Walking down the street in Siena is like taking a step into the 13th century. The cobblestone streets, old stone buildings, Gothic churches, and museum full of 14th century altarpieces shoot you right back in time to the extent that you step outside expecting horse-drawn carriages to come clopping down the street. The Duomo, Siena’s main cathedral, is overwhelmingly beautiful, boasting massive columns of blue and white striped marble inside and an elaborately decorated Gothic façade covered in figurines and decorative motifs. I’m pretty sure I actually gasped aloud when I got a proper look at the front. Did I mention there are also colorful pictures across parts of this same façade?? I don’t recall whether they were painted or done in mosaic but the whole building, outside and in, was stunning.
As a small medieval city, Siena is beautiful, serene, quaint. Needless to say, coming from Rome, it was an even greater contrast. We had quite a lovely time exploring, shopping, and meandering. It’s one of those places (one of MANY on this trip) where, no matter how many lovely things you plan to see, the coolest things and most enjoyable trips are the wanderings between determined points on the map.
Setting off from Siena, I trekked by myself up to Urbino, home of some pretty epic painters and Renaissance government figures. The Duke of Urbino was a pretty big deal in his day and his Palazzo Ducale is now an incredible museum that I absolutely loved. Urbino is also very proud to be the birthplace of Raphael, Piero della Francesca, Bramante, and various other prominent artists of Early Modern Italy. I got my nerd on reading Castiglione’s “Book of the Courtier” in Urbino where the book takes place. In my defense, it was assigned as homework over break.
Urbino is absolutely gorgeous and it’s sloping hills reveal interesting and surprising outlooks over brick buildings, castles, churches, and the palazzo. While I was there it was swathed in fog pretty much the entire time but that gave it a nice Narnia-esque feel instead of being depressing. Additionally, Halloween is apparently a big deal in Urbino as the street filled up with young kids in costume storming local stores and demanding candy.
From Urbino I reevaluated my itinerary, skipping a one-day sojourn to Torino in favor of two days in Verona (excellent choice, by the way!!!!). My first day was perfect for exploring and meandering (my favorite two pastimes). After checking into my adorable cozy little bed and breakfast right at the main gate to the historic city center, I set off with Shakespeare lines running recklessly through my little English major brain. “Two houses, both alike in dignity/In fair Verona where we lay our scene…” Fair doesn’t even begin to cut it; this place is magical. Perhaps I’m biased as this was my one day of sunshine on the trip but I fell head over heels in love with Verona. There are the same awesome cobblestone streets but the buildings are even more beautiful and on a bigger scale than Siena. Historically, Verona had lovely elaborate frescoes on the facades of many buildings and a good number of them remain even today. The more expensive ones from palazzi or other royal abodes have been largely taken down and put in various museums throughout the city to keep them intact.
My first day, I wandered to one of the markets and got some olives and foccaccio before checking out some of the main churches in Verona. In the two days, I actually made it to all four! They are simply amazing! The Duomo has massive columns of red Verona marble and San Zeno has a huge Mantegna altarpiece that was really cool. I accidentally stumbled upon another church with weird, artfully arranged skeletons of martyrs and saints in every chapel. I was really not expecting that and it was pretty strange. My second day there, two friends came along and explored the city with me so that was really fun. We had a great time!
Perhaps one thing that lent Verona such an air of fantasy and wonder is its association with Romeo and Juliet. Somehow, over the years, two houses have been assigned as the houses of the two lovers and “Juliet’s grave” is an actual site that you can visit (and you better believe I did) as well as home to Verona’s fresco museum. Both Juliet’s house and her tomb are absolutely covered with graffitti – the names or short messages of countless lovers over the years. Now, however, there’s a thousand euro fine for defacing the walls. At Juliet’s house I actually ran into some friends I met at my Siena bed and breakfast who are from Portugal!! They’re just the sweetest people and we met because the woman running the place didn’t speak any English (or Portugese) so I had to translate between the woman and the couple. The “balcony” at Juliet’s house actually used to be a sarcophagus so I guess we were standing where someone was once buried … weird.
Two of us set out next for one day in Bologna, home to the oldest University in Europe! It was sort of a psycho day as we tried to cram in everything that we wanted to see but somehow for only 18 euro each we got a private apartment right by the center! Score! The Pinacoteca (painting gallery) in Bologna had some absolutely amazing Baroque and Mannerist painting and we both loved it. The food there was also excellent, though that can pretty much be said about the food throughout the entire trip.
Last but not least … Venice!! I met up with a different friend for the weekend and we had a great time wandering along the canals and perusing mask shops. We visited a museum of 14 – 19 century painting that I loved and a museum of modern paintings that I could have done without (though obviously I thought the Dalì paintings were super awesome and interesting). The gondola rides were absurdly expensive so we just looked at other people paying silly amounts for a boat ride and took pictures. The Basilica of San Marco is gorgeous and inside there is a massive jewel-encrusted carved slab that was taken from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade around, I think, 1207 when it was sacked.
Overall, it was a crazy and awesome week of autumn leaves, interesting paintings, wonderful food, cute Italian boys, and famous cities of Northern Italy!
Greece: the heart of ancient mythology, the home of so many great ruins, and an endless collection of breathtaking islands just waiting to be explored by seven rampaging California girls. I thought (and still think) I was lucky to be living in Rome, but visiting Greece is something I’ve dreamed of since my second grade obsession with Greek mythology and, a few years subsequent, with Disney’s “Hercules.” In other words, I feel that I’ve been looking forward my whole life to visiting this place that I sort of decided to visit on the spur of the moment.
We started our first day absurdly early – our taxis left for the airport at 4:15 am. Many of the girls in the group went out the night before and just stayed up (Granny Ali was not one of them). Since our flight got us there around 9 or 10 local time, we had a chance to drop our stuff, rest up a bit, and were still left with a day to run around Athens. The group split up since the girls who went out wanted to sleep at the hotel, but a group of us went to go visit the Acropolis, meaning the Parthenon, the Erechthion, and the rest of these uber-famous ancient ruins. We even found a hill that overlooks all of Rome and stopped to just take it all in for a bit. After our ancient exploits, we jumped back to contemporary Greece and did some shopping in the Athens flea market. I have to admit, the sandals were quite tempting but I was somehow able to control myself and only get a bracelet (this means spending about 7 euro instead of around 50). For dinner we found an adorable family-run restaurant with INCREDIBLE tzatziki and fresh Greek salad. The meat-eaters of the group also enjoyed what’s called souvlaki, a Greek style of preparing chicken or pork on a kebab.
Our second day started off pretty rough – on our way to the bus stop at 5 am my friend was attacked and had her purse literally ripped from her shoulder. She handled it incredibly well, but afterwards we were all extremely wary and tended to harbor a general hatred towards Athens.Despite the drama, we made it onto the four-hour bus that took us to the ferry out to Zakynthos, also known as Zante, another island about an hour away. Our time on Zante was absolutely amazing. The water is crystal clear and warm, the beaches are just beautiful, and the clubs are open all night, each with a better offer on drinks than the last. The guys who ran our hotel were super nice, helping us call cabs, find tours, or just get settled easily. Who could believe for ten euro a night we could stay somewhere so nice?!?! While on Zante, we did a day trip where we got to see the sea turtles!!!! We visited their home in the water off an island just off Zante in a glass-bottom boat and later also got to visit a really nice beach nearby. We even got to swim in some of the caves on the island called the Kerry Caves. SWEET! I got some good use out of my waterproof camera, that’s for sure. I think the turtles were my favorite part of the Zante trip, though a night of sitting on the dock singing Disney songs around 3 in the morning is also in the running.
We had to get back to Athens to go to Santorini and had to change our whole gameplan as updated ferry schedules apparently do not exist in Greece after July. Instead of attempting to do two nights in Mykonos and two nights in Santorini, we had a layover day in Athens and spent three nights on Santorini. It was unbelievably lovely and I think we really made the right choice. Santorini is just insanely beautiful everywhere you go. We visited the volcano that helped to create Santorini itself, rode donkeys up 600 stairs, saw the sunset from the picturesque town of Ia which is said to have the nicest sunset in the world, did some souvenir shopping in Fyra, and had the best gyros of the trip in Perissa near our lovely little hotel. The owner of the hotel, Freddy, really took us under his wing, driving us all around when we wanted to go places and fixing breakfast for us every morning. He was quite a character.On Santorini we spent time at both the red beach and the black beach. I have never seen water so clear in my life. Each place we went in Greece had nicer and nicer ocean, I think.
And so, after an insane week of running around, driving each other a little crazy but overall having a wonderful time, we were able to get back to Rome in time to rest up a bit and start classes! It’s been about two weeks already, but that’s a story for another time. Ciao!
It's so wonderful to have the time to really explore Rome instead of trying to overload a short trip! Today, after finishing our midterms, my roommate and I went on what I'm calling a "Church Crawl," the art-lover's equivalent of a pub crawl, to scope out a few churches right around school. As we're always drained after class and tend to be lugging around textbooks, we headed home to drop off our books and rest, then headed out, refreshed and in church-friendly attire (many churches in Rome will deny you entrance or make you wear a scarf to cover your shoulders if you fail to meet their dress codes).
Our first destination? Santa Agnese, a stunning Baroque church by Borromini bordering Piazza Navona (a five minute walk from school). Covered in gold and massive marble Corinthian columns, the church also has very colorful scenes inside it's huge dome. We saw a group of nuns come in and pray (not, somehow, singing "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" ....).
Next up? San Luigi dei Francesci, where one of the chapels has three large Caravaggio paintings in all their glorious vibrant color. The most famous of the three, "The Calling of Saint Matthew," was my personal favorite and the motive for the visit, but the other two were also interesting and definitely worth note.
Last on our trip was a church we stumbled upon by accident on our way to San Luigi, San Agostino. To our delight, there was a Raphael painting on one of the walls, a chapel designed by Bernini, and another Caravaggio in one of the chapels. I had just remarked to my roommate, Lily, that it looked like his style when I checked the information in front of it and, sure enough, there was a reason for such strong resemblance. :P
Quite an afternoon! And, of course, we made it back in time for dinner which should be any minute now (we usually eat at 8:30). Our signora is such an amazing cook! Can't wait! Ciao!
After a day of exploring the Tivoli gardens, I am pretty exhausted. Getting out there was quite the adventure but we made it! We are slowly but surely acquainting ourselves with Rome’s public transportation system. The gardens are lovely! There are massive gravity-powered fountains throughout the extensive gardens. One of them actually functions as a “water organ,” complete with silver pipes, and plays music every two hours. It was a great day to be out in the gardens and it was nice to be in such a serene environment (quite the opposite of the revving cars and loud voices outside my bedroom window as I’m writing this).
My Italian class is so much fun!! I have this compulsive obsession with learning as much Italian as I can because, with every lesson, it becomes easier and easier to speak with my signora at home, or just people in general, out and about. Having just finished my first week of classes, I can comfortably talk to people in Italian and it’s such a trip!! Having such a strong background in Spanish definitely helps a whole lot but so much of learning a language is just listening – idioms, voice patterns, pronunciation. One may learn formal elements of language out of a book but to ACTUALLY learn any language, you just have to listen to people speak.
Though I’ve already been nerding out with regard to monuments we’ve been seeing, I’m insanely jazzed for some of the top museums in the world: The National Museum, Villa Borghese, and the Vatican Museums. Wooo!!
We’re introducing some friends to the Asian restaurant across the street tonight. Normally, of course, it’s important to try authentic local cuisine a lot but, as Lily and I get wonderful, home-cooked Italian food every night during the week I don’t feel too bad defaulting back to Thai or Chinese food on the weekend.
Ara Pacis and Bernini's "Ecstasy of Saint Theresa" tomorrow!!
