It's time to do me!: Mexican, Margaritas, and Secret Bakeries

February 10, 2011

Today is mom’s birthday! I was wanting to call her as soon as I woke up to wish her Buon Compleanno! But then I realized that I don’t think she would appreciate being woken up at 3 in the morning, so I went to school to start the last day of school for the week. Italian class today was no different than any other..and I literally laughed so hard I was crying. Gloria wanted us to go through this one conversation from the book with the person we were sitting next to and as we were doing this Marissa and Nick were making faces across the room and I guess Gloria spotted it and started giggling and said “It’s like a silent movie without subtitles!” Our whole class started laughing, but that wasn’t even the best part of class. Somehow we got on the subject of traveling this weekend and Jackie mentioned that she was going to Amsterdam and Gloria goes “ohhh to smoke?!” (Marijuana is legal in Amsterdam). And Gloria continued the conversation by saying “Don’t fall into the water doppo hashish (after smoking hash)!” This comment literally had everyone laughing so hard because Gloria was serious when she made the comment, but was also laughing just as hard as we were. I swear the things Gloria says is never censored and she acts as if she’s the same age as us…I love her so much! When we got to Art History our class size was decreased by almost half because most of the architecture students are their field trip to Rome..I guess we don’t take the same school field trips as the architecture students.

As soon as Art History ended Marissa and Danielle flew out of school because the two of them are going to London for the weekend and were taking the 3:00 train from Florence to Pisa to fly out of Pisa. When Lauren and I got home the two of them were just about to leave so we were able to say our “have fun”’s and “be safe”’s. Once they left I was really excited because I was able to get online and skype mom to wish her Happy Birthday! She was super excited to see me and I was just happy that we both were online at the same time. We talked for just a little bit and I told her I would skype her again later in the day when she wasn’t so busy and before I went out to dinner. I was doing a little homework and noticed that I had a message from Ivy (one of the communications girls)…all of Ivy’s roommates went to Paris for the weekend, so I invited her over to hang out a little bit before we met up with a few other people before dinner at the Mexican place Tijuana. When it was getting close to 7 a few people came over to our apartment to meet up to walk to Tijuana together and everyone was beyond excited!

We walked into the restaurant and found Nick, Stephon, and Bria already there at our table which we had reserved earlier in the night. However, people who weren’t really invited tagged along, so luckily our waitress was able to pull another table over to ours even though she already looked stressed out and the night was just beginning. Their menu was enormous and I swear there was at least 4 pages of just drinks. Lauren and I both decided to get a burrito..she got a vegetarian one and I got one that was filled with chicken and spicy sausage..and then we decided to order chips and queso to split. Our reasoning for going to dinner at 7 was because happy hour was from 7 to 8 which meant half-priced margaritas, so of course we ordered margaritas; Claire and I both got peach, Nick and Lauren both got the typical lime, a couple other people got strawberry and mango, and the opposite end of the table got their margaritas on the rocks, not frozen. So it was definitely a festive-looking and fun table! Everyone’s food started coming out and I was in heaven! My burrito was enormous and had little sides of potatoes and rice, and our order of chips and queso was so cool; they had the cheese in this thing that looked like a candle warmer with a tea light candle underneath of it keeping the cheese warm…delicious! I was finishing up eating when everyone was curious what time it was because if we were going to order more drinks we had to do it before 8 o’clock…luckily it was like 7 minutes til 8 and I decided I might as well get one more drink and went with the passion fruit margarita. I must say that my first margarita experience was heavenly and extremely delicious! We definitely are going back there because I know Marissa and Danielle are going to be upset to find out that we went to get Mexican and margaritas without them, and plus it just was great food and drinks for good prices!

When we were getting ready to leave the restaurant a few of us decided that we wanted to go out to a bar since it was still pretty early, so Lauren, Bria, and I went over to Ivy’s to use the bathroom, drink a little limoncello, and then head over to Nick’s where everyone else was meeting. Earlier in the week Nick and I had talked about trying to find a zoo to go to on Friday, so while everyone was sitting in his kitchen we started talking about plans for tomorrow before we went out. I looked up tickets for the zoo which were 12 euro and the train to get to the town that had the zoo was only 3 euro each way…a pretty awesome deal if you ask me! However, the more we started talking about it other plans got thrown into the mix and everyone started talking about going to Assisi instead. I wasn’t really into that idea because train tickets there are expensive, and although I would love to see the church in Assisi in person, I think looking at everyone else’s pictures of it are better than paying a good deal of money just on transportation alone to take the exact same pictures. Nick wasn’t really into that idea either, so him and I both agreed that if we got up at a decent time tomorrow morning we would just head off to the zoo, and let everyone go to Assisi if they wanted.

After having a little more limoncello we decided to go out to this place called Bigallo which is a chill little bar near the Duomo. They have this card system there where you can buy a drink card for 10 euro and it’s good for any 3 drinks of your choice, and you can save the card so you don’t have to use it all in one night. You also can get this other card that gets stamped everytime you or one of our friends buys a 10 euro card and slowly you can build up to win free things. Well Bria had one of the larger cards and if she got two more stamps on it she would get a free bottle of wine, so Nick and Lauren bought drink cards and we received a bottle or red Chianti. Nick also told me he would let me get a drink with his card so Bria ordered me the same thing she got..vodka with redbull and grenadine..not too shabby! We got a table and just relaxed for a couple hours watching the soccer game and just talking and having a good time. Nick and I also figured out that the woman at the bar never charged Nick for my drink..so we scored on that one!

After a little while everyone was ready to leave the bar, so there was only one more thing to do to make the night complete…go find a secret bakery! Around the city of Florence there are bakeries that start baking around midnight/1 a.m. in order to get ready for the next day. Well, apparently there is about a one hour window where if you go and find one of these bakeries you can get the fresh, warm, delicious pastries for 1 euro. Luckily, Ivy has found two different secret bakeries and took us to get a delicious treat! The first one we went to wasn’t open yet, so we headed to the second one, which had their door cracked (usually you have to knock on the door and someone will come out to see what pastry you want), so Ivy walked in and bought 3 chocolate croissants; one for her, one for Lauren, and one for me! We all devoured our croissants..so fresh! But surprisingly the chocolate was more like pudding and was cold, but I suppose if the pastries were fresh out of the oven they would have been filled with the chocolate that came out of the refrigerator and wouldn’t be warm unless they re-warmed the whole pastry. Either way…YUMMM! Lauren and I could now go back home happy.

When I got back home I wasn’t really tired, so I got on skype because even though it was like 2 a.m. here, it was only 8 p.m. at home, so there was bound to be someone on to talk to. All of a sudden I got an awesome surprise and my Uncle Brian from Indiana added me on skype and I got to talk to him and the boys..I hadn’t seen them in so long so it was so awesome to see them! Alex and Joshua told me how school was going and I got to ask Uncle Brian about the places he has been in Europe. What a treat! On top of that, when I hung up with them I got to skype mom for the 3^rd time today and tell her all about my night, which I hope brightened up her birthday. I ended up skypeing a couple friends from home who couldn’t believe I was up so late, but I always get so excited talking to everyone back home and Marissa was gone so I was in my room by myself, so I didn’t even realize what time it was. Eventually though I started getting sleepy and realized it was 5 in the morning…WAY past my bed time!

Me and my lovely peach margarita!
(topped with these super sour berries we swore were poisonous,
and a sweet yellow cherry tomato that tasted like a strawberry)