“I don’t really like this stuff, but it’s still kind of good and smells very weird. Scroll down and discover what I’m referring to.”

“This is called a Panettone cake, pronounced pan-net-TOW-neh. My mom will tell you what makes it special and a little bit of history.”

The Panettone cake originated in 1495 during a luxurious Christmas banquet given by the Duke of Milan, when the dessert got burnt. A less known cook presented the duke with a rich brioche bread filled with raisins and candied fruit, and the duke loved it. This is how the tradition was formed and became the King of Cakes. This cake is actually a large, dome shaped loaf of bread with candied or sometimes liquored fruits or raisins, combined with nuts or chocolate. It is known to be expensive due to the amount of time and quality of ingredients that go into making it. Our hosts bought this cake for us as a special “Noel” gift. We received the chocolate orange flavor that most of us enjoyed, but as you read, Hallie did not enjoy it. We made sure our cake did not include any alcohol before consuming.

Hallie says, “I took a picture of this because I wanted to show you what it actually looks like. See that piece of cake, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. And if you speak Italian, you will understand the pictures words but not really what I’m saying. So, you know I don’t really like this cake because it tastes kind of weird. And as you heard, it smells weird, but I want to actually tell you what it smells like, it smells like chocolatey paper.”

“Some of my favorite things about where we are staying are, our new home is pretty nice. We discovered a new fruit here that is called a Kaki fruit. I don’t really like the skin, but the inside is like Jello. It also tastes like Jello but it’s not really Jello. It’s actually kind of weird. This is what it looks like.”

“Now I’m going to talk about where we are living. We have these bugs we like to call helicopter bugs because they make a helicopter sound when the fly. We learned they are actually stink bugs from another family that we know and made friends with here. Now back to my house, I am homeschooling and using the Good and the Beautiful homeschool books, if you want to look it up. I think kids will really enjoy them if they are six, because I love mine!”

“This was part of my school because we learned how olive oil is made. We went to an olive factory and see the picture of my dad holding the olives, the big dark one is sweeter while the little green ones are more bitter. They put them in like this because it gives the oil a specific flavor. In the grinder, the olives are being ground because this helps the oil to separate the oil from the olives. In the third picture, that is us looking at the olives being grounded. I didn’t try to olive oil because I’m the pickiest eater in the family and I didn’t want to try it by itself, and I really don’t want to try olive oil.”

“These pictures were taken at Leonardo Davinci Museum in Florence, Italy. The bridge looking thing is a bridge we built using these little stick thingies, you’ll see them in the picture. In the larger picture, I stepped on a lever because I’m measuring air. What I liked most is the water lifter machine and the mirror enclosure.”

“These are sweets that I enjoy, they are really good! And why I really enjoy them is because they are literal sweets from Italy, except for cookies because we made them. My favorite sweet out of all of them is probably the cinnamon roll I had in Florence, for breakfast. The croissant had a little bit of chocolate on the outside and they stuffed it on the inside, it was also very good. The cookies were good and the salt on the cookies were sea salt, but no caramel. My gelato flavors were strawberry and vanilla and strawberry, I think. I thought it was very good, but my favorite was the strawberry-vanilla flavor.”

“Two of these pictures are at the Temple. Guess why I did the chair? Because the chair reminds me of the scriptures because it’s kind of a book, but a chair. And why I really like the Temple is because it gives so much joy to me. And I just really like going there because it’s just so beautiful and one of my favorite parts is the fountain. It’s actually supposed to be the water flowing to Jesus.”

“These are pictures in Florence. One is me at the river, then the other two is in the city (in front of the Duomo Santa Maria Dei Fiori). Why I like these is because I get to chase pigeons, and I don’t get to see pigeons very often.”

“This is in Pisa. What I liked about Pisa is that I feel like I’m free, dancing and playing in the fields of grass around the tower. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t go in the tower of Pisa and climb up to the top. But I was with my mom, it was fine. That’s when I did some fun things like take pictures, and I even got to go to this place that was being worked on where there was a staircase and there was a little grass area where I could spin around and said, “I’m free” because I actually felt free. I had never seen something like a leaning tower before, I thought it was amazing. Ciao!”