I'M GOING ON AN ADVENTURE : valentines days edition

Instead of hanging around in the city, and seeing the already enormous amounts of PDA Italy has to offer being doubled because of the holiday, my roommate Rachel and I decided to head out that day with the hope of finding a spot across the fume to sketch and lounge around at most of the day. All of our friends were wither in Rome or Barcelona for the weekend anyways, so it looked like the most fun.

Our first stop before heading out of the center of the city was a small, vintage bookshop just around the corner from our apartment. We had been in there once before and absolutely loved it.

 Even though all of the books are in Italian, we both found ones that we thought we could aspire to one day make it through, giving us a goal to improve our Italian and also getting an awesome souvenir. So we hid them away in one of the shelves for another day. When we went back on Friday, we were luck enough to actually find them again! I ended up buying two books, on a hardback, and both graphic novels for only €5.50 total. I know, I know, you're probably judging me right now because I just bought "comic books", but they are legitimately large enough to be novels, and my thinking is that it will be a great way to learn phrases and conversational words, instead of struggling through a 'mature' novel that I'll never be able to fully understand. Rachel walked out with a hardback book as well for only €5, and no she did not get a graphic novel.

After that we headed over the river via Ponte Vecchio, which we had seen in the distance, but had not yet actually been too as we like to avoid the tourist areas. But since it was our "date" out we decided to be typical tourists for half a second.

After our temporary tourist moment, we decided to actually get across the river and out of tourist country. While walking we were vaguely on the search for some mountain side spot, one of which we didn't actually know, to sit and sketch and read for the rest of the afternoon. We ended up stumbling upon a small asian market and picking up an enormous bottle of soy sauce (it's incredibly expensive here and we really enjoy making stir fry), so our trip was already counted as a success.

 After that we kept on walking until Rachel saw a road that seemed safe enough and looked like it lead up into the hills. It was a bit of a workout to get up the hill, and we were both out of breath, but the view when we turned back around was definitely worth it.

We attempted to climb the wall to get a better picture, but unfortunately neither of us are Spiderman so it was quite impossible. After consulting our map we determined that if we kept walking we'd end up at a large garden complex, and figured that may be a good spot for us to rest for the afternoon.

We were greeted by what looked like a countryside on top of the mountain, which was already a good sign for what we were looking for.

What we had actually found was the Italian version of a National Park, but it was more a National Garden. Needless to say we were incredibly excited and marveled at how gorgeous and empty this area was. 

Rachel looking very gorgeous among the scenery. I'm sneaky with pictures like this.

It was just too quaint with little bridges like this one.

The view on top of the bridge wasn't half bad either.

As we climbed back down form the garden on the mountain, we found more of Narnia lamp posts! We're taking it as a sign, or the fact that the authors of LOTR and Narnia were form Europe and probably saw scenes like these all the time. Whichever scenario you prefer.

We even got to see some more snow-caped mountains waaaaaay in the distance.

We rounded off our time out back in the city by the "babies" where we read for a little bit before we went and ate out at a rather disappointing chinese restaurant. The conclusion from that experience is that it's just better to cook at home, monetarily speaking as well. Since our dinner wasn't that great we made some snacks with our Nutella, strawberries, and bananas. That made up for it a million times over. It's the little things sometimes, and this day had been full of millions of them.