LAUREN WALDSTEIN

With Halloween just around the corner and Thanksgiving sneaking up faster than I anticipated I'm trying really really hard to eat well these next few weeks - which means I'll have to resort to memories of meals gone by. This one was particularly memorable as it came sandwiched between two awesome weekends and I'd been hearing about the restaurant for so long. If you get a chance to go to Florence in the near future, or ever, definitely make reservations at La Giostra. Here it is:The next dest...

At this point in studying abroad, I had already finished the bulk of my traveling, but this was an extraordinary weekend that was relatively easy to make happen. Take a look: We've been doing a lot of traveling in the past few weeks. It's exciting and eye-opening but it's also a little exhausting, especially when we traverse across across countries. So the past few weekends have been really nice ways to explore more of Italy and get to know the country that's been home for three months. ...

Having just posted about Pesach during Rosh Hashana, it seems fitting that I now discuss my sins right in time for Yom Kippur.

I left Rome at the end of May and have been back at school now for over a month. I feel almost entirely readjusted to American college life, except for some little pangs of Rome-sickness. Last night I had a dream that I was on the bus to Sienna except it was going to Interlaken and I was with Tom and Ethan and Tom was wearing a black beanie on his head. It was so vivid I felt disoriented upon waking up in my bed in central Illinois. Anyway, I wrote this post after experiencing my first Passov...

First let me catch everyone up on the crazy ending to my Amsterdam adventure. When I got back to Rome I felt relieved and relaxed, happy to be back in a place that I know pretty well. I was without a source of money, except for the lovely Ms. Borden, but the package that my mom sent was "guaranteed to be in Rome on April 10th." Okay, just a few days without my precious belongings: no iPod - big deal!; no camera - I've seen everything already; no make-up - I'm a natural beauty. S...

I left the Netherlands through Rotterdam, where I had to go to catch a plane back to Rome because the tickets were so much more reasonably priced from there than from Amsterdam. The train ride was only an hour long which gave me about three hours of knock-around time before getting to the airport. I had done just enough research to find out the name of the best restaurant and the best museum in Rotterdam and since the museum was a little too expensive, I made my way from the train stat...