Cortona, Montepulciano, Ravenna, and other fun things.

The last two weeks have been amazing. I have been able to see some really beautiful smaller Italian towns and also gone to some areas in Florence that I have not been yet and did a couple of things withinv the city that I have been dying to do. 

Two weekends ago my friend Katie, a girl who goes to USC with me but I had not met before this trip, and I decided to hop on a train and take it to a couple small Italian towns for the weekend. The countryside along the way was breathtaking, rolling green hills with singular yellowish houses on the top of them. The first town we were going to was called Montepulciano which was a very small town high on a hill with only one street. That night we were going to stay in a restaurant that rented out 3 rooms. We checked in there and had an amazing pizza lunch. We walked around, looked at the spectacular view as the city was so high up, and found a tiny restaurant for MORE FOOD!!! My life here really revolves around food... I had an amazing tuscan bean soup, a crostini with pecorino and truffles, a crepe with nutella, and a salad, washed down with wine and limoncello which definitely just tastes like candy. After dinner we went to the main piazza of Montepulciano. It was dark and there was no one there so it was like we were transported back in time to the Renaissance. It was really eerie but also very cool.  

The next morning we got up early and the woman who owned the restaurant fed us so much food. We had tiramisu, a stack of biscotti, cheese, and coffee. Way too much for breakfast. Then we took a train to Cortona which is another hill town that is along one main road with a couple Piazzas. They have a really cool Etruscan museum, and because I am studying the Etruscans in class it was fun to see the items I am studying in real life. The rest of Cortona was slightly dead because it isn't tourist season but it was also really cool to see the view as it was so high up. They also had amazing Pizza (i had a pizza Bianca this time). 

This weekend was really great too. I was supposed to go to Assisi on Friday, but instead I decided to take a day in Florence and cut my hair a bit, about 4 inches!!! 

Then Saturday, my friends and I went on a school trip to Ravenna which was SOOO COOL!!!! 

Ravenna is a really great mix of modern and Byzantine architecture and art and the basilica of San Vitale with its mosaics is so amazing.  I had studied the mosaics there done during the reign of Justinian but each mosaic had been presented in class as an individual piece but I can appreciate them much more now that I have seen them in this context as a whole apse. Also,the mosaics are covered in gold and become brilliantly lit in this specific setting because of the architecture which is not something I would have been able to understand without having been to the church. 

That night my friends and I said we were going to go out to clubs when we got back but we wound up just getting waffles from a gelato place called "Very Good" (its in between the Duomo and the Uffizi) and I got mine smothered in nutella. Seems a little touristy but I don't really care because it is so good. 

On sunday we went to a piazza across the Ponte Vecchio from us called Santo Spirito where they were supposedly having a Vintage sale. Everything is closed on sundays, even restaurants, so it is very hard to find food and our host parents don't provide us food on this day so we wanted to go as we thought there might be some baked goods and cool vintage items. We got there, got some good cheese and bread but the vintage items were really more of a yard sale with a bit of craft sale mixed in... and we had walked a really long way so it was a total bust. However, after that we decided to go to the Accademia which I had not done yet and I was dying to see the David!!! Usually you have to have a reservation to go to see the David I believe, but this day we were able to walk right in with our student passes. I have been trying to sketch a lot since I have been in Florence and we stayed at the Accademia for three hours sketching the David and I am actually pretty proud of the product. 

This weekend is going to be killer. On Friday my Botticelli class gets a private viewing of the Sistine Chapel in Rome!!!!!! And then I head to Venice on Saturday for Carnivale with all my friends from this program in addition  to seeing a whole bunch of my friends who are abroad from USC.  

Siena and Pienza, and Monteriggioni

View of Piazza Del Campo

So I have officially been living in Italy for a couple weeks now and I finally feel like I have my bearings. There is still a lot of the city left to explore and things I want to do within Florence (food to try, monuments to see, etc..) but I feel like I have gotten the majority of the touristy stuff out of my system,  I have settled into a routine and have a pretty good idea of how to orient myself in the city (although its pretty easy if you can see the Duomo from where ever you are.) That being said, life is pretty good right now. Monday- Thursday my classes start at 11:00, I usually get up around 8:30 to start the day off right. Back in the states I could never get up that early for anything. I think while I am here, while it sounds really cliche, I am just excited to get up and see what the day has to offer and don't want to stay in bed. Once I am ready, I set off towards school out of my residential neighborhood and decide which of my favorite cafes I want to patronize that morning. Usually it is a Pasticceria called "Minni" on via Giancomini (on my way to school). This cafe has wonderful quarter sized pastries, I usually get a tiny fruit tart for breakfast and then wash it down with one of the best cappuccinos I have ever had in my life. Prior to being in Italy, I needed a lot of sugar in my coffee which made me feel like a very silly Seattleite. However, coffee here is so good I don't even usually put any in. I am also developing a really bad caffeine addiction I think... I never used to drink coffee on a regular basis but I have not gone a day yet where I haven't had a least one... if not two... cappuccinos. This won't be a huge problem when I come home and can go to local coffee shops like Vita, Vivace, and the Victrola. However, when I have to go back to Los Angeles... coffee there is dismal. And apparently I am turning into a pretentious coffee snob... 

Anyways. 

I go to school and my classes are really interesting and fun. It's  really great to be in the middle of the subjects I am learning about, and also really intimidating. It's one thing to critique and throw out your opinions about art/architecture in class when it is thousands of miles away but when here, when we go on site visits and the art is right in front of you, its can get pretty overwhelming. But that is the amazing part, knowing that the pieces really do exist and being able to take them in for what they actually are in their full form. I also had never seen a real fresco before (if you don't know what a fresco is, it's a painting done on walls from wet plaster that dry to become part of the wall). After having seen a few of them now in churches, I am in complete awe of Renaissance painters. It already boggles my mind the detail and intricacy that goes into a panel painting but these frescos seem to take it a step further as they span entire walls, are on a time frame as they need to be finished before the plaster dries, and also I have trouble hanging things evenly from the wall yet these painters were able to paint scenes with such precision at strange angles. 

I got side tracked, I was talking about classes. 

Then, if I have time I head towards the Duomo to get a panino. My favorite is a prosciutto crudo with mozzarella and lettuce from a Cafe called Coronas. 

After school, I am going to be volunteering by reading "Green Eggs and Ham" to little italian children every so often, also taking a class on Gnocchi that the school offers, and I also joined a gym that I am proud to say I have gone to the past two days I have been a member. 

Last week I went to Siena and Pienza for my first day trip around Italy. That was interesting to be able to compare another city to Florence. Florence is much flatter, and while I complain that florence seems so much less spacious than American cities, Siena is even tighter except for its huge piazza (which is shell /amphitheater shaped and realllllly cool.) Pienza is a tiny little town built by Pope Pius II that was done in only 4 years. It never grew after that because the Pope died so there was no one left to patronize it. It was really cool to see my first small Italian town. They specialize in Pecorino cheese... I definitely got a huge hunk of that and ate it on the bus ride home. 

Over all, life is really great here and I am feeling very independent and happy.

uffizi and surrounding area

my school- villa rossa- bello, no?

First Week

I have created this blog to document my study abroad experience for my family and close friends to stay updated with the events in my life while I am in Italy on the Syracuse University program in Florence. I will be studying Art History and Italian during the week, the classes will be like nothing I have ever experienced before as many of the pieces I will be studying I get to see first hand as opposed to my previous art history courses which could only provide images of the pieces through slides. To see some of these monuments, we will be venturing out of Florence for class to places in Italy like Rome (I get a private tour of the Sistine chapel for one class!), Pompeii, and many others. Also, while I plan on remaining flexible with my travel schedule throughout the semester, there are some trips that I definitely would like to take outside of the country. I would love to go to Greece to see the Island of Rhodes, which I have been told is beautiful and is also where some of my family is from. England is also high up on the list and I plan on going to London as I only was able to visit that city once in the entire month I studied in Oxford  the summer before my senior year in high school. Of course I would love to go back to Oxford too and see it again (also if you happen to be a friend of mine who is traveling Europe and you find yourself in Oxford, go to Ben’s Cookies in the covered Market. It will change your life.) I hope to go to Paris as well and I can’t wait to spend a couple days exploring the Louvre. Hopefully from these trips, classes, and experiences I will have great stories and pictures to share with you all on this blog as well as possible travel suggestions if you are visiting.

 

So that was my brief synopsis of what the blog will be, and at this point I’m just going to go ahead and talk about what has happened with my trip so far.

 

Sunday, January 11/12^th – The 29 Hour Day

            On Sunday, I boarded a plane to San Francisco for the first leg of my flight to Italy. Arm in arm with my friend from high school, Katharine Crnko (her blog is www.kcrnko.org if you want to check it out too), we landed in San Francisco, checked into a cheap hotel by the airport, and decided to take the BART into the city for some Pizza and an Ice Cream Sundae at Ghirardelli Square. The next day we were supposed to take a flight to Paris at 3 with a group of other west coast students from the program and then take a quick connection flight to Florence. We had been advised to get to the airport around 11:30 to check in even though our flight wasn’t until much later, and being the super punctual people we are, Katharine and I decided to get to the airport around 10:45. When we got there we were informed that Air France would not open until 12:00. Because we had so much time on our hands, Katharine and I sat on a bench in front of where Air France should have been and observed as the west coast kids slowly showed up and were confused because Air France still was really late. When they finally opened, most of the group had shown up, around 16 total, and people were beginning to meet mingle. Once we were on the other side of security, we had about 3 hours to wait for our plane so we ate and read outside of our gate while making friends. When we had boarded the plane, we were sitting on the tarmac for about an hour before the captain came on the loudspeaker, saying something in French that ended in “Los Angeles.” None of us knew French but this clearly was not good as we were way up in northern California. As it turned out, the plane was missing a part and they were going to have to fly the part up from LA then install it. Not only were we already late but we were definitely going to miss our connection at this point. We wound up hanging around the airport with the rest of the group for four more hours before boarding for the second time and finally taking off around 9:30 (we were in the airport for a total of 11 hours.) After the grueling twelve hour flight, we landed in Paris but we weren’t quite sure what we were going to do to get to Florence. All 16 of us stormed the Air France counter in the airport while Katharine calmly tried to figure out with their manager what we would do. The airline wound up being able to get us all seats on a flight to Pisa at 8:00 that evening but we were told we had to find our own transportation from Pisa to Florence. We only had to wait about an hour before boarding that plane, and the ride was not bad at all. However, when we finally touched down on Italian soil and went to pick up our bags, we found out that the airline had lost the baggage of a few people and we had to wait to sort it out. Syracuse had arranged for us to take a bus to school from there, so when the bags were sorted out, we got on the bus and made it to our hotel around 1:00 in the morning. We calculated that we had been up and traveling for a total of around 29 hours through all of this chaos. It was a really confusing time but clearly this type of situation brings a group like ours together. 

 

Orientation Week:

The rest of the week has been a whirlwind of trying to meet people, information sessions, trying to get all the correct documents to the right people, orienting myself to the city and trying to fit in with a completely different culture without offending anyone. Luckily, Syracuse’s registration process was ridiculously easy and I wound up getting my first choice classes which include

-       Botticelli: Analysis in Depth

-       A class on Etruscan and Roman art and society

-       A Renaissance Architecture Class

-       And then Italian III which comes with a Culture and Community class

I am extremely excited about the Botticelli class as he is one of my favorite artists but  my Renaissance classes in the past seem to have only mentioned him briefly. For this class we get to go to Rome for the day and have a private viewing of the Sistine Chapel!!!! Also, I am really excited for my Etruscan and Roman class because we get to visit some of the ancient sites such as Pompeii. I have studied ancient art quite a bit and I am so excited to get to experience these spaces first hand. I am clearly very excited to be taking the Renaissance Architecture class as I love the subject and also it will help me understand the city I am in on a deeper level because Florence is really one of the epicenters of Renaissance architecture (I went to the Duomo for the first time today… so amazing!). It will be nice to start Italian up again because I really would like to be conversational by the time I leave. I am currently speaking in a broken mix of Italian/English to my host family but they know more English than I know Italian so, so far I have been taking it easy but I need to push myself more. Also, it’s really interesting because I have been trying to use Italian when I am out to order things or in public but people just assume I am American because I am blonde and will only talk to me in English. I went to buy a hair dryer at an electronic store a couple days ago and I went up to one of the clerks to ask him a question, I said “Scusi, vorrei trovare qualcosa” and the man looked at me and said, “I don’t speak English” which I found strange as I had started the conversation in Italian. Also, when I am walking around with someone, usually Katharine, every time an Italian has come up to us to ask us something, they have come up to Katharine first because I guess they assume she’s Italian and I am clearly an American. I then have to be the one to talk to them because Katharine hasn’t taken Italian yet but the dynamic is really interesting.

 

My Host Family:

My host family is amazing! It is a mother, a father, a 14-year old son, and a grandpa. They live in this beautiful house that is about a 20-minute walk from the school. It is furnished beautifully, has a lot of space, a garden, a veranda, and a great room to watch the flat screen tv in. Katharine is my roomie and we live on the top floor next to the son’s room and we share a common room with him which is really comfortable and has an Ethernet cable and most host families don’t have internet so we are lucky. The house on the inside is very American but on the outside is not really a form that I have seen before. It is very narrow, about 3 stories, and is seamlessly connected to the houses on the sides of it. It is closest to a town house I guess but each house is still very individual. The connected townhouses in this area usually take up an entire city block. While everyone claims to know the best gelato place in the city, my host brother says that the one by our house is the best and I think I believe him because at dinner every night when he is asked if he likes his food he responds with something along the lines of, he likes ice cream. We are going to try that tomorrow I think. I’ll let you all know the name and if it is good when I go because clearly you must know THE best gelato place in the city! However, I am convinced that my host mom makes the best pasta in the city, tonight she made a fresh tomato sauce with penne and it was definitely the best pasta I have had in my life. She also made a bruschetta yesterday that blew every other bruschetta I have ever had out of the water. It’s interesting because the flavors are definitely fairly simple and clean and yet she knows just the right combination to make it taste perfect. Also, if you are a friend from home/ family member you clearly know how attached I am to my dog Rusty. My host family has an adorable cuddly black cocker spaniel named… Black. Not nero which is black in Italian, but black. The dog is very cute around dinnertime and always is hoping for scraps. On our first night,  our host mom put Black in the bathroom so he wouldn’t beg and when the parents went to clean the first course, the son went to the bathroom and let black out. Then we started eating the next course and the parents noticed Black was there and it was quite cute because they sort of fake reprimanded the son and then put the dog back in the bathroom. Every time the parents got up, this happened again, it was definitely like a comedy.

 

Exploring:

I haven’t had much time to explore yet. I don’t have class until 1:00 on Monday so I plan on getting up early, taking a map and just trying to orient myself to the city on my own.  As I previously mentioned, we did see the Duomo today. As an Art History major there are so many works and buildings that I want to see and this was at the top of the list and getting to walk around it and experience it fully was like opening a present. I had a meeting to go to so I couldn’t stay long so I would like to go back and spend more time observing it. Next weekend I think we are going to Assisi or Ravenna .