Marty and David's Visit!

I am truly blessed to have such adventorus older brothers! This past Saturday, Marty and David arrived in Verona, Italy for their first trip to Europe. I was so excited to be able to share my abroad experience with them. It made for some unforgettable memories, that’s for sure!

Having been on a long and messy group of flights from the states, the boys were pretty jet lagged and tired. They both settled in and then we headed for dinner at L’orlogio. It was my first time going to this restaurant but it was recommended as an authentic pasta cuisine. We all tried different pasta dishes, so we could taste each others. We also got house red wine and it went very well with our meal. Afterwards we made our way back to my apartment but of course stopped to get gelato! We went to the best gelato place, La Romana. Our final choice in gelato flavors was biscotto, 150 years and strawberry, and just because we could, we got it in a box so we had even more gelato to split between the three of us (typical Ryans, always upgrading our food) and it was probably the best decision because we finished it all and then the boys were ready for a good nights sleep after a long trip across the pond.

The next day was a big sight seeing day in Verona. We first made our way over to San Zeno for mass. We were a bit late (my mistake on the times) but Marty and David really enjoyed going to an Italian mass. After, we walked around the church since it is one of the most beautiful ones in Verona.

On our way back to the apartment to get ready for sightseeing, we stopped at a piazza outside of San Zeno and got macchiato’s and crossiants. It was the perfect day: sunny and about 60 degrees. It was a bit foggy but that was nothing too extreme.

We packed up a lunch of prosciutto, parmesan cheese, and some Chardonnay to take with us for a picnic on the hill. On our way there we stopped at Piazza Bra to see the Arena. Then we headed towards the Roman ruins, Juliettes balcony and then Piazza Erbe. Then we made our way to Ponte Pietre and finally crossed over the bridge to the stairs that lead us up to the hill!

It was a beautiful sight and I could tell the boys really enjoyed the view of Verona from the hill. We found a spot to sit and had our bread, prosciutto, cheese and wine. Quite a typical Italian afternoon J

On our way down from the hill we stopped and took some cool pictures. Basically being our normal, model selves. Marty had some great candid shots from his usual goofing off. It was so refreshing to have a break from my normal routine and spend time with family and just relax. On our way back to the apartment, we all stopped at Piovo to get panzerotti, which is the best place to get them!

That night we headed to San Matteo Pizzeria. We were really hitting all the traditional Italian dishes for the short time we were in Italy. My roommate Lauren joined along with us and we each split a bottle of their house red sparkling wine. Marty got the San Matteo pizza, recommended by our waitrees. David got the Quattro salami pizza and I got the zucchini pizza. It was so delicious and we scarfed it down quickly.

For that nights dessert, I made the boys get hot chocolate from Café Teatro. They have the best hot chocolate, and if you haven’t had Italian hot chocolate, you should know that it is literally HOT chocolate. It’s super thick and creamy and very rich. I was sad to have to refrain from it but I was glad they enjoyed it! We headed right to bed since our next day was jam-packed with more traveling.

Our plans changed a bit since we originally planned to go to Florence for Monday, also St. Patricks day, but the train sold out so we rescheduled for Tuesday. We decided to go to Lake Garda in Peschiera that afternoon, but first we stopped to grab Cappuccino’s and some croissants from a nearby café. We all tried some very unique croissants with delicious fillings and then we tried a cannoli and then wafer pastry that was called Triangulo. Not our healthiest breakfast, but when in Italy..

We stopped at the supermarket to get some more food for lunch and dinner. We also picked up a lot of alcohol to celebrate as true Irishman. We got a pack of beers for our lunch at Lake Garda as well as Bailey’s for that nights festivities and them some more wine… just in case.

Lake Garda was a great afternoon spot. We walked down to the lake and skipped a few rocks, walked down the docks, saw snakes, hiked along the lake to a long dock where we stopped for our picnic lunch. We brought prochuitto and salami with mozzerlla cheese on nice sub sandwich bread. Then we sat back and cracked open our nice cold McFarland red beer, made in Ireland to get our St. Patricks day celebration on! The beer was awesome and really hit the spot while sitting on the dock.

We then started getting harassed by some hungry swans. It was actually really frightening because they were so close to us on the dock that their beaks were actually sitting on the edge of the dock! They were hissing at us and begging for food so we ran out of there before any of us got attacked!

We continued to hike down the river and passed some cool lake houses and even the amusement park, Gardaland. Everything was closed since it was Monday, so the town was nearly empty which made it seem like we had the whole lake to ourselves! Unfortunately, it was still foggy and we couldn’t see the mountains across the lake, but it was still a great afternoon.

Marty even fell in the water when he was walking along the shore! It was really slippery apparently but he was wearing shorts so it was just his shoes that got soaked.

We stopped at a few more docks to take pictures. Marty has a secret talent of being an acrobat. Pretty cool huh?

Afterwards, we laid on the dock and sunbathed for a bit, then headed into the city center to play Frisbee in the park. It was a perfect ending to a perfect day.

That night David made pasta at the apartment and had our red wine with dinner. We finished the mozzerlla balls topped with olive oil and oregano for an appetizer then Marty cooked sausages and I cooked artichoke to really complete the meal.  We were stuffed.

Later that night, I invited Mary and Lisa over to drink with us for St. Pattys day! The boys and I had our Baileys, Lauren had her white wine and Mary and Lisa had vodka mixed drinks. We played a ton of fun drinking games like thumper, cheers governor and circle of death. We had so much fun and drank our apartment dry of alcohol. Once it got to around 2am and there was nothing else to drink we called it a night and prepared for our day trip to Florence!

Copenhagen, Denmark

Copenhagen was one for the books. We started off staying the night in Malpensa airport in Milan. Worst sleep of my life, to say the least. 6am finally came and we went through security to board our 8:30am flight to Denmark.

We arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark on Wednesday morning having the whole day ahead of us which was nice.

Our stay was at the Sleep in Heaven hostel, which was so cute! It had a bar, lounge area that had a lofty look to it. It was one of the nicest hostels that we have stayed in so far. 

Our first plan of action was to rent bikes and ride around the city. It was around 50 degrees and very sunny, this made for perfect biking weather.

Being hungry, we stopped at La Galette, a French crepe restaurant. I got a caramel crepe and added some banana slices on it. Delicious!

We rode around the town a bit more and stubbled across the round tower, which was pretty cool. 

On our way to a park we also hear a band coming down the street. It ended up being the changing of the guards which occurs twice a day. It was such a nice surprise! 

We headed over to Kastellet, which is a fortress where the famous Little Mermaid statue is located.

The park was such a cool place. It used to be a military base so it is basically a piece of land surrounded by water. From a birds eye view it looks like a five-pointed star. We locked up our bikes and went for a walk around the area. We passed a super cool windmill and stopped to eat a snack.

Next we passed the St. Alban's Anglican church which had this amazing stone work exterior. Then we went past an elaborate fountain that was unfortunately not on yet. It was pretty to look at. 

Copenhagen being a port city, we quickly stubbled upon the Baltic sea. The water was so blue! There was a ton of fun statues along the sea that we stopped at to checkout.

We finally made it to the Little Mermaid statue. It was so cool to see how far the story, that Hans Christian Anderson wrote, went, now that it has been made into such a successful Disney movie and even a statue dedicated to it.

Our next stop was to Christianhagn which is a place in Copenhagen that was established by a group of hippies back in the 70’s. They claim that it is a separate country, but as of now they are still apart of Copenhagen. There was a church that had a very cool spiraled tower.

We also stopped in Nyhaven which is a well known dock filled with restaureants, canal tours and tourist. We grabbed s waffle cone ice cream from Vaffelbageren. It as such a nice change from gelato, and a perfect afternoon snack. I got caramel and coffee flavors with whipped cream on top.

On our way back we were riding our bikes along the highway and realized how serious the bikers were in Copenhagen. They stop for no one. Fortunately, we made it back to the hostel alive. We did take some tourist-y stops for some breathtaking pictures along a bridge.

We checked into our room and ended up having a 6 person room all to the three of us! We relaxed a little bit and then headed out for dinner.

If you don’t know, Copenhagen is and VERY VERY expensive city. Being a college student on a very tight budget, we had no desire to spend over 20 bucks on dinner, so we ended up at a fast food type place and got burgers and fries. It wasn’t half bad, and did the trick.

The next day we went catch a free tour of the city. Our tour guide was Stephen and was from Australia (just like Ashley, our Prague tour guide). He brought us around to:

^ Town square

^ Nyhaven

I stopped to get a peanut butter crepe .. unbelievably delicious

^ Hans Christian Anderson's house

^ Some old bikes that were thrown into the canal from bike thieves.. how sad!

^ We saw the changing of the guards again too!

^ We stopped by the opera house from across the canal

^ The Denmark flag was everywhere! They are very patriotic

^ We then stopped where the Royal family lives, there were guards that have to stand in the property for 12 hours at a time.. could you imagine? But it is one of the highest honors for Denmark.

We passed by Tivoli Garden which is a huge theme park in Copenhagen, the second biggest in Denmark!

It was nice to learn a little history of Copenhagen. Afterwards we stopped in the National Museum of Denmark which had a wide variety of exhibits. My favorite was the toy exhibit which had toys on display from the past 70 years or so. It brought back a lot of memories, well at least the toys from the past decade...

We headed back to get some food and decided to stock up on some groceries and eat at the hostel. We to a ton of food for cheap (a nice change to what we had the day before). It was quite a feast. We played cards and just relaxed at the hostel since we had an early flight the next morning. I made sure to grab a bagel to have for the flight home the next day too J

The next morning I was on my own with the flight. Kristen and Jordyn were heading to Berlin for the weekend and I was heading back to Verona since my brothers Marty and David were coming to visit me for the weekend! My traveling was a huge mess, unfortunately.  The flight was totally fine, but once I got to Milan, I found out that the trains were on strike and I was not able to get back to Verona until 5:30 – five hours later than expected! There was a lot of waiting, but I finally made it back and had never been happier to be at the apartment.