Today was so much fun. It all started off with great Italian breakfast at the hotel. It was very simple much like hotel breakfasts in the United States, but the food was fresh and very delicious. I ate a stuffed croissant and some scrambled eggs. Definitely worth waking up a few minutes early to go to breakfast! After breakfast we started our Italian crash course. It was so helpful to finally understand some of the words that we heard a lot while walking around. I found that since I had taken Spanish, it was easier to understand some of the words. The words were very similar with just some slight differences in pronunciation. I can imagine learning Italian is much easier than trying to learn English because there are not as many exceptions. We went over how to say the basics like scusi(excuse me/sorry), Buongiorno (good day), and bagno (bathroom). I thought that this quick bit of information was very helpful for me later in the day when we went out and tried to order things. The Italian people were a much friendlier when they could see that we were trying to speak in their language.

We then had a small break for lunch that we could put our new language skills to the test. A small group of us decided to go to a small bar (like a café in the US). Here we got some great sandwiches. I had a little bit of trouble here because the people at the counter knew very little English and there wasn’t much of a menu for us to point to. Even with the difficultly it was still a great lunch.

After lunch, we had a very informative walking tour. This was so interesting for me because I was able to learn so many new things and see so many things I never knew existed. At the beginning of the tour we saw the newer section of Italy which separated the rich and poor sections. For the Italians, the new skyscrapers were so amazing but to us they looked like some of the buildings we are used to in Pittsburgh. They are not used to seeing such tall buildings. After we went around the one skyscraper, we were able to see this other very tall building that was made to have trees growing on and around all of the balconies. This was so cool because it showed again how much the Italians incorporate nature into their architecture. During this tour I learned so much about Italian history and there was a lot of things I never realized. For example, I found out that Milan lost almost 80% of its building during world war 2 and I did realize that the United States did part of that bombing.  We walked past many other amazing things, but the one thing that stood out to me was a really nice store called Italy. It was like a big grocery store and had a lot of fresh fruit, veggies, wine, pasta, and much more. The best part of the store was the gelato. I keep getting pleasantly surprised by all of the vegan gelato there is. I thought that it would be hard to find accommodations for allergies, but it is great that they have options for everyone. We then passed through the art district and the streets and buildings were exactly what I pictured when coming to Italy. The balconies were so cute. After this we kept walking and ended up at the first mall. This mall had the most beautiful glass ceiling and the stores all had gold and black signs. We found out about this bull that everyone spins on for good luck. A lot of us spun around it. This mall housed many name brand stores like Gucci and Versace’s. We went in Versace’s and it was amazing. The people were surprisingly friendly even though they knew we weren’t going to buy anything. We walked through the mall and saw the Duomo. The pure size of it was overwhelming. It was such a great experience to see a building like that. We are hoping to get a chance to go back and see inside. Afterwards we walked all the way back to the hotel and we were able to see a nice park on the way back. Tonight we plan on going to get some good pasta and get some more rest for our early morning tomorrow.