Day 40 and 41

This Saturday and Sunday I was just at the restaurant all weekend. It sounds boring, but I really wanted to finish my internship. I only had to get in 21 more hours which isn't hard at all to do during the weekend. I ended up working 13.5 hours on Saturday and 9 on Sunday which made me the first of the study abroad group to finish my hours. The good thing about this weekend is that the paid interns had seen that I have worked hard so I got to do some new and interesting stuff. They let me work the hot line of the restaurant with them which was a lot of fun. I hadn't been able to cook anything during dinner service yet, so it was a great learning experience. I spent the weekend learning how they do things. An order comes in and usually a customer will order some kind of antipasta first. You can easily order a 3 course meal. As soon as the order comes in the antipasta is started and goes out when everything is ready. At the same time on the hot line you look ahead to the entree or any other courses and you get everything ready for that. You put sauce pans on the stove and maybe work with the sauce to get it near ready. I also had to start any meat for the main course by either putting it in the oven or on the flat top grill to get it warm or cook it. If its a piece of tenderloin for instance, you would throw it on the flat top and get it cooked to the desired temperature and then pull it off. Once they are ready for that course then you throw it back on the grill to warm it up if necessary. We have precooked pork and chicken entrees that have been roasted and when you get an order you just slice them and then put them in the oven to rewarm. Every entree also gets 2 sides with the dish. Which sides they get change every day. The common ones are roasted potatoes with rosemary, sauteed peppers, roasted eggplant, and spinach with roasted garlic. The fun thing about it is that you can plate it however you want to. Every plate you can put together can look completely different. You are encouraged to use your imagination. I had a lot of fun working the line this weekend. I just hoped we would have been a little busier so I would have been able to do more. Still I finished my internship, now all the hours I work from now on will just be bonus hours.

Day 39

Today we went on another group trip. Our first stop was a pecorino cheese factory. This is where Chef Polegri's restaurant gets all of its cheese. We got there just in time to watch them start the process of making pecorino. They had large vats of milk heating to one side of the room. We saw in a few of them how the milk looked when they just started and then you could sit there and watch the curds form and float to the top. The vats were elevated so that when they were ready for it, they brought over these large tables on wheels with a large enclosure on top that they could fill with molds. When they were ready for it they had a large hose attached to the vats and they just poured the curds into the molds. Once those were full they were put in warmers for about 50 minutes to drain the liquid and form the cheese. We got a tour of the whole facility. There were many many coolers each with cheese at a different stage of production. There were several with cheese at different ages of molding. You just walk in and see tons of wheels covered in green mold, the smell sucks. There were also lots of large tubs full of brine that were salting the cheese. We got to try some of the fresh curds that were going into the pecorino, they tasted like nothing, no salt or flavor at all except maybe a tiny bit of milk flavor. After they make the pecorino they take the left over liquid and heat it again to make ricotta so we also got to see that process. They obviously use a ton of milk every day. We saw a large digital counter at the top that gauges the current milk on hand. When we arrived it was only in the single digits. They were receiving a delivery the entire time we were there though and the counter was filling up at about 1 liter a second. After the tour we had a tasting of basically all of their product which was way more cheese than you would really want to eat. Then of course our group got to buy all of the cheeses. When our group gets to do that, the companies are always happy, we seem to always spend at least 500 euros between all of us. The rule on cheese is that if it is older than 60 days you can bring it back to the states. I didn't buy any myself, but there were some that bought several wheels. It was all super cheap compared to what you would pay in the states. After we left there we just had a short ride to a near by town. We parked the bus and had to hike through town because cars weren't allowed to go where we were going. After about a mile or so walking we came around a corner to a magnificent view looking over a valley. You dont often see stuff that is literally jaw dropping, but you get that a lot here in Italy. We walked down a large steep hill till we came around another quarter and saw the best part, the city of the dead. Its a small city that was built on top of a large rock basically. It stands alone in the valley with all sides a vertical cliff. Climbing up there would challenge the best of rock climbers. The city is now abandoned. There was an earthquake here in Italy a few years ago that caused much of the city to collapse over the hill. Still tourists are allowed to go up and there are a lot of shops and restaurants that cater to the public. You have to use this large bridge to get up there. Its a pretty good climb, but we are used to that on this trip. The city was amazing. Any spot there you have an amazing view of the surrounding valley. We ended up having a little picnic in an old cave like restaurant. We had brought our own food, but they also made us some wood oven baked bruschettas that were excellent. We spent a while walking around town and stopping in the various restaurants. Afterwards the hike back wasn't as much fun, but we got there. After leaving we had another trip on the bus that was only about 20 minutes to get to Bolsena. Its a town that sits right next to a very large lake. It was sunny but the air was still a little chilly and the lake was beautiful. We stopped first at a great gelato shop, we all got to pick what we wanted, I tried some apricot gelato which was excellent. We walked along the water a bit. I stood on a dock and took some pictures of the waves crashing, unfortunately I didn't notice the large wave coming in that hit the dock and flew up and over me. I got pretty well soaked on one side of my body. At least I wasnt alone. A few people got caught by that wave. We walked up to town after that and visited the Cathedral of Saint Christina. It was a large church dedicated to the Saint who was accused of heresy but she was innocent. They didn't believe her and tried to execute her but several attempts failed. She was thrown into a lake with a rock attached to her ankle and the rock floated. We actually got to go down into the restored crypts. We saw her tomb and many other discovered ancient Roman tombstones. The tombstones were easily 2000 years old. After the cathedral we went to an actual castle on the hillside of the town. It was small, but they restored a lot of it and put in a museum. For just a few euros you could also go up on top and walk the old walls. It was a great view of the town and the lake. You could see some of the stones up there that we still from the days when they could throw them over the side at attacking forces. By the time we made it through the castle it was getting to be near sunset and we had to get to our final dinner of the day before heading home. We ended up going to a restaurant in the countryside outside of Orvieto. It is the same restaurant that many of the students have been interning at a few times during the week. They have a farm with many cows, chickens, rabbits, and a few horses including a month old colt that was very friendly and very cute. Dinner was amazing there. We had a large antipasta first course with some potatoes that were some of the best I have ever had. The pasta course was next with a meat ragu which was also very very good. Then the final course was roasted chicken with a side salad. It was another great meal. We went home after that, of course that meal was 2 hours like a lot of our meals are. Once I got home it was time to go to bed. I was planning on finishing my internship over the weekend.

Day 35, 36, 37, 38

Yeah I am going to be lazy, but there really isn't a lot to write about. I got back in Orvieto from Ireland at about 3 pm on Monday. We had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to get to the airport, go through all the security and get to our plane. We arrived in Rome around 11 pm and of course the next train wasn't until about 1:30, so we had to wait. By the time I got home I was sick of traveling. In hind sight I wish I had just done Dublin over the weekend. I enjoyed the town more than London and I didn't get to see a lot there. Still, at least I can say I've been to both places. I spent the rest of the afternoon in town, just resting and making sure I was prepared for this weeks classes. My number 1 priority this week is to just get my internship hours done. I only need 28 hours this week to finish. I will work more than that, but at least I wont have it hanging over my head and I will have the option of taking it easy if I want to. Also there are a lot of students who still need a lot of hours, so the last few weeks there is going to be some fighting over shifts so everyone can get done. Tuesday we had World Cuisine class, we are doing African cuisine now. The recipes themselves don't sound to appetizing but we usually find a way to make things work. I just took a dessert, a date and almond cookie or brownie as it really should be called. It was simple enough that I got it done pretty quickly so I did a second dish with a ton of dates that we had lying around. I took the seeds out of them and stuffed them with a mixture of marscapone cheese, salt, pepper, and hot pepper oil. The contrast of the sweet dates and then the salty spicy stuffing was really good. I got a lot of compliments. The brownies were also a hit, Chef was thinking of using that again in the restaurant as a dessert. We topped the brownies with melted saffron gelato that we had in the freezer since last week. Wednesday it was European cuisine and I made coq au vin, which is just chicken marinated and then braised in red wine. That was also very well received, the chicken was very tender and everyone loved it. I like how much more comfortable with cooking I am. For the chicken I only read the recipe once and I didn't really follow it after that, I just kind of knew what needed to be done to get the desired result. Today, Thursday was Latin class in the morning, I made empanadas. They also went really well. I made a beef filling for them with tenderloin, cumin, red peppers, potatoes, raisins and hard boiled egg. It turned out very flavorful and had some good spice to it which is what you want in an empanada. We baked them and were very happy with the outcome. I also made a chimichuri sauce for dipping. It has been a good week. I haven't gotten as many hours done as I would have liked, but I am still planning on working a lot this weekend so I'll get my target hours done. Tomorrow we have another group trip. We were supposed to go to a buffalo farm to learn about buffalo mozzarella, but that got cancelled, so I am not sure what is on the agenda other than a planned picnic for the group which should be fun.

Day 34

Today was our real day in Dublin. We got up early and left with a few of the girls to go and see some sights. We got another tour bus for the day, but things are much cheaper here, it was only 13 euro for 24 hours here. We took the bus to Trinity College and saw the book of Kells that they have on display there. After that we got back on the bus and went through a lot of the streets of Dublin. This tour was great though, because instead of a prerecorded audio for our tour, the bus drivers themselves provided the commentary which was extremely funny. Our real destination was the Guiness storehouse. It is of course one of the biggest attractions in Dublin. All Guiness that comes to north America, comes from the Dublin location. The storehouse itself has over 1 million visitors each year. You start out on the ground floor and the tour is self guided all the way up to the seventh, which is a Guiness bar and the tallest building in Dublin. Of course the tour starts with the brewing processes and the history behind all of it. You get a little reward at floor 3, a sample of beer for free. As you move on you get to learn about the different ways Guiness has been transported, advertised, and sold over its long history. Every guest that comes through gets a free pint at the end of the tour, but you have a choice on how you want to get it. You can stop on floor 6 and learn how to pour a perfect pint of Guiness. You have an expert lined up behind a bar who will talk you through pouring your own beer right from the tap, and there is a science behind it. We chose to just get our beer poured for us on the top floor. The view from the top was awesome. Its called the gravity bar, its a glass walled circular bar that looks out on to all of Dublin. The beer of course was awesome. The foam was so rich and creamy that you could put a shape into it and it would hold that shape until the beer was all gone. The professional pourer gave us our pints with a shamrock drawn in the foam, she did it with such ease and they were perfect every time. We found that Guiness is much better here when its fresh. Shipping must do something to it, or maybe we just dont have trained bartenders that know how to pour a perfect pint. So we all enjoyed our free pints right there as we planned out the rest of our day. We wanted to go on a tour of Dublin castle. We left the bar and of course got some souveniers and then started walking to Dublin castle. Unfortunately by the time we got there, the tours were sold out for the day. That was alright though because we were supposed to meet the rest of our group for dinner. We walked over and ended up eating at a local pub. I had a beef and mushroom pie that was phenomenal. One thing we learned about the British and the Irish though, is that they don't salt their food for some reason. After dinner I rushed back to the hotel real quick to drop off the purchases from the day because next on the agenda was a meeting with a group at the Brazen Head pub. They claim to be the oldest pub in Ireland, but a lot of pubs in town claim that. We were meeting a group there for a ghost tour in Dublin, but mostly at the Hellfire club in the countryside. We met our eccentric and interesting Irish tour guide there. He was tall and skinny and had the voice and accent that was perfect for this kind of tour. He was an excellent tour guide as well, his stories were always very well told. We drove towards the outskirts of Dublin, occasionally making little detours to see old buildings that each had their own bloody history. The coolest part was just getting out into the countryside which we hadn't seen at all. This was Ireland as you imagine it. Hellfire club was on top of a mountain. Maybe its just a hill, but it seems like a mountain when you are walking up. The walk up took about 30-45 minutes, with occasional pauses for more stories. The walk was well worth the view. It was just about sunset then and we had a view over all of Dublin so far you could see the coast and the ships and islands out there. The hills themselves were perfectly green and flowering which I wondered how that's possible in such cold weather. It was extremely cold on that hill. The wind was blowing in and it had been raining a lot of the day. We got to Hellfire house though. The house was built by one of the wealthiest people in Ireland long ago as a hunting lodge people thought. It really became a brothel house full of gambling and drinking and every vice you can think of. That wasn't the reason it was all the way up there though, where it would have taken a day worth of riding on a horse to get up there from Dublin. It was also a place where sorcery and devil worship took place. There were a lot of gruesome stories of course of people being lit on fire, being sacrificed and then of course the resulting spirits that lingered there. Our guide claimed that people had been up there before had felt things like pinching and burning. Of course there had been a lot of sightings of things as well. We didnt see anything though. I just wish the tour had actually taken place in the dark. It was still sunset even by the time we walked all they way down the hill, but like I said, the price of admissions was worth the walk I thought, because we would have never of gotten that view while we were here otherwise. After we left we got taken back the Brazen Head where we decided to hang out for a while. As you can imagine every pub in Ireland is always packed at night, and there are over 600 pubs here. The Brazen Head had great Guiness of course and cider. They also had a live band of some older gentlemen playing classic Irish tunes. They were very good. I spent some time talking to a few drunken Irishmen who were also enjoying the music and harassing the girls. They were harmless, but very funny and extremely nice. We ended the night just before the buses were going to stop running. We got back to the hotel in one piece and we all had to get to bed. By that time it was after midnight and we were all planning on being up by 4:30 am to get to the airport for our flights back to Rome.

Day 33

This morning was our last in London. We only really could accomplish a few things today just because we had our flight at 9 pm that night and with our past experience I thought it would be a good idea to get there extra early just in case something went wrong. It was also getting to the point where I didn't want to spend a lot more money on London when we still had Dublin to go and I want to go to Venice as well. So we went back to central London and got back on our bus that we could still use to get around. We found out that by using that tour specifically, we could get a discount on Madame Tausaud's wax museum, so we thought why not. It was interesting. Kind of creepy though. In the end a lot of them just look like propped up dead people. We started out in a room with Angelina and Brad, Will Smith, Miley Cyrus, Morgan Freeman, Mel Gibson, there were a ton of them. Plus there was a line to get your picture with the wax Robert Pattinson, so of course I was like "why??" People paid who knows how much for a picture with a wax man. The whole place was pretty cool, it was massive on the inside which I wasn't expecting. There was even a ride near the end about the history of London, created Pirates of the Carribean Disney ride style. We got into miniature London cabs and rode through a pretty well displayed abbreviated, of course, history. After we left there we had lunch at a local pub. Of course the choice was fish and chips with a pint. It was pretty good and I am glad I can say that I have that experience under my belt. Next we decided it was just about time to just start heading to the airport. We had spent enough money over the past few days, we could go back and just relax and wait for our plane. There is a lot to do in the airports here, they have a ton of shops, free wifi and food of course. I spent a few hours at Starbucks just having coffee and reading a book. We were very early for our flight, we still had about 5 hours by the time we got there. Here's a tip though, never fly Ryan air, they are cheap, but they suck. They put a 22 pound limit on your bags, which if you go over that you have to pay a huge fee. It also has to be a certain size. 22 pounds isn't a lot, especially if you are going to be over there for 4 days like we were. I ended up just only taking one pair of pants with me just to help keep it under weight and I was still over the limit by 2 pounds so I had to trade some stuff into other peoples suitcases. The airline is always late as well. We didn't like it because as early as we were, we just wanted to check in then. They said we had to wait till 6 pm though before we could. So at 6 pm we went to check in and of course there was a massive line about 200 people deep. It took quite a while to get through that just so they could put a red stamp on my boarding pass that I already had. We spent a lot of time waiting this day. Finally we did make our flight, it was delayed of course. It was good that it was quick though. We made it to Dublin at about 11 pm. We got a bus out to our hotel which other kids from our abroad group were staying. Weirdly we ended up just a few doors down from them. They were all out when we got there, but that was fine with me. I just wanted to get some sleep so I could get out and do stuff in the morning.

Day 32

We got up for our first morning in London at about 8:30. We didn't really know how long it was going to take to get to Stonehenge. What I found online is that you need to get to Victoria Coach station in the middle of London and then get a bus or a train to Amesbury. From there it's only about 2 miles to Stonehenge. Unfortunately its much easier than it sounds. First we had to find the buses at the airport we were at, then wait in a massive line to buy tickets. Then of course we couldn't get a bus for at least 1.5 hours. We soon found that our cheap bus ride was also 2.5 hours long to get to the center of London. It was still an interesting ride. I got to see a lot of London and its outskirts. Saw a lot of Harry Potter looking homes. By the time we made it to Victoria Station it was already well after noon. We immediately asked at the information kiosk, how to get to Amesbury, but then they told us we would have to get a train to Salisbury and then get a connection to Amesbury. At that point I just thought we should give up. We would spend our whole day just trying to get to and back from Stonehenge. I thought it would be better to spend what little time we had in London, seeing the sites there. We ate lunch at Victoria Station, which was huge, with a lot of little shops. I also picked up some London souveniers there. From there our next mission was to try to get to King's Cross and see Platform nine and three quarters. Again we were disappointed. London is pretty easy to get around once you figure out how. It took me a while to figure out the subway system. I got us to Kings Cross anyways, but to see platforms 9 and 10 you actually needed a ticket to get to them so we were robbed of that chance. After that we just sort of started walking. Finding monuments in London is extremely easy. There are signs on almost every street corner pointing the way to different sites. We used the subway once again to get to the London Bridge location. From there we just started following the river. We saw the bridge, an old battleship in the water, an old sailboat next to a restaurant, then we just happened upon Shakespeare's Globe theatre. It is the rebuilt one of course, the original was burnt down accidentily during a performance of Henry VIII. From there we found the original London tour. It was of course a double decker bus that hit all of the major sites of London. For 25 pounds we could get on and get off anywhere for 24 hours. We took it and started the tour around. One of the first sites we came on was Buckingham Palace, so we of course got off there. We saw a crowd gathering near the barracks, where the Queens guards lived. Right there in the courtyard they had some trainee guards practicing marching. They were dressed in brown uniforms, not red, but they did have the trademark giant furry helmets on. You could tell they were trainees because they weren't any good. One of them stopped marching and knelt down to tie his shoe. Not very intimidating. Across the street we got to see the front of Buckingham Palace. Its a lost smaller in person. The gates were closed today so we didnt get a chance to mess with the guards in front. They did look every professional though. From there we continued on the tour around the city. The bus is a great way to see everything quickly. We drove over London Bridge and directly past the tower of London. We saw Big Ben of course, parliament, Westminster Abby, the London Eye, Trafalgar square. All along the tour we also had a audio commentary on the history of each area of London, including sites that weren't official stops. It was a long day of walking and touring. We gave up after dark and started making our way back to the hotel. I figured out that if you are going to stay here, you should just spend the money and stay in the center of London. It is extremely expensive to travel around here. We were all they way over at Gatwick airport, which we thought was convenient since we would be leaving from there Saturday. In the end though it just cost us money. They had a convenient Gatwick express train that we could take to and from the airport to get us to Victoria, but it was expensive to keep on using continuously. The prices for everything were kind of ridiculous. The pound is even more expensive than the Euro, and every site had at least a 25 pound cover charge and the rates on the trains and buses weren't any better. Its an expensive city to go around. We ended up back in the hotel at about 10 pm, we ate at an oriental restaurant in the hotel, which wasn't bad. I just ended up going to bed early, it was a long day of walking and we had more stuff to do tomorrow.

Day 31

Well there isnt a whole lot to write about today. I had class this morning, Latin cuisine. Class went very well. I made tamales which turned out great. My number one concern though was getting out of there on time, which is not a habit we have. We had to catch a train at 2 pm, class is supposed to get out at about 1, and its about a 30 minute walk down the hill to get to the train station. Luckily my teacher just let me go at 1, I started cleaning up while everyone was still eating just to get things done, but he came back and told me to just get out of there. We made the trek down the hill, good thing I had packed the previous night. The rest of this day was just spent traveling. We had the train to Rome, then another train to the airport, then a delayed flight, a 2 hour flight, and finally a wait for a long bus ride. By the time we got to the airport we booked it was already 10:30 pm in London, 11:30 for us in Rome. We hadn't even had anything to eat all day, so we ate at the restaurant in the hotel. The hotel was extremely nice, we got it cheap online, so I am not sure what the regular rates are. The restaurants themselves were pretty expensive. That first night I just had a cheeseburger and fries though. It sounded very good to someone that has been eating Italian for a month. We ended that first night early though. We wanted to get up early the next day to try to get to Stonehenge.