Sparty On, East Lansing!

We can't help but take time to send out a lot of love to our MSU Spartans!  Though we still haven't found a way to watch our beloved Green and White boys on the football field each weekend, we're catching up by watching whatever footage we can find on ESPN.com the following day.  Without compare, the highlights of last night's game against Wisconsin were by far our favorite.  Luke is adamant that by wearing his MSU shirt each Saturday in Italy, he is ensuring that the victories keep coming (admittedly, the one weekend he did not was Notre Dame - which is something we do not talk about).  Anyway, our hearts go out to our Spartys each weekend, and we desperately wish we were out there tailgating with the best of them (though we are enjoying touring around Italy as an alternate Saturday activity).

Go Green!

You Sound Like You're From London!

Logically, our first weekend we were "at home" in Italy, we spent it flying out to London!  This was a special trip for us as I could finally show Luke the location of my beloved 6-week study abroad some years ago, and return to what I still think of as my "European" home.  We also had a few special shows to see while we were over there, so despite having to learn the lesson, "waiting until the week before to buy plane tickets is a very bad, and very expensive idea"in order to actually get there, we were both very excited for our trip.
We arrived Friday afternoon and, after navigating the tube to our hotel, we admired our room's view of
"The Gherkin" and part of London's skyline before setting out to see some of the sights.

We headed straight to the big three: Big Ben, Parliament, and Westminster Abbey.  We got off at the Westminster tube stop, crossed the street, and I had Luke turn towards me so I could take this picture of his first time seeing Big Ben...

 ...we turned, walked past Big Ben, and only when we turned around to get a better view of Parliament did Luke say, "Whoa! There's Big Ben!"  In other words, when I took the picture above, Luke had no idea where he was, what he was standing in front of, or that we're have photographic proof to remind us of this occasion.  We decided to take another picture to commemorate the experience and were lucky to get one of London's double-decker red buses passing at a perfect time to add even more effect.

 We walked a little further and stopped to take in the beautiful architecture of Westminster Abbey.  Unfortunately, it was closed for the day so we couldn't get inside, but simply standing in front of it is enough to give you a feeling of awe.

We then walked across the Thames and made our way to The Academy, where the concert being held that night.  The venue ended up being very cool, and absolutely enormous inside.

Beirut is one of our favorite bands and put on an absolutely amazing show that has since been declared one of the best we have seen.  If you have never listened to them, we highly suggest giving them a try.  Be warned that it at times takes on characteristics of what I like to refer to as gypsy circus music, but the musical talent in the band is extraordinary and the lead singer's voice is mesmerizing.  Also, with it being the last show of their European tour, we got a few extra songs at the end where the singer came out and played solo - very cool.

 Afterwards, we went to the "after party" that was held in what appeared to be a house which half had been turned into a bar, and the other half was a live music area with a stage.  We stayed through a couple of other bands playing (including one, Molotov Jukebox, whose lead singer was the girl who played Tonks in the Harry Potter movies = the real reason I wanted to go).  While it was fun, it was also a little weird (think London punk scene) so we decided to turn in early as we had a lot to see the following day.  To get back to our hotel, we elected to take one of the infamous red double-decker busses, and sat up top amongst a handful of intoxicated adolescents who spent the ride singing "No Scrubs" and "Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls" by TLC.  Priceless.

On Saturday, we decided to go to Tower Bridge, as it was something I never saw while I was in London.

 We ended up climbing to the top, which gave us some pretty cool views of London down the Thames.

From the Tower Bridge, we headed to my favorite spot in London, St. Paul's Cathedral, stopping first, of course, to get tea and a scone at one of my other favorite spots in London, "tea", which is right next to the Cathedral gardens.

 Inside St. Paul's, Luke took a few forbidden pictures of the cathedral before we began our epic climb to the top.

 It was exhausting, but the view from the top is incomparable.  Despite not wanting to see another set of stairs for the next three years, we were very glad we did it.

From St. Pauls, we explored Covent Garden market and walked to Trafalgar Square.  Hungry from all of our climbing and walking, we got some Pret (my favorite thing to eat in London - Luke had been hearing about it for years) and enjoyed it on the steps of a museum.

 Trafalgar was beautiful, as always, and we had fun taking some pictures of the fountains...

 and, of course, the lions.

Our final activity was my surprise birthday present (which had ceased to be a surprise when Luke told me about it the week before): tickets to see Wicked!  It was an absolutely amazing show, which was greatly enhanced by the fact that my amazing husband had so thoughtfully bought me the tickets and was sitting by my side, despite the fact that he hates going to see plays.  (I'm desperately hoping to change this, and have a feeling that Wicked has started the process).

All in all, though it was short, it was an amazing trip, and a smashing way to spend our first weekend at home in Italy.

Home Sweet 300 sq. ft. Home

The day after we visited Milan, we were able to FINALLY move into what would be our home for the next 6 months.  The first day we had arrived in Italy, Luke and I decided we'd go into Novara, the city we'd be living in, for dinner.  We followed road signs that pointed towards Novara until they began to seem like they were all pointing in different directions and we found ourselves in a small little Italian town.  We had heard that Novara had a historic city center, a large park, and lots of great restaurants to choose from.  To us it didn't SEEM that big, but who were we to judge?  We parked the car next to a (very tiny) park we found and tried to figure out if it was possibly the one we had seen on maps of Novara (which had appeared to span for blocks).  We then walked towards the "city center" which was, of course, a very old cathedral.  It didn't SEEM like the foot-traffic only historic center of Novara we had heard about, but again, what did we know?  We then set about looking for a restaurant and found... just about nothing.  Maybe our eyes weren't trained correctly yet, but all we seemed to stumble upon were very small cafes with groups of old men sitting outside, drinking wine, and staring very pointedly at us.  After wandering "our city" for about half an hour, we decided we were too hungry and would just eat at the hotel (where we had an awesome meal, including delicious filets cooked on blocks of salt, something we had only seen done on Food Network!).
Now, fast-forward to us meeting Marco, who works in Meritor's H.R. department, on Tuesday morning so that he can take us to our flat in Novara.  We pull out of Luke's office and Marco immediately turns the opposite way from which we believed our Novara was.  He then lead us through winding side-streets, another town, and a million one-ways, which we eventually assumed was his way of delaying going back to work.  Finally, we emerged in a huge city that we soon learned was the REAL Novara.  Apparently we had visited a small town on the outskirts - oops.  Needless to say, we were pleasantly surprised with our beautiful new home (surprise that was only slightly dampened by the fact that we can not drive to our apartment door since it is in the aforementioned foot-traffic only Historic City Center, and thus had to carry all of our suitcases the 5 blocks from where we were parked and up three flights of stairs to our door).
Our apartment is in one of the oldest buildings in Novara, and right in the center of all of the shopping, restaurants, and cafes.  It is, as the title of this post gives away, quite small; even calling it an apartment doesn't feel quite right.  It's more of a studio where everything possible is marble (floors, countertops, our entire bathroom...).  Aside from the frustrations that incur when trying to cook in a "kitchen area" that has approximately 24 sq. inches of counterspace, we're settling in to our new space fairly nicely.  We made sure to document our first meal in our new home:

Our "kitchen area" (view from the formal dining room)

 Cooking while "sharing" a bottle of wine

 Success!  Meal #1 turned out pret-ty good!

Starting Catch-Up: Milan

Alright, alright, so I'm still learning the ropes of this whole "blogging" thing.  Lesson #1: If one does not blog regularly, one becomes backed up and, subsequently, overwhelmed.  So this is the beginning of our "catching-up" era in the blog, where I begin to recollect all that we have done, wade through the massive amounts of pictures we have already accumulated and chip away at getting up-to-speed.

After our beautiful Saturday on Lake Maggiore, we couldn't wait to see more Italy and planned to visit Milan the next day.  Naturally, we ended up sleeping in until 12:30 (blaming the jet-lag, of course) and spent the day lounging at the pool (Luke) and frantically catching up on Masters assignments (Steph).  Luckily Luke had Monday off, so we decided to travel to Milan the following day.  After a stressful car ride to a train station on the outskirts of Milan (which included almost getting run over by a cable car and numerous ignored requests from our European Garmin to travel the wrong way down one-way streets or enter a freeway via the off-ramp), we were at last walking up the metro steps and found ourselves looking straight at the Milan Duomo.  It is, in a word (or two), absolutely spectacular.

We got right down to business: gelato.  We decided to enjoy our first tastes of this beloved Italian gelato in front of the Duomo.

 Let it be known that pistachio (my choice) is the best flavor in the history of the world (though Luke prefers a caffe and caramel combo)

We then wandered over to the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, which is, in a sense, the world's first shopping mall.  It was built by Giuseppe Mengoni around 1867 (who never got to see its success as he fell to his death a few days before it opened - yikes).  The architecture was absolutely amazing and even though Luke wouldn't let me buy anything "right now" (the stores inside are primarily Gucci, Prada, etc. - and I'm pretty sure "not right now" meant "not in this lifetime"), it was an amazing experience to walk through it.

Wandering around, we run across a lot of these "average streets."  This one in Milan seemed especially quintessential of Italy; we're still having a hard time not feeling like we're walking around a movie set whenever we walk anywhere over here.

After seeing some of the more "touristy" sites in Milan, we decided to be a little more European and do the Italian thing to do on a nice afternoon: find a castle to hang out at.  Luckily, there's one in the middle of Milan amidst the financial buildings and shopping districts.

We spend some time relaxing in the castle's park, reading and journaling... and started feeling as though we could definitely get used to this.