Back on that media visit grind (in dress clothes).
Today’s first visit was with Burston-Marstellar, communication experts in the advertising, public relations, and marketing industry. From learning about influencers and creative executions to sipping on Campari at 11AM to determine the brand’s product experience, we got a crash course on the company’s capabilities and big name client list.
Burston-Marstellar was my selected media visit so I was given small gifts to present to certain speakers and also ask questions today. They were kind enough to also host our lunch for the day so I took advantage of the free food and ate what I could. Because we’re constantly so rushed when we go on these media visits (even now), we don’t get a lot of time for lunch or to stay hydrated.
I notice the dehydration part the most because normally drink a lot of water on a daily basis. It results to having to use the restroom often, which doesn’t help when there aren’t a lot of public restrooms in these foreign cities (I’m looking at you Rome, Assisi, Florence, Venice, and Milan). To combat this, we weren’t drinking enough water, which didn’t help because our bodies were really weak during the long walking tours and traveling with public transportation.
The following visit right after our lunch break at Burston-Marstellar was with Rai Milan, which is a branch of Italy’s broadcasting station. We got to see Anna again, who was our guest journalist when she was visiting us in Pittsburgh. At Rai we were given a quick presentation on the company’s history and organization. Then we got to tour their studios, both radio and various TV sets. The experience was really cool. I would’ve never expected to sit in the live audience section of the TV set. It was like touring the Warner Brothers studios, but behind the scenes on the production side.
At the end of the tour we were presented certificates of participation, which was funny to look at because it was mostly us being exposed to all this information. Random memory, but the presenter asked if I was Latina after he read out my full name and I had to politely correct him.
Once we’d finished all of our media visits for the day, we were free to have dinner on our own. Originally we’d wanted to go back to the city center, but the weather thought otherwise.
When we were on the public bus heading back to the hotel, I’d seen on Google Maps that there was a bubble tea place near by that I really wanted to go to. You’re probably thinking, why go out of your way to go to a bubble tea place while in Italy??? Answer: I’m just that type of person.
Also think about it, if you’re a person living in this country and you wanted to try a different type of food that’s also available back home, wouldn’t you want to compare the differences if there were any? It’s similar to how condiments in other countries don’t taste like they do back home. For example: ketchup. Also, let’s not forget how Heinz isn’t the only ketchup brand in the world. You are in my world, Heinz ketchup!
Anyway, I checked how much time we had left because the shop closing time and our arrival to the hotel was very close. It was a 10min walk from the hotel and the shop closed in 30mins. Easy, we got this right?!
Not really… the rain clouds were approaching and Mother Nature wasn’t kind about it. We walked for maybe 5mins, taking wrong turns before deciding to just go back to the hotel.
I could see the lightning strike, then it started to rain really hard after we made it back to the hotel lobby. Unsure of what to do, we stood in the lobby wondering what our options were. There was a brochure for a Asian fusion food restaurant called SHiNy. I couldn’t help but think about how similar it was to SHINee, a Korean pop (K-Pop) boy group (Happy 10th anniversary boys💕). Kayla and I were set on going there and as we waited in the lobby for the rain to let out, other people in our travel group considered that restaurant too.
We finally got to the restaurant, ordered food, struggled to retrieved our check due to how busy the restaurant got and the whole “slow food” movement they’ve got going on in Italy, and then finally returned to our hotel room—fed and exhausted.
Will there be a night where we’re not exhausted? Also, can you believe we chose an Asian food restaurant for our last free time dinner in Italy? It makes sense given the circumstances.
Till tomorrow~