good.  Next we went to Slurp. The flavors I got were Chocolate Crisp and Stracciatella. The chocolate crisp had small, crunchy chocolate-coated crispies. The stracciatella had one giant chocolate chunk that was so big I had to bite it. I ...

              A day in Florence  We are in Florence for a month YAY! :) This is what one of our days looked like. We went out to the other side of the Arno River to meet a friend and go into a church (where Galileo and Michelangelo are buried), but it was closed. But we also saw people setting up for a master chef Italy show! It was pretty cool. Then since the church was closed we went back to our side of the river and got gelato. I got chocolate and banana flavors, it was yummy. Then we climbed a mountain to see dad's favorite church in Florence but that was closed too. Even though I didn’t enjoy the climb, the view was pretty, especially when I looked out of a telescope. Later we went back to the first church and it was open now. We went inside and saw all the graves. It was actually kinda cool. It took us a little while to find Galileo's grave but we found it. I could not find Michelangelo’s grave (not the ninja turtle), but...

We stopped in Munich for an afternoon to see dad’s cousin and her husband.  We had lunch together. I ate a brizza. That is a Bretzel Pizza; Bretzel means Pretzel in German. The crust was made of Bretzel; it had cheese and tomatoes as toppings. It was not the best thing ever. The Mac & cheese was by far better. There were also Radishes that my dad's cousin ordered; they were covered in chives and really good. Overall the food in Munich was pretty yummy. I was looking forward to the food in Venice because it’s Italian food. The first night we got pizzas. My mom and I shared a margarita pizza with mozzarella on it. My brother and dad got a pizza that had meat and mushrooms on it. I did not like it. To me the sauce was bad but everyone else thought it was good. We got gelato in the morning and I got coffee and chocolate flavors. For lunch the next day I got spaghetti with cheese; it was delicious.  Then for dinner I got more spaghetti with bolognese sauce and of course CHEES...

  We went to an animal park in Basel, Switzerland which was really cool & big. We saw almost all the animals at the park. There were a few that were hiding though, such as the fox and the lynx. There was supposed to be a cat but it was not in the cage that was labeled for it.  I don’t think it was a housecat, but all the labels were in German, so we couldn’t read the name or description. Some of the animals we saw were swans. There were both black and white swans. I’ve never seen black swans in person before! There were also chickens, two types of hens and a rooster. I also saw goats; there was a goat fight breaking out and the old wise goat made it stop. Baby goats were sleeping next to their mother. I saw a lot of fish in all the ponds in the various enclosures. There were two sleeping pigs, one (maybe the male) playing in a lake. Baby pigs were sleeping in two piles. A peacock and a peafowl were not in their cages, so they were wandering around the park! We saw do...

  The flight. The flight into London took six hours from the Boston airport. We had a driver pick us up from our house and take us to the airport. We got there around 5:00 PM. We boarded the plane at 10:00 PM and took off at 10:35-ish.  We got an on-plane dinner of chicken rice and beans. We also got a roll and butter that was very good. The main course was not the best though. I had apple juice as a drink. My mom had a vegetarian meal and my Dad and Brother had the same thing as me. I watched one movie called “The bad guys.”  It was very good. Then I went to sleep for about an hour. When I woke up I watched TV and for breakfast I got yogurt and an apple. The yogurt was awesome but the apple had no flavor at all though.