Story Dust and Wanderlust.

I've already raved about one beach in Italy, but that was not even the best one I'd seen. The same trip that took us to Mt. Vesuvius also took us to Positano- one of the little beach towns along the Amalfi coast in the region of Campania. This time, no one was running late because it was a day dedicated to just spending all our time on the beach and the little shops along the way. A day I appreciated very, very much. Reader, here's another fun fact about me. I'm a water baby. I can spend hours together in the water; it could be a pool, a beach, sometimes even the shower, if I'm being totally honest. So Positano, along with a bunch of other places along the Amalfi coast, was definitely on my list of places to visit - you'll recall I had a long list - not because Positano was a beach and I'm obsessed with beaches, but because you couldn't travel to Italy and not let the extravagant beauty of the Amalfi coast stimulate your senses. Does that so

It is a widely known fact that Mount Vesuvius is 17,000 years old, with the oldest rock being about 300,000 years old. It is also a widely known fact that wearing sandals on a day you know you're going to climb a mountain - a very old and rocky mountain - is not the best idea. But as usual, reader, I had forgotten to check in with common sense. During our visit to Campania, which we did through a student travel company called Smarttrip, one of the highlights was that we got to climb Mount Vesuvius. To say the view from the top was breathtaking would be an understatement. It was a very dull and windy day, and the top of the mountain had disappeared behind a thicket of clouds. So as we slowly trudged on to the top - correction: I slowly trudged on because of all the times I had convinced myself workouts were boring; Harry was way ahead of me - little streaks of 'cotton candy' had begun to pass me by. As I went higher, and the streaks turned into clumps, I star

I was flooded with a strong, vivid sense of familiarity and deja vu. We were on a beach about an hour and a half away from Florence and I couldn't, for the life of me, shake off the feeling that this place looked exactly like home. Not my home in the States, but my home in India. See, my ancestry is deeply rooted in Goa; a state in India that is known for it's beaches and 'siesta' lifestyle. Of course I'd spent most of my life in Bombay, but even the promenade of this little Tuscan beach was similar to the one I frequently went to there. Man, was I dizzy with deja vu. The little town called Viareggio is a beach town in the province of Lucca which, like I mentioned, is not too far from Florence. Despite the fact that we were making a trip to the Amalfi coast, I really wanted to visit one of the Tuscan beaches, and since Viareggio was so close, we decided to do it on the weekend we went to Pisa. And of course, as I'd come to expect from little

It took me five whole minutes to come to terms with the fact that I was standing under the Eiffel Tower. My first thought- something that honestly stayed in the back of my mind throughout the night- was caution, mingled with a tiny ounce of fear. My first instinct was to look around, and make sure that I, and millions of other people around me were not going to have our stories cut short that night. It's so heartbreaking to think that that's what our world has come to. But my second thought was how immensely blessed and terribly fortunate I felt. There I was. Standing under the Eiffel Tower. Not on a family vacation, or a summer trip around the world. Not by drilling a hole into my parents bank account. No. If I was here, standing under the Eiffel Tower, it was all because of me, with little nudges in the right direction from my parents and close friends. And as someone who didn't grow up living the fancy, good life, this felt truly, truly earned. All th

Templars are terrifying. Okay, I know I’ve said I scare easy in the past, but for real, the Templar Knights are frightening to look at. This post, however, is not about the Templars.  It’s about a quiet, hardly known fortress named Monteriggioni. A little gem nicely tucked away into the hills of the Tuscan countryside in the Province of Siena, Monteriggioni was built between 1213-1219 by the Sienese as a defense against Florentine invasions into Siena. It’s location on top of a hill made it easy to catch approaching armies and its high walls made it a hard breach for said armies.  Monteriggioni was the first of 4 stops on a day trip we went on with a travel company called Ciao Florence. The other 3 places were Siena, San Gimignano and a Tuscan vineyard for some Chianti wine-tasting. It was one of the first places we went to outside of Florence. It was also one of our first group tours and, hands down, one of the best. Our tour guide Mario was funny, charming and so

I'm not a breakfast person. 99.9% of the time, I'll leave the house in the morning without breakfast and I'm fine all the way until lunch time. Because if I have to choose between waking up in the mornings to make myself breakfast and sleeping in for an extra hour, I would choose sleeping in over anything and everything. My time in Florence changed that. Well, to some extent. You see, I was looking for any and every reason to walk into a little cafe and grab authentic Italian coffee and a croissant.  And while cafes served coffee all day, it never felt the same if I got it past 9 am. Sometimes I'd even buy a fruit tart. At 9 am. Because I have no self-control. Caffe Rosano was one cafe that I went to almost everyday. It is on Via S. Gallo - the street a block away from my apartment which was on Via de Ginori - safely tucked away from the hub of tourists bustling around in the heart of city.    Caffe Rosano was the very first cafe that Harry and

Airbnb is a life-saver. Airbnb is also a major major money-saver. As a student on a budget, every penny you save contributes to the joyous feeling of conquering adulthood. But studying abroad is a different story. 'Adulting' the right way starts to become a nuisance and a burden when the list of places you want to travel to and experience is longer than your grocery list for that month. And if you're so close to different countries and cultures all merged into one, as is the case with Europe, why would you want to miss out on an opportunity to knock a huge chunk of places off that list? You can bet your comfy winter socks, reader, that I had a long , long list. But I was also a broke student, who, two months into her time abroad was already failing at being an adult. And it was in this time of dire need, that cheap flights and affordable Airbnb listings came to my rescue. While the benefits of cheap flights can be debated, I can swear by the perks

Halloween is just around the corner, so, reader, let's talk about blood and gore.                                                                It was a Friday night and I was standing on haunted ground. The bodies of the infants that had died shortly after birth were buried on this ground instead of a cemetery because they weren't cleansed of their original sin through the sacrament of baptism. But of course I'm referring to something that was done back in the Middle Ages. Now, however, a gorgeous little square that is home to a small 11th century church called Santi Apostoli stands over it. The little gorgeous square's name is Piazza del Limbo, named after the dead children that the Florentines believed were stuck in 'limbo' - you know, stuck in that space between heaven and hell, never finding peace or God's love, but never actually being enough of a sinner to be subjected to eternal torment in hell. I was standing on what was once burial gr

No matter how much I loved being in Italy, every day was not filled with gelato, and skipping down cobblestone streets. No, I wasn't alone, or homesick, or miserable. But more than once, I found myself reciting a quiet litany of "just breathe's." Having grown up in a catholic environment, I have a stubborn habit of seeking comfort in a church or a cemetery. (Did you read my post about finding inspiration in a graveyard? You didn't? You should.)  And lucky for me, Florence has an abundance of them! Living a block away from the Duomo had its perks. I passed it every single day, on my way to class and on my way back; even if I went grocery shopping, or decided to just walk around, it was there. People are not kidding when they say that the Duomo is literally in the heart of the city. Every road, every street somehow led to it. For the first couple of months, I used it as navigation to figure out where I was going and how I was going to get there. The

Have you ever done something stupid enough to throw your entire travel itinerary into complete disarray? If you have, you know the struggle. If you haven't, come on a journey with me to relive what, at the time, felt like the most brutal 15 hours of my entire existence, and you can laugh with me. Or at me.  " Flight 1396, scheduled to depart at 9.05 am has been delayed. Please wait for further instructions shortly, thank you" the intercom at the airport in Pisa blared a little too loudly. The sun, now shining in all its glory heated up my skin through the glass of the windows in the waiting area and it told me that it was approximately three hours past our scheduled departure. Angry passengers huffed and puffed at the ground staff of the airline, but there was little they could do about a strike that had ensued everywhere in Italy. We were fresh out of the stress of midterms and only just beginning to feel the excitement of Fall Break, when we found out the ni

I have always been fascinated with death. Okay, maybe that sentence deserves a little more explanation. When I say I'm fascinated with death, I mean that I tend to wonder, as I'm sure most of us do, about what happens to people after they die. And that subsequently leads me to questions like, what were they like alive? What were their lives like? What were their families like? Did they live life to the fullest? Did they have regrets? This is also why my fascination with death extends to my fascination with cemeteries. San Miniato al Monte is a church in Florence equally rich in history and legend as its more famous counterparts like the Duomo, Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce. Perched atop the highest point in Florence - even higher than Piazzale Michelangelo - on Monte alle Croci, this church went from being a chapel, to a fortress, to a monastery. It now holds a famous cemetery, that upon entrance, feels like stepping into another world outside of our own

Reader, let me tell you, there is perhaps only one other thing better than studying abroad in Italy. It is studying abroad in Italy during a gelato festival. It took every bit of my self-control to keep calm as one of my flat mates, who'd been living in Italy for a year by that point, informed the rest of us during breakfast that there was an annual gelato festival happening that weekend. It was only our first weekend in Florence and I was smitten. The Gelato festival is an 'on-the-road' event; it starts off in Florence at the beginning of the summer, and then tours different parts of Italy picking and choosing the best 'gelatician' and his unique gelato flavor, made specifically for the festival. The tour culminates back in Florence, where, during a three day event held at Piazzale Michelangelo, locals and tourists along with the judges get to sample gelato from each vendor and vote for their favorite. The winner is then honored with the title of 'Be

We were lost. The sun sizzled too hot on my skin for a September afternoon as I peered at the map of the city that the school had provided for us. It's main purpose, besides the obvious, was to ensure we weren't late to orientation. It was 15 minutes past the time we were supposed to be at orientation. We were lost and late. Frustrated, Harry pulled up Google maps. "We can't be that far," he said as we tried to navigate the via' s and the piazza' s without detouring anymore than we already had. The thing about Florence's streets is that they're all so narrow, they don't look like they could lead anywhere. So we would walk halfway down a street, assume it led nowhere, and turn around only to come back full circle or better yet venture on to that very street...but from the other side. The streets always lead somewhere. By some miracle, they always did. Then there were the piazzas that burst into view just as you'd turn a seem