Il mio ragazzo arriva!

CJ visited me in Italy!! It was quite a fiasco. It was my first time going on a trip alone (to meet him at the train station). I was so happy to see him after all our time apart. We stayed on a house boat in Amsterdam, which was a great time, and very secluded…minus the chicken coop on the bank! Obviously Amsterdam has its own connotations, but is a modern city, overcast, with good transportation. Everyone speaks Dutch AND English fluently--its very impressive. food is pretty similar to american food. French fries with various sauces (not the standard ketchup/mayo of Europe), and Croquettes, which reminded me of mozarella sticks, but filled with a mushy pea/meat stew mixture. We went to the zoo (which had raccoons in it! Normal for us, but strange to Europe, I suppose. I never see squirrels or rabbits, either…although they eat rabbits here), and the Van Gogh Museum (which had many paintings that influenced Van Gogh, but not many actual Van Goghs. “Where is Starry Night” “In New York, they bought it when it was cheap, its worth so much more now…”) Amsterdam is a very expensive city, and we were happy to get out of it.
We also went to Palermo, a city in Sicily. It’s the biggest one, of about 2 million people! It doesn’t have much in terms of tourist sights, but the food and the beach (in a nearby suburb) made it completely worth it. Seeing a beach for the first time in many months was heaven, and we walked for an hour in the sand, reveling in the sun. It was so warm for a change! Sicily has all the food Americans think of as Italian, because most of the Italians who immigrated to America were from Sicily or the South, which remain very poor compared to Northern Italy. Cannolis, pizza, fish, good olive oil, tomato sauce--these are much more common in Sicily. Its difficult to find cannoli up north.
We returned to Verona, and I got to show CJ the city I’ve been living in for so long. It was strange to have someone from home here--it felt very surreal. Spring also sprung while we were away, and it was amazing to see how beautiful Verona was with clear skies and green trees. I’m outside all the time now, and the city is much more enjoyable--I’m glad this is how CJ saw it!