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.
No comments:
Post a Comment