Hello Italy!

Coming to Italy has been a huge bonus on my Ireland vacation. It means I get to spend time with Amy- see her life over here, meet her friends, explore Italy and just spend some quality time with her. For those of you who don't know her, we probably don't know each other that well, but Amy is my best friend from New Hamsphire who I lived with in San Francicso and is now living in Milan teaching at the American School of Milan. Amy's in the middle of her second of a three year contract. And exploring with her just a little bit last night made it obvious already that being here is easy for her. Not in the way that everything is perfect, but she's acclimated really well, speaks the language enough to fool me that she has always lived here...and most importantly knows where to get great pizza right around the corner from her apartment.

Amy & I have such an easy and fun friendship that we fell right back into and spent a lot of last night catching up and laughing- a lot.



I love seeing where she lives and meeting the people who have become like family to her. And I finally got to meet one of those most important people, Rebecca, last night (Hi Rebecca!) which was fantastic. It's going to be a great few days here and I'm really looking forward to seeing Milan, Venice & Lake Como.

Amy & I are off to explore Milan in the rain (boo), get more pizza, try gelato and then meet up with more of Amy's friends later tonight for...you guessed it, more pizza!

PS- Things I've already learned about Italy:
1. You can't put your feet up on empty seats on the train.
2. You can, however, drink a beer on the train or anywhere for that matter.
3. Dogs are allowed inside restaurants. Inside the first restaurant (which Amy doesn't actually know the name of, she just refers to it as Pizza D'Asporto, which actually means pizza to go) I stepped into where I got my first pizza, Amy and I were talking when all of a sudden I heard a dog barking. Interestingly, this didn't phase Amy at all. A few seconds later, I saw the dog trotting through the restaurant with no one, but me, curious about this.