Pasqua e Pasquetta. Easter and Easter Monday.

Ciao!
Well I have gotten quite an earful for slacking on my blog this week. My apologies. I am sad to say that we only have 4 more weeks left of the blogs! :( How sad. Well, I suppose I have some catching up to do!

I last left you on Saturday of last week, just before I went out to dinner with a group of friends.
We went to the Restaurant Il Latini, which is the best place in Florence for the famous Florentine Steak. They have two seatings, one at 7 and one at 9:30 and we had our reservation at 9:30.

When we got to the restaurant, which is down some tiny little street, there was a very large crowd waiting outside the restaurant to get in. We were a little bit worried, because from the outside the place looked very small. However, once we finally got inside, we saw that it was anything but small. There were several rooms, but our table was down in the cellar. It was incredible and had a really nice atmosphere.

Then, when our waiter came over he told us about this amazingly delicious fixed menu that they have that has a very large sampling of many things. It sounded amazing, and we hope to go back to try it if we have enough time in the next few weeks, but we went there for the steaks, so that is what we chose. We started with some antipasto, which was amazing! 

 First, we each got a plate of speck, along with some crostini that had chicken liver pate, fresh cantaloupe, and an absolutely amazing rice salad!

The Florentine stakes come by the kilo, which you usually split with on other person. So our waiter figured out about how many we would need. 

 In came a very large platter piled high with steaks! 

 This was the portion I took. There was no way I could've eaten a larger piece. The steaks do come medium rare, which I would normally never eat in the U.S. but in the true nature of my trip, I ate it! I figured that if this is how the entire country does it, it can't be bad! In reality, it was actually very good, once I got over my initial hesitation, and the flavor was wonderful. We also had roasted potatoes, which were gone before pictures were possible. They were some of the best potatoes I've ever had. The oil and the flavor was to die for that I used about 3 or 4 pieces of bread to soak up all the left over oil that was left on the platter. We started with 2 plates of potatoes, and had to ask for 2 more they were so good.
After dinner they asked if we would like any coffee or dessert, but we were all pretty full so we passed. We had about 6 bottles of wine between us, so we were working on finishing them up, when our waiter came in with a round of Vin Santo (which is the famous dessert wine from Florence) along with biscotti. Then he came back a little while later with a round of Spumante for all of us! Both of these were free! :) It is important to tell you that the last bus home leaves my bus stop at 11:48pm. Well, we kept getting free stuff, so there was no way I could leave! So I ended up missing my bus home, since we didn't leave the restaurant until 11:45, so I texted my host mom and let her know that I would crash at one of my friend's. So after a late night we all finally went to bed. We had planned on getting up and going to church around 9 and then seeing the fireworks. However, things didn't go exactly as planned.
I didn't have any of my stuff with me to sleep over, so I slept in my dress clothes. Unfortunately we changed our clocks for DST that night, so in addition to not having an alarm clock to wake me up in time for church, I also lost an hour, making me miss church. By the time I woke up it was already 10 am. I felt kind of unclean from not being able to shower or change my clothes, so I decided to just go home and get ready for Easter lunch with my family.
When I got home my family was still sleeping! Shortly after I got home they woke up and got everything ready for lunch. Around 1 pm my Mom's cousins came.We had a wonderful lunch, and I was ready to burst like at Thanksgiving afterwards!
We had 2 different types of pasta and 2 different types of meat!

This was the best lasagna I had ever had in my entire life. The cheese was to die for.

This is pastiera. It is a typical dessert for Italians at Easter. It was amazing. It was kind of like a cheese cake, but more moist, because it is made with ricotta cheese. I had quite a few pieces of this throughout the week!

This was the chocolate egg. You find these all over the stores leading up to Easter. They have prizes inside of them.

Brotherly nap time after lunch!
Because I missed church in the morning I went with my mom at 6:30. Mass lasted 39 minutes! There weren't that many people so it went really fast.

Some fireworks went off near our house later in the afternoon. Megan was scared and ran to hide in my room. She was shaking so I sat with her and tried to calm her down. Poor little thing.

Here's a picture of the fireworks from the Duomo. There is a cart that is in a parade throughout the city, there are many dignitaries of the city and some flag throwers!
Once the cart gets to the Duomo there is a dove that flies from the cart into the duomo, then circles around and goes back out to the cart and ignites the cart for the fireworks. It was said that if the dove made it all the way back to the cart it would be a good year for Florence. Now, the dove travels on the wire and is powered by technology, so it always makes it back around.
Here's a link with a bunch of pictures by the newspaper if you want to see. http://firenze.repubblica.it/cronaca/2013/03/31/foto/firenze_in_migliaia_per_lo_scoppio_del_carro-55695749/1/ **If you go to the site an add may be in front of the photos. Press 'chiudi' to close the add, and then click on successivo to go through the pictures.**
Here's a picture that one of my friends took.

Easter Monday, Pasquetta, is a national holiday in Italy. Pretty much everything is closed, including schools, so I had the day off. I spent the entire day in bed with Stella working on some homework and watching some movies. I think she loved getting to spend the whole day with me. 

Tuesday I had to head back to school, even though the Italian schools still had off (they had a 6 day weekend!). I actually woke up with my alarm around 7 and laid in bed for 30 minutes debating if I wanted to go to my class. I wasn't feeling that great and hadn't been able to fall alseep the night before from a bad headache. Finally, I decided that I wasn't going to go, because I would be miserable for 3 hours and wouldn't be paying attention anyway. So I went back to sleep for a couple hours, got up and  was at school by noon. I felt much better after getting to sleep in. When I got to school I saw a bunch of my classmates in the computer lab and asked how class was. They informed me that class was cancelled because our professor was sick. Lucky me, I didn't have to use one of my skips or miss any material! It's a good thing I slept in too because I would've been very upset if I had gotten up and gone and class was cancelled. The rest of the day went really well. It was absolutely beautiful outside, it was  in the 60's and sunny so a few of us went and got a pizza and ate them outside. :)

 Stella decided that she needed to catch up on her correspondence and make a few phone calls to her beloved fans. :)

Thursday I had my art history in the morning. We went to the Bargello and the Museum of the Opera of the Duomo. We got to see some of the other David statues that have been done, Michelangelo's Pieta, and the famous Gates of Paradise doors. They were breathtaking. You walk around the corner and all of sudden they are in front of you. You just stand there in the bright glow of the doors and its breathtaking. 

That evening I went and met up with my cousins for dinner. My little cousin Giovanni wanted McDonald's for dinner, so we went to McDonald's which gave me an excuse to try the slice chips. They were really good, and I wish that we had these in the U.S. I would order them over french fries any day. 

After dinner we went out for gelato. I got 2 flavors: bacio and mint chip. This was the first time I have had mint chip in Italy and it was really delicious! I found it a little funny that the color was lime green and not the usual green color you see in the U.S. 

Friday I went out with my friends to Trattoria ZaZa. I had ordered tortellini with ham in a cream sauce. I was in heaven after just one bite. Tortellini are one of my favorites and this was definitely up there on the list of the  best I've had.

Today was one of the nicest days here in Florence so far. It was 66 degrees and HOT! I went for a little bit of a walk to the park by my house. The streets were full of parked cars from everyone heading out to the park.

Well, that is about all for now. It's time for me to start packing up my suitcase. Tomorrow morning I leave for Sicily for 8 days with my school. I'm really excited for the beach! 

I'm not sure how the internet situation will be, so I may or may not blog while I am there. 

Ciao!