My first couple of days in Florence were surreal and dreamy. My classes hadn’t started yet, I was meeting new people almost everyday, and everything was exciting and new. I was living the dream.

The dream mostly consisted of good food and shopping, the things that most people usually travel to Europe for. Sometimes, the dream came in the form of drinking a cocktail while the others smoked cigarettes out on a balcony in full view of the duomo, having their main character moment. Other times, it’s me listening to Megan Thee Stallion and Britney Spears outside of the Duomo the way God intended. Most nights are more chill than not with me making plans for a hot date alone in my room with pizza, probably Netflix, and a bottle of rosé. Other nights are considerably less chill with me throwing back drinks and having to witness a drunk girl being face-down, ass-up on the floor, as she tries to twerk and shout “I prefer Nicki Minaj.”

I don’t think I need a copy of the communist manifesto in Italian, do you?

Either way, it’s an experience.

In the early days, I stumbled upon an open air market and pranced around the park, perusing their selection of used books, clothes, paintings, and jewelry. I bought, as I can be counted on to do, a small painting of a naked lady, some jewelry, and a new jacket. 

After having a bad day– although clearly it wasn’t that bad because for the life of me I can’t remember what was bad about it– I decided to do some retail therapy at a nearby vintage clothing store down the street from the duomo that contains nothing but high-end designer labels. It’s called mental stability: look it up. 

It was there that I found every European designer label you could fathom. I’m talking about Hermes, Yves Saint Laurent, and Chanel. The whole store was a shrine to Moschino and Miu Miu. I’d found my happy place. It was there that I picked out a vintage Moschino blazer and mauve Barbour International raincoat and went to go check out.

My credit card declined and a piece of my soul died. 

There is something so mortifying about having a card decline. You either look like a dumb bimbo who doesn’t know how much money is on her card or you can play it off like you’re confused too and something outside of your control has gone wrong. 

This was a moment to maintain my composure and have some dignity, so naturally I cried about it in front of everyone instead. The man assured me that everything would be okay and that he would save the clothes I’d picked out for me for the next few days while I got my card sorted. 

Natalie told me that she understood my reaction and we went to get dinner where I handled the situation by inhaling some creamy ravioli with a huge glass of merlot and splitting a chocolate souffle with Natalie. It’s called self-care. Look it up. 

It was one of my first days in the country and the card was locked. My mother had gotten a fraud alert that she’d missed. I then had to call my credit card company that night and tried not to go full-tilt Karen. (“I HAD A VINTAGE MOSCHINO BLAZER IN MY HAND WHEN MY CARD DECLINED!”) 

I went back a few days later and redeemed myself. I am vindicated. 

I have since become a reliable customer. My new Moschino mini skirt will back me up on this.

Those were how I spent the first couple of days. Trust me, the plot only thickened from there.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Some Florentine photos:

Ciao!

I had to open the post with that, because I am now officially in Italy, trying to use words like that in an attempt to learn a second language. 

I’ve packed my best clothes and my favorite books. I did my duolingo, watched Italian tv with Italian subtitles, and listened to Italian language podcasts in an attempt to sprinkle some last minute language skills into my repertoire before showing up. Before I left, I asked for a small photo album that could fit in my bag for my birthday. That way I can bring pictures of my family and friends with me to Italy to look at whenever I get homesick. The photo album came as a pair, so now I will be using one for my loved ones and filling the other one up with images from my time in Italy when I get back. I have my favorite pictures of my parents and friends during my favorite moments with them, peppered in with glam shots of my precious, plump cat Calypso. 

My friend and fellow Sarah Lawrence student, Natalie, traveled with me from Atlanta to Rome and then from Rome to Florence. We’ve all seen the Instagram “models” strutting down beautiful European streets, not at all hot and sweaty, with perfectly coiffed hair and no fanny packs strapped to their waist. 

This was not that.

I remained grimy, and oddly sticky, for much of the duration of my plane and subsequent train ride, in need of a shower, long nap, hot tea, and steamrolling. After tripping over my two behemoth suitcases, not knowing how to operate any machine I came across, and struggling to string together a coherent Italian sentence except when apologizing to whoever was around me, I managed to get to my destination. Jet-lagged and hungry, I was therefore unaware of what day, and, possibly, what year it was at any given moment.

So, you see, my friend and I were not the poised, unbothered, clearly-made-of-money ladies that have graced all of our Instagram feeds, who are conspicuously never juggling multiple cross-body bags and effortlessly getting around the suddenly uncrowded streets of Europe. We were the flushed-faced tourists, hiding our fanny packs beneath our clothes, while rolling our suitcases down the street in comfortable walking shoes and stretchy pants that are good for airplanes. 

I am not complaining. This is all part of the adventure. 

After a character-building day, I went to bed in my host family’s apartment only to wake up the next day in the middle of the day. 

Day #1: Lost

My host family asked me if I was dead. Surprisingly, at 3:35 in the afternoon, I was not. In order to actually do something with my day, after sleeping away most of it, I decided to set out to see the city. 

There were a few problems with this task. 

Whenever I leave the house, I always get lost. Whenever I get lost, I cry. Whenever I’m crying out on the street, people aggressively try not to make eye contact with me. I therefore strived to get a grip, but I have not yet mastered the art of taking a deep breath. That will surely come in handy one day.

After a charming day of getting lost in a beautiful city, I called it quits, ready to redeem myself the next day, which, I am pleased to report, I did. Natalie lives near Il Duomo and accidentally stumbled upon it during her time lost in the city, so we set out for Il Duomo in order to get our feet wet on our second full day in Florence. 

My first full day in Florence: My First Cup of Coffee

After eating a dinner of ravioli and red wine with a dreamy view of the duomo, I ordered myself an espresso shot over a tiramisu. Since I was in the land of cappuccino and espresso, I decided that my first real cup of coffee should be here. If I was ever going to fall in love with coffee, it was going to be here, save for perhaps Rwanda or Colombia. I also thought that drinking espresso over dessert is the mature, chic way to go. 

When in Rome.

Update: I am still a tea drinker. 

I still have too much of a sweet tooth for something that bitter, which is probably why I chased it with gelato while wandering around the piazza. It was there that we watched the sun go down around the Duomo, more than making up for yesterday’s disaster.

So that was the start of a beautiful time abroad in Italy. More information to come. 

I came here for a number of reasons. 

I wish I could say that I came here for the people that I would meet or so that I’ll be changed as a person, but we all know that I’m not like that. The main reason, which should be obvious, is that I just wanted to see Florence and other parts of the world, but mostly, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone. I knew even when I signed up for this program that there would come a moment where I’d be so frustrated, so hopeless, and so out of my depth that I would come to regret it, but I decided to come anyway because I knew that I would have to push through those feelings and feel better for it. 

Now, I’m here, actually doing it. I’ll let you know how that’s going. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

My family spent the end of summer once again at Amelia Island and I’m running out of new things to say about the beach that I love. Like everybody else, I think that the beach is my happy place (aside from those adults who think that DisneyLand is their happy place). Saying, “I love it, I love it, I love it,” isn’t exactly poetic, but sums up how I feel.  

There was perfect weather and drinks on the beach. I bought things that I don’t need and my brother put on a different movie every night. It was the perfect summer sendoff.

The best part of the trip was when, on the beach one night, we got to witness a nest of sea turtles hatch and make their way into the ocean. The sea turtles crawled out of their hut and scattered into the ocean one by one. We waited several minutes to watch as the final one struggled to get into the water after being pushed back by the waves each time. 

Same little dude, same.  

Apparently, the turtle that struggles the most to get into the ocean will be the strongest of them all, and there’s an inspirational something in that. He hung around so long that we almost had to name him. In the end, there was an unheard of 100% survival rate and I got to cross something off my bucket list that I didn’t even know was on it. 

I spent the rest of my time going through consignment stores, checking out a lavender shop, and perusing a tea store, because these are the things of no importance that you should do while on vacation. It was a quick week at the beach before each of us had to return to our lives– my parents back to work, my brother and his girlfriend back to their apartments and jobs, and me back to school. 

I had spent much of my summer swimming, painting, trying to review any Italian, and listening to music poolside, not to mention my two internships. 

I can’t think of a more perfect end to the summer. Now, it is onward and upward to my next semester, taking place in Florence, Italy.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

“I am born. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
-David Copperfield, Charles Dickens, chapter one, page one

21 years ago, I was given the gift of life. Everyday since then, I have been giving life the gift of me. I kid, but in all honesty, I believe that is how people should feel: that they have touched lives, made an impact, and, most importantly, that they belong exactly where they are. 

I wandered around the area that I was staying in, drinking cold champagne outside of the Flatiron building while reading my book. There I was on my 21st birthday, celebrating one of those rare birthdays in which you are actually happy to be older. 

Some people don’t take their birthdays very seriously. I am not one of those people. I am the main character on my birthday. A birthday is an excuse to celebrate yourself, so you might as well roll out the red carpet in an event that is less of a birthday party and more of a coronation.   

And my coronation was not going to happen without its cake. A big cheesy cake isn’t just for kids anymore. Everyone will be having one on their birthdays from now on, up until they reach the age in which Type 2 Diabetes is a plausible threat and even then it’s still on the table. I went to Magnolia’s Bakery and got a rich tasting, sweet-but-not-too-sweet chocolate cake with a customized message. I got a cake that says “God Save The Queen.” I then invited some friends over and I let them eat cake. 

Today the cake says: God Save The Queen.

When I turn 40, the cake will say:

40

Pass the botox. 

If it can fit on a snarky birthday card, I will likely put it on a birthday cake one day. 

The outfit I wore was in reference to the fact that I was their master of ceremonies. I also thought that it was going to fit me better, having never worn it before. So please, check out my crop top costume vest with my black sparkly pants. The plan was to walk to dinner with my friends and then eat cake back at my hotel, mainlining drinks all throughout, of course. 

I showed up, ridiculously dressed, and had a wonderful time with my gorgeous friends. Dinner was at a French restaurant called Lou Lou, known for its craft cocktails and named after the owner’s dog, both of which I wholeheartedly approve of.

My Firebird cocktail came in the form of a bird shaped cocktail glass and my food was some rich, creamy, prettily-presented food that I scraped from my plate. 

Then, back at the hotel bar, I had a Cosmo, as I can be counted on to do, and had my cake with my friends. 

It was a pretty laid back birthday party, not the raucous-causing birthday bash where the drinks keep coming and the people in the next room tell you to keep it down. Upon learning that cocktails are expensive and that hangovers hurt like hell, I decided to keep it lowkey. Sipping alcohol responsibly and then being tucked in bed only shortly after midnight, isn’t most people’s idea of a typical 21st birthday party, but makes for a very enjoyable evening.

He crashed my photoshoot

Between the extravagant cocktails, the French bistro, and my royal cake, my namesake, Marie Antoinette, would have been proud. A few of my friends could not make it (I love you anyways, Alyssa and Julia) but I had a fantastic time with Bella, Anahat, and Valentina. Three’s a crowd, so I guess you can say that I had a crowd of people to celebrate my birthday with me. 

Finally, we bring the curtain down on my only 21st birthday. Here’s to a sensitive, dramatic, sweethearted (wickedly funny, extremely cute) fun-loving girl, who fits all of the descriptions of her beloved Cancer zodiac sign, worships her standoffish cat, and can now drink legally in her home country.

Happy birthday to me and thank you to all of the people who made it truly special. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

My favorite political cartoon is of a couple in an art museum. The art on the wall is little more than a circle. One person turns to the other and says, “I could have painted that.” The other person responds with, “yeah, but you didn’t.” That’s what seeing these paintings in Chelsea reminded me of. 

Technically, I could have painted the colorful Rorschach-blobs lining the walls of the Highline Nine art gallery, but I didn’t. It was hard at times to see the appeal of the artwork in front of me. They were vibrant, resplendent colors that would nicely decorate the wall of an apartment, but didn’t resemble anything real and cost about as much as a down payment on a Tesla. 

Chelsea is known for its spectacular art galleries, so once my mother left me I decided that I would get my bearings and practice my navigational skills by skipping along from one art gallery after the other. Am I posh yet? I’m striving to be better with directions. When I was a child I got lost in my own house (and it was a one-story house with about seven rooms). 

Using my GPS, I managed to mostly find my way and ended up in a variety of fascinating art galleries, starting with the fascinatingly named High Line Nine. I chose these galleries off the internet based on how much I liked their name. That’s how the great ones do it. After none of the pieces spoke to me, I moved on to the C24. 

This art gallery had less to do with actual paintings and more to do with conceptual artwork where everywhere you looked there were videos being projected onto the walls.

The third one, The Gagosian Gallery, which I clearly wasn’t supposed to be in because they were in the process of renovating it and moving in new art pieces, was filled with even more avant garde pieces, much of which could have doubled as furniture. 

From there, I walked over to the Chelsea Highline once again, never imagining that I would love a hollowed-out railroad as much as I do, before calling it a day. I wanted to get back to my hotel, so that I could prepare for my evening at the theater (still posh). Valentina, like the fabulous friend she is, snagged us both tickets to see a Broadway show via the ticket lottery, and gave it to me as a birthday gift. In order to fulfill my unofficial New Year’s resolution of learning the subway system, so that my parents can sleep at night, I took the subway from Chelsea to Broadway to meet Valentina, and, not to brag, I didn’t get lost. 

The play was being performed in the Circle In The Square Theater, even though, and this is not to start a fight, the stage is more of a rectangle in an oval. The theater is known for kickstarting the careers of several famous actors, yet all of the actors in this play were already pretty well known. Ever heard of Laurence Fishbourne, Sam Rockwell, and Darren Criss? 

“American Buffalos” is a play about three men who are going to pull off a heist in order to improve their lives and realize the American Dream, but since it’s a play they only discuss doing a heist instead of actually doing it. It mostly asks questions about loyalty. The play was written by David Mamet, a playwright known for his witty, rapid-fire dialogue. Aaron Sorkin, eat your heart out.

So together, Valentina and I saw an Emmy-nominated play being performed by heavy hitters at an illustrious theater in New York City. Truly, it was an incredible birthday present.

As far as the play itself went, I absolutely loved it. It was witty, serious, and well-acted. All three of the actors did a phenomenal job with Sam Rockwell being one of the best things to happen to acting in a while, in my opinion. 

Valentina and I had a fun time seeing the show, an act we hope to repeat some day when I get back from Italy and am stateside again. I went to sleep that night thinking about my 21st birthday the next day.

Stay tuned for that.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

On day four of our trip, my mother and I took our regular pilgrimage to the Met, in particular to see the Temple of Dendur. A person could spend an entire day in the Met, so we did.

Not only was the Temple of Dendur still standing, but the Met had several new exhibits on display for just this occasion.

We first set out to check out the Met’s exhibition of “Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents,” a new Met exhibit that had been advertised across the city.

Winslow Homer was controversial in his time, which would have been during the Civil War, for depicting people of color in his works and for showing a woman’s bare legs in a painting on the beach. He’d been deeply influenced by the Civil War, which bled into his work, having personally followed the conflict from the North. 

His work took place throughout the Americas, living up to its name of “Crosscurrents” by containing an idyllic, yet dangerous sense of nature, through his depictions of sharks brushing up against ill-fated rafts in the middle of the ocean, choppy waves, storms brewing in the background, and doomed rescue missions across stormy seas. 

I’d never heard of him before, but fell in love with his works. Not only were these poignant, historically-relevant paintings, but they were beautiful and realistic, not chaotic and messy. Most of the artwork that I’d seen from that era featured extremely pale people sitting still with their hands neatly folded in their laps, staring blankly at the viewer, not these sensationalized images of people galavanting across beaches and trying not to drown. We stood in front of the paintings, admiring them until our feet hurt from standing.

From there, we saw the Met Gala’s exhibition. The Met was showcasing their: “In America: An Anthropology of Fashion,” as part of the Met Gala’s “American Style theme.” It feels like it was just yesterday that I was being disappointed by the outfits worn to the Met Gala… and then disappointed again a year later when they were just as bad, if not worse.

What would I have done for the Met Gala, you don’t ask?

For American Style I would have dressed as an homage to Zelda Fitzgerald. She was from the south, moved to New York, enjoyed writing, painting, and swimming, and supposedly either wrote or contributed whole chunks to “The Great Gatsby” (if that’s the case, then F. Scott can go choke). She is everything I have ever wanted to be, up until she burned alive when her mental institution caught on fire. Zelda was America’s first ever flapper girl, making her synonymous with American style and feminism with her skirt at her knees and page boy hair cut. 

For the Gilded Age, I simply would have worn a deeply-ironic gilded soot-gray dress, since Mark Twain coined the phrase “The Gilded Age” to convey the fact that era looked like it was shimmering and golden as a mask for the corruption beneath. Alright, so that’s enough about my Met fantasies. 

After we perused the entire Met and saw the two new exhibits, we closed down the Met in the Temple of Dendur. My mother and I sat in the Temple of Dendur writing our novels. It was as sweet as it sounds. It had always been my dream to live in New York City full time, writing my novels in Central Park, the New York Public Library, and at the Met’s Temple of Dendur, an ancient Egyptian temple that has since been turned into a chic part of the city for parties and, at least once, a Chanel fashion show. As the story goes, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was given the temple as a gift from the Egyptian government before it could be destroyed by the creation of the Aswan Dam. 

So, The Met excavated it brick by brick and the temple has called New York City its home ever since. We wrote until the Met turned out the lights. It was a very productive day and a beautiful one to share with my mother. This was her final day with me in New York before returning to our home. 

My next few days in New York would also be filled with art and perhaps a bit of novel writing. More on that soon.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

The day my semester ended and I was almost allowed to go home as an RA, I got on a plane and went to Atlanta, where my parents picked me up to take me to my brother’s college graduation in Athens. I jumped in their car and was taken straight to UGA where I was treated to days of shopping and other fun events where I went where I was told and enjoyed every minute of it.

I spent my day shopping at an occult shop that sold spiritual jewelry, a vintage clothing shop, and a locally-owned, independent bookstore, and then had low tea at a cafe in the afternoon and drinks on a rooftop in the evening. This was all my version of nirvana for those who are wondering. I spent my day looking at moonstones I couldn’t afford and vintage hot pants. 

For lunch, we went to a cafe on Lumpkin, cleverly named “The Cafe on Lumpkin.” The appeal of going to “The Cafe on Lumpkin” is that, at around 3:00, they serve low tea, although how it’s any different from “high tea” is beyond me. Each person received a pot of their own tea and I chose “The Marquess,” because, naturally, I can be counted on to choose the one with the bougiest sounding name. With it comes finger sandwiches and scones, plus all of the jams that a person could possibly need to slather on their scone. 

Many royal family jokes were made during low tea and all of them came from me. My older brother, the heir to my spare, graduated from college the very next day in a ceremony that made Joe Biden’s fireworks display look like a sparkler show. 

UGA knows how to roll out the red carpet during a graduation ceremony. At my school, I’m likely to get two hours in an uncomfortable folding chair underneath a tent, at the end of which, I receive a diploma with a subtext of “we-will-not-speak-of-this-again-until-we-ask-you-for-money-in-a-few-years” and I’m fine with that arrangement.

At some point towards the end of the trip, I realized that this was likely to be my final trip to Athens, Georgia. Now that my brother has graduated from UGA and moved away, I do not foresee any reason to return. Now, I must say goodbye to Athens, but only after a long, wonderful trip visiting it. So, congratulations Bobby and Mikaela, and goodbye Athens, Georgia. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel