Caroline Cao
Venice, city of water. Crowded compared to the likes of Ferrara. Tourists everywhere. Taxis sailing around.
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Outlets and sockets. Figure em' out. Pack the right plugs.
Watch for trick steps everywhere. Watch out for that Biker! Watch out for cars driving through alleys and sidewalks. Most of the time, you got the right of way... Most of the time, the driver knows you have the right of way.
Brace yourself for the dirth of Wi-Fi around cities.
Bathrooms tend to be one stalls in Ferrara. Expect long lines. Some locals in Italy aren't very smiling in certain territory, Ferrara being one of them. This is attributed to lack of diversity on Ferrara. Sometimes they stare. Just walk on and don't make eye contact. When in doubt, glare back (no, not really, don't try it).
After two weeks of daily four-five course dinners (sometimes lunches) and numerous snacks, there's plenty of trivia to cover and calories to burn.
So without further ado:
I don't have the best relationship with pizza in America. This may be attributed to its greasiness. Or maybe after eating it excessively in Media Production classes, I got sick of it. Luckily, organic pizza in TerraViva restored a bit of my old liking toward pizza.
Ferrara, the Italy City of the Renaissance, has a snug flat aesthetic, like it's has been neatly ironed out in all its warm colors and freshly liberated from the heat of a dryer without ever losing its warmth (or scorching atmosphere). The collective buildings are as tight as foundations in NYC. Luckily, it has none of the loud, crowded revelry of Times Square. Ferrara is fairly eventless and spacious compared to touristy Venice, Bolonga, and Rome. Though this does have the side effect of Ferrara locals staring--or glaring--at you since they rarely get to adapt to stupid dumb tourists wandering their territory, never having any exact Euro change, and giving them the extra grunt work of deciphering unpracticed Italian (I'm guilty of this).
When walking to daily breakfast at a local cafe, I ended up dodging quite a few bikers. Though I'm quite accustomed to bikers on the campus of the University of Houston, it's harrowing to have bikers suddenly be zipping toward you to certain painful doom then have the swerve of relief when they, or you, dodge them. Parents ride with their toddlers or infants in their basket. Even the elders ride around on bicycles. Hypothesis: this attributes to proven longevity in Italy.
More astonishing: the cars and motorcycles passing through the marketplace. So the trail across the buildings can double as a pedestrian-sidewalk and road. Everyone was sensible to slip out of the way or the driver whizzed by, unfazed. Humans (the non-tourists ones at least) and automobiles certainly seem to co-exist on one road.
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