The evening of my return from Assisi, my roommate Camila and I left for three nights in Paris! It was a lovely city full of art and history and I found the people to be much less nasty than their reputation. Notre Dame was eerily beautiful, the Eiffel Tower was gigantic and visible for miles, Versailles was more lavish than anything I could imagine, and the Louvre and the d'Orsay absolutely blew my mind. By our flight home I felt completely overwhelmed by the amount of fascinating things I'd experienced.
The day after our return from Tuscany, I left for a night in Assisi with four friends. For me this was a very exciting trip because of my tie to the place and its history: I attended a Catholic school called "the Franciscan School"(/"Saint Francis") for 6 years and grew up hearing about St. Francis and St. Clare and the town of Assisi - so it was unreal to see it in real life. Everywhere I saw things I'd seen growing up, like the cross of San Damiano and St. Francis’s prayer.
The train down was long but enjoyable because, spread across two rows of seating, my friends and I shared food and told our favorite cheesy jokes. We eventually arrived in Assisi, a charming town of small cream-colored buildings on a gradual slant since it's built on one big hill.
Our hotel was small and quirky and run by a woman and her nephew, who also owned the restaurant beneath the hotel. The woman rushed up late and unlocked everything for us, apologizing in somewhat dialectal Italian and offering us pastries as we paid for our rooms. The girls room was great, with three beds, and the boys somehow ended up with one bed - a problem which was solved promptly by Cristian bluntly telling a staff member, "Siamo due maschili." ("We are two guys.") They received a different room.
We sang a few hymns and I listened to the Lord's Prayer in Italian - being able to follow it but not produce it - and we stayed for vespers. Afterwards we wandered to the upper level, whose walls held old Giotto frescoes from the turn of the 14th century!
Seeing the tomb of St. Francis himself was chilling - experiencing the physical remains of someone who until then was somewhat of a character of fables is shocking. After exiting the church we watched storm clouds come in, and got poured on, hopping souvenir shops to avoid the downpour. This was the best group of people to experience Assisi with - very religious friends who appreciated the place spiritually, and also great personalities that took the weather situation and were able to laugh about it.
Back at the hotel, we had a fantastic dinner in the attached restaurant, and took fancy bottles of water up to our rooms and watched Hercules - a nice lighthearted balance to the overwhelming experiences of the day. The following morning we made our way to what's left of Francis's childhood home (just the front door and a few rooms).
Next was the Chiesa di Santa Chiara (Church of St. Clare) where we saw a display of the robes of Clare and Francis among other things from their time - a box of her hair, the ropes that tied their robes. The adjacent room held Clare’s tomb.
Outside, Aaron had us all laughing with his recreation of the Sermon to the Birds:
We spent the rest of the morning wandering the city - from a tunnel from Roman times, to the baptismal font where both saints were baptized.
We grabbed a quick lunch where the waiters said we spoke Italian like the Swiss do. We were elated. The social evolution of our accents improving seems to go:
I left the group early to get back to Bologna in time to catch my flight to Paris that night, so had a 3 hour train ride to myself - during which I listened to music and got to contemplate my adventures in Italy and their gradual movement towards closure. While watching Umbrian countryside fly past, I was able to feel complete satisfaction with my life at that moment, surrounded by open fields, occasional mountains, and little villages - probably one of the most peaceful experiences of my time abroad.
At the end of May, my study abroad program took all of us on an excursion through the Tuscan hillside :)
After a lengthy bus ride with excellent foggy mountain views reminiscent of King Kong scenery, we first visited Monteriggioni - a tiny city with high city walls, just composed of a church, belltower, and a few other buildings like restaurants and trinket shops.
Clearly, we had a fantastic view of the surrounding countryside. We wandered its one main street, circled around through some foliage then a vineyard, before returning to the bus.
The main square is Piazza del Campo, regarded as one of Europe's greatest medieval squares. In its center is the Fonte Gaia from 1419, full of wolves to celebrate Rome's founding myth. At the base of this bowl-shaped piazza is the Torre del Mangia: "tower of eating", on account of the tale that one of the main times the city was attacked was because the guards in this tower were busy eating.
Some friends and I ate at a lovely osteria, each getting different pasta dishes. I had delicious one based on a boar sauce.
Our program took a tour starting in the Piazza del Campo from this tiny, eccentric woman with a heavy Tuscan accent: often dropping k sounds for a barely present h instead - cool real-life example of the things my friends and I had learned in our Dialectology class!
This tour took us to the Duomo di Siena, completed in the mid 1200s, with a grand facade with gold; its exterior and interior are all striped with cream and dark green marble, reminiscent of THE Duomo in Florence. Here the inside stripes were even more extreme. (I said it felt like being inside a tiger.) Inside, the mosaic floor from 14th-16th centuries shows scenes from the Old Testament along with allegories and symbols of virtues.
We went off to one branch of the church to see the Piccolomini Library from around 1500 which holds old choir books and frescoes, based on the work of Raphael, that tell the story of Pope Pius II, one of the symbols of the Italian Renaissance. The ceiling was breathtaking.
Next we reached where we stayed for the night: Sant'Anna in Camprena, an ex Benedictine monastery from the 15th century, essentially on top of its own hill in the middle of nowhere in the Tuscan hillside. The group of us explored a little and watched some ominous stormclouds approach and didn't really care about the drizzle and stood and watched the rain move in.
Dinner was served in their refectory which has become a 5-star restaurant, with products from surrounding vineyards. There were so many courses I couldn't even touch dessert! During dinner there were moments I sat back and just appreciated my friends, and being surrounded by people who know so much more than i do - Fran was talking about little things hidden in the paintings of the Sistine Chapel, and Aaron was telling entertaining stories of his favorite popes. I am surrounded by intellectual and hilarious people.
That night after dinner a group of us wandered outside again and spent probably 20 minutes in complete silence watching the quiet hillside and array of stars - one of my most peaceful moments in these 5 months abroad. We stayed in very simple rooms, some of which used to be monk cells! After a cuddle session with my lovely roommates, I slept peacefully and the following morning we had a relaxed breakfast and again boarded the bus.
Our penultimate city was Pienza - we were only here for an hour, but I found it charming nonetheless: another city of tiny, winding, slanted streets with great mountain views, as showcased by this photo of me and Adriana:
I grabbed a quick sandwich on the way to the bus - I was in a rush and the man working went about opening a new bagged ham hock for it etc. a la Mr. Bean in Love Actually. Still it was a delicious mortadella panino, from this little restaurant:
Our final stop was Montalcino, where we spent the whole time trying to find the grocery store and waiting in cashier lines. It was very similar to Pienza: quaint.
From here we went to a nearby vineyard and took a tour of the place - it was a charming cabin-type house and on the ground floor we sat and tested bruschetta and different wines from the vineyard grapes! We also got our animal fix - there were two-week old kittens and two huge dogs who demanded affection. Here's me and Mary at the tasting:
From there we took a beautifully scenic hike through the countryside, despite the obvious oncoming storm which hit us about halfway through. Once again it didn't really bother us :)
Our hike ended at a huge beige church - the abbey of Sant'Antimo, a former Benedictine monastery.
From here we hopped on our bus to return to Bologna. Overall, it was a perfect final experience with (almost) the whole program - I spent it like I spent my whole semester: surrounded by intelligent people and beautiful hills of Italy.
Here's a summary picture set of my trip to Madrid I took at the end of May with Camila, a roommate of mine in my program! We stayed with family of hers - a couple and their 3-year-old, Lucía, who didn’t understand that I didn’t speak Spanish, and continuously asked me to color with her. The situation worked out great; we often ate with them, traveled with them, and had a great place to stay.
The trip itself was cool because my mom and two aunts of mine studied abroad in Madrid, so it was charming to imagine college versions of them walking these same streets in the same phase of their lives as I am now.
My favorite parts of the city: exploring big streets in the city center (Gran Vía & Plaza Mayor), a pretty church called Parroquia de Santa Cruz, wandering Retiro park & renting rowboats on its lake, seeing works by Caravaggio and Goya in El Prado, and wonderful Spanish food. One of our fav things was the market enclosed in glass windows which had a TON of little stations for desserts, wines, trinkets, fresh-cut meat, and everything else imaginable. On this trip we also were able to take a day trip with the family to a beautiful city called Toledo with charming views of its cream architecture and a huge wall painting by El Greco.
Overall, Spain was a lovely change of scenery from Italy - but afterwards, I was very relieved to return to a country where I spoke the language :)
Walked the longest set of porticoes in the world up to San Luca. Hiked up with Nate and ran into a group of friends! The church was closed but we still got a cool view of the city!
Some favorite friend moments: 1) kids I helped out in my Dialectology baked me a cake in gratitude! 2) Out with some favorites for Matt's birthday in Piazza Verdi. 3) Playing hostess at my apartment and experimenting with dinner recipes for 4 friends :)
Here begins my blog catching-up that is long overdue! Here are pictures from a favorite day of mine in Bologna: some crazy friends and I took a hike outside the city up a hill to a church called San Michele in Bosco. Along the way we stopped for photoshoots with hilarious "JUST LIKE HEAVEN" graffiti and with dandelions. The horizon view of the city from the church was fantastic!
Last day in Bologna and I have five months' worth of stuff to pack. Which means it's apparently time to lie around my apartment feeling sorry for myself! Hurray! Unfortunately my back-to-back travel plans offered me zero time to update this blog about any of them - it's looking like that's something I'll only be able to do once I get back to the States. Nonetheless it will happen, because they were grand adventures with lovely people and I have some great stories and photos to share. This blog has been a great way to share things across an ocean and also kind of across time - looking back on it in the future will bring back many, many memories. I can barely fathom the end result of the flights I'll have tomorrow, and my brain hasn't quite decided how it wants to feel about the whole thing, but overall the strongest feeling I'm left with is fulfillment. This journey has been everything it possibly could have been: in terms of the beautiful places I saw, the incredible people I was lucky enough to get to know, and the very important things I learned about myself. It has been five months of great meals, beautiful sights, historic places, and fantastic people. And I am so, so lucky.
Just took the loveliest trip across Tuscany with the whole program. Who knew you could see so much in just two days? Said a few goodbyes tonight; feeling melancholy at the thought of leaving these fantastic people and this beautiful country.
Also, a few weeks ago I tagged along on a class field trip (for a class I wasn't a part of; there were just extra spots) on a short trip to Mantova, the city of my roommate Valentina! It was a dreary day that ended in a downpour and a frantic run back to the train station (accompanied by sung lines from Les Mis by my goofy friends) but we did fit in viewing some cool architecture of the Basilica di Sant'Andrea, considered one of the main works of Italian 15th century Renaissance architecture in Northern Italy.
A few weeks ago, Stephanie and Alexander and I took a lovely day trip to Parma, a charming city in our same region, home to Parma ham and Parmesan cheese itself.
We filled the day with museum visits and good food, as one should while traveling Italian cities. We started with the Parco Ducale, a huge green park planned in 1560 and expanded in the 1800s, and home to the ducal palace which we did not enter, because it is now basically a police base.
We then visited beautiful church - the Duomo di Parma - absolutely covered in biblical paintings:
We went on to see the Teatro Farnese, a gorgeous wooden Baroque theater, sometimes considered the first “modern theater”, constructed in the early 1600s. From what we understood, it was built for the visit of Cosimo de Medici, who never actually showed up! Nonetheless it used to host royal weddings and after bombings in World War II was reconstructed in painstaking fidelity to its original structure. I snuck a picture despite photography restrictions.
Behind the stage lay the entrance to a grand art museum holding massive paintings in a progression from medieval times to the early 20th century. An afternoon spent in silence gazing at art with friends is an afternoon spent well.
Our penultimate stop was to the Camera di San Paolo, an ex-monastery with frescoes from the early 1500s, with one ceiling with a “particularly feminist slant”:
depicting feminine characters representing values such as bravery and judgment. Brilliant!
Finally we visited our last museum, this one full of archaeology dating all the way back to MUMMIES!:
AND the highlight of the WHOLE trip, in the very first full display room sat an ancient sculpture Steph and I had studied in our History of Emilia-Romagna class: the head of a young girl called Baebia Basilla, a figure of Charity to those in need of the ancient Roman city of Veleia, a tiny city “in miniature” made up of only what was necessary. We’d seen pictures of it in lecture, studied it in notes for the exam, and here we were, face-to-face with this two-millenium-old artifact. Once again, against the rules I snuck the blurriest of blurry pictures, because my nerdy enthusiasm knows no bounds.
In all, our day trip to Parma was a wonderful, intellectual journey filled with unexpected gems.
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