The plan was for Mom to text me around 11:30 on Friday (March 5th) when she got to the Bologna airport. 11:30 came and went. Class finished around one, and I still hadn’t heard from her. I went to lunch, thinking the plane was delayed, and still hadn’t heard anything even after grabbing dessert. At this point, I realized her cell phone probably wasn’t working so I tried the hotel but they still hadn’t arrived. I was lucky at the train station though! I pulled up on my bike and saw them waving from inside. I couldn’t hear it from outside, but Abbey said mom whistled so loud when she saw me that everyone in the station looked at them. After some really long welcome hugs, we walked to the hotel. They settled in a little bit and then I showed them around Ferrara and went to my host family’s store. It was cute seeing them all meet one another, not speaking each other’s language, but saying exactly the same thing to one another. I went to my house for dinner, packed my things, and spent the night in the hotel.
The next morning we got up and took a train to Rome. Rome! It’s huge. Seriously gargantuan. Possibly the biggest city I’ve been to, including in the US. (Or at least it felt that way—so many people, so much to do, so much to see) Our hotel was pretty close to the Colosseum, near the center of Rome. We got the suite room with the balcony which you could see the Colosseum from. After settling in, we went to the Trevi Fountain, which was PACKED even though it’s not even tourist season. I don’t even want to think of what it looks like come June and July. The weather was a little on the chilly side, but I was thankful for the sun and lack of precipitation. At the fountain, we all threw our pennies over our shoulders and took pictures. We grabbed lunch on the way to the Spanish steps and ate there. I had expected them to be better, or for the piazza to be bigger, but it was pretty low-key. After lunch, we took the metro to the Vatican and went through the Vatican Museum. We were really just interested in seeing the Sistine Chapel, but you had to go through all of these halls before you could get there. It was actually really neat though going through halls of roman statues, Renaissance paintings, tapestries, really old maps, and gorgeous ceilings. The Sistine Chapel seemed like just another room as part of the exhibit, but with a lot more people sitting to soak it in. I was completely in awe—to have every surface of a room painted in that manner was just absolutely stupefying. The guy knew what he was doing. (Unlike some of the works of art in the next rooms of contemporary art—just kidding!) We saw the Pope’s gardens then headed over to St. Peters. The whole square was crowded with members of the servizio civile who wear bright yellow uniforms. Based on my interpretation of what one of them told me when I asked why there were so many of them, they had been invited by the Pope because of all of their hard work in Abruzzo last year after the earthquake. Cool.
We watched the sun set over the Basilica then got gelato before dinner :) We passed by the Spanish steps (ok) and Trevi Fountain (really cool) in the dark and then went to dinner. After dinner and dropping stuff off in the hotel, we went to the colosseum to take night pictures and we tried some jumping ones, too. We also checked out the Vittorio emmanuele monument and the Forums across the street from Palatine Hill. Then it was bedtime.
The next morning I tried to get a shower. Tried is the key word here. There was a switch on the outside of the shower, two handles with different functions, two shower heads and 6 jets. I could figure out how to get the correct shower head to work, but the water never got hot. I washed my hair and then it got cold all of a sudden, so that was the end of that. After breakfast, we headed to the Pantheon but it closed soon after we got there. We took pictures in the piazza in front of it then went to Palatine Hill. That place is larger than life. There were so many parts of it to see so we didn’t see everything but we did check out Constantine’s Basilica, The Roman forum, Titus’ Arch, a big villa, and a stadium (and a couple other places but we didn’t know what they were). Next we went to the Colosseum and saw where they kept the animals underground and flooded the arena for ship battles. The arena in Verona had more of an “I can imagine myself watching gladiators fight to the death here” feel, probably because at the colosseum there were no seats left. After that we had lunch and went back to the Pantheon. The dome was so giant I couldn’t take a picture of the whole thing. It is amazingly well preserved for being so old and the marble and paintings were so elaborate and beautiful. We did some shopping around after that then took the train back to Ferrara. We met a really cute Italian guy from Rome on the train and he gave me his email address…I’ll try facebook stalking first :) Overall Rome was a really cool experience because it was like a bunch of world coming together in one place—so many people from so many different places of different ages, classes, languages; so many periods of history; different religions represented, it was truly global.
On Monday (Women’s Day!) I took my Translation midterm then headed to Venice. Adam and the guys from Spisani gave all of us women “mimosa” the traditional flowers for women’s day. Mine spent the day in my bag, so when I got back I decided to press them instead of put them in water. Mom, Abbey and I had planned to meet at 2:30 in Venice, but by the time I got out of my test and to the train station, the next train wouldn’t arrive until 3:00. I took that one and found out when I got there that Abbey and Mom had also just gotten there and had figured I would be late as well. We met at the Frari church and went inside it to see some Donatello sculpture, Titian paintings, and this big old pyramid. There were a lot of people buried inside the church too under the floors. Kinda weird. After that we went to Rialto and took pictures from the bridge, then headed to San Marco’s square. The cathedral looked nice in the daylight, but we didn’t go inside. We walked around for awhile and kept stopping in places because it was cold and we needed to thaw out. We stopped in this church that was being used as a music museum and saw a bunch of different violins, violas, and stringed instruments I don’t know the names of. We decided to make our way back to the train station and have dinner on the way. We stopped at a place along the water and watched the wind blow stuff over outside. Dinner was pretty long and it was good because we didn’t really want to go back outside. But eventually we did, made it back to the station, and were no stuck there till 6am. Thank goodness!
On Tuesday, I went to class and then met mom and Abbey for lunch. Abbey had cappellacci and mom and I had piadinas. We spent our “day in Ferrara” inside the hotel, taking a brief excursion to K2 for gelato then coming back to nap. It was just so miserable and cold outside I wouldn’t have wanted to spend the day any other way. Around 6 we went out and got flowers for my host mom then met them at their shop and they took us to the house. Clara had made maccheroni with vodka sauce, lasagna al forno, the chicken-prosciutto-cheese wrap things, and baked tomatoes. AND for dessert, an apple cake! Mmmmm :) It was a good dinner together—Clara told a story about closing the cat in a dresser drawer earlier in the day and I didn’t need to translate much because of all of her gesturing. She kept making this face like Tata did, completely petrified, and holding her arms stiff out in front of her. Paolo spilled water everywhere and blamed it on Teresa. Ale was being his usual brotherly self and talked about how the frizzante water helps with digestion and makes you fart. Clara was so appalled, but everyone else thought it was pretty funny. After dinner, I brought down my computer and put on skype so that Mom and Abbey could say “hi” and so Dad and Kelly could see Clara, Paolo, and Teresa. After that I went back to the hotel with Mom and Abbey and spent the night. They had to leave really early in the morning to catch the train to Bologna to make their 7am flight. We had a teary good-bye, but not as bad as it would have been if I had been more awake. I heard from Dad the next day that they had gotten into Paris at 5pm because their flight had been delayed 8 hours. We had checked the night before, but there was nothing on the website about a delay for their flight. Ugh travelling can suck sometimes.
On Wednesday we had enchilada night at the apartments. Sam makes a really good enchilada, and we made spicy salsa and beans and rice to go with it. It was just good as Clara’s cooking, and that’s saying a lot. I can’t see her trying to make Mexican food though. We drank a little at the apartments, and then some of us tried to go out dancing, but the discoteca Bolognese was dead. So we went to the 1euro shot bar instead. It was really good to practice my Italian with real Italians for a change, and one guy (who was actually French) asked me at first if I was Italian! Yay, I’m getting better! There were a lot of French guys that night…most of them really creepy and wouldn’t leave poor Teresa alone. We went back to the apartments after the bar closed and tried to help figure out sleeping arrangements for those who weren’t fit to drive or bike home. I thought Teresa had left her bike at home and took the bus and so we would be walking back, but her bike was at the apartments. Unfortunately, she had been extra cautious and used Andrea’s lock in addition to her own and didn’t have the key for that lock. So we had to walk after all. At the beginning I was feeling ambitious and thought Teresa and I could take turns running while the other biked slowly. She tried, but her headache was too bad to I tried. I thought it was ok at first, but the enchiladas and 1 euro shots didn’t agree. So we walked. And got home at 3:30am. Sigh. The next morning I woke up at 10:40 and therefore missed my 11am class. (Which of course, is my favorite one) I thought about pulling a Raff and going in late, but I hadn’t done the homework and was seriously in need of a shower after having smoke blown all over me the night before, so I just went in for the 4om class and had lunch a casa.
I decided not to go to Switzerland this weekend so I could catch up on stuff (like this!) and study for my history midterm on Monday. They had to leave at 6:30 am to avoid the all-day Italia-wide transportation strike, so I’m pretty glad I didn’t have to do that. I made plans instead to go to the art gallery and pick our project subjects with Micheal, but when we got there it was closed because of the strike (a lot of people commute here from Bologna or Venice). So we just had lunch and then I shopped a bit. I just got the 1st Lord of the Rings book in Italian and also a purse I saw when mom was here that I liked a lot. Tomorrow I’m finally meeting with Yasemine to do some language practice, and maybe Sunday I’ll go travel somewhere. Possibly Padova, Ravenna, or San Marino. Who knows!?
Friday, March 12, 2010
Sicily
Quite possibly the best 5 days of my life. If there had been midnight rugby involved, it would be a sure thing, but we had an amazing time otherwise. No class, all the food, transportation, and entrance fees were pre-paid, we had sun and warm weather, went to a beach, I woke up to see the sunrise, we ate arancini, cannoli, and seafood, and got to play on ancient ruins. Aka heaven.
On Feb 24th, we arrived in Palermo and were greeted by beautiful mountains and ocean all around. We spent the day in Monreale (a hilltop town close by) where we explored a gorgeous church with mosaics EVERYWHERE. The history of Sicily is really neat—it was inhabited by just about everyone at one point or another, so the idea of having mosaic images of the Bible was to spread Christianity to people who didn’t speak the same language. It is amazing what those people could do with a bunch of shiny tile squares. We got to the bus before it started pouring and spent the next couple hours in the bus going around the city. There were a lot of cook monuments, buildings, and gardens but we didn’t stop to see any of them. Guess I’ll just have to come back someday…rats.
The next day, we went to another amazing hilltop town called Erice. This was a medieval town at the tip top of a mountain, so the bus ride was a terrifying adventure in physics and probabitily (if the bus tips to this side, what is the probability that we bounce down thousands of feet of mountain and make it!?) Our bus driver earned the title “Grande Salvatore” after this and it stuck for the whole weekend. No guided tour of Erice--we just got to walk around on our own and explore the narrow streets, pretty castles, and breath-taking views of the land and the ocean below us. It was what the gods must feel like on Olympus :) We had lunch at a hotel and got what had become the standard-meal: Pasta alla norma (quite good), French fries, and either a hamburger patty or breaded chicken. As a vegetarian, Andrea got a plate of slices of cheese and French fries. The “grown ups” got seafood and a lot of people weren’t very happy about that because we were sick of “American” food and wanted to have seafood too. Even I wasn’t opposed to seafood—we were in SICILY for goodness sake! Ricardo explained to us afterwards that we all sign up for the same meal, but part of Sicilian hospitality is giving the “professors” the good food, and giving the students normal stuff. To refuse would be impolite, but the directors started getting the hint that we needed to get seafood at some point.
After lunch and a quick game of catch with Kelsey and an orange, we went to Selinunte. The Greeks had established a city there and despite an earthquake and years and years of being uninhabited, the temples were still somewhat preserved. I paid attention to the first half of the tour, but then decided to play on the ruins of the other 2 temples close by. We got good pictures on top of ancient columns and climbed all over the place. The views were amazing from here too—the ocean was nearby and we had a great view of other former temples and current houses. I lost my sunglasses down a hole, but didn’t want to stick my hand down in the hole to get them because there were lizards all over the place and probably snakes too. Ick!
On our way to our next hotel, we passed the better-preserved Greek temples of Agrigento lit up in the dark. The next day we actually got to visit the temples and see these walls which people had been buried in. The almond trees (which look a lot like cherry trees) were gorgeous all around the temples and there were fields of them all over the place, too. Because I actually paid attention to this tour, I learned some interesting stuff like how the Greeks of Agrigento used the local limestone but painted it white to look like marble, how the Byzantines converted one of the temples into a church when they came, and how ancient Greek sculptors made their statue of Hercules with small feet and a big head so it would look proportional from the ground.
We ate lunch in an agro-turismo and had similar food but not the same thing exactly, placating us for the time being. I had lunch with the “grown ups” and talked in French to Yasemine (one of the director’s wives) and her sister for awhie. Because I still haven’t gotten my conversation partner, Yasemine and I are going to work together so I can practice my French too (which I’ve forgotten SO MUCH of). Our waiter was really cute there, and he spoke French, too. He studied in Belgium and Yasemine and her sister were making fun of him for that. Apparently the French don’t like the Belgians. Or the Italians. Or anyone for that matter, lol.
We went to a Roman Villa next, which had been excavated relatively recently and was still being fixed-up, so we didn’t get to see all of it. But the main spectacle was the mosaic floors with pictures of Baccus, animals, the 12 labors of Hercules, people exercising, dancing girls, and Grumio. Just kidding about Grumio. I wish lol Mrs. Robertson should have been there—she would have enjoyed our tour guide, especially his explanations of the vomitarium and the sex rooms. Seriously. Those are real parts of a Roman Villa. If only those plebians knew where their tax money was going!
Our hotel in by Acireale was really nice and we had a great view approaching Etna from the West on our way there. I woke up early the next morning to watch the sunrise from the roof of the hotel and it was sooo beautiful. The way the clouds looked made it seem like the sun was rising over a far-away town or piece of land when there was actually nothing but water. I took a ton of pictures and also worked on adjusting my camera settings to get a better picture. They turned out really well! I went back to bed then got myself up for a delicious 3-course breakfast: croissants, pound cakes, yogurt, bread with meat and cheese, cereal, granola, kiwis, and fresh squeezed blood-orange juice. We started our day in Taormina and took a small tour of a roman theater, a building with influence from the Arabs, Spaniards, and Byzantines, and then went to a Greek Ampitheater which had also been used for the Romans (for Gladiator fights!) and they hold concerts there sometimes now. The view from the ampitheater was one of my favorite parts of our whole trip. Etna was to our right, the bright blue sea was to our left, and the hillside towns were in between. There were a lot of ceramics in the shops on our way back to the bus so it was probably a good thing I had left my money there. We spent the afternoon (drum roll, please) ON THE BEACH at Naxos!!! The water was freezing, but it was comfortable lying out in the sun for the afternoon. Olivia and I tried to shop around, but everything was closed. We did get drinks (strawberry vodka and limonata) at a bar nearby with some other Ciee people, found a pastry shop and got cassettine (a local specialty with the ricotta mix they use in cannolli and cake), then had gelato. We took a bus ride (SPAAAAAAL, oooh oooh oooh! (Ricardo’s version of Bohemian Rhapsody)), to another town with a gorgeous piazza (especially that night with the full moon) which appeared to be inhabited by teenagers alone. I have never seen that many pre-pubescents in one place. Jenna, Olivia, and I stopped for an arancino (a rice ball with either ragù, spinach, veggies, or ham and cheese, breaded and possibly fried).
That night after dinner, a few of us walked down to the docks and scoped out a good spot to take pics the next morning. It was a really fun walk down (thank you Queen) and the dock was pretty cool too. Lots of people hang out by the water and there was a lot of interesting graffiti and huge rectangular chunks of concrete (probably left by the Greeks, arabs, byzantines, or aliens). The next morning, Keester, Adam and I got early and headed to the dock again to take sunrise pics. It was even better than the day before. The sunlight reflected off the water and I got a ton of pictures with the seagulls and ships going out for the morning. They’re pretty good if I do say so myself, but it would be difficult to mess up something that gorgeous.
After another massive breakfast, we headed to Mt. Etna. I fell asleep after the tour guide got on the bus and when I woke up, we were on top of a volcano! It looked more like a ski resort with Italians dressed in 1970s style snowsuits riding sleds that looked like shovels. There were some craters that we learned about, and a couple people wanted first-hand experience so they took a garbage bag blowing around in one of them and rode it down the side a few times. We had a little bit of free time, so I did some shopping (and got a cool bracelet with volcanic stone) and some eating (more arancini) then went back to the bus. Finally, at last, thank GOODNESS, we got our seafood. It was the perfect close to such a great trip—a four-hour, five-course seafood meal. We started out with a plate of raw stuff which I don’t know what half of it was, and then had 2 courses where they kept putting plates of 3 small portions by us and we shared. The plates just kept coming and coming…shrimp, muscles, anchovies, sardines, crab, oyster, and tons of other stuff. I tried it all, and liked a lot of it. It was all really well prepared and they served it with veggies or mashed potatoes or lemons. Next was a plate of pasta, and I kept biting on shells so that wasn’t my favorite. We had some salad, and finally desert! (Cake with the ricotta mix and chocolate chips) Between courses we took breaks on the patio outside and soaked up the sun for the last time until it decides to come to Ferrara (probably sometime in April, we’ll see). We went back to the airport and arrived in Ferrara around 12:30. Let’s just say that class wasn’t very fun the next day.
On Feb 24th, we arrived in Palermo and were greeted by beautiful mountains and ocean all around. We spent the day in Monreale (a hilltop town close by) where we explored a gorgeous church with mosaics EVERYWHERE. The history of Sicily is really neat—it was inhabited by just about everyone at one point or another, so the idea of having mosaic images of the Bible was to spread Christianity to people who didn’t speak the same language. It is amazing what those people could do with a bunch of shiny tile squares. We got to the bus before it started pouring and spent the next couple hours in the bus going around the city. There were a lot of cook monuments, buildings, and gardens but we didn’t stop to see any of them. Guess I’ll just have to come back someday…rats.
The next day, we went to another amazing hilltop town called Erice. This was a medieval town at the tip top of a mountain, so the bus ride was a terrifying adventure in physics and probabitily (if the bus tips to this side, what is the probability that we bounce down thousands of feet of mountain and make it!?) Our bus driver earned the title “Grande Salvatore” after this and it stuck for the whole weekend. No guided tour of Erice--we just got to walk around on our own and explore the narrow streets, pretty castles, and breath-taking views of the land and the ocean below us. It was what the gods must feel like on Olympus :) We had lunch at a hotel and got what had become the standard-meal: Pasta alla norma (quite good), French fries, and either a hamburger patty or breaded chicken. As a vegetarian, Andrea got a plate of slices of cheese and French fries. The “grown ups” got seafood and a lot of people weren’t very happy about that because we were sick of “American” food and wanted to have seafood too. Even I wasn’t opposed to seafood—we were in SICILY for goodness sake! Ricardo explained to us afterwards that we all sign up for the same meal, but part of Sicilian hospitality is giving the “professors” the good food, and giving the students normal stuff. To refuse would be impolite, but the directors started getting the hint that we needed to get seafood at some point.
After lunch and a quick game of catch with Kelsey and an orange, we went to Selinunte. The Greeks had established a city there and despite an earthquake and years and years of being uninhabited, the temples were still somewhat preserved. I paid attention to the first half of the tour, but then decided to play on the ruins of the other 2 temples close by. We got good pictures on top of ancient columns and climbed all over the place. The views were amazing from here too—the ocean was nearby and we had a great view of other former temples and current houses. I lost my sunglasses down a hole, but didn’t want to stick my hand down in the hole to get them because there were lizards all over the place and probably snakes too. Ick!
On our way to our next hotel, we passed the better-preserved Greek temples of Agrigento lit up in the dark. The next day we actually got to visit the temples and see these walls which people had been buried in. The almond trees (which look a lot like cherry trees) were gorgeous all around the temples and there were fields of them all over the place, too. Because I actually paid attention to this tour, I learned some interesting stuff like how the Greeks of Agrigento used the local limestone but painted it white to look like marble, how the Byzantines converted one of the temples into a church when they came, and how ancient Greek sculptors made their statue of Hercules with small feet and a big head so it would look proportional from the ground.
We ate lunch in an agro-turismo and had similar food but not the same thing exactly, placating us for the time being. I had lunch with the “grown ups” and talked in French to Yasemine (one of the director’s wives) and her sister for awhie. Because I still haven’t gotten my conversation partner, Yasemine and I are going to work together so I can practice my French too (which I’ve forgotten SO MUCH of). Our waiter was really cute there, and he spoke French, too. He studied in Belgium and Yasemine and her sister were making fun of him for that. Apparently the French don’t like the Belgians. Or the Italians. Or anyone for that matter, lol.
We went to a Roman Villa next, which had been excavated relatively recently and was still being fixed-up, so we didn’t get to see all of it. But the main spectacle was the mosaic floors with pictures of Baccus, animals, the 12 labors of Hercules, people exercising, dancing girls, and Grumio. Just kidding about Grumio. I wish lol Mrs. Robertson should have been there—she would have enjoyed our tour guide, especially his explanations of the vomitarium and the sex rooms. Seriously. Those are real parts of a Roman Villa. If only those plebians knew where their tax money was going!
Our hotel in by Acireale was really nice and we had a great view approaching Etna from the West on our way there. I woke up early the next morning to watch the sunrise from the roof of the hotel and it was sooo beautiful. The way the clouds looked made it seem like the sun was rising over a far-away town or piece of land when there was actually nothing but water. I took a ton of pictures and also worked on adjusting my camera settings to get a better picture. They turned out really well! I went back to bed then got myself up for a delicious 3-course breakfast: croissants, pound cakes, yogurt, bread with meat and cheese, cereal, granola, kiwis, and fresh squeezed blood-orange juice. We started our day in Taormina and took a small tour of a roman theater, a building with influence from the Arabs, Spaniards, and Byzantines, and then went to a Greek Ampitheater which had also been used for the Romans (for Gladiator fights!) and they hold concerts there sometimes now. The view from the ampitheater was one of my favorite parts of our whole trip. Etna was to our right, the bright blue sea was to our left, and the hillside towns were in between. There were a lot of ceramics in the shops on our way back to the bus so it was probably a good thing I had left my money there. We spent the afternoon (drum roll, please) ON THE BEACH at Naxos!!! The water was freezing, but it was comfortable lying out in the sun for the afternoon. Olivia and I tried to shop around, but everything was closed. We did get drinks (strawberry vodka and limonata) at a bar nearby with some other Ciee people, found a pastry shop and got cassettine (a local specialty with the ricotta mix they use in cannolli and cake), then had gelato. We took a bus ride (SPAAAAAAL, oooh oooh oooh! (Ricardo’s version of Bohemian Rhapsody)), to another town with a gorgeous piazza (especially that night with the full moon) which appeared to be inhabited by teenagers alone. I have never seen that many pre-pubescents in one place. Jenna, Olivia, and I stopped for an arancino (a rice ball with either ragù, spinach, veggies, or ham and cheese, breaded and possibly fried).
That night after dinner, a few of us walked down to the docks and scoped out a good spot to take pics the next morning. It was a really fun walk down (thank you Queen) and the dock was pretty cool too. Lots of people hang out by the water and there was a lot of interesting graffiti and huge rectangular chunks of concrete (probably left by the Greeks, arabs, byzantines, or aliens). The next morning, Keester, Adam and I got early and headed to the dock again to take sunrise pics. It was even better than the day before. The sunlight reflected off the water and I got a ton of pictures with the seagulls and ships going out for the morning. They’re pretty good if I do say so myself, but it would be difficult to mess up something that gorgeous.
After another massive breakfast, we headed to Mt. Etna. I fell asleep after the tour guide got on the bus and when I woke up, we were on top of a volcano! It looked more like a ski resort with Italians dressed in 1970s style snowsuits riding sleds that looked like shovels. There were some craters that we learned about, and a couple people wanted first-hand experience so they took a garbage bag blowing around in one of them and rode it down the side a few times. We had a little bit of free time, so I did some shopping (and got a cool bracelet with volcanic stone) and some eating (more arancini) then went back to the bus. Finally, at last, thank GOODNESS, we got our seafood. It was the perfect close to such a great trip—a four-hour, five-course seafood meal. We started out with a plate of raw stuff which I don’t know what half of it was, and then had 2 courses where they kept putting plates of 3 small portions by us and we shared. The plates just kept coming and coming…shrimp, muscles, anchovies, sardines, crab, oyster, and tons of other stuff. I tried it all, and liked a lot of it. It was all really well prepared and they served it with veggies or mashed potatoes or lemons. Next was a plate of pasta, and I kept biting on shells so that wasn’t my favorite. We had some salad, and finally desert! (Cake with the ricotta mix and chocolate chips) Between courses we took breaks on the patio outside and soaked up the sun for the last time until it decides to come to Ferrara (probably sometime in April, we’ll see). We went back to the airport and arrived in Ferrara around 12:30. Let’s just say that class wasn’t very fun the next day.
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