Ciao!

Today was another awesome one!

My friend’s dad drove us into town and we caught the bus to Cividale, another important Roman and Longobardo town. When we arrived at Cividale we toured the main cathedral before exploring the town.

After the church, we walked around and went over the Devil’s Bridge. From what I could understand, people sold either their own souls or pig’s souls in exchange for help from the devil to build it.

The river that the Devil’s Bridge traverses is astonishing. It was the clearest and bluest river I’ve ever seen. I wanted to swim in it so bad. Maybe next time!

After crossing the river/bridge, my friend asked a passerby how to get to the Longobardo temple and he directed us back to the municipal area with the church where we had originally come from.

We planned to go see the Longobardo temple, but it was closed until 3 PM, so we went to lunch.

As I explained in the last blog, Friuli-Venezia Giulia is an autonomous region with its own language, and as I found out today, its own cuisine. Today I was able to eat Frico and Gubano. Gubano is a dessert dish that is small knots of croissant/doughnut dough with thicker bread like dough in the middle. It looks like golf ball size knots of doughnut with banana-nut/ginger style bread in the center.

I also had Frico con patate, which is a cheese shell with mashed potatoes in the bottom. OMG. Best. Food. Ever.

I freaking LOVE cheese and potatoes are a close second, so it was AMAZINGGG.

After lunch, we walked to the Longobardo temple and there were a group of French tourists there. We got at the student rate (if you are under 25 in Italy-and most of Europe-you are considered a student and you pay super reduced rates to get into museums) of 1,50 Euros!

The Longobardo temple was amazing because it was on the beautiful river with lots of houses and the mountains were visible, but some parts of it were built/decorated in the seventh, yes, seventh century!

It was so cool. I am not an ancient/medieval historian and normally I am not very interested in ancient history, but it was neat! It helped me tie a bunch of loose ends together from all of the classes I have taken and people I have heard talk about their theses and interests.

After the Longobardo temple, we had to rush to the bus station to head back to Udine. In Italy, high schoolers take public transportation because after middle school they do not have school buses. In Cividale they have an agricultural/scientific high school, so lots of students got on the bus with us and it was so interesting. Two of the students were sitting right behind the bus driver so I could see them in his rear-view mirror: they were GETTING BUSY. I mean, I did my fair share of kissing boys as a teenager, but these fools were making me blush. My friend said they were only 15 or 16, but the girl was laying in the boy’s lap and he was sucking on her neck for the greater part of 45 minutes! #scandalous

The son of the mayor of my friend’s hometown also got on the bus, but only shortly before we got off to walk to her house.

We got off the bus and went to her house for a few minutes before we took her dad’s car and went to the stadium so that I could learn to drive a standard transmission car.

When I was a kid my dad used to let me shift gears in his standard truck and one of my ex boyfriends tried to teach me for like 3 minutes once (before he got worried about me burning up the clutch), but otherwise I had ZERO experience with a standard transmission vehicle.

In my opinion, I did a good job. I got all the way to fourth gear once or twice…in a parking lot! There was a carnival going on and dogs, bicyclists, and other people…I will post a video whenever I am able to upload the footage to Youtube.

 

After learning to drive we went to the mall and found a Hello Kitty story that was about to go out of business. I got a few cute things for cheap and I am so excited about it because it’s specifically Italian Hello Kitty!

We walked around the mall for a while and then we went back to her house to have dinner.

Her dad bought us all kinds of wines from Friuli and we tried them.

I drank a full bottle by myself and have to wake up at seven tomorrow because my train leaves at noon-it’s going to be rough, haha!

The owner of the B&B I am staying at in my next destination texted me yesterday and asked what time I was arriving at the train station and today she said she would pick me up!

I am so happy because the next place I am going to is my most rural destination for this trip and I have never been there before nor do I know anyone, so I am thankful that this woman agreed to pick me up at the train station!

I will leave tomorrow around noon and I will be to my destination around 3:30 or 4!

In Bassano del Grappa I will be able to upload pictures from my visit to Friuli-Venezia Giulia, so stay tuned!