Ciao! Sorry I haven't updated in like two weeks! I've been pretty busy and it's just hitting me that I am almost at the halfway point in my time here. I am unbelievably sad about that fact. I am falling more and more in love with Italy every day, it's going to be so hard to leave! But enough of that, here's the adventures I've been getting myself into lately:
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Tivoli
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Last weekend I went to Rome! It was with SAI, and was included in our program cost which was cool. We left at 6:30 am on Friday, I was super tired but managed to sleep a bit on the bus. We stopped in Tivoli on the way. Before we got off the bus the lady from our program said "be back on the bus in two hours" - we took this to mean we had 2 hours of free time to wander around Tivoli. We unfortunately missed the memo that everyone was going to see this cool villa and gardens. Boo. Anyways, me, my roommates, and a few other friends ended up getting coffee at a little caffe, and there's a funny story to go along with that: I ordered a "macchiato". In Italian, "macchiato" literally means "spotted". The past few times I just said "macchiato" at a coffee bar, I got a small cup of coffee, "spotted" with milk which is what I wanted. The lady at this caffe in Tivoli however, goes "latte macchiato?" and I was like "sure", thinking that was what I had gotten before. However, there is a big difference between a cafe macchiato and a latte macchiato. She gave me basically a cup of hot milk with a few drips of coffee in it. Ew. I didn't even drink half of it, but I didn't want to be rude and not take it. Now I have learned the hard way: order a cafe macchiato, not a latte macchiato. Who the heck would order a latte macchiato? Haha anyways, we then had HUGE lunch, 3 courses of barley & bruscetta, pasta, and meat and potatoes. I felt so bad but I couldn't even eat half of it. It was pretty good though, and free. After lunch we headed into Rome!
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| Coliseum, ca. 70-80 A.D. |
We checked into our nice, 4 star hotel in Rome mid-afternoon, and had a few hours of free time before dinner. I went with some friends into a beautiful church nearby and bought a few souvenirs. We then went to dinner at a cool pizza place. Dinner was really large as well, and it took like 3 hours but was good. I was exhausted after dinner so me and a few others managed to find our way back to our hotel; it took an hour and a half to walk back, but we got to see all the ruins and cool buildings around Rome at night which was awesome.
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| Arch of Constantine, seen from the Coliseum. ca. 312 A.D. |
Saturday morning at 9:00 we had a tour of all the major Roman monuments. The weather was really nasty and rainy, my headset for the tour guide stopped working, we lost our group a few times because it moved wayy to fast.. but despite all this it was still really really cool to see these amazing things you hear so much about! We saw, among other things I didn't recognize because I couldn't hear, we saw: The Coliseum, The Trevi Fountain, the Four Rivers Fountain, and the Pantheon. They were all really cool. There were a lot of people around, but it wasn't too crowded. I would never ever go to Rome in the summer, I bet it would be insanely crowded. After the tour we had free time for lunch and the rest of the afternoon, so me and some friends decided to go to the Vatican!
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| Trevi Fountain, 1732-1762 A.D. |
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| Pantheon, 126 A.D. |
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| Inside the Pantheon |
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| Friends friends friends |
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| Laocoon and His Sons, 25 BC |
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Inside the Vatican Museum
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St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, 1626 A.D.
We got to the Vatican mid afternoon, and we randomly found a deal for an english speaking tour guide & immediate entrance (there was a huge line) for just 20 euros. The timing was perfect, because we got in before they closed, but after not long they stopped letting people in so the Vatican museum was almost empty. The museum has tons of art and is kind of overwhelming and I was trying to appreciate it all, but I really just wanted to see the Sisitine Chapel. We saw a lot of cool things, and finally got to see Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel near the end of our tour! It was amazingly beautiful, I could stay in there for a very very long time. We also saw inside St. Peter's Basilica, and Michelangelo's Pieta! Michelangelo is amazing. I stared at the Pieta for such a long time, it's indescribable. |
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| Pieta by Michelangelo, 1498-1499 A.D. |
After the Vatican we had a 3-course dinner that was included with our trip at a nice restaurant which was pretty good. (Except dessert was supposed to be panna cotta, but we ended up deciding that it tasted like tofu with Hershey's chocolate syrup) That night me and my roommates and some friends went to see the Trevi Fountain again and then the Spanish Steps!
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| Spanish Steps, 1723-1725 A.D. |
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| Audrey Hepburn & Gregory Peck on the Spanish Steps in Roman Holiday, 1953. Love this movie and that I was here! |
Sunday morning came too soon. We had a bus tour at 9:00. Again, my headset thing wouldn't work so I didn't know all that we were supposed to be seeing, but it was cool to get to see everything from the top of the double decker bus, and to actually sit, we did a lottt of walking in Rome! After that we had free time for lunch, in which we tried to see a church that is apparently made entirely of human bones, but it closed right before we got there! Slept on the bus ride home which was nice. Overall I liked Rome, but it's much more city-like than Florence, I am so glad that I am living in Florence!
Now on to this past weekend. On Friday, I went on the "Tuscany and its Wines" trip with my program. We left Friday morning and took a bus to San Gimignano, a lovely small town in Tuscany, about an hour away from Florence.
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| I love Tuscany. |
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Front gate to San Gimignano
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San Gimignano is known for its towers, it has fourteen!
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| Haley, Sam, Eliza, me |
We just walked around and explored the town, it has a lot of cute shops and small stone streets lined with pretty buildings, it's really awesome. We also got probably the best gelato I've had, in fact over the door it said "Gelato World Champion 2006-7". Legit! I got passionfruit and chocolate. We were there for about two hours and then we headed to a nearby winery called San Donato. We had a little tour of it (the owner of San Donato looked and sounded exactly like Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof which was hilarious) and then had a yummy lunch of garlic bread with olive oil, salami, prosciutto, cheese, olives, barley salad, and lots of other fresh stuff. We tried one red wine, one white wine, and one dessert wine with biscotti. I didn't like the wine as much as what I tried in Chianti, but it was still good. After that we stopped by another little town on the way home for just a few minutes, and then were back in Florence around 6:00. It was a really nice day, I love small Italian towns!
Saturday I went with 3 friends to go horseback riding! We took the train to a small mountain town near Lucca called Bagni di Lucca. It is such a beautiful mountain town. We got picked up from the train station by this nice Dutch guy and taken to where we rode. We rode for an hour through the mountains, it was nice, but the horses were not that well behaved. They kept stopping to eat and whatnot, but it was still fun. I used to take horseback riding lessons, it made me kind of miss it!
After riding the Dutch couple that takes care of the English-speaking tourists for the horseback-riding place invited us over to their house for tea and coffee! They were such nice, hospitable people. They don't have any kids and it's such a small town that they don't meet new people all the time I guess. But it was nice to get to talk to them for a bit, after that we headed back to Florence. I really want to go back to Bagni di Lucca! It was so nice there we almost stayed the night!
Sunday was probably the worst day I've had here, just because I had to draw/study/write a paper all day because it's midterms week! But I got all my stuff done and so far midterms have gone well! Here is my midterm drawing for Florence Sketchbook:
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| Statue in Loggia dei Lanzi. Graphite. |
I only have one more class and then it's SPRING BREAKK! I'm going to freaking Morocco!! I'm going with SnoworSand, the travel agency I'm interning for. I'm getting an awesome price and all I have to do is take pictures for them on the trip. I am soo freaking excited! Here is all that I will be doing:
http://www.snoworsand.com/templates/tripPDFs/Morocco_Spring_Break.pdf
Soo yeah it's going to be amazing. As of right now I know that my roommate Haley, and then just 6 other girls are going on the trip, I think it'll be fun though! Haley are taking a bus on Saturday/Friday night from Florence to Pisa at 3:30am to make our 6:30am flight to Marrakech. Eep. Might have to stay up all night, we'll see. Well thanks for reading this Russian novel of a post, and next time I update will probably be after Morocco! Thanks for prayers for safety and all that! Ciao!
~ Elisa
