I’ve started writing this post from my hotel room in Rome (wow, never thought I’d ever type that sentence). However, I know me well enough to know that it’ll take me months to finally finish it, but I want to start here, where it’s all ending - in the Eternal City.

I’ve spent the last month and a half in Italy, most of it in a study abroad program and the last week and a half with my family. The bulk of my time was spent in Sorrento and Florence, but I’ve made trips to Pisa, Siena, Lucca, San Gimignano, Capri, Pompeii, Cinque Terre, Rome, and Vatican City.

There are so many stories I want to tell you from this summer. There’s cliff jumping off the Amalfi Coast, skinny dipping in the Ligurian Sea, and even that one time I punched a drunk Italian man in the face (long story short: he deserved it.) The summer was full of me pinching myself, or grabbing the person closest to me by the arm and desperately saying, “Can you believe we’re really here? Can you believe we’re really doing this?”

So here’s what I will tell you:

I flew solo from Houston to Florence, with a brief layover in Germany, where I bought my first legal beer. Prost!

My parents wanted to book me a private touristy transport from the airport to my school to make things safer and easier, but I’m the stubborn and difficult child who insisted on “figuring it out as I go”. That’s the thrill in traveling, right? Navigating transportation in a foreign country alone where you only know about three phrases in the language (and something tells me knowing how to say “I’m hungry” and “Goodnight” won’t get me very far).

Luckily, with the help of google translate, I was able to hail a taxi to the university. I spent the whole ride with my face pressed against the window, in complete awe, and mentally praying to God that my taxi driver wouldn’t murder the solo blonde American and dump her in a ditch somewhere. A half hour later, I made it: safe, sound, and jet-lagged.

In all, Sorrento felt like a vacation, but Florence felt like home. I never expected to click so well and so quickly. The whole city felt like one big village with hidden gems on every corner and in every small, unexpected way. The grandeur was not lost, even in the street art and the century old apartments and corner-stores, with their baskets of fruit and freshly cut flowers that put the $3.99 bouquets at HEB to shame.

The days were beautiful, but there’s nothing quite like a night in Florence. There’s live music everywhere (anything from a band, to a small orchestra, to a couple performing a full length opera on the street corner), people pouring in and out of the streets, and small angry men in Fiats using their horns like an obscenity that crosses all language barriers.

We had to cross this huge bridge at least four times a day, and every night we’d go sit up on the stone sides and look out at the Ponte Vecchio lit up and reflecting off the Arno river. It was one of the most beautiful places to be at night, and I found myself there alone with my notebook on multiple occasions. That bridge ended up being one of the key monuments of the entire trip. We ate lunch, danced, and dodged scooters on that bridge all summer long.

Anyone who says Paris is “the city of love” has clearly never been to Florence (I say, knowing damn well I haven’t been to Paris (yet!). This is a place where “ciao bella” is the new “hello”, and you can find couples pruning each other in every apartment doorway. PDA is a second language over there, and I get it. It’s impossible to not get lost in the wine, the street lamps, and the man playing “that’s amore” on his accordion beside a wrinkled couple holding hands in an outdoor cafe. Italy could make a romantic out of anyone.

I lost count of the number of museums we ventured into, but I never lost that initial awe that always followed when I heard the line, “This is an original Michelangelo” or “Donatello” or “Botticelli” or “Da Vinci”. I remember turning into the hallway that led to the statue of David and stopping dead in my tracks because of how caught off guard I was even thought I knew we were going to see it. There were so many of those moments - when you couldn’t believe you were standing in front of something you had only seen in your art history textbook (or because you couldn’t believe the cake on some of these male statues, I mean come on David what you so THICK for?).

Also let me just say this: studying abroad is such a scam. You get thrown into a new country with a group of people you barely know and are forced to live with, and then you spend every moment with them and form lifelong friendships in a matter of weeks and then, what?? They just leave??? Unbelievable.

Blaire. Marina. Brittany. Nina. These are my roommates. These are my girls.

We hated our apartment. The toilets didn’t work, there was no AC, our beds kept breaking, and you had to wear shoes inside because there was about an inch of grime on the floor. It was old and disgusting and hot and god I miss it so much. I’d give anything for just one more sweaty night on that dirty floor. We made this place our home in the month we were in Florence.

We had family dinners. One of us always had a recipe for a pasta dish we wanted to try out, so we’d take turns cooking for the apartment. We’d put on Dean Martin or Frank Sinatra, light a couple candles, and (of course) pop open a couple bottles of wine. We’d make cheese platters and bruschetta, never cutting corners on the in-home restaurant experience, and take turns practicing our Italian (and by practice, I mean googling all the dirty words and dramatically shaking our hands at each other). These were some of my favorite nights from this summer; when we’d spend hours at the table, long after dinner was over, drinking one too many glasses of wine, laughing and telling stories, and sharing things with each other that we hadn’t even talked about with people back home that we had known for ages.

We had nights out. Now, now, there are plenty of things that I can’t include in this section for a wide variety of reasons, most of those having to do with what’s left of my friends’ and I’s pride. Here’s the thing about Florence: the night life has a range. There are your classy loungebars, with smooth jazz and overpriced cocktails, then there are your noisy pubs where they only play American music from 2013 and everyone has had just enough to drink to want to be your friend in the bathroom line. And finally, there’s your absolute shitshow: the karaoke bars. These are hubs for study abroad students from all over the world. There’s a bar in Florence called Red Garter. Our professor explicitly told us to stay out of it, so naturally we went there on our first night. The drinks are cheap, the people are handsy, and trying to move through the crowd is like trying to shimmy back into your prom dress. I remember finally making it to the back room where the karaoke stage was, and running into an American girl that was drunk, sobbing, and yelling at her boyfriend. I instantly felt at home.

In a place like Florence, where everyone is trying to achieve bella figura, you can see the appeal in finding a club that allowed you to absolutely let loose and dance while singing Dancing Queen like it was the national anthem. The karaoke selections were outrageous. You’d have german students get up there and sing something that vaguely sounded like a german Gangham Style (which we somehow ended up singing the chorus to all summer), then you’d have a guy from Spain try to flex with Despacito, and finally you’d get a girl that got up there and sang New York, New York like she was on Broadway. My friends and I proudly (and quite off key) sang Don’t Stop Believin’ (obviously) and came back for an encore performance of Bohemian Rhapsody.

The men. The men. The only thing in Italy that ages finer than the wine. I fell in love approximately 837643 times with men I never had the pleasure of learning the names of.

Anyways, yes, the rumors are true: I lived my Mama Mia inspired best life. I went out with a few Italian men while I was there (IYKYK). Dating culture in another country is WHACK. Trying to find things to talk about is like, “So uh, Trump huh? How’s that going for you?” and then you spend the next hour trying to teach them American slang like, “it’s lit bro” and “big mood”, and then spend the next hour trying to undo what you did because they now think “lit” means lava and they don’t understand why Americans are so obsessed with volcanos.

One contender worth mentioning is my good friend, Luigi (if you’re reading this, hi Gigi!). I met Gigi at this questionable club in Florence. I was at the bar with my friends, ordering my Jack and Coke, and this tall, outrageously handsome man walked in through the entrance. We locked eyes, and the rest is history. We danced all night and sat outside the steps of Piazza Santa Croce talking until 4 in the morning. We only went on a couple more dates before I had to leave for Sorrento, but I’ll never forget those nights we spent walking hand in hand by the river, drinking beer, and him spinning me around on the bridge, singing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” in the cutest broken English I’ve ever heard. Definitely a memory to share with the other old bats when we’re sitting in our rocking chairs at the old folks home, reliving our glory days.

I turned 21 in Sorrento. What a dream. At precisely 12:01AM, Blaire walked into a corner store and came out singing “Happy Birthday”, a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand, and a phallic shaped bottle of Limoncello in the other. The day was spent laying out on the beach, drinking Peronis, and scoping out cute Italian men. My professor bought me dessert at dinner, the waiters sang to me, and I got to watch the sun set over Pompeii that evening.

That day was golden, absolutely golden.

Since I wasn’t in America, and the drinking age in Italy is generously 16-18, I didn’t think to go out that night. However, my roommates pulled me out of bed and got me to a club immediately. I didn’t pay for a single drink that night. People in the program that I had barely talked to were running up to me, holding out shots, and slurring “happy birthday”s all night. Ah yes, the love language no one talks about: alcohol.

On the morning of the end of the program, I woke up in an empty hostel room; my roommates had left before sunrise to catch their flights back home, and I was just beginning the last leg of my trip with my family.

The next week and a half went by in a blur. We took a boat to Capri, and went swimming in the legendary Blue Grotto. I dragged my parents around all our old stomping grounds in Florence and Sorrento, including the disco club and the shot bar, which had a piranha fish tank with a framed photo of the pope above it, and where we took water shots with the bartender’s 8-year-old son. After a wine tasting tour in San Gimignano (which I referred to as “San Jimmy Johns” so often that my dad recalled that pronunciation when telling his coworkers about the trip), we toured Sienna and Lucca, and stopped once more in Pisa to put in our time of holding up that damn tower.

I learned two very important things while I was in Italy:

The sentence, “Me piace la tua barba (I like your beard)” can take you so much further than you think.
Always look UP!

Which brings me here: Vatican City was…ethereal. There isn’t much to say other than that. I think I have a permanent crick in my neck from looking up for so long. The art in Italy is impressive, to say the least, but the art in the Vatican takes it to a whole new level. I mean, ya’ll, seeing The Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel with my own two eyes? No word could even capture that feeling.

We finished our trip where this blog post began: Rome.

Rome is dirty. Rome is rainy. Rome is breathtaking. The architecture alone is enough to sweep you off your feet. On our first day there, we were at the top of the famous Spanish Steps (fancy way of saying “big ass staircase”), and it started to rain. Look, in the entire month and a half that I had been in Italy, it hadn’t rained once, and I love the rain. Umbrellas immediately sprung open, and the streets and piazza below emptied as people took cover in the side shops.

Now, I don’t like pina coladas all that much, but I do love getting caught in the rain.

I must have looked ridiculous, strolling in the rain with my bangs plastered to my forehead, clothes soaked, and face completely upturned with the stupidest grin on my face. I gave everyone a free wet t-shirt show, and caught a brutal cold, but I was in Rome, and in the rain, and I had never felt so full of something I can only describe as pure bliss.

I miss it all so much, already.

There was so much from this trip that I can’t fit into this already lengthy blog post. Maybe I’ll save it for that memoir of an entirely plain girl with a few good stories up her sleeve that I’ll write someday, but for now I have these snapshots from a chapter in my life I’ll never get tired of rereading.

In all, I can sum up this summer in three words: Veni, Vidi, Amavi.

I came, I saw, I loved.

Caio.