A Pisa My Mind

Well, this was a week full of little treasures.  We did not have any major adventures, just some small things that really made the week fun.  On Wednesday, we played Ultimate Frisbee in the park, which was a lot of fun. Based on the number of Italians who stopped and stared, I’m sure they thought we were insane.  It was about 60 degrees outside, so most of us were in t-shirts and some of us were even in shorts.  Meanwhile, all of the Italians were still in their heavy coats, scarves and sweaters as they took a walk through the park.  Clearly, we were not Italians.  We had a relatively friendly game until the rules started to become a little too fluid for some of us, but it was still fun!  We even had a couple Italian students playing with us.  And we got some healthy exercise in with all that running!

Mom sent me this photo this week

and I think it needed to be shared!

 When Friday rolled around, we went to Pisa and Lucca for the day.  We climbed up into the leaning tower, which was interesting since the stairs are slanted and they were quite worn from all the people who have climbed them over the years. I did not get my customary picture holding up the tower, but that’s okay.  We were running a little short on time!  We did get to go into the church, baptistery, and cemetery that make up the Pisa complex, though.  According to legend, the burial ground at Pisa contains dirt from the hill where Christ was crucified.  They claim that the dead buried there do not decompose because of this dirt.  And did you know that one of the monuments men, Dean Keller, is buried in the cemetery in Pisa? He did extensive work in Tuscany during the war, particularly in Pisa and Florence.  In fact, the Camposanto Monumentale where he is buried (at least in part) is a site that he tried to protect and restore during and after the war.  The site caught fire in 1944 and the frescoes were severely damaged, but Keller enlisted men and art experts to restore and protect the remaining frescoes.  How cool is that?!

Grave of Dean Keller, 

one of the Monuments Men

The kids in orange and blue were just school kids 

that were walking by as we took the pictures!

Saturday was filled with last minute plans.  Ryan (a friend) and I started the day with shoe shopping at timberland, since we both needed good, waterproof shoes.  Unlike Oklahoma, Italy actually has a rainy spring and neither of us had appropriate shoes! Not to mention, with all the walking we’re doing, I’m wearing through my shoes a lot faster than usual as well.  They were expensive, but they were totally worth it!  We also decided to take an afternoon train into Florence because part of the Body World exhibit is on display there.  Funnily enough, it is actually being held in a church, Santo Stefano al Ponte.  We all thought that this was really odd and funny, but then again Italy doesn’t exactly have a lot of free space other than in the unused churches!  The exhibit was only partial, but it was still a lot of fun to see.  It focused on the cardiovascular system mostly, but also had some of the digestive system too.  Afterwards, we went to Hard Rock Café for dinner because we were all craving some American food.  Yes, it was rather pricey, but it was totally worth it.  Pasta and pizza are great, but sometimes you just need a pulled pork sandwich or nachos!  And oh my god was the food delicious!

Today, we had a kind of family game night.  We had board games like Monopoly and Settlers of Catan and we also had a few decks of cards.  I joined a group that was playing Egyptian Rat Tail (or Slap) and then we started a game called President.  Both were a lot of fun and it was nice to just do something kind of family like.  It was fun and relaxing to not have any classes or trips to worry about and to just chill in the monastery. 

Well, I thought that this was going to be a rather short post, but clearly I was wrong.  It was definitely nice to have a rather chill week without any major adventures or crazy travel plans.  Next week we’re thinking of going to Cinque Terre to do some hiking and see the sights.  I’ll let you know how that goes!

A City of Ash and Dust

“Oh, time will pass, men will move on, and stories will fade. But one day, Pompeii will be found again. In thousands of years. And everyone will remember you.” (This is from Doctor Who)

 Chillin' in the hotel, trying to figure out the metro

We went on our first independent trip this weekend and it was quite the adventure.  Three other students and I woke up nice and early on Friday morning to catch the train to Naples, which arrived at about 10am.  After a brief wait for our room to be ready, we dropped our stuff and headed out into the city to see the sights.  The metro took us to the coast, where we spent the afternoon looking out over the crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean.  Climbing out onto a bolder break line, we had an amazing view of the water, the city, and Mount Vesuvius. Of course, the boys wasted no time sprinting to the end of the rock shelf, jumping over holes and around some sleeping people to make it to the end.  I didn’t feel like breaking myself or my camera just to get to the end of the break line, however.

We took a break from the coast to have some lunch.  Naples is supposedly famous for its thin crust pizza, which was really good, but probably not the best that I’ve ever had. We ate in a restaurant by the park, which was surprisingly cheap considering how upscale the interior appeared.  Afterwards, we walked to a castle that stands on a tiny island out in the Mediterranean that you can access by a short bridge.  After reaching the top, we had another amazing view of Naples and the water. 

“Wait a minute. One mountain. With smoke. Which makes this...” “Pompeii. We're in Pompeii. And it's volcano day!” (This is also from Doctor Who…)

Well, it may not have been volcano day, but it was Pompeii day! We took the (very delayed) metro to Pompeii on Saturday morning.  We paid our entrance fee, grabbed a couple maps, and entered the city. We walked straight to the Amphitheater, which is at the back of the city, and worked our way forward.  A lot of the city was closed off for construction and restoration, probably because it isn’t tourist season right now.  We spent about 4 hours in the city, wandering along the pathways and into various buildings.  Thankfully, it was a bright and warm day, which made for excellent exploration weather.  We hit some of the highlights of the city, including the temple of Jupiter and Gladiator Arena. 

Finding the infamous brothel, on the other hand, was a bit more of an adventure.  In the maps, there is no location entitled brothel, so we finally decided to ask someone.  Michael, who actually speaks decent Italian, approached one of the security people in the park and started trying to explain brothel in Italian.  Thankfully, before he dug himself into too much of a hole, the woman said that she spoke English and pointed us in the right direction.  The brothel is called the Lupanare, in case you ever get to Pompeii.  It’s a very small building near the arena, and it has some interesting frescoes as well as stone beds.  There was an American family in the building with us, which proved to be very entertaining.  They had a son, about 10 years old, who declared that he didn’t understand the point of the building.  Everyone started to laugh, and his mother told him that he didn’t need to know. 

The Garden of the Fugitives

Fresco from inside of the Lupanare

View of Vesuvius from within the city

Our last day in Naples was volcano day!  We left our hotel around noon and traveled to Ercolano, which is where you can catch a minibus up the mountain to the trail to the crater (It’s only €20).  Now, all the research that we had done told us that the hike up the mountain would only take about 20 minutes and we had 90 minutes until our taxi came back to get us.  Plenty of time, right? WRONG.  Try climbing up a 45 degree or more incline on gravel and sand for over a mile.  We were dying.  Admittedly, none of us were wearing the best shoes in the world, either, but still.  It took us about 30-40 minutes to reach the top of the mountain and another 20-30 to reach the end of the trail around the crater.  Unfortunately, it was cloudy so we couldn’t see much, but hey, we made it to the top of Vesuvius.  We looked around at the little gift shop at the end of the trail, picking up some souvenirs, before realizing we only had about 20 minutes to make it back down the mountain. Now that hike is the part that you CAN do in only 20 minutes.  We slipped and slid our way back down the mountain, somehow managing to stay on our feet the entire time.  By the time we reached the bottom, our shoes were filled with gravel, but we were on time.  However, our taxi driver wasn’t (he was running on Italian time). 

 All in all, it was an amazing weekend.  We saw the Mediterranean, walked the streets of Pompeii, and trekked the slopes of Vesuvius.  That’s not something everyone can say, now is it!

A Stroll Through Churches and Chocolate

Sabato Stroll number two went fabulously.  We journeyed to Perugia and Terni for this particular stroll, which are both in the Umbria region of Italy (Arezzo is in Tuscany, if you didn’t know). 

Our little group arrived in Perugia at about 915 and we then took a bus to the top of the city.  From here, our group split in two.  My group, led by Colin, went to see the Duomo, the Etruscan Well, and finally the Temple of the Angels.  The Duomo and the Well were a bit of a letdown after the overwhelming beauty of the ones in Orvieto on our last Sabato Stroll.  However, it was still an adventure!

We walked through the residential part of the city to find the Temple of the Angels, which was in the middle of preparations for what we believed was a wedding (there seemed to be a lot of them going on in Perugia this weekend!).  It was a beautiful little church with a wonderful courtyard out front that must have been quite the luxury way back when.  While enjoying the sun outside the church, we noticed a tower that we decided to explore.  After climbing some seriously treacherous stairs, we arrived at the top for an amazing view of the city and the surrounding countryside.  It was absolutely beautiful, made more so thanks to the sun that has been rather elusive over the past month. 

 Finally, we headed back toward our meeting point to catch the train to Terni.  After taking an elevator that we thought was our mini metro (thankfully a sweet Italian lady pointed us in the right direction), we arrived at the metro station. The mini metro was actually surprisingly cool.  They were incredibly modern, with independent cars that traveled down the tracks.  I have to say, we were ridiculously excited about this part. 

Next, we hopped the train to Terni, the home of St. Valentine! We went to the church of Saint Valentine, unintentionally interrupting the beginning of a mass, so we had to make a quick exit.  However, most of us were really only there for the chocolate festival, so no big loss. 

The chocolate festival was so much fun.  There were vendors everywhere, selling chocolate, wine, food, and other sweets and treats.  It was remarkably crowded, especially considering Terni isn’t a huge town.  We certainly didn’t overindulge ourselves (for the most part) but we definitely bought some wonderful chocolates.

I got several pieces with dried fruit and some of the others managed to find some chocolate covered strawberries before they sold out.  Colin and I also tried what tasted like the baby of a churro and a cinnamon roll.  They made it by wrapping dough around a wooden spool, baking it, and then rolling it in cinnamon sugar.  It was incredible, although very, very hot.

The chocolates kept coming, with some made with such intricate details that they seemed to come to life.  Some were definitely homemade, but I think quite a few came from a market of some sort.  Too many stalls had the exact same things for there not to have been a market.

Church of San Valentino

 By the end of the festival, we were all a little hyped up on sugar and ready to head back to Arezzo and get off of our feet!  It was a pretty cool day, topped off with delicious chocolate! 

Class After Class

Yet another interesting week.  We had our first true excursion for our renaissance art class on Wednesday.  We travelled by bus to Siena, which does not have a train station or a major highway that runs to the city by the way.  We started off in the Saint Catherine of Siena Church.  The church is rather plain, but houses several relics of Saint Catherine.  They have her thumb, her whip, and, most notably, her mummified head! In the past, the reliquary that holds her head was only opened on religious holidays, but we were able to see it in all of its… glory.  It was definitely an interesting sight.

Next, we moved to the Duomo of Siena.  The Duomo actually has quite an interesting history. If you didn’t know, Florence is actually the arch rival of Siena and when the Duomo was finished, Florence immediately started to build one that would be bigger and better.  Of course, the Sienese couldn’t allow that and started a massive project to expand their church, with the original building being only one transept of the final product. Unfortunately, they faced many setbacks including bank failures, unusually rainy years, and, to top it all off, the Black Death hit the city in 1347. 

(Fun Fact: Music Notes were actually created by Guido Monaco who was born here in Arezzo!)

Funnily enough, however, just as Kirk (our professor) began to talk about the rainy season, it started to hail! It was just pea-sized hail, but it was still hilarious.  We tried to escape under the arch of the building so Kirk could finish talking, but it just followed us.  It seemed to be coming from the building itself! Eventually, Kirk gave up and we went into the museum and Duomo to look at the art.

Afterwards, we went to the Piazza del Campo, which is a giant half circle piazza in Siena.  It’s actually where they do the horse races, or Palio del Siena.  Unfortunately, that race happens in the fall, so we didn’t get to see it. We did get to go into the town hall, and then have lunch a La Finestra.  We had the special pasta of Siena, which is called Pici.  It’s a thicker, chewier, spaghetti type pasta that was amazing.  We followed it up with a gelato in the blessed, yet highly elusive, Italian sunshine in the Piazza.

 Ceiling of the Music Book Room

Music Book in the Duomo.

It's actually like 3 feet tall, FYI.

Palazzo Publico/Town Hall in the Piazza del Campo

On Thursday, we had a pasta making class! It was so much fun! We made three types of pasta by hand: ravioli, tagliatelle, and potato gnocchi (in the north they make it with milk-soaked bread -yuck!). They were all really easy to make and unbelievably delicious! All we did was mix a cup or two of flour with a little salt and an egg.  We made the flour into a little volcano, cracked the egg into the volcano, and then (attempted) to whisk the egg while slowly adding the flour without destroying the volcano.  Some of us had more success than others.  This dough was what made our tagliatelle and ravioli.  The gnocchi was just a cooked and cooled potato mixed with a little flour and a bit more salt. And, obviously the best and most important part, we ate the pasta! It was so good and yet so bad for us. 

Tomorrow, most of us are headed to Perugia and Terni.  Perugia is another college town with some cool views and (another) beautiful cathedral.  Terni, however, is just a small city in Umbria.  However, it has a Cioccolentino going on, which is a chocolate festival! Guys, I am beyond excited for this trip. Terni’s patron saint is San Valentino, which is actually really cool.

Oh, three other students and I also planned a trip to Naples and Pompeii for our first free weekend which is next week.  We get to travel to and from Naples and stay in a hotel for super cheap, which is great for poor college students!

Well, it’s almost dinner time, so that’s all for now!

A Week of Adventures

Wow, this has been one heck of a week. In fact, it could easily be two separate blog posts, but where is the fun in that.  So have fun reading this one massive post!

The fun started on Wednesday, with our first traveling Renaissance art class and the OUA Retreat.  The travelling class was really cool.  We started off at the Arezzo Archaeological Museum, which is on the site of an Ancient Roman amphitheater.  Did you know that if any act of violence occurred in a Roman play, they actually did that on stage? Eye gouging, rape, cutting of heads, it was all done with the use of slaves and convicted felons, unlike the Greeks who actually acted these things out.  Anyway, we learned a little bit about the Etruscans, the predecessors of the Romans, before moving on through the museum.

We then went to the Pieve, the people’s church in Arezzo.  It sits on the Piazza Grande in Arezzo, and it is where the lower class came to worship until they were banned by the town’s bishop. It actually holds an interesting relic, the head of San Donato who is Arezzo’s saint.  It was (supposedly) inside of this extremely elaborate container made of silver and decorated with rubies and emeralds.  You couldn’t actually go up to see it, or get within 10 feet of it for that matter.  However, on the holiday for San Donato every year, thousands of people come to pray to the relic, to the point that the holy water is just randomly swished at the crowd in the hopes that you’ll be touched by some.

After the pieve, we had a quick lunch break before we were hopping the train (alongside all of the very annoying school children) to go to one of the suburbs for our retreat.  Marta, one of the lovely staff members of OUA, owns a villa in the suburb that she allowed us to rent for the evening.  It was a beautiful property, built in the 15^th century and just recently renovated in the early 2000s. Once there, we wrote letters to ourselves, helped make dinner, and had a tour of the property.  The villa consisted of the main house, the top floor of which Marta and her family inhabit, the farmer’s house, a private chapel, a vineyard, an olive grove, and a few other buildings that haven’t been restored yet. It was amazing.

We spent the evening eating, playing HeadsUp, and talking before catching the train back.  The food was amazing, even with us making it.

Two days later, we were all waking up at the crack of dawn to travel to Padova (or the anglicized Padua, cause that’s clearly easier to say…not!).  We arrived around 1030ish and walked to the Scrovegni Chapel, which was amazing.  It was once a private chapel, attached to the palace of the Scrovegni family.  The entire interior of the church was painted with frescoes by Giotto, a famous Italian painter.  According to our professor, his paintings were revolutionary for his time.  To get into the chapel, we had to go through a room that cycled the air so that we wouldn’t impact the micro climate of the church.  We weren’t even allowed to take pictures inside!

Next, we went to the University of Padova to see the anatomical theater where Galileo taught and lectured.  The lecture hall was cool and they showed us the wooden podium that Galileo used, but the theater itself was definitely the cherry on top.  We walked underneath the wooden theater and looked up from where the body would have been sitting.  There would barely have been room to stand to watch the autopsies, ignoring the fact that they could barely have been able to see since it was so dark inside.  Honestly, I don’t know how the place never burned down with the number of candles and torches they had to use!

First woman to ever graduate 

from a University

The next day, we went to Venice for Carnevale, which was quite an experience! First off, we were packed into the train like freaking sardines, standing in the aisles.  The first sight of Venice was beautiful though.  We wandered around for a bit, just trying to take it all in, checking out some mask shops and what not.  Eventually, we tried to find San Marco Square, which is where all the Carnevale action was.  After several reroutes and some serious crowds, we decided to back track and find somewhere to eat and regroup.  The next venture towards the square was actually successful.  We found a person walking around with an Italian flag on a pole, who seemed to be a tour guide, so we took a shot and followed him. 

After many twists and turns and narrow streets, we finally reached San Marco and boy was it worth it! Everywhere, people were dressed up in costumes and sporting masks.  The crowds were milling about, trying to find a new person to take pictures of.  There were definitely a lot of Americans there and they were incredibly easy to point out.  We wandered around the square for a couple hours, taking pictures and enjoying the Carnevale atmosphere.  As dusk started to fall, we decided we should start heading back to the train station, especially since none of us were particularly interested in experiencing Carnevale after dark. 

Finding the train station, however, was much harder than we initially thought. We just couldn’t seem to escape San Marco! Every time we chose a direction and started walking, we ended up back in the square or a quarter of a mile down the coast from the square! An hour later, we were on what we thought might be the right track.  We were supposed to be following these signs, but they were rather intermittent, so sometimes we had to guess.  About 2.5 hours after we started heading to the train station, we finally made it and 45 minutes later we were back in Padova. 

We were so exhausted from all the walking those two days that we, regrettably, got McDonalds for dinner because it was right by the train station.  After eating, we all went back to the hotel and were in bed before 10 pm.  Carnevale was fun, but exhausting. 

Well, I told you it would be a long post.  I certainly had plenty of material to work with and I’ve even left quite a bit out of this rendition! If you want to hear more, just ask!

Note to self: Next time, take the water taxis.