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.