On my way home

Hey everyone! I guess this will probably be my last post. I know its been a while since I posted last- All of this last week was exams and presentations, and we were all very busy doing a lot of not so interesting things.

All of my finals seemed to go well though, and we still managed to have a lot of fun despite all the work.

My homestay mom surprised my roommate and I with a Giraffa banner. Not one of the ones you can by at any store, but one of the ones that the contrada sells and you can only buy if you are in the contrada. We were both so excited! She had been gone the week of my birthday, and she also surprised me with an Italian cake- much more basic than American cakes, but it was still delicious.

Thursday and Friday we all worked to wrap everything up. We went to one last dinner together, at the same restaurant we went to the second day we were in Italy. We went on a final shopping expedition. And this morning we got up at 6:30 and walked to the bus station at 7:30.

One last bus ride through Tuscany, a little while in the airport and now I am not in Italy in more.

My flight routes through France to Atlanta, so right now I am sitting in the airport in Paris. We over the city, so I got to see the Eiffel Tower from the plane. We flew over huge snow covered mountains too, some of them were higher than the clouds.

We board the plane in 30 minutes to return to Atlanta.

I am ready to come home, but sad at the same time to leave Italy.

This is the end of another one of my journeys, but the next one is starting soon. Last year of Undergrad. I hope that sometime soon though, my path will take me back to Italy.

Harry Potter e i doni della morte

So yesterday I did homework all day (exciting, I know) and then I watched Harry Potter.

In Italian, without subtitles.

And it was awesome.

I won't say much else in case you haven't seen it yet, and I do still plan to see it in English because it is not quite the same with the voice over and the fact that I understood most but not all of the dialogue. But it was good.

They still do intermission here, so in the middle of the movie it paused.

We were out until 12:30 watching the movie, and then we came back and got up super early in order to be on a bus to go to the beach at 8.

Catching up: Monday-Wednesday

I am now behind on telling stories. In brief, this is what happened in the last two days.

Yesterday we took a cooking class! I learned how to make Pici, a hand rolled Sienese/Tuscan pasta. We made a tomato garlic sauce, which is Sienese. The guys (half of them, anyway) tried to stand around and watch, but we threw taunts at them until they started making the sauce! Actually, it was more like there wasn't a seat for them and they took advantage of that, then we started making fun of them and the instructor informed them that they would be making the sauce, I think. It all turned out very well! We ate Tiramisu after the Pici. And we walked their in the rain.

I have all of the recipes.

I set out this morning to find a cookbook, which I will hopefully choose tomorrow.

Today in class, I realized that I talked for a full conversation without having to translate in my head once.

And, today was my birthday! And my wonderful friends on the program surprised me with lots of desserts. Lots of desserts.

Our art history professor took us to a museum on Monday which used to be a hospital. It was opened in the 1300s and was a hospital until the 1950s. There are still today large tunnels and rooms excavated into the rock under the hospital which used to be used as storage rooms. Our teacher took us down into them to show us around, and then after we had gotten sufficiently far into the maze, he said that class was over, he was not going to show us the way out, and he would see us next year.

I asked one of my friends if that would count as an excused absence or an unexcused absence. Students trapped in underground labyrinth by professor. We decided excused.

Rome Pictures

Here are pictures from Rome!

The drive to Rome: there are sunflower fields everywhere, and they were all blooming. This can't really show it, but maybe you can imagine.

This may seem like a strange picture. What are these people doing?

This is a water fountain. I did not fully appreciate this last time I was in Rome because it was 50 some degrees. This time, it was more like 90 (I have not known the temperature here all summer because I do not understand Celsius and I don't see the temperature recorded all that often). The fountains are still run by the aqueducts, and still all over the city running constantly. you can drink from any of them as long as there is no sign saying otherwise. I still believe that this is one of the smartest things I have seen in a large city and that every city should have at least a few of these around. And they should be equally as pretty. No more of this water fountain that little kids put their mouths on nonsense. I want pretty fountains with drinking water.

The inside of St. Peter's Basilica.

The story behind this sculpture? So, Bernini designed the fountain, and another person designed the church which stands directly across from it instead of him. Bernini, lacking trust in the building's stability and the architect's skills, decided to make a sculpture reflecting this sentiment: prepared to catch the church when it falls down. Or else cowering in fear of that day.

Silly artists. I think they both planned it that way.

The Pantheon

Trevi Fountain

The Colosseum. This is what you see when you walk out of the metro.

The Domus Aurea. Underground. A small part of it.

The Forum from above on the Palatine hill.

The picture above says that the arch which my friends are standing in is the arch of Augustus...or was the arch of Augustus. You can still see the base on the left and right of them. And the forum behind.

The Roman Forum- Old temples. What's left of them.

Temple to Saturn

Trajan's Column. Reliefs of a battle he won are carved all around the column.

The monument to Vittorio Emmanuele

View from the top of the giant monument to Vittorio Emmanuele

Part of an old bridge in the Tiber river

The Mouth of Truth.

The Circus Maximus. What's left of it, anyway.

St. Peter's Basilica. See the tiny people in front on the stairs by the door that sort of look like ants? It's huge.

Pope John Paul II was beatified recently and they had a lot going on around the Vatican about his life. His tomb is in the Basilica now.

Saw this in the metro. This says: Globe Theater at the Villa Borghese [in Rome]. And if you look farther down, you will see Italian names of Shakespeare's plays, including "La tempesta" and "Sogno di una notte di mezza estate"...Dream of a night in the middle of a summer. Sound familiar?

Sprinting around Rome

It is about time I got up the details of my trip to Rome, I think. A warning: there are no pictures in this post because the pictures are being finicky right now. I will post them later. I have been working on final projects here and tonight I am taking the night off from that and writing this instead. Making good choices. Actually it is one, because I have been looking at the paper too often for the last few days.So, Rome!

Day One: finish class at 3:00 or so (supposed to finish about 2:45). Bus departs at 4. Run back to house, throw everything in my backpack and go.

There are fields of Sunflowers in Tuscany. I got to see dozens of them.

We arrive at the hotel after the three hour bus ride and learn that our reservation did not go through. Fortunately, there are about 10 other hotels (not an exaggeration) in the building and about 30 others (may be an exaggeration) on the same street, so we end up staying in the same building at the hotel which belongs to a nice old man who only speaks a little English and gives us pastries and cappuccino from a fancy machine every morning. After we get this worked out, we go to dinner across the street and then crash with alarms set to get up around 7 the next morning.

Day 2: Vatican. That would sum it up, but what most people would call a days worth of activities we added to. And the Vatican alone is not enough to describe what's there. I have seen it twice now and still feel like I have barely comprehended everything that is there. We started in the museums, which we had to wait in line for maybe an hour to see. Then we spent hours in the museums. There are sculpture galleries, courtyards, frescoes, tapestries- every square inch is decorated. Many of the rooms alone are sufficient to be the show without the works of art added to them.

We followed this up with St. Peter's Basilica, the largest church I believe in the whole world. It is beautiful, as beautiful as I remembered, unreal. The ceilings are impossibly high and the columns are themselves the area of a small room. There are mosaics so detailed that at first glance you think they are a painting, and sculptures on the ceilings that seem to move. The entire church and square in front can certainly be described as majestic. I could have sat inside for a very long time and just taken everything in.Most might have done this and called it a day, but not us! With only two full days in Rome, we couldn't call it a day yet, so we walked out of the square and towards the Tiber River, where we passed Hadrian's Mausoleum, crossed the river and walked to Piazza Navona. Here, we saw Bernini's fountain, a beautiful church, and people, so many people doing so many things! Some were making art work to sell to tourists. There were human statues posing with people for photos, musicians, and a group of high school boys who were trying to break dance in the middle of the square. They were still learning, but some were pretty good. One of them was still just too small! He looked about fifteen, and wasn't strong enough yet to do some of the moves. He was trying though!

We went to the Pantheon where we saw the tomb of Vittorio Emanuele and...Raffael! I did not know or remember that he was buried in the Pantheon.

We ended at Trevi fountain and then found dinner.

And that was Day Two. We finally made it back around 11:30 pm. we had to walk because the metro had quit running.

Day Three: back up at 7:30. We left for the Colosseum shortly after 8 and were in around 9:30. We spent quite a while here, and they had an exhibit up this time around about the Emperor Nero's infamous house built over much of the most coveted land in Rome after Rome mysteriously burned (his fault, perhaps?). They have begun to excavate parts of his villa, the Domus Aurea, since I was last there, and so this time around I was able to see part of it when we went to the Forum.

And now I suppose you can have the explanation of the My Little Pony from my last entry! One of the members of our group has a five year old god-daughter, and this five year old girl entrusted him with her beloved pony Rainbow Dash with the task of taking pictures of Rainbow Dash around Italy. She even gave him the comb for her mane. And so, Rainbow Dash accompanied us to to the Colosseum where her picture was taken along with the small plastic goat another girl has which has been a joke between her and a friend for quite some time. Rest-assured, her mane was properly combed and she was looking her best!

After the Colosseum, we went to the Forum. This time around I got to see the excavated part of the Domus Aurea, as well as Augustus' house (also newly excavated) and parts of the Palatine Hill, the ritzy part of Ancient Rome, which I did not see six years ago. And of course, the Forum and all of it's still standing and not standing columns. Really though, it is very cool to see, but it is also very hard to immagine anyone living in the place because, although very well preserved, it is hard to envision it as it must have been once. Still though, I have an idea, even if a small one.

Again, we did not stop here. I will just list the rest of the day:

1. Lunch. by now, it's after 3:00pm

2. Monument to Vittorio Emanuele

3. Tiber Island

4. Church with the Mouth of Truth

5. Circus Maximus (chariot race track. aka now a field with a median and one set of bricks that used to be bleachers. There was a man running around the field though. We decided to call him the eternal runner)

6. metro to Spanish Steps

7. A church at the top. There were people in their singing, it was echoing through the whole room. It was beautiful.

8. Borghese gardens where we found a movie theater which was not open that night

9. walk to Piazza della Repubblica. Find gelatto. Watch Transformers 3, in Italian.

10. 12:30Am, return to hotel.

And well, that's about it! The next day, Michelle and I got up and attempted to find some gardens near the Vatican and failed. We did however get to sit in St. Peter's Square and watch the pope talk on the big screens. He was not in St. Peter's that day, he was somewhere else, but we were sitting in his area watching him speak. They had the fountains all turned on.

And then we went home!

I am back from Rome!

I have returned from Rome just this evening!

And it was a whole lot of fun, which sadly I am going to have to wait to tell you about because I have a rather large final project due tomorrow.

I will post a few pictures though, and tell you just a few things.

First, we saw almost every major historical site and modern landmark in just two and a half days. Yes, we are amazing, thank you. We are also tired. My feet sort of hated me by the end of Saturday after we spent hours upon hours in the Colosseum, the Palatine Hill, the Forum, the Vittorio Emanuele monument and museum, the Tiber Island, Circus Maximus (it's a field with old stands in one corner now, we walked past and waved, basically), the church with the mouth of truth, back to the metro, over to the Piazza di Spagna (Spanish steps) up past the Medici Villa, into the Borghese gardens, back down to the Piazza della Repubblica where we finally paused to watch Transformers three in Italian. Which was wonderful, I might add. Mostly made so by the fact that the cheesy dialogue is even cheesier in Italian. (Optimus=Optimoose)

We left our hotel at 8:30am and made it back to our room at 12:30 am. I don't know how far we walked. If you want to know, just google map it on the right side of this page. I am too tired.

And that was just one day. I will tell you more later! here are some pictures, though. And some details you will just have to look forward to having explained later :D

Cheese tastings: they do exist

Today, I am leaving to go to Rome for the second time with a group of four other friends from the program who have never been before. This has made me the unofficial leader of what sites to go to, and we have quite a list compiled.

Tonight: Trevi fountain and surrounding areas

Tomorrow: Vatican City. Bright and early.

Saturday/Sunday: Villa Borghese, Roman Forum, Colosseum, etc. It's a long list.

We'll see what we get done.

Yesterday we took a trip through small towns in Tuscany with our art history class. We stopped first at a monastery, Monte Oliveto, and looked at famous frescoes and the rest of the monastery that was open to the public. Once there were a huge number of monks there- now my teacher said there are only 30 or so. We saw a few them. It was a very quiet place up in the middle of the hills, near a small town now but in the middle of nowhere when it was founded 700 years ago. They were very self sufficient way back, and we saw the place where they used to keep fish for Fridays and another building which our professor said they packed with snow and turned into a refrigerator!

After we saw this place we went to Pienza, a nearby small town that started off as a medieval town and is not entirely Renaissance, thanks to Pope Pius II who seemed to care a lot more about his own personal power than the Church, and had the whole town torn down and turned into the "perfect Renaissance town," complete with a focal point in the middle of a main piazza with his family crest everywhere. Even the church had several dozen more of his crest than any Christian decorations. Hist coat of arms is all over parts of Siena as well.

We weren't in Pienza very long, but we were there long enough to notice the smell of cheese coming from a lot of buildings. And it was delicious smelling cheese!

Fortunately for us, Anna planned a cheese tasting for us after the trip! We went straight from Pienza to a small cheese...farm? sort of? owned and run by only seven people. Four to take care of the sheep, and three to make the cheese. The man there spoke in Italian, and Anna translated for the words we couldn't understand and the students who have not studied as much. Then we tried six types of cheese. With honey and marmalade and bread. It was wonderful. All pecorino cheese, aged for different amounts of time so that they were all different flavors and textures. Some had walnut leaves on them to change the flavor. We ate ricotta (fresh ricotta, different than the kind you can buy in the states) with sugar stirred into it.

We were all in cheese paradise.

More parades

Now that I have caught up with Venice posting, I need to tell you about the rest of Sunday and yesterday. When we arrived back to Siena from Venice, the first thing we saw of the city was that a major road was blocked. After walking a block from the bus stop, we ran into a parade. The Oca contrada's parade. Yet again! And this time, it was a style I am a little more familiar with. The horses' name was Mississippi (Meeseesseepee if you are Italian) and so they made the parade a little bit like part of what you might see around New Orleans...which is not Mississippi, but I guess its close. Including a sort of Jazz band with women following with Oca colored parasols waving them up and down. It was quite a site! They were parading along the route that we were to follow home, so I took us back another way. Later on that day we saw them again on the Piazza del Campo. They had set up all of the things from the parade there and were having a big party on half of the square. Even later on in the afternoon, we returned to the square just in time to see something happening- a huge crowd had gathered, and there were people near the front cheering. About half of the Contrada banners were hanging out of the Palazzo Pubblico. we watched for a while as banners moved and then people cheered, and then moved home when it looked like another parade was about to start.
When we got back, we found Gianfranco and Flora sitting watching the television, watching what was happening in the Campo square. I asked them what was happening. They told me that it was the selection of the contrada's for the Palio that will be held on August 16. Giraffa will be running! Too bad I am leaving only two weeks before the second Palio will be held...but I will be watching it on the internet from the States. It turns out too that my homestay mom is sewing the jacket for the jockey. THE jacket! So I got to see the jockey's jacket, even if I don't get to see the race in person.

Venice, for Real This Time

I am actually awake now, so I can post the rest!

I got off the train in Venice and went out to the bus station to get to the hotel. I try to walk most places usually, but the only map I had of Venice lacked street names, and unlike most Italian cities, in Venice there are no large main roads to work from. Just a few bigger small roads and some small Piazzas, except for the Piazza of San Marco, and I knew if I came to that I had in the wrong direction. So I took the bus. But this was not just a bus: there are no cars that I saw in Venice. It was a boat. The taxis are also boats, and the water buses, taxis, and gondolas all move about in the canal at the same time in all random directions. I don't know if there was any order to it, but I didn't see any of them run into each other.

As I said, there are no main roads in Venice, so when the bus pulled into the dock that was my stop I found myself on a small piazza with two tiny streets leading off of it. In the States, these would have been considered sketchy alleyways: about five feet wide and running between very old buildings. In Venice, this is normal. After wandering down a few of them I found my hotel on a slightly wider street.

Victoria, a friend from school who was studying for the last month in London, had already arrived, and I found her already at the hotel. The airline lost her luggage. In fact, her luggage is still making its way to Siena. I dropped my things and we headed out to learn our way around as best we could in the labyrinth that is Venice.

It really is an unreal city. Every few roads you cross a tiny bridge over a canal. There are often boats tied up outside doors that open directly onto the canals. The buildings are colorful even if they are close together, so the city feels tight but not dark. On some roads there are hundreds of people, and on other roads, no one. We found a place on a small street to eat dinner, where the waiter told us that the tables with the young ladies were always his tables and not to listen if the woman working there came to help us. Then we went in search of Victoria's first gelato in Italy in a very long time and got lost again making out way back to the hotel.

The next day was long, but filled with amazing things! We found breakfast at a place off the path tourists usually stay on, and had caffè latte and brioches at the counter, then went to the Piazza di San Marco to decide what to see. This is the biggest square in Venice. It may be bigger than Piazza del Campo, and hosts both the Basilica di San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale. We went in both! The basilica is beautiful- I personally like the Duomo in Siena better, but the entirety of the ceiling and much of the walls of this basilica were covered in mosaics, beautiful mosaics with a gold background and pictures form the life of Saint Mark. The entire room sparkled. And we were able to go on the roof and the top level, which has the museum of older works which used to be displayed in the basilica. I was able to look at the mosaics and tell by the style which was older and which were newer! My art history class is paying off!

Then we went into the Palazzo Ducale, where the Duke of Venice was made to live for the rest of his life with only limited chances to leave. It was a beautiful building, at least! All of the walls and ceilings were richly decorated with Renaissance era paintings. In one room, the paintings were copies of the originals because Napoleon decided to take the originals right off the ceiling!

There was one large beautiful room that was especially magnificent, right out of a ball room scene in a fairy tale. I am a little whimsical...I really wanted there to be no one else in the room so that I could dance around like this:

The room had this feel. It just wasn't as tall. And it didn't have the big staircase.

Of course, go down a few flights of stairs and around a corner, and you find yourself in the prison.

I am maybe very happy I did not live in that time period.

Really though, Venice was an amazing city. Every part of it. We ate dinner after all of our touring at a restaurant on the water front and watched more boats going by.

The Rialto Bridge across the Grand Canal

A gondola on the Grand Canal

Venice is famous for its Carnevale in February and its masks. I bought one. Here is me wearing it and not looking so elegant.

The Grand Canal. The dock on the left is for "taxis."

A stairway in the Palazzo Ducale

The interior courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale

The exterior of the Palazzo Ducale

The facade of the Basilica di San Marco

Piazza San Marco

A church we stumbled across