Today.

Today I woke up early for my 8am class. It was canceled. Then I went home, ate breakfast, drank tea, read, and fell asleep until it was time for my next class. Then I played frisbee with Frank and Allison. That is all.

Elizabeth and I get a taste of Italy 1/4

Alrighty--so this is going to be a long post. If you just want to look at pics, scroll down.

There's so much to be said (all good!) about our (first?) trip to Italy. I'm going to preface it all by saying that Elizabeth and I were only there for 29 hours, and only saw two cities. Actually, we spent just about the same number of hours on an overnight bus to get there and back. The bus ride was as nice as an overnight bus ride could have been. Finding a good position to sleep on a bus is an art. My favorite involved having my left foot posed on my right knee, with my left elbow resting on my left knee, and my curled up left wrist holding up my head. Easier done than said. You should try it. But not for a fourteen-hour bus ride. We rode through Marseille, Toulon, Nice, Turin, Milan, all to get to the lovely Bologna. At times the bus felt more like the Polar Express because in the middle of the night I'd wake up, look out the window, and find that we were surrounded by snow-covered peaks. There were two bus drivers who switched about every 2-3 hours all the way from Barcelona to Bologna and back. But enough about the bus.

You might be wondering how Elizabeth and I came to choose Bologna and Ravenna to visit out of all the lovely Italian cities. This is going to make us seem like huge dorks (debateable if we really are or not), but honestly, we chose these cities because we had learned about them in classes we had taken freshman year. Ravenna was the star of a Byzantine art history class that Elizabeth had taken, and Bologna often came up in my favorite class of my college career thus far, Botany and Anatomy in the Renaissance. This worked out to our extreme advantage, as Elizabeth could relive everything she had learned by telling me about the gorgeous mosaics we saw in Ravenna, and I could do the same by telling her more than she ever wanted to know about the anatomical theater in Bologna. We decided that for future trips (Loire valley, mayhaps), each of us would study up on one landmark so that we could play tour guide for the other. (Alright, so it's not debateable--we are huge dorks.)

I'm going to be honest in saying that I had not even heard of Ravenna before Elizabeth saw that it was close to Bologna, and therefore a must-see for our short northern Italy trip. The bus arrived in Bologna at around 11am on Friday, we stopoped by our hotel, and as the room was not ready yet, we wasted no time and set out for Ravenna. One train ride later, we were enjoying the quaint little town that is Ravenna and all that it has to offer. We saw mosaics in Apollinaire nuovo, San Vitale, its adjacent mausoleum, and Apollinaire en classe. Elizabeth taught me all the goodies. In San Vitale, for example, she pointed out to me one of the first instances of Christ represented as a lamb, before the church decided that it was an iconographic no-no. The mosaics were also chock-full of representations of the four evangelists and borders that liken to Muslim geometric designs. As Elizabeth explained, Byzantine art is not often thought of as colorful, and the figures are often seen as rigid and dull. This is not at all the case with the mosaics. The tiny bits of glass have held up their color very well, and many of the people portrayed had billowy robes. The overall effect of the mosaics from far away was a velvety texture, although I held Elizabeth back from touching the roped-off masterpieces to confirm or deny this observation. We did, however, question if any of the artists had seen a real sheep. They are a little wolf-like. Some of the ways they tried to display depth perception and shadows were cute. Better than I could do. Elizabeth also taught me what a squinch is--basically handing me on a silver platter my new favorite word and secret weapon for Scrabble. But I won't bore you with a definition.

Post continued in part two. . .

A square in Ravenna

San Vitale

Unfortunately, this is one of the best pics of the mosaics that I have as it was not permitted to use flash.

Street in Ravenna

Our super sweet hotel room

Italy 2/4

By the time Friday night rolled around, we were very relieved to see the approaching bus that would take us out of the ocld rain in Ravenna to take us to the train that would get us back to Bologna. We finally checked into our hotel, Il Guernico, and to my surprise, it was both the nicest and cheapest hotel I have ever stayed in. "How is this possible?" you ask. We split the bill 50/50, each half being only 17€. The recently re-done hotel has everything to offer: Wifi, a 5€ breakfast buffet, bikes to rent, etc. Our personal room was ridiculous in the best of ways: two comfy twin beds, flat-screen tv, heated towel rack, and the cherry on top--a shower with one of those huge flat showerheads that just dumps water on you and in the middle of that, a light that bea,ed down in changing colors. After the discovery of these features, Il Guernico was deemed The Whimsical Pleasure Palace and priceless works of art all over Bologna were described as having palettes that include Magic Shower Blue or Magic shower intermediary color between red and indigo.

It's amazing how many churches you can explore in a short amount of time. On top of the three churches in Rabenna with mosaics and a mausoleum in Ravenna, Elizabeth and I entered at least three more in Bologna: San Petronius, San Domenico ( seat of the Dominican order; home to some of Michaelangel's works, and where Mozart once gave a concert), and some church nearby our hotel. San Domenico was probably my favorite. When I first stepped in, I was too much in awe to move for about two minutes, and after that, I could only just barely restrain myself from running all around it. As morbid as I am, I spent a lot of time staring down the church's relic, somebody's skull. Beneath it there were three different saints' names written, one of which was St. Cecilia, my confirmation saint. So maybe that was her skull or there was another relic in the skull case that I didn't notice that belonged to her. We would have liked to enter Santo Stefano, whose architecture includes 7 different styles, but it was closed when we got to it and did not open up again until too shortly before we had to be on our way back. We did get a chance to explore the antique market just ouside of Santo Stefano, though, and we were very tempted to buy some beautiful old, Italian and otherly foreign jewelry.

Bologna, in general, left me awestruck. The city is what happens when a medieval metropolis continues to thrive up until contemporary society. Famous for the still-standing two medieval towers, Bologna is believed to have been covered in like structures, aptly named The Forest of Towers. I cannot recommend this place enough. Granted, I have yet to see the more popular traveling destinations of Rome, Venice, Florence, Pisa, etc., our February visit was practically void of other tourists. I think I heard another group of native English speakers only once--but don't let that scare you. Every person we spoke with either recognized our looks of confusion and tried speaking English with Elizabeth and I, or very nicely and slowly told us something that we couldn't aurally understand but, with the aid of Italian hand gestures, was crystal clear.

Keep reading--more in the next post down!

Along the Via dell'Independenzia

The market where we bought canolis, olives, and marzipan. Not sure why there's a French flag there. I think my camera likes to mess with colors. It's probably an Italian flag.

Not a great pic, but it shows a little bit the liveliness of the place.

Neptune!

Typical.

Italy 3/4

Bologna is home to the oldest operating university in Europe founded in 1088. Past students include Dante and Petrarch. One of the buildings can be found in the Palazzo dell'Archiginnasio, location of the famed anatomical theater that I had been itching to see since that class I took freshman year. The building is covered in crests of alumni. Elizabeth and I were absolutely giddy looking at all of them. As we stared at the ceiling giggling to ourselves, one of the Italian guides approached us. Although we couldn't understand anything he said, we followed him to a room that he unlocked just for us. This room was huge (I'm not good with numbers, and now that I'm trying to learn the metric system, I can't really describe things in terms of feet anymore either). The walls were once again covered with crests and thousands of books. The guide showed us a tile explaining that this room was created in commemoration of the opening of one of Rossini's operas. Or something like that. Then, the guide opened up another magical door. This time, we were not allowed in, but we got to take a peak at this never-ending hall with fullystocked ancient bookshelves and, again, the crests that lined the walls. Next, it was finally time to see that anatomical theater. Most of it was destroyed during an air raid in WWII, but it has been completely restored. The walls display stautes of Galen, Hippocrates, and other important figures in medicine. I tried my best to creep out Elizabeth with what I have learned about public dissections back in the day, and I think I succeeded.

Despite all of the sights in Bologna I have hertofore described, Bologna is most well known for its food, and Elizabeth and I could not bring ourselbes to ignore this. After a long but delightful day Friday, we headed out to a local pizzeria, where I had pretty much the best pizza I have ever had in my life ( sorry, Bazbeaux, I'm still a loyal customer, but you are no match to Jari's in Bologna). We conquered two pizzas, one with sautéed eggplant and ricotta, and the other with artichokes (these did not taste like they came out of a can or jar opened up in the middle of nowere, Indiana), wild mushrooms, and ham. Yum. I'm drooling on my computer. Saturday, we started the day off right with pistachio canolis for breakfast from a Sicilian stand at a market. For lunch, we headed out to Scalinatella, a restaurant recommended by Lindsay, a friend of mine who I met in that favorite class of mine and who studied in Bologna all of last year. The pasta was sublime. I got the special with mussels, clams, octopus, and broccoli. The parsley that topped it off was so fresh it tasted like it was still growing on the plant. Of course, we could not bear to leave without having had some real Italian gelato. Elizabeth got two different kinds, one was banana, and the other remains a delicious mystery to us both, although we did discern that it contained chunks of nutella. My flavor was also a bit of a mystery, except I was able to identify that it contained chunks of nougat. Before we left, we also made time to buy goodies for home--tortellini (Bologna is tha birthplace of both tortellini and Bolognese sauce), a mixture of olives and sun-dried tomatoes , and marzipan in the shape of shrimp and squid.

You're almost done. . . just one more post to go!



Basilica of San Domenico

Back of San Petronius (not a great pic, but look at the height of the passersby to get an idea of the size of this place. . .)

The hall that the Italian guide showed to us

Inside the anatomical theater. Here, a professor would read the text of Galen out loud while the anatomist would dissect.

Outside the Palazzo dell'Archiginnasio, where the library and anatomical theater are

Italy 4/4

Despite the obvious language barrier, Elizabeth and I had some interesting conversations with locals. They usually involved short sentences or phrases repeated over and over until the exchange of words was about the length of a normal conversation. Example ( cute old Italian man at the pizzeria): "America big. Italy not so big. Just *makes gesture with hands to indicate small.*" Another good conversation with people who worked at the train station: "Obama good. Bush no good." Chuckles ensued.

If you know me, you probably know I hate talking about the weather or that I use it, like most, as a crutch to wedge myself out of awkward silences. It goes without saying, then, that me mentioning anything about the weather at all means it was exceptional. When we left Aix, it was cold and rainy. When we spent Friday in Ravenna, it was still sprinkling, but we were inside churches all day anyway. We awoke Saturday in Bologna to the sound of rain on the roof, which made us slightly displeased. As soon as we set foot outside the hotel, however, the sky cleared up and the umbrella I made Elizabeth stick in her purse was all for naught. After our day in Bologna, we walked back to the bus station to begin the trek back to Aix, and as soon as we were under the shelter of the stazione, it began pouring. We reveled in the meaning of it all, and I turned to Elizabeth saying, "Now I bet we're going to see a rainbow or something disgusting like that." And then Elizabeth immediately points out to our right a double rainbow. The bus pulls up, one fo the drivers asks us in Spanish what we make out to mean, "Hey, you girls were on our bus on the way here, weren't you?", we confirm the recognition, and we are on our way.

Give yourself a big pat on the back if you read this entire post! (Can't imagine anyone made it through besides my mom--so I hope you enjoyed it, Mom.) Sorry for the rambling, but it was one of my best weekends in Europe. Stay tuned for next week! I'm going on a trip with my program to the Luberon mountains.


Piazza Maggiore

Santo Stefano

The Two Towers

San Petronius

The double rainbow

Excursion with our program

La vie. This is a pretty inclusive painting. Anything anyone would want.

Joan Miró

Calder mobile.

Last weekend, our program took us on a little excursion to St. Paul-de-Vence, Vence, and Antibes. In St. Paul-de-Vence, we went to the Fondation Maeght, created by a couple who dedicated their lives to art and those who create it. Over in Vence, we saw the Chapelle de Rosaire, which is a lovely little chapel completely designed by Matisse. Last stop was Antibes, where we went to the Musée de Picasso. All in all, it was a good day for me to appreciate art.

Preview for next weekend: Elizabeth and I bought overnight bus tickets to Bologna, Italy! We'll be there for just a couple of days, one of which we hope to catch a train over to Ravenna and see some byzantine art at its finest.

St. Paul-de-Vence

Calder is a big deal here. Stabile.

This museum had a pretty sweet garden.

The Maeghts (sp?)

The secret garden we found that was gated off. Boo.

St. Paul-de-Vence/Antibes

St. Paul-de-Vence

Me, Monica (IU), Carmen (IU), Katie (U. Mich., Iceland friend), Kendall (UW, Iceland friend), Sara (UW), and Whitney (UW)

I could live there.

Antibes outside le Musée de Picasso