A Few More Pictures

Proof that mom and I climbed the duomo!

Feast day of St. John the Baptist, patron saint of Florence. They open the main cathedral doors (a rare event) and the Baptistery's Gates of Paradise for a procession. The red fleur de lis on the flag is the symbol of Florence.

Burano, the Venetian island where they make lace. Very colorful houses, very leaning bell tower.

Venice!!

Back in Florence, I'm a little bit obsessed with the Arno.

Mom and I at Piazzale Michelangelo. We had a great visit!

Elba

I have so much to report and I’m weeks behind... maybe I'll try to give the reader's digest version, though that’s generally impossible for me.

This weekend we went to Elba, the island off the west coast of Italy where Napoleon was exiled. It is an absolutely beautiful place, dotted with little beach towns though mostly covered with semi-tropical vegetation and windblown rock faces. We left Florence at 5:30 Friday morning so we could spend the whole day in Elba. We had a 2.5 hour train ride to the port town of Piombino and then an hour by ferry to the town where we were staying, Portoferraio (literally, "iron port"). We walked up a steep hill to get to our hotel, which had a direct view of the sea. The room where I stayed with my friends Indiana and Gabriela even had a little balcony that looked right out on the Tyrrhenean Sea, complete with a table, chairs and an umbrella. Naturally, I started both my mornings in Elba gazing at the water. After we got checked into the hotel and settled we went straight to the beach. Elba has a million little beaches, some of which you can only get to by boat or by hiking down one of the cliffs, so it wasn't weird for our hotel to share a private beach with a few other hotels. The beach was rocky, but the water was warm and the day was cloudless. After a couple of hours my friends Zach and Federico got a little bored, so they rented Vespas and rode to the next town over to see about renting a boat. They called us to say that they would come pick us up at the beach if we would go get something to eat and bring it with us.

Thus began the boating adventure. We had passed a little market on the way to the hotel, so we walked back down the hill. But by the time we got there, it was lunch time and the market was closed. So Indiana and I went on a grand tour of Portoferraio to find a market that was open. We ended up following signs to the Coop, a big Italian grocery chain. It wasn't very much different from an American grocery chain, but of course we didn't know where we were going, so we ran all over to find the things we wanted. We had already told the boys to meet us at a certain beach with the boat, so we hurried there as fast as we could after we finished our shopping. But when we got to the beach, we saw Zach swimming in to talk to the lifeguards. The guy at the boat rental place had told Zach and Federico that they could cut the boat’s motor and row into shore at any beach, but this was apparently not the case at public beaches such as the one we were standing on. One option was to dump a bunch of our stuff on the beach and swim out the considerable distance to the boat, but we all had our cameras and phones, so that idea was vetoed. We spent a couple minutes in complete frustration and some of our group opted out in the process, but soon enough we were on a paddle boat that the lifeguard let us use (for free) to get out to the motor boat with all of our stuff. Federico and Indiana took the pedal boat back to shore, and then swam out to meet the rest of us. Once we got on the boat, the rest of the afternoon was beautiful. We went almost halfway around the island and got to see a bunch of the small towns and beaches, as well as some beautiful sailboats. I got to drive the boat for awhile and was even promoted to First Mate! We put our anchor down for a little while and jumped off the boat into the sea – the water was so clear you could see to the rocky bottom. I have no idea how deep the water was; all I know was that it was much deeper than a swimming pool and I’ve never been in water that deep in my life.

Getting back to shore was not the problem that getting off of it was, and we went back to our hotel, took showers, and went out to eat. I had a great “frutti di mare” appetizer with all different sorts of fish and shellfish, prepared in ways I’ve never seen before. My mussels were cooked traditionally, but my tuna salad had very unique herbs in it, and there was some sort of meat with a sweet sauce and raisins that was absolutely heavenly. My plate even had some octopus on it, I think, which was really good. I had pasta with seafood in it for dinner, but some of the others had the fish of the day, which was brought out on a big cart before it was cooked for them to choose the exact fish they wanted. I would have had no idea what to do, but they got it taken care of and it was some of the best fish I’ve ever tasted. After dinner we agreed to get up pretty early the next morning to head out on a kayaking adventure across the island: we would get up, rent Vespas to go to the other side of the island, then spend some time on one of the sand beaches and take a guided kayaking tour.

Similar to the boating incident, said kayaking adventure didn’t quite occur as planned. Those who were originally planning to go woke up at 8 am as we had planned and went to breakfast. But by the time we had gotten everything together and were ready to head out to the auto rental place to get our Vespas, some other people were awake and interested in coming with – which was fine, but it sort of ruined our organization. So we ended up running down the big hill of our town to the rental place to get there before 10 o’clock and then changing vehicles and driving partners several times. In other words, it was mass chaos for about 20 minutes, which I didn’t handle very well (I don’t deal well with broken plans, as some of you may know). But just like the boating chaos, we finally got it figured out and I ended up on the back of an ATV with my friend Gabriela. The rest of our original group was able to stay together on Vespas, as we originally planned, and we had a beautiful ride to the other side of the island. By the time we got there the kayaking tours were actually full for the day, but we rented paddle boats, played on the beach, had a huge piece of watermelon for lunch, and just generally chilled. To get back to Portoferraio we decided to ride around the island instead of across it. It ended up being a 2 ½ hour drive, but it was a beautiful, cloudless day and the wind in my hair felt wonderful. The road around the island is right along the coast, so we had gorgeous views of the sea the entire ride. I didn’t want to get off the ATV – I wanted to ride and ride forever.

After the ATV adventure came the dinner adventure. We walked to the historic city center to visit the house where Napoleon spent his exile (not too exciting, but beautiful gardens) and then looked around for a place to eat. We read a bunch of menus, but we finally stopped at “Gambero Rosso” (“Red Shrimp”) because their menu was completely in Italian and completely hand-written, meaning they cooked whatever they happened to get fresh that day. We sat down outside and the owner, Giancarlo, who was also our waiter, immediately started joking with us. In total, dinner took us close to four hours, between all the courses we ordered, all the joking around, and all the time spent waiting for our mussels, but it was a great four hours. I think it’s one of those things that’s just hard to describe if you weren’t there – there are so many little stories, like Giancarlo bringing out a live lobster before he cooked it for Gabriela and telling us it was named Hugo – but I will remember the night for the rest of my life. Giancarlo gave us free appetizers and a huge discount, and told us at the end of the night that we were cute. We sat together well at the table, just enjoying each others’ company and talking, he said. It’s an “art” that young Italians have lost, at least according to him. All in all the night just had that magical quality to it that makes something memorable.

Ok, that’s a brief recounting of last weekend’s adventures… I will try to post soon about this week/weekend and my mom’s visit.

A Few Pictures

Pisa, The Mediterranean, Cinque Terre, and the Arno at Sunset

It's a Small World After All (I just didn't think I'd realize it this soon.)

After spending Sunday evening with Penn kids, I've spent most of the last few days with Kyle. He is, like the recent graduates I saw this weekend, on a eurotrip and spending a few days in Florence. Monday night we met up for the first time, grabbed some pizza, then went to the train station to pick up his friend Sara, who will be traveling with him for the next few weeks. I was telling him on the way to the train station that I couln't wait to randomly run into someone I knew on the street, since my meeting with him was my second planned event with friends in Florence. After we got Sara, we all went back to their hostel to look at Kyle's pictures and let Sara rest a bit. We decided to get gelato and left the hostel. Kyle had lead the way there, so I was a little turned around and we soon realized we'd gone the wrong way. We were headed back in the right direction soon enough and I was just starting to get my bearings when I saw a girl on the street who I thought looked like my friend Leah Abrams from Italian and English classes at Penn. I was almost past her when I realized it WAS Leah Abrams. She and her friend were only in Florence for that night and the following day, and we ran into her on a back street at 10:30 pm! Crazy.
Tuesday I met Kyle and Sara for lunch at my favorite sandwich shop, then after I was finished with afternoon class we walked to the Piazzale Michelangelo. It used to house Michelangelo's statue of David, though only a replica stands there now as the original has been moved to the Academia. The Piazza is on the top of a hill south of center city, so visitors have a panoramic view of all the important Florentine sites. It was a beautiful day, and we could see forever, even out to the rolling hills of the countryside. On the way down we walked along the old stone walls of the city for a bit and then sat in a little garden for a few minutes before heading to dinner. I saw Kyle and Sara for the last time at lunch today - they should be on their way to Siena as I type this.

Also, I think I should say a few things about the city of Florence and the culture in general, since I've only talked about specific places.

1. Streets: All of the streets in Florence are cobblestoned. The cobblestones are big slabs of rock, not small bricks like in the United States. This definitely matches the overall look of the city with all of its gothic and Renaissance buildings. So the cobblestones look nice, but there are two problems with them: a) they collect dirt. Whenever I wear sandals, I have to scrub my feet at the end of the day because they are black. The city owns many street cleaning machines that wash down the streets every night, which brings me to problem b) Polished stones are extremely slippery when wet. It's hard to walk wearing rubber-soled shoes after it rains or right after the street cleaners come through. I actually fell down and bruised my tailbone last week wearing sandals on the cobblestones. Ouch.

2. Streets part 2: Most of the streets in Florence are very narrow and therefore one way. Their cars, like European cars in general, are much smaller than American cars, but it still can't be easy to navigate the tiny, twisty streets. Only the small portion of the current city that was the original Roman camp is organized on a grid. The city's sidewalks are narrow too, so most people walk in the middle of the street. Everyone runs out of the way when they hear a car approaching. But there are also thousands and thousands of Vespas in the city, which are impossible to hear coming until they've almost run you over. Vespas don't have to obey traffic laws as far as I can tell, though there aren't many traffic laws, as far as I can tell. There are certain streets that are fully lined with Vespas parked within inches of each other. I would NOT want to drive here.

3. A few more food observations: There are a million places to eat! Florence is now a very toursity city, so every other storefront is a restaurant or "bar." I put "bar" in quotation marks because an Italian bar is a place to eat, not necessarily a place to drink. Many have large counters where you can choose your sandwich, pizza variety, salad, etc., then sit down to eat it (though you can even sit down and order in some of them). Most also serve coffee and espresso drinks as well as water and alcohol. Usually these places don't have menus, just things in a case to choose from. This is because they change what they offer based on what they have available and what's in season. I've been eating as many meals as I can with tomatoes because everywhere I've gone they've been incredibly ripe, read and juicy. Everything served here is extremely fresh. Many places serve cheese for an appetizer: one restaurant we went to served a variety of cheese with honey and fig jam to spread on top. I have never had better cheese in my life than I've had in Florence. The only issue with such a wide variety of food choices is that there are an overwhelming number of places to go. We've started asking our teachers and the hotel concierge where to go, though sometimes we just wander around until we find a place that looks good.

Still trying to firm up plans for the weekend, though we're taking a group field trip to Assisi tomorrow. I've heard that it is one of the most spiritual places in the world, so I'm really looking forward to it.

A Long Post for a Long Weekend

I’m writing at the end of my first full week, and weekend, in Italy. Classes are gearing up and we’re starting to get into the swing of things, which is good because I wasn’t doing so well without a routine. I always forget how much of a creature of habit I am.

Penn in Florence only runs classes Monday to Thursday, so all our weekends are long weekends. Thursday afternoon after class I was attempting to do some homework in the hotel lobby, since that’s the only place in the hotel we have internet. A side note before I start my story: we are staying in a hotel for the entirety of the six weeks. There are only about 40 rooms in the whole hotel, so Penn in Florence is using about 2/3 of the available space. The two brothers who work the front desk are about our age and they love to joke around with us and help us find the best things to do in Florence. I understand why Penn is building a relationship with this particular business – we provide them with consistent booking and they give us great service. Anyway, back to my story. I was quickly convinced to stop working and take a walk because it was beautiful and sunny outside; this “walk” turned into a complete evening out. We (Zach, Federico, Gavriela, Keira and I) wandered around for a while, got gelato, then went to take a break by sitting on one of the bridges. We ended up sitting on the bridge for two hours and watching the sun set over the River Arno. I’m not very good at sitting still, but in this situation I was perfectly happy to sit and talk and enjoy the sunshine. After the sun went down we decided to eat dinner and ended up going to a really cool place that serves typically Tuscan food. I had a pepper stuffed with cheese and a nice plate of pasta, plus bread, wine, and Limoncello, a sweet after-dinner drink (Lemon flavored, of course). Our waiter loved that we spoke to him in Italian and didn’t mind that we asked lots of questions, so he gave us the after-dinner drinks for free. The food in Tuscany in general is simple and fairly healthy. My Italian textbook taught me that this has been a relatively poor area for hundreds of years, so the food culture developed around what farmers could grow and raise and preservatives were rarely used. Tuscany is known for its olive oil, so there’s no need to put expensive (at least traditionally) salt in bread when there’s better flavoring available.

That was Thursday; Friday, a big group of us left for Cinque Terre, on the Lirugian coast (about 3 hours southwest of Florence by train). The Cinque Terre (literally, 5 lands) are 5 small Italian villages on the sea. We stayed in Riomaggiore, which is one of the bigger villages and the entry-point to Cinque Terre. The group booked a hostel for the two nights we stayed – each person only paid about 70 euro total. The hostel we stayed in is actually someone’s summer home, as far as I could tell from the family photos displayed around the apartment. The owners must put the hostel association in charge of renting the apartments to visitors, just as families in the Outer Banks allow realty associations to rent out their houses in the summer. The place where my friends Katie and Michelle and I stayed was really nice – newly renovated bathroom and everything. The only downside to staying in this particular place was the long walk to get it. All the villages are set on the cliffs next to the sea and we were staying at the highest point in Riomaggiore. There were probably 200 stairs plus various other walkways to get to our apartment. But the view was totally worth it. The higher up you are, the better view you have of the sea and the cliffs. The villages are surrounded by terraced farms where the villagers grow olives, lemons and other things, and you get a better view of those with altitude, as well.

The first day we were there we ate lunch, checked into our hostel, then changed and headed for the beach. The only sand beach (though I’m fairly sure the sand is imported) is at the 5th town, Moterosso, a 20 minute and 1.20 euro train ride from Riomaggiore. The air wasn’t very warm, but the water was, so we got to have a nice swim. It was great to hang out on the beach! The guys and girls in our group had made plans for the weekend separately, so the guys headed back to the hostel and the girls went to dinner. Liguria is famous for its pesto, so I had pesto lasagna for dinner – no meat, just lots of cheese and lots of pesto. After dinner we strolled around town and found a place to walk down to the bottom of one of the steep cliffs where the water smacks hard against the rocks. It was an absolutely beautiful night, and I would have been happy to sit there for a couple of hours and just listen to the wind and waves. But we headed back to Riomaggiore so we could wake up early in the morning.

Four of us got up in time to leave for a hike at 8:30 am. The villages of the Cinque Terre are connected by a train and by roads, but also by hiking paths. Between the first two towns, the path is cut into the rock of the cliffs and is relatively flat. It only takes about 20 minutes to walk between the first two, but the trail keeps you close to the sea and affords you a great view. The second leg is a little harder, changing elevation a little bit. Leg two ends with 385 or so stairs organized into switchbacks. I’ve never climbed so many stairs at one time in my life! There isn’t much to see in the second town, so we continued on right away, partially guided by a Native American man who was a little bored and eager to help us. We had the typical Penn State vs. Penn confusion – I guess it can happen anywhere. The third leg starts to change elevation a lot. We traveled up all the stairs on one side of the town only to go down just as many on the other side. The first set was made of brick, but all the other stairs we climbed were mud and stone cut out of the cliffs. It had rained in the morning, and rained a little bit while we were on our way, so it was very slippery! We were surrounded by vegetation, which is strangely tropical for the latitude. There are lots of bright pink flowers and even some cacti, though those might be planted instead of natural. All the while we had beautiful views of the towns we were heading toward and away from, as well as the sea and the forest. I’ve never seen anything like it. We stopped at Village 4 to get lunch and do a little shopping; we were worried that if it kept raining we wouldn’t be able to hike the last and hardest leg. But it stopped raining while we were eating and the sun even came out a little, so we headed for the fourth leg. There’s hardly any flat surface on the fourth hike – we were constantly going up or down stairs or dirt ramps. On the last leg the trail is very narrow in some places. There’s barely enough room for one person to pass, let alone people going in opposite directions. It’s a little scary when you’re on a foot wide path up against the side of the cliff with nothing but some trees on your other side to catch your fall into the sea. But we all made it safely, and it felt so good to start the final descent into Monterosso, a series of hundreds of stairs. We went into the sea again and looked around town, which has a lot of little boutique shops where you can buy jewelry, souvenirs and scarves. Our evening adventures back in Riomaggiore included a late night walk down to the beach under a full moon.

We got up early Sunday morning to head back to Florence. Some of us stopped in Pisa on the way. We’d been told that we didn’t really need more than an afternoon to see Pisa, so we figured we’d check it out. Everyone knows about the leaning tower of Pisa... Well now I can say I’ve been there, though it wasn’t really very exciting. It’s a tower, and it’s leaning. The tower literally puts Pisa on the map – there is nothing else to do there (except go in a museum about the tower). The city itself isn’t very big and it isn’t very nice. Florence has much more interesting architecture and is much more lively. The leaning tower itself isn’t as big as the tower in Florence, and really, if you think about it, the only reason anyone even knows about it is not because of an architectural feat, but an architectural screw-up. We didn’t really feel like paying 15 euro and waiting an hour and a half to climb the tower, so we just kind of looked around the tower complex, which includes a huge cathedral and a baptistery. I wanted to poke around the church, but there was a mass going on, so we really only got to step inside. It looked like there were some incredible frescoes on the walls, but we couldn’t get close to them. I think the baptistery cost money too, so we just headed back to Florence. I’m glad I got to go and see the tower in person, at least.

We got back and I finished my homework for Monday, then I heard from some of the guys I know who just graduated from Penn(Matt Curtis, John Bninski, Josh Veit, Terry Wang). They are eurotripping and Sunday was one of their days in Florence. We went out to dinner and then to my favorite gelateria – I know, it’s crazy that I already have a favorite gelateria. But this place is right next to the river, and we got to watch the sun go down. I’ve already seen the sunset several times, but I don’t think I will ever get tired of watching it. The colors are spectacular, and the reflection of the city on the water is perfect because the Arno is so still. It was a great night. I was missing my usual Penn crew a little bit this week, so this rendezvous was perfectly timed.

We’ll only have three days of class this week – Thursday is a group day trip to Assisi. Who knows where else we’ll end up over the weekend…

First Impressions

I am now in Florence, Italy! It was a long trip over - three hours on the tarmac at Dulles because of thunderstorms. My connecting flight to Florence was supposed to leave only an hour after I landed in Frankfurt, so needless to say, I missed that. I was thinking before I left that the only thing I was scared of for my first trip alone was missing my flight. But I was perfectly capable of handling the situation with the help of a friend I ran into on the plane and my recollection of the Frankfurt airport from my trip to Germany. Maybe I just needed a little bit of a test to gain some confidence in my own traveling abilities. And the best part was that we got bumped up to business class on our flight to Florence because those were the only seats left on the plane. I got shrimp cocktail for lunch on an airplane!

I already starting to get to know the city after a few days. Florence is extremely walkable; nothing is more than 15 or 20 minutes from our hotel on foot. The big tourist attractions are a stone's throw from our hotel. We are literally 30 seconds from the duomo, Florence's main cathedral, finished in the 1300's. I slept too late the first night and my roommates went out on their own, so I went out on my own too. I sat in the duomo for probably 45 minutes, just trying to take in all the architecture and people-watching. The building itself is incredible, from the height of the dome and the paintings decorating it to the intricate patterns in the floor's marble. Today I went inside the Baptistry, also. The Baptistery is right in front of the cathedral and it was actually completed before the cathedral itself. It has an octagonal shape, which our art history instructor told us was to represent the 7 days of creation plus the day of resurrection. The brochure in the Baptistery itself says that the 8 sides represent the 7 days of the earthly week and the eternal day at the second coming. Either way, the 8 sides are reminders of rebirth at baptism. The textbook we're using for art history explains how important public art was for reminding the people daily of their faith and explaining Bible stories to those who couldn't read - a tradition I think is lost on modern people in general. The Baptistery also has Byzantine-style mosaics on its dome. The single dome tells 6 or 8 Bible stories and also has a depction of Christ's judgment. The background of each panel is done in gold tiles - it is truly a sight to see.

I'm doing ok with my Italian. I'm trying to understand/read/speak as much as possible, but it's hard. All the waiters and shopkeepers speak English; even if you order in Italian, they usually answer in English. My Italian professor told us to ask people to speak to us in Italian, and if they don't, to leave. There are a million places to eat and shop in Florence, so we're not supposed to waste our time at a place where the help won't speak to us in Italian. We'll see if it works!
A dopo,
Ellen