Saturday, February 20, 2010

Italia (long overdue!!!)

Hello everyone!

Wow...so, I haven't quite met my goal of blogging at least once a week...I apologize to those of you who check this on a regular basis and are wondering if my poor sense of direction permanently got me lost. Just so that I don't have to write about 8 pages of info, I'm going to use this post to talk about Italy, and then tomorrow or the next day I'll post about my first week of classes and our trip to Cartegena today.





I left on a Friday at about 8:15 to meet my friends in town and catch the bus to the Alicante airport. I went with Bella, Sam, Megan, Carmela, Lauren, and Brayan. Yes, the lonely boy among six girls - I don't know that he'll ever travel with girls again. :) Ryanair was not as bad as I had expected, and our flight went smoothly. It was raining when we landed in Bergamo, and on the bus on the way to Milan the rain turned to snow, which was very picturesque as we drove through the countryside. Unfortunately, as we found out, it was not so great to walk in, and we took taxis to our hostel because the snow was more like slush. We got settled (with our two private rooms and our complimentary bottles of wine) and decided that we were very hungry and ready for some authentic Italian food. We walked around in the freezing cold and rain and finally found a place recommended by our hostel. It was 6:30 and they didn't open until 7:30, but I think they saw our desperate faces and let us in to sit at the table until they were officially ready to serve us. Everyone got pizza (except for me) that was HUGE! The food was delicious and the wine cost less than the water. After dinner we stopped by the supermarket and grabbed some - okay, a TON - of chocolate and cookies and such, and then we just chilled in our hotel for the rest of the night.

The next day was clear and beautiful, and we caught a bus into town and got ready to explore. One of the first things that we saw was my most favorite part of all of Italy - Il Duomo. It is the 3rd largest church in the world, and it is absolutely fabulous. So intricate and spectacular - words can't even describe, so I'll just post a few of the pictures that I took, because that will do it more justice than me trying to describe it.



After that we walked around the city a little more - designer stores EVERYWHERE you look! There were some demonstrations happening (since I don't speak Italian, except for "grazie!" and "prego!" I don't know what they were about) and other random things around the city. We kept walking and ran into a castle which I had read about in my travel book and it seemed really neat, so we bought tickets for 1.50 euro to visit all of the museuems, and there were many. There was an artillery museum, a sculpture section, a musical intstruments section, and an art gallery. We got to see a Di Vinci painting that was absolutely beautiful, and the art museum that was there was my favorite art museum of all time. The art was just amazing, and it was displayed well with good lighting. There was much religious artwork, but also some pictures of just plain people. On our way back to the hostel to get ready to eat we stopped for gelato - yes, it was maybe a little chilly. However, there was no way we could go to Italy and NOT get some.





We went out to a restaurant near our restaurant and were pleasantly surprised by the pre-dinner drink, appetizer, amazing pizza, great dessert, and great service, all for an extremely reasonable price. The next morning we made our way to the train station and caught a bus to Verona - my first train ride ever! It was actually a very nice way to travel - very comfortable and quick and didn't make me carsick like buses do sometimes. The weather in Verona was beautiful, and walking around I could tell that it was a little bit more typical Italy: Verona is more of what I think of when I think of Italy than Milan was. We walked around and there had just been a big celebration so there were a ton of people still milling around. We made our way to the place where Romeo and Juliet was filmed - there is a courtyard with the balcony, and a statue of Juliet. It's supposed to bring you luck in love if you rub her right breast, so of course we all had to do it. On the way into the courtyard there is a tunnel with letters and notes all over both sides where lovers and friends write their names. We of course all did that as well. We walked around more and explored the city - which included a huge tower with 368 steps (I climbed them all, thank you very much!) From there we could see the entire city of Verona at sunset - amazing! We also made our way to the Arena, which is a huge circular building where they have operas, I believe. It's usually 8 euros, but on the first Sunday of every month (what do you know?) it was only 1 euro! We had fun climbing the stairs and taking pictures before we decided that it was time for some food. We found a very quaint little place in the plaza and sat outside - our waiter was fun and the food was great! We had a little bit of a mishap on our way home because we accidentally got on the wrong train (the one for rich people, apparently), but luckily we were able to get off before someone checked our tickets, and then we waited for OUR train. Oh, the exciting things that happen! :)









The next day we slept in a little bit and enjoyed our breakfast at the hotel (did I mention we got a free breakfast every morning?), then went out for shopping. As I mentioned, name brand everywhere, but it was fun to explore. We hung out at a little cafe for coffee and lunch, and took the metro to the Navigli district which was supposed to be really great, but it was bitterly cold that day and we were all ready to go home, so we went back to the place we went to the second night for gnocci. The next day we went to a museum that had the cartoon of the School of Athens, and some Di Vinci. My favorite was the exposition of pages from Di Vinci's journal - he was such a genius! I mean...one page would have a list of books he wanted to read on the left hand side and then some geometric drawing on the ride side. His mind seemed like it was always going a million miles per hour, and it was neat to get a glimpse into that.

It was a really fun trip, and I'm very glad that I went. For future reference, five days was probably a little too much for Milan, but I really enjoyed all of the random moments getting to know and having adventures with my travelling companions. I thought that more people would speak English, but we were lucky to have Bella with us because she took three years of Italian in high school and pretty much saved us. I was never more happy to return to Spain and hear Spanish in my life :) I'm going to post a few other random picture of the city and memories below - sorry this has been so long coming - hope you enjoy it!





1 comment:

  1. The church was AMAZING!! I looked at each pictur for like 10 minutes, to make sure I looked at every detail! Thanks for the postcard of it, it's great :) I wish we had a complimentary bootle of wine anytime we rented a hotel room...only in Italy! hah p.s. next time rub your chest twice, once for you and once for me, we know i need some luck in love! haha

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