Day 15

Day 15 was our first full day in Ravenna.

Class was in a nice air conditioned conference room in our hotel, which was nice after Florence. We started off with a seminar on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (Λυσιστράτη). Aristophanes is the playwright that I said was the dirty one, the one that wrote about the clouds. Well, this play is much worse, thanks to this play, I know that βαδίζειν means ‘prick’ in ancient Greek. To quote, “Absolutely, by the Two Goddesses. If we sat around at home all made up, and walked past them wearing our diaphanous underwear, with our pubes plucked in a neat triangle, and our husbands got hard and hankered to ball us, but we didn’t go near them and kept away, they’d sue for peace, and pretty quick, you can count on that!”  I had never before realized that such humour was popular as long as 2500 years ago, but evidently it was. We then learned about the Roman Republic and its fall, with Sulla taking the dictatorship, then Crassus and Pompey ruling the republic alone, then with Caesar, then Caesar alone, then Cassius and Brutus warring with Octavian and Marc Antony, then Octavian attacking Marc Antony and Cleopatra, leaving Octavian (Augustus) in complete charge. It was really a tumultuous, busy time, but we didn’t go into too much detail due to time restraints. After this we had a seminar on Plato’s Phaedo (Φαιων) which was very dry and kind of boring, then we had another on Aristotle’s Poetics which was both dry and very difficult to understand.

Because we were on our own for dinner the hotel gave us free lunch which was pasta with pesto, then 2 blocks of deep fried mozzarella (like slabs of mozza sticks) for the main course.

After lunch I went over to the single computer in the town and checked email for a few minutes. I grabbed some juice and water at the grocery store and headed back to the hotel. I decided to use my free time to catch up on blogs and wrote days 10-14 that afternoon. I made myself a sandwich for dinner and then watched Citizen Kane which is argued to be the best movie ever made. I am no expert but I can say that it was an excellent movie in my opinion. After that it had cooled down outside and the sun had just set so I walked down the beach reading (for those that care, I am improving my reading while walking skill) until it got too dark to read any more. In the evening I wasn’t interested in the party going on on the beach and later on the roof/balconies so I watched Don Juan DiMarco which came with The Astronaut’s Wife in a Johnny Depp pack. It was a very funny movie, Johnny Depp plays a guy who thinks he is the “Legendary Don Juan, the greatest lover the world has ever known” except he walks through New York with his mask, cape and sword, Zorro style. He meets an aging psychiatrist (Marlon Brando) and they bond. Very funny movie, Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando, how can you go wrong?

I should also mention that I drank 2L of juice, 1L of the orange, carrot and lemon one and 1L of pear juice, 30% and 50% fruit respectively. Also 1.5L of water.

Day 14

Day 14 was another travelling day.

We finished packing last minute things and headed out for Ravenna.

The drive took about 3 hours and I read and dozed for most of it (the heat here saps a lot of your energy). Near the end I was feeling a bit down so I put on Abbey Road and it cheered me right up.

Our hotel in Ravenna is decidedly the nicest so far. The rooms are quite small, with a king and a single bed, but they are comfortably so and are meant mostly to sleep and change in, most of the time is to be spent at the beach. Our hotel comes with a private section of beach and each room gets two beach chairs and an umbrella. The sun here dwarfs the other cities’. It is unbelievably hot here, like, 5 minutes walking down the street and I sweat through my shirt. The beach is very nice, but somewhat crowded in the day. We learned fast that Ravenna, and the entire seaside really, is where the Italians come to get a vacation from the tourists so there is very little English here, at least compared to Florence and especially Rome. We also learned that there are only a few restaurants. I went out for lunch with a group for pasta and afterwards hit the grocery store for snacks, drinks and the makings for sandwiches for later. One of the drinks I grabbed I thought was orange juice but was actually an orange/carrot/lemon mix which sounded disgusting but tasted really good and I drank the whole litre in one night (200% of my daily recommended dose of vitamin C), so all of you that bugged me to be healthier, that was for you. I also learned that the only place in the entire town to get internet is a crappy pc in a café that sounds like a typewriter and costs 6 euros an hour! Communication will therefore be sporadic and short I am afraid. I spent most of the rest of my afternoon on the beach. At 7 we were invited to the weekly welcome party where there was music, food and drinks and most people ate a little too much and were too full to eat much of dinner. Dinner was penne and veal with salad, fruit, vegetable and desert buffets. After dinner I did my reading for class on the beach which was much quieter in the night.

I came back to the room and finished my reading to the sound of the Macarena coming from the patio party. There was some commotion around curfew when the teachers found that some girls had snuck a few older Italian guys into their room (they are being dealt with presently. The girls, I mean, the guys are long gone). Besides that it was a nice, quiet night.

Day 13

On to day 13, our last full day in Florence.

In class we had a seminar by Lex on The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. We then had a very interesting lesson on the beginnings of Rome and the heyday of the Republic, as well as the great expansion of Rome in its first 500 years of being.

After class I grabbed pizza and headed back to the hotel. I used the internet for a bit then headed up to pack. After packing I wasn’t sure what to do so I decided to do a bit of shopping, or at least browse more, after all, Florence is famous for its shopping along with its art. I ended up at the leather jacket store from before and I tried on a few ones. The first 2 were the typical motorcyclish ones; black, tight fitting, shiny. Then I tried on a looser, matte, dark brown one and I loved it. Seeing as this was my last chance, I needed a jacket for fall anyway and these are known to last forever, I bought it for 150 euros ($216), which is the largest single purchase I have ever made, but I think it was justified.

For dinner we went to a nice rustic Tuscan restaurant with beautiful art everywhere. After dinner I decided I may as well go out on the town with everyone seeing as it was my last night in Florence. We explored around the city and found it is quite different at night. We met quite a few groups on trips like ours (a lot of them were college age), most of them out for a drink. We passed through the Piazza della Signoria where a youth orchestra was playing amongst the statues, and then in the Piazza San Lorenzo there was a jazz band playing in a little gazebo, which was cool. At one point we met a group from Hungary and I had a rough conversation with them in half English, half Hungarian. At the end of the night we ended up at a gelateria where we ate gelato with a Norwegian boy who looked about 13, but was probably about 15 or 16 who was sipping away coolly at his third champagne sized glass of Absolut Vodka. The fact that he was treating it like water alone was astonishing, but the fact that he could carry on a fully intelligent conversation in a language not native to his was unbelievable. We tried to catch his name, but it sounded like Kshglaus. So after about 3 tries we just called him Laus and bid him goodnight before heading back to the hotel. We had a grace period before we had to be in our room so we hung out in the hall, ate snacks and vandalized each other’s arms and legs with a sharpie. It was quite a bonding moment. After curfew I fell asleep fairly fast, despite the infernal air conditioner.    

Day 12

Day 12. First of all I am going to stop talking about waking up, showering and eating breakfast because that really doesn’t change from day to day so I’ll jump straight to class.

Our principal secured us a conference room in a nearby hotel so we walked there at 8:15 for class. We began class with my 30 minute seminar on Sophocles’ Antigone (technically Аντιγονη) which was a surprisingly engaging for a 2500 year old play. I got the class to do an activity then lead a philosophical debate about the nature of laws and such. We continued the class with a lesson on the Hellenistic revolution (Alexander the Great) and the subsequent end of Classical Greece. Jam then gave his seminar on Heroditus (Ηροδότον) and his account of the Persian Wars. After class I learned that I got 90% on my seminar. My teacher made everyone a proposition that if we took a second seminar he would average the marks, and then add 10% of the average to the mark. For example, if I got 90 on the first and 70 on the second, the average is 80, +10% is 88. I decided to take on a second one (The Aeneid by Virgil) because, by my calculations, as long as I got 74% or higher my 90% would increase.

For lunch I headed to the café with Ty and Lex (Two of the other guys) and had a pizza burger on a pita, which was messy but very good. After that we hurried back in order to make it in time to load the bus for Pisa.  The bus ride took about an hour and a half, some of which I dozed for. Once there we realized that there was nothing but a nice church, the leaning tower and tons and tons of cheap touristy things as well as quite a few African guys trying to sell us “authentic designer sunglasses” out of cardboard boxes. After our 45 minute visit we loaded up the bus again and headed back for another hour and a half. I know you can’t do Italy and not see the leaning tower of Pisa, but it really is not much more than a tourist trap.

Dinner was pretty much right after Pisa. The day before we had had an unexpected addition to our group: Georgia Hardy, the woman who started the company that runs our tour. She stayed with us until we left Florence, then she was staying with another group that was coming into Florence the day we left, and then going to France to meet up with yet another trip. She accompanied us to lunch and then stayed and chatted in the common room afterwards. After dinner I used the hotel internet (they finally relented) and finished my second travel journal (the description of David from the day before). After curfew I finished (500) Days of Summer which turned out to be an outstanding movie.

Day 11

I shall skip the banalities of the typical morning for Day 11. After breakfast we had our second optional excursion (After the Vatican). This was to the two main art galleries in Florence: the Academia and Uffizi. Academia used to be an art school and still is in part, but its main attraction is Michelangelo’s famous sculptures, most prominently David, but also St. Matthew and the Prisoners.

Michelangelo was a strange man. He was apparently unattractive, scrawny and amazingly moody. During his time, sculptures were made using a certain process. 1. The sculpture is commissioned. 2. The sculptor thinks and makes some concept drawings. 3. The sculptor molds a 6” model using wax. 4. A 4’ model would then be made using clay for more detail. 5. A full scale plaster model was made with the help of a team. 6. The sculptor leaves for another project while his team of students carves the sculpture out of marble. When it is carved, it is started on all sides, so if a mistake is made, they can just make it smaller using the same rock. Michelangelo threw almost all of this out the window. He would be commissioned to make a sculpture. He would sometimes make a wax model, seldom anything larger and not often even that. He would then set away carving alone. Instead of carving all around evenly, he would carve out all of the details from the front and work around, this made it easier for him to picture the work, but one false chisel and the very expensive piece of stone you have been carving for years is trash. The average sculptor alone would finish a full sized sculpture in 3-4 years. Michelangelo finished David in 2 years, with it being the largest sculpture ever seen at 17’ tall. In the room with David are St. Matthew which is unfinished and shows how exactly he carved his sculptures and the Prisoners which appear to be 5 unfinished sculptures showing souls escaping bodies in death. It has been speculated that perhaps these Prisoners were left unfinished on purpose to show the humans breaking free of the rock like souls breaking free of the body. Either way, they are not the focus of the gallery, David is. I had to write a piece describing David for class and just got it back with a very good mark, so I think I will paste it and hopefully do David at least some justice in my description.

One of the most, if not the most, striking thing I have seen so far on this trip is Michelangelo’s David.  While I had some expectations due to all I had heard about it, nothing compared to what I found inside the Academia. I am somewhat saddened in writing this because I know no matter how hard I try; I can never relate the complete effect of David into words. No matter, it is my prerogative to do my best to that end, and at least attempt to describe David and his effect on me. Before visiting the Academia I had always referred to David (On the few occasions when I felt the need to mention him) as “The David” or “Michelangelo’s David”. At this point I viewed David as simply a sculpture. Perhaps he was an exceptional example of sculpture, and renaissance art in general, but still in essence merely a monolith carved in the figure of a man. Since admiring him, I now find myself subconsciously referring to David as a person. Again, I find that words do not avail me in this endeavor. It is a gross understatement to say that David appears to be human. At very least he seems the perfect human, proportioned perfectly (when viewed from the intended angle of course), anatomically correct in any way, tension distributed just so in order to show us his intentions. 


As I learned from our passionate tour guide, David reveals himself to viewers not all at once, but differently from different angles. To paraphrase, “Every time I enter this hall, I see standing at the end a roman god, poised in a posture exuding perfection and power.” When you move closer this godlike façade fades to reveal a truly human David. His abdominals seem so realistic that you can see the tension spread across in the torque of his body, you can see the veins sprawling across his hands and neck and his face is depicted so realistically that you half believe he will turn his head and address you. As you move off to David’s left you once again experience a wholly different view. From this vantage point we can see the biblical inspiration. Transcending that, we see what Michelangelo was striving to show us.  In David’s face we see a complicated set of emotions, an underlying fear overpowered by faith and sheer determination. As our guide demonstrated, if you follow the biblical story of David and Goliath up to the point that you are viewing, that is, immediately after David replies to Goliaths challenge and prepares to launch his sling, knowing that the will of God is behind his swing, you can fully appreciate the expression that David exudes. It is not only his face that shows us this, but his posture as well; back straight, head up, moving forward undaunted in the presence of this giant. Personally, this angle struck me the hardest. The determination flowing from David seemed to bore right to my core, as if it was me he was challenging instead of Goliath. The next position doesn’t so much show a new David, but expands on his humanity and determination while showing admirers a new level to Michelangelo’s genius. This is the view of David from behind. According to our guide, a renowned professor of anatomy marveled at how never before had he witnessed such a perfect example of anatomy anywhere but his textbook. We can see here just how David has prepared himself for the launching of his sling. His shoulders are flexed, his back torqued and his legs taught, almost seeming spring loaded. Here also we can see what part engineering played in the creation of David. Apparently if David’s left leg was in a slightly different position, he would not be able to stand without falling forward. This is just an example of how much thought and calculation went into every part of David. The final view of David is of his right side. If you can picture him, he is focused away from you in the other direction. When I see this I imagine the part he played in society when he was created. He was a mascot of sorts for Florence. He protected the people and gave a message to all others not to pick a fight with the city, for they are protected by higher powers. 

In conclusion, while some works of art are able to show aspects of science, religion, history, symbolism, and true beauty, few, if any, show such a perfect combination of all of these as David. Not only is that alone amazing, but it is more than 17 feet tall, all carved by one man alone with no model in a style that meant ruination from one misplaced chisel. If nothing else in the world is, David is an example of true genius. 


While somewhat more formal than I usually write here, I think it was better that I paste that than trying to describe David all over again. After David I quickly visited the gallery of music showcasing some of the world’s first pianos and quite a few original violins by Stradivarius.

After the Academia we visited the Uffizi gallery which was formerly the private art collection of a very prominent Florentine family. It contains many Roman and Greek statues as well as some of the most famous paintings in the world. We were exhausted by this point so our tour guide gave us the condensed tour, showing us how Italian and specifically Florentine art evolved during the Renaissance. We started with a 13th century painting of Mary and the baby Jesus in Byzantine style with a golden background, golden halos, adult faces and disproportionate sizes (Jesus was much larger than a baby). This was meant to assert divinity over humanity and was the standard for all art of the time. We moved through the galleries watching the slow evolution of painting, from the more humanized views, to the first secular paintings (portrait of the Duke of Urbino), to some pagan figures in art (Birth of Venus), to the beginning of sexual imagery (Venus of Urbino) and showcasing the only two Da Vinci paintings left in Florence as well as the only surviving painting by Michelangelo in the world (the Vatican is a fresco and uses different methods than a painting), finally ending with a 17th century work depicting the baby Jesus, as the first did, but this time it is almost blasphemously human; Mary has just finished feeding Jesus and is covering her breast while Jesus yawns and places his hand on his genitals. After this journey through the renaissance we passed a showcase of Caravaggio, showing the Medusa which actually gave me chills. Caravaggio took realism to a new level, calling it naturalism. He believed that not all figures should be presented perfectly, but naturally. For example, if a model had a scar, or dirty fingernails, or a fruit had a bruise, he would paint it as it appeared. Apparently he would attend public executions and study the expressions on the beheaded face before painting Medusa.

 After the museums we grabbed some lunch and met for class outside again. We got two sample seminars from our teacher on Homer and Hesiod. We also studied some more particulars on Classical Greek life and major people. Dinner was at a similar restaurant with similar (but amazing, of course) food. After dinner Jam (a different guy, haven’t mentioned him yet) and I prepared for our seminars (both of us were the next day) at the café. After curfew I read a bit and watched some of (500) Days of Summer which was a very good movie.

Day 10

Sorry for not posting in so long, there has just been a string of work and stuff going on. I am going to try and catch up tonight, but I may have to finish tomorrow (on the beach!).

So, day… 10? Si, Day 10. I am going to come home and say random Italian words by accident…

Anyway…

Monday morning started like Florence mornings typically would. I would wake up grumpily (Air conditioner), shower and schlep downstairs for the meager breakfast of a pastry (croissantish thing with sweet filling), some meat and cheese and a crappy cappuccino. For all its charm, the hotel amenities could be better. We then went out in the yard (it hadn’t begun to heat up yet, thank god) for class. Our class snagged the tables in the shade; the other classes had to use the lawn and the tables in the sun.  Our class focused on philosophy and Socrates in general. Of all our classes, this one probably had the most profound effect on me and made me self-reflect and examine my thoughts a lot in the following few days. After the class we had a test on the Greek myths we presented on. The test was 2 questions long: write a summary of three myths, write an essay explaining how historians can use myths as an accurate source. I ended up getting an 86% on it, so I was satisfied. After class I grabbed a slice of pizza and headed to the internet café to email and download some web pages for my upcoming seminar on Sophocles’ Antigone.

I made it back to the hotel for 1:30 in order to go to the leather market with the class. We haggled a deal to get about 20% off all purchases at a certain pair of leather stores; one purse store and one jacket store. I looked around the jacket store for a bit without the intention of buying anything, then watched as the girls went crazy over the purses and wallets. After that bit I headed back instead of moving on to the belt and tie stalls of the street market because I needed to do laundry badly. I gathered up everything and headed down to the Laundromat. There I realized I forgot my detergent at the hotel and tried to buy some from the dispenser. The instructions were in Italian so it took me 5 euros to finally get the 2 euro sample of detergent. I got everything in the washer and then decided to explore some streets and find some of the cool graffiti I’d seen around. Florence is filled with graffiti, most of it is just tags and such, but every once in a while there are some cool ones. One set of three I found on Via San Gallo (they appear to be the same handwriting) The first one seems to be from an Italian pop song “Apriro Il Giardino, Quando Tornerai” (Open the garden when I return), the second is my favourite “Niente di particolare, a parte il fatto che mi manchi!!” (Nothing special apart from the fact that I miss you!!) and the last one is very straightforward and obviously from the heart “Siculamente… Ti amo!” (Sicilian… I love you!). There were some other ones I found and this became a sort of hobby of mine in Florence. I was back a few minutes before my load was done and read Dante for the rest of the time as well as through the dryer cycles. After the second 10 minute cycle not all the clothes were completely dry but I was out of coin and coming close to dinner time. So I headed back to the hotel and hung up the really wet clothes.

We had dinner at a nice Tuscan place not far from the hotel (typical pasta, meat, dessert) and I headed back and watched a movie and prepared for my seminar.

Not a very exciting day but I had to include it anyway, just to ease those troubled minds that worried about the state of my clean underwear supply.

Just a Notice

Hey all,
Just want to let you know that I fixed it so that anyone can comment now (:

Though it is a good idea to get a Google account, it can be a lifesaver

Day 9

Day 9. Day 9 was a Sunday. Sundays are lazy days. Not just for me though, not even just for Georgia Hardy, but for all of Florence.

Because it was our first day without anything planned, we were allowed to sleep in as much as we wanted/needed to. Because of my accidental 4 hour nap in combination with our very loud and rattling air conditioner I was up for a good part of the night, unable to fall asleep. Because of this I slept until 12:30. After showering and getting dressed I went downstairs and found people engaged in various homework-related activities around the hotel. A few had gone out for lunch or to do laundry (which I have to do ASAP) and those remaining were not interested in leaving. I knew I had to do work at some point, but first I needed food and internet. So I slipped out of the hotel on my own for some exploring. While we aren’t really supposed to go out alone that rule is meant more for the night and I was oriented enough with Florence that I could get around on my own.

I quickly noticed that Florentines disappear on Sundays. Apparently they all go to church in the morning before going out for the rest of the day. Because of this nearly every store is closed. Including my perfect café. I set out on my way downtown, passing a few shabby grocery stores and a few nicer restaurants but no pizzerias or bistros. I also past a few internet cafes but none of them offered wifi. I continued until I got to the Piazza with Santa Maria del Fiore in it where I found a small pizzeria and bought a calzone with ham and cheese. I have to admit that it wasn’t amazing. The cheese and the ham were completely separated and it was very greasy, I only ended up eating 2/3 of it. On my way back I passed a sprawling restaurant/sports bar/ café that advertised free wifi to customers. I figured it was better than a crappy PC at an internet café, so I went inside and ordered a cappuccino and was directed to the bar. There I got my cappuccino and was asked to sign a form and show ID for internet. Apparently this way I can’t spread around the password. At first it didn’t seem as if the bartender was too happy with me sitting there with my meager coffee but he warmed up a bit when I ordered a second cup. After getting caught up on emails and blog posts I headed back to the hotel and did some work until dinner time.

For dinner we headed to one of the best pizza places in Florence. The name I don’t remember, but I do remember that it referred to Dante and the slogan was “Il Paradiso della Pizza” which makes sense because one of the volumes of Dante’s Divine Comedy (the sequel to the one I am reading, actually) is called Il Paradiso, or The Paradise. First we got a plate of prosciutto and Tuscan salami which was different from what I know as salami, but still good. Then at our table we had four pizza:  Diavola, with pepperoni and salami, another with olives, artichoke and prosciutto, pizza margherita with just cheese and a four cheese pizza. All were good (except the olive/artichoke one, I didn’t try it) and we left stuffed. On the way back we stopped for gelato and coffee. I debated trying to run out and do laundry before curfew, but I doubted I would make it back in time so I did some more work before watching The Astronaut’s Wife which was way freakier than expected and I was paranoid for a good while afterwards. I went to bed at a good time (After Spain had won, of course) but couldn’t fall asleep because of the damn air conditioner! It was past 3 before I finally fell asleep.

Day 8

Wow, only Day 8? It feels so much longer since I left. Then again, it also feels like I have just scratched the surface of Italy.

This is the only post so far that I have written on the actual day; hopefully it is a habit I can continue, though I doubt it.

My roommate and I slept through both our wakeup call and his alarm and didn’t get up ‘till 8:12, when breakfast was at 8:30. We got ready fast and made our way downstairs for a breakfast that was similar, though not nearly as extravagant as our Roman hotel. Almost straight from there we met our tour guides and departed on a 2 ½ hour walking tour of Florence. In my last post I said how I wasn’t at first impressed by Florence. That all changed today. I learned that 90% of the buildings in Florence are actually medieval or renaissance buildings, often covered in plaster. First we made our way to the sprawling open air market (mostly leather and linen) around the Basilica San Lorenzo. Known as the San Lorenzo market, I can’t help think it may be somehow connected to the naming of the St. Lawrence market. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence. Either way, we saw the market and the church. On the front of the church there is just a façade of rough stone with horizontal outcrops every few feet running across the building. Apparently after all of his work in the Vatican, Michelangelo asked the Pope to sponsor the decoration of San Lorenzo. The Pope agreed and all the preparations were made, but the Pope died before the work was started and the new Pope decided not to continue, so the church is still unadorned. From there we moved on to the breathtaking Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. There are two churches there, one smaller church built in the early medieval period on foundations laid by the Romans, and another, much larger Cathedral (the biggest in Florence, if I heard the guide right) built between 1200 and 1400. The most striking features are the façade and the tower of this church. The mosaic and friezes on the walls of the church are amazing. White and green striped with intricate mosaic patterns, amazing paintings and gold inlay, it is astonishing to think that this was accomplished by hand. The façade was actually added in the late 1800s when Florence was briefly the capital of Italy and also the richest city in Europe. From Santa Maria we moved on to the Piazza della Repubblica (Republic Square) which served as a center point for the city since its founding in roman times. There is an authentic antique carousel as well as a gateway arch restored, as much of the city, in 1895. From there we moved a short way to the Piazza della Signoria (Lords’ Square). Here is where the main building, or city hall, is located. Originally a single tower, the building was built around it over time. In the square there are many famous statues, all original. The only copy is actually Michelangelo’s David. David was originally commissioned to go on one of the towers of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, but the church was expecting the biblical David, small, meek and modest. Instead they got the famous sculpture, proud, strong, nude, notably done in the ancient Greek style, celebrating the human style. While this is what the renaissance, and especially Michelangelo, is famous for, it was not what the church wanted. Instead of simply rejecting it, a council of influential artists noticed its importance and placed it in the town center for all to enjoy. While a place of prominence, it doesn’t do the David justice; it was meant to be viewed from a great distance, up on a church tower. Because of this, David’s hands and feet are disproportionately big. Part of Michelangelo’s genius was that he understood that proportion had to be distorted sometimes to give the impression of proportion from a distance. Anyway, there is a replica of David in the Piazza della Signoria where it was placed from 1504-1895. In 1895 it was moved to the Academia museum (an old art school) where it is now. After the Piazza we moved to the most famous church in Florence: the Basilica of Santa Croce (Holy Cross). This church is most famous because so many historical figures are buried inside. The outside shows how the green and white facades were added in the 1800s; the front has the new, beautiful façade while the rest is the old stone of the medieval age. Inside, the floor is littered with marble rectangles. These mark the tombs of influential Florentines who paid lots of money to the church in order to be buried here and show their crests in the church (a kind of advertisement) along the walls are many beautiful paintings and sculptures. The most important part of the church is the tombs placed in between the artwork. These include Machiavelli, Galileo and most prominently; Michelangelo himself.

After Santa Croce we split up and my group stopped in a small restaurant for lunch. I ordered a pizza Diavola (Sauce, cheese and spicy salami) and I receive a thin crust, fresh baked, full sized pizza. I was luckily hungry and the pizza wasn’t too filling so I managed to just finish it before I was fully stuffed. From there we more or less made our way back to the hotel. I was planning on relaxing for a bit before heading out to the nearby café (it offered free wifi to customers). Unintentionally I ended up sleeping for about 4 ½ hours, until the sounds of Back Against the Wall by Cage the Elephant woke me up from down the hall. I freshened up and was about to head out when Sey came back from the pool and asked me to wait for her to change before heading out because she wanted to hit the café as well. We spent about 30-45 minutes there. At first I was apprehensive, but it turned out to be perfect. It reminded me of a Starbucks except while a Starbucks tries to make everything seem Italian, this came across as almost American. The fridge was stocked with Corona, Coors and Red Bull while the wall was covered in mismatched posters, most with English slogans. The price was what really made me love the place. It was just a good cup of cappuccino as anywhere in Rome, better than most, actually and yet it was €1.10 while in Rome it cost between €2.50 and €3.00. After this Sey and I explored the city for another hour or so. She looked for a dress while I scoped out the local Laundromat, then we checked out some of the markets as the closed down. On our way back we grabbed a slice of pizza and a coke at a small pizzeria near the hotel.

Back at the hotel I finished The Day the Earth Stood Still, which was excellent, in my opinion, especially considering the technological barriers for a science fiction movie in 1951. I played around with my camera settings for a bit so that they would come out a bit more detailed, though larger on the memory card. I then read some more homework and began to type out these last two blog posts. It is now insanely late (curse daytime naps) and I should be sleeping soon in order to take advantage of being able to sleep in for the first time this trip.

I bid you arrivederci until tomorrow.

Day 7

What are we on now? Day 7?

Well, on day 7 we got up at 7:00 AM, got the rest of our stuff packed (Last minute things) and headed downstairs for breakfast. After double and triple checking our rooms we gathered in the lobby and waited for the bus.

After about 3 hours we stopped at one of the 6 catacombs located around Rome. These were built from around the 2nd year A.D. and 300 A.D when Christianity was still illegal in Rome. There are more than 500,000 tombs in the 20km of corridors. At one point this location housed the bodies of many popes, martyrs and saints. While many of the important bodies have been moved to churches, some still remain. When the catacombs were rediscovered in the 1800’s, many of the first tombs had been ransacked. Originally, tours were run with the tombs just as they had been, but many people were taking small bones and stones as souvenirs, so the monks moved all the bodies from opened tombs to the lower levels. It was very unsettling to be 20 or so meters below ground, standing not just above floors with intact tombs, but also on top of tombs laid into the floor below us (they wanted to be close to the popes and saints). A few times I would place my hand on an open ledge and realize that for hundreds of years someone’s body lay there and I would shiver a bit. While it was certainly an educational experience I was happy to return to the Tuscan heat and the fresh air.

After another few hours and a rest stop we arrived at the picturesque Tuscan medieval town of San Gimignano. Everything appears as it did in the medieval times (1200-1400), sans electricity/signs. The first thing I did was locate an ATM because my supply of money was running dangerously low (€6 after the rest stop). The next thing I did was stand in line for the world’s best gelato (official since 2007). I got a mixture of mint, vanilla and lemon for €2.50 and it was amazing. They don’t lie when they say the best gelato in the world, the flavours blend and softly melt over your taste buds. The true sensation was really beyond accurate description. For the next hour and a half we explored the walled, beautiful town, from the little pasta shops, to the amazing vantage point of the Tuscan countryside. The entire time I was beating myself up for leaving my camera on the bus, but I am sure I can steal some other people’s pictures at some point. At one time I was really hungry and there was a heavenly smell wafting out of a small pizzeria. I bought a simple, albeit huge, slice of pepperoni pizza. I don’t lie when I say that this was the best piece of pizza I have ever tasted. The sauce and cheese was infused with an amazing myriad of spices and herbs, the tastes all blended together perfectly. After that I admired the landscape for a bit until we loaded the bus again. When I say Tuscan countryside, it is not just my own opinion that it is beautiful. In part because of its perfection in proportional mountains and in part because it was the majority of their homes, most renaissance painters used the Tuscan mountainous landscape as a backdrop for their own paintings. No matter where the picture is in the world, the mountains are that of Tuscany. In one of the panels in the Sistine Chapel, our guide pointed out that the mountains in the depiction of Israel and the mountains depicted in another painting of ancient Greece were almost identical because the painters believed that the Tuscan mountains offered the perfect proportionality between land and sky.

I must admit, to my shame, that I was not at first enthralled with Florence. We arrived at our hotel on a small, somewhat cramped street. We walked up the gravel yard to a hotel totally different from what we were expecting. Our hotel in Rome was somewhat modern, if a bit outdated in construction. It had 10 floors, 2 elevators, key cards (in fact, you had to insert your card into the wall for the lights to turn on), room service and an extensive lobby and restaurant. Our Florentine hotel was once the residence of a wealthy citizen a couple hundred years ago. It holds about 100 residents, of which we are 42. The rooms are small, fitted with a small bathroom (no shower curtain for some reason) windows which we can’t open (they will turn the A/C off for the entire building) and a small writing desk (built in minibar of course, how would Italians survive without their alcohol?). Our liaison with the hotel is a man with an Italian/Austrian accent named Francisco. Some have described him as a Nazi. Along with the rules about windows, there are strict rules regarding noise, pool behavior and presence outside of rooms. All of these are understandable, but not conducive to 37 17 year olds. We walked about 15 minutes to our dinner for the evening, a nice Italian winery and restaurant. We were served amazing spaghetti, fries, chicken and tiramisu. After this a group of us decided to head back to the hotel for the last hour or so instead of going out, as we didn’t really know the lay of the land yet. The road back smelled of garbage, was crowded and had quite a lot of graffiti. Not exactly the breathtaking city I have heard so much about.  I read some more Dante and watched the first half of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) before going to sleep.

Days 5 & 6

The last two full days in Rome were relatively uninteresting (no tours or anything) so I am going to consolidate them into one post.

Day 5 started out typically: Wake, shower, breakfast, class. In class we delved deeper into how Greek society and city states began to evolve and especially the difference between Sparta and Athens (Sparta was radically communist while Athens was radically democratic). We also looked into how the history we know now was recorded.

After class I went to the internet café with a girl from my class, let’s call her Hal (I don’t like putting people’s actual names on the internet without their permission). Hal and I helped each other out with our myth presentations for a bit before heading back to the hotel. On the way back I stopped in the pizzeria and grabbed myself a slice of what looked like cheese pizza with bits of hotdog on it. Whatever it was, it was good. I decided my room was boring so I crashed in Hal, Lye, and Anne’s room with a bunch of other people. Most of them were in the photography class and were trying to complete some of their assignments (which seem really cool by the way).One person had the idea to open up the window for a kind of aerial shot. Once we did this we realized that there was about a 3’ ledge with perfect room for sitting. The next little bit was spent by me and a new friend Sey watching the world go by from this window. I had asked a few times about going down and finding a grocery store for snacks for the room. Finally Sey agreed that she needed to get out so we went and found a giant drugstore/supermarket. It had the variety of a Wal-Mart. There Sey and I stocked up on chips, chocolate, wafers, orange juice and other such necessities. We came back to find that Lye, Hal and some others were trying to get some actual work done so we went into Sey, Air and Ico’s room next door. Sey and I played war on the ledge while we all enjoyed our snacks and the other two read and listened to music. By this time my own room already had accumulated visitors and I wasn’t exactly welcomed warmly.

We went to dinner at 7:00 and had the same kind of food again; pasta course, meat course and dessert course. I can’t quite remember what we had each day but I do know that none of it was bad. After dinner we had a choice to go down to a piazza with the teachers and watch the world cup Spain-Germany game on a public screen or hang out on our own. Originally I had planned to go to the piazza, but it became apparent that most people figured out they could watch the game with their friends other places without the teachers supervising, so there weren’t many heading out. Instead, I went with Lye, Sey, Hal, Anne, Ico to show Anna the Trevi fountain (she missed the tour the first day). So we all went down to the subway and made our way to the fountain. We took tons of pictures and saw some cool sights. We also stopped at the Spanish Steps and some of the girls got another assigned shot for photography done. From there we took a cab back to the hotel. It turns out it was about double the actual price because he didn’t go straight to the hotel, but we got a little tour of Rome anyway, so it wasn’t too bad.
After we got back, I crashed the rest of the time in Sey, Air and Ico’s room and Sey and I watched the first 45 minutes of the Wizard of Oz while the others bustled around their own business.

On the morning of Day 6 I apparently slept through the wakeup call and my roommates didn’t think to wake me before 8:20 which is 10 minutes before my class started. I was also supposed to present my myth first thing in class. I quickly got dressed and ready, downed an espresso downstairs and got to class right on time. I quickly turned on my laptop and presented my myth using the notes on my computer. After I sat down I could actually not remember anything that I had just said. Though it felt bad, I got an 82%, so it wasn’t terrible. We spent the rest of class learning about classical Athens including part of a rather rude play written in that time. It compared thunder to “Shitting after eating a lot of stew”. We also did a little review for our upcoming myth test.

After class a bunch of us met up as a group and went with a few teachers to the nearby street market. While apparently nothing compared to the legendary Florence leather market, it still had a nice selection of jewelry and clothing. I got some gifts out of the way and spent about €15. Once the market closed down at about 2, Sey and I went to the train station, which also acts as a large mall. We went to the book store because we had both finished the novels we brought. I bought a copy of Dante’s Il Purgatorio on sale for €7. I thought it was fitting as Dante wrote from and lived in/loved Florence which is our next stop. After that we went clothes shopping. Sey wanted a new dress and I wanted to get at least one shirt from Italy to be my Italian shirt. I couldn’t come back to Canada without any new clothes for myself, it would be simply unacceptable. I ended up finding a cool grey shirt that was actually the lowest price in the store. €13.50 on sale from €27.00. We then stopped by the grocery store and topped up our snack supply.

We went back to the hotel to find my room filled with visitors again so we crashed in Sey’s room and finished watching the Wizard of Oz while Air napped beside us. We tried to sit on the window ledge and read our new books, but some busybody on the street saw us and must have thought the ledge wasn’t as wide as it was because he told us to get down, then went in and got a concierge to come out and tell us to get down. After that I decided to go out to a café before dinner where I got the best cappuccino yet and read the first 2 cantos of Il Purgatorio. I got back in plenty of time to drop my book of in my room and be downstairs for dinner. I had decided that before I left Rome I wanted the clichéd dinner in the open air with a plate of spaghetti and a checkered tablecloth. Because of this I abstained from my dinner and afterwards convinced Sey to drag herself away from her computer and come enjoy a last Roman night. Everyone else declined my invitation so Sey dragged me to a gelato place where she got her final Roman wish, then I dragged her to a little restaurant that overcharged for my plate of spaghetti, but I was satisfied and felt like I had finally done Rome properly.

We got back to the hotel and all of us pitched in for internet in Sey, Air and Ico’s room and spent the rest of the time talking to people back home, looking at pictures and listening to music. It turns out Air and I have a similar taste in music in the fact that it is somewhat varied. She stole my iPod and put on first Shania Twain, then Bob Dylan, The Doors, Drake, Lil Wayne and Cage the Elephant. It was pretty awesome.

Well, there’s the recap of days 5 and 6. I finished this just in time because we are approaching San Gimignano for the world’s best gelato so I should shut down. I shall update more later.

Day 4

Well, It seems like I have fallen behind again. At the moment I am on a bus to Florence through the Tuscan countryside. I’ll catch up to that part eventually, but for now let’s go back to Day 4.

On Day 4 we learned better and didn’t even attempt to set our alarms, just waiting for the wakeup call at 7:30. We went downstairs for breakfast and ate pretty much the same as the day before. Instead of class in the morning we had it in the afternoon and had a visit to the Vatican planned for the morning.
We walked to a nearby subway station and worked our way through the maze of hallways until we found the right train for us. When the train pulled into the station we realized that it was packed full of morning commuters and tourists. I don’t mean that there was standing room only; I mean that there was barely room to squish in; we had to leave half of our group to wait for the next train.

Once we had all reunited we walked the ten minutes from the station to the gates of the Vatican and the entrance to the Vatican Museum. With our tour guide we made our way through the 7km of art gallery, barely scratching the surface of what is housed there. There was everything from ancient Greek statues to murals by Raphael to a collection of modern art. All along we were constantly pressed by an unending throng of tourists, it made the whole museum feel somewhat claustrophobic. At the end of the museum there was a door into the Sistine Chapel. I had heard a lot about the Sistine Chapel but nothing can really explain what it’s like. On either side wall there is space for tapestries for about 20’, then a frieze of paintings by renaissance teachers, including the teachers of Michelangelo and Raphael. On one side they depict the life of Jesus; the other depicts the life of Moses, meeting in the front of the church with the death of Moses and the resurrection of Jesus side by side. To put it most simply, the ceiling depicts the story of Genesis. That is a gross understatement. When Michelangelo reluctantly agreed to paint the fresco he was given a team of students to do the labour while he directed, as most artists worked in that day. After one day he dismissed them all as incompetent (he was a very moody, grumpy, but fiercely independent man) and decided to paint the entire ceiling alone. It took him 4 years to do, lying on his back on treacherous scaffolding with paint dripping in his eyes. When you are looking at the ceiling it is hard to realize how large the figures depicted are. They could only be 50 feet above your head for all you know, when if you take a step back you realize it is much, much higher and each person painted is 5-10 times the size of a real person. On the back wall is another painting by Michelangelo, the only other one available for public viewing at the Vatican. It depicts the last judgment, with the righteous ascending to heaven with the angels and saints, while the sinners are being damned into hell. Michelangelo painted this 30 years after he painted the ceiling and you can see how deep his depression had set. The colours are all much darker and the entire sense of the painting is more malicious almost. In fact, one of the saints is holding his own skin (he was flayed alive) and Michelangelo painted his own face onto the skin to represent how tired and in pain he was (his back never recovered from the 4 years spent painting the ceiling). He also held a grudge very vindictively. One cardinal constantly criticized his work, so he painted him at the bottom right of the painting (the deepest into hell) screaming while a snake ate his genitals. After the glory of the Sistine Chapel we visited St. Peter’s Basilica. There has been a church there since the 4th century and the time of Constantine, always built over the final resting place of St. Peter himself. The original church was destroyed and rebuilt over 200 years in the middle ages. The actual structure and architecture was designed by Michelangelo and is distinctly renaissance while the interior decoration was headed by Bernini and is definitely baroque, creating an interesting mix of styles. There are many sculptures, mosaics and paintings inside the church including the only sculpture by Michelangelo ever to be signed. After the basilica we moved into St. Peters square and soon headed back to the hotel. One interesting tidbit of information I learned was that Raphael and Michelangelo were extremely jealous of one another. Michelangelo was the better artist and Raphael refused to accept this, while Raphael was handsome, outgoing, well behaved and popular, all of which Michelangelo was the opposite. One of the places you can actually see this rivalry is in one of the Raphael rooms inside the museum. These rooms were painted by Raphael after he heard of Michelangelo’s work on the Sistine Chapel. In one painting, The School of Athens, we see famous Greek philosophers and writers conversing in ancient Athens. There are many small features that mean a lot about that particular philosopher’s beliefs. Since nobody knew what they looked like, it was common for painters to give these people the faces of famous contemporaries. Raphael painted himself in the crowd along with DaVinci and others. There is one figure sitting away from the crowd with a sour expression on his face, excluded from the party. This figure has the face of Michelangelo. This bitter rivalry ended soon as Raphael died partying in his thirties and Michelangelo lead a long, depressing life into his eighties.

After the Vatican we had a few free hours before lunch. I decided I should finally try some Italian pizza. I went into a little pizzeria and didn’t find the typical types of pizza, but prosciutto, Caesar salad, Mediterranean, etc. I decided to try the prosciutto and got the largest slice of pizza I have ever seen. It was truly amazing. After my pizza experience I tried to hang around the hotel for a bit, but it was boring so I grabbed my textbook and headed out a few buildings down to a little corner café where I ordered a cappuccino and read my homework while watching the Roman world go by. It felt like my first truly Italian experience.

In class we delved into the Greek wars, including the Persian invasion and the story that inspired the movie 300. Actually, at some points he asked us who we would cast in what roles if we were to make a movie of certain events. It was a very interesting class.

After class and dinner (pasta, meat, cake) I made my way down to the Internet café again and caught up on my communication while doing some research for my ancient myth presentation. I had some gelato and some more cappuccino while there. After that, me and the group I was with stopped in at a local store and I found a replacement adapter (mine didn’t fit the plugs). I went back to my room and met some of the people my roommate had over. It turns out I am not the only one that is going into grade 11 next year, so that was good to know. They left after a bit and I watched some more Gilmore Girls, finishing all but the last episode of the last episode of the series, that one I am saving ‘till I get home.

Day 3

So, I am actually on the fourth day right now, but I am a bit behind, so I am catching up now.

So, on the third day, I had set my alarm for 6:30, another of my roommates for 7:00, then a wakeup call for 7:30. The first two alarms were snoozed instantly and it wasn’t until 7:40 that I dragged my butt out of bed and into the shower.

Breakfast was a nice buffet with lots of bread and spreads, also some bacon and eggs. Oh, and coffee, lots of coffee. I had a double espresso and half of a cappuccino with breakfast. From there we went right into a conference room that is acting as our classroom. We had 4 hours of class that seemed to fly by. This included two 15-minute breaks. The class is really interesting, we covered an overview of Classical societies, including the difference between Greek and Roman advancements. In a nutshell Greece was more intellectual and artistic while Rome was better with engineering and architecture.

After class we had about an hour to grab a sandwich for lunch and get ready to go see the Colosseum and the Roman Forum.

The roman forum was truly amazing, there are 2000 year old buildings standing there, some even older, going back to 800 BC! This was the ancient centre of Rome, where the emperors lived, the marketplace was, the courthouse and where sporting events were held before the Colosseum. Inside the forum we also got to see the sight of Caesar’s cremation which was really cool.

The Colosseum was really interesting; it is amazing to think that something so huge could have been built 2000 years ago in just 9 years!  It’s kinda sad actually because a majority of the Colosseum has been taken away for other building projects, mostly in the Vatican, but also other churches. This went on until the late 1700’s, meaning that all the seats that covered the Colosseum were gone and not a slab of marble remains.

We made our way back to the hotel on our own, stopping for some gelato along the way. I stayed in the hotel room until dinner; finishing my book, reading some of my homework and writing some emails.

Dinner was fettuccini alfredo, prosciutto & another meat I didn’t know and tartufo for dessert. After dinner I followed some people to a new internet café about 10 minutes away that had wifi and was hidden in the back of a café/bar/gelatteria (They are all serve the same things here) and settled in quite comfortably.

I got back to my room and found my roommate with some visitors, so we talked and got to know each other until curfew. Later I finished writing some emails and began the first blog post.

That was Day 3, stay tuned for Day 4-the Vatican!

Days 1-2

(Day 1-2 because I was up for 30 hours due to the plane ride/time difference, so this covers Saturday and Sunday)



Ciao!


So, People want me to blog about my trip to Italy, so here I am lying in my hotel room typing away in the dark.

Flying over here actually took shorter than we thought. It was supposed to take 9 hours but it only took 8 hours and 10 minutes. We flew with the Italian airline Alitalia. Alitalia’s planes still had ashtrays and double pronged headphone jacks. The flight attendants were surly and the food was, well, airplane food.

Although there were these drawbacks, the ride wasn’t too bad. I spent the first few hours watching Gilmore Girls (I like Gilmore Girls, so sue me!) until my laptop battery died, then I listened to music and read Dean Koontz (Odd Thomas) and got more than half way through it. Enough about my banal activities, let’s talk about Rome.


My first view of Rome was not very flattering. We got out of the airport to see a few billboards, lots of taxis and the reek of cigarette smoke mixed with exhaust fumes. Then again, what city can really be judged based on the view from its airport?


We got on a leather-interior coach, bleary eyed and drowsy and drove the 40 minutes to the hotel. 
We got to our hotel (relatively young for Rome; about 70 years old) and gathered in the lobby. The hotel was built during the fascist rule and therefore contained numerous maps of ancient Rome and marble busts of all the emperors lining the lobby. We put our entire luggage in a side room because our rooms weren’t ready yet. The principal began to lecture us on safety, keeping together and watching out for your stuff. While she was doing this a couple was sitting behind her reading a newspaper. As she wound down her lecture, the couple quietly left. A few minutes later we discovered that the principal’s bag was stolen. The irony of that whole situation amuses me somewhat. 


Immediately after this we walked to the nearest subway station and took the 10 minute walk through the Roman tube to find our train to take us to Spagna station and the famed Spanish steps. After lot’s of picture taking and fountain drinking we moved on the pantheon which was unfortunately closed for mass. Finally we ended our tour at the famed trevi fountain where we all wished with a coin. Cheesy, maybe, but fun. 


From there we were set free to roam Rome.  A group of us wandered for about 2 hours, along the way stopping at a small bistro and getting an amazing grilled salami Panini with espresso. 


Back at the hotel everyone was jet-lagged and fell right into bed. I knew I should stay up until bed time so I could get a full night’s sleep, so I watched some more Gilmore Girls and read some more in my hotel room. We met at 7:15 for dinner in the hotel which consisted of three courses: penne with pesto, grilled chicken and some light cake.


After dinner I convinced a few people to come check out an internet café with me, so we went and paid for a half-hour each. It wasn’t a pleasant atmosphere, cramped and hot, but it served its purpose. Afterwards we headed back to the hotel and I did a little bit of research for my mythical presentation, due Thursday before falling into bed.