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The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the train before.
~ G.K. Chesterton
The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the train before.
~ G.K. Chesterton
Friday, October 17, 2008
Here we go...
I leave tomorrow for fall break! I'll be heading to Verona, London, Milan, and Perugia during my break, so if you want to talk to me or feel like reading some new blog entries....I won't be here and there won't be any. Sorry. Expect lots of updates and pictures once I get back though. I'll be staying with Vanessa's family when I'm in Verona so that will be really fun. I'll be staying with KC, Hanna, and Julie when I'm in London so I'm really excited to have playtime in the city with them. I'll only be in Milan for a day and a half, so I'll probably only do the Duomo, Duomo museum, La Scala, and window shopping. Then I'm coming back to Arezzo on Friday night and going to Perugia the next day for the CHOCOLATE FESTIVAL. That's all.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Oops My Bad.
So I haven't written for quite some time (oops, my bad!) and now I'm writing because I really do not want to read Aristotle right now. Or do any other kind of work right now. But I just had a moment where I looked at our calender for the upcoming week and out of habit flicked through the rest of the packet with the calender for the rest of the semester in it...and we don't have much time left! I don't know..I just got this really weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I don't want to have to say goodbye to anything I have here...the villa, my classes, or Italy itself, but most of all I don't want to have to say goodbye to my friends. There are a lot of people here that I'm going to miss horrendously when December 14th rolls around, and I don't even want to think about what's going to happen when I have to say goodbye to them.
I went to Venice last weekend, which was pretty gosh dern awesome. First of all, it was organized by the Accademia, which means it was free-tastic (and by free-tastic I mean transportation and housing was free, which isn't too bad). The only thing I had to pay for was food, which I surprisingly didn't spend too much on. Let's recap- we left really early Friday morning and got there around midday. It took us awhile to find our hostel because 1) Venice is rather difficult to navigate and 2) Kevin was leading us. After we checked in we had the majority of the afternoon off, so some friends and I wandered around, got some panini, and window shopped for masks. We wandrered right on over to St. Mark's Square, which is huge and amazing and the Basillica is even more astounding. Venice was part of the Byzantine Empire, so the architecture in completely different than anything I had ever seen before. San Marco is beautiful, but we didn't have time to go inside because we had to meet up with the rest of the group to go to the Goldoni Museum. Hence more trekking around the island of trekkers.
We (finally) found the rest of the group at the Chiesa dei Frari and headed over to the Goldoni Museum, which was okay. It was small (it used to be his house) and I guess only interesting if you do theatre (Goldoni wrote plays for Commedia troupes). Anyway after that Liza, Ann Marie, adn I went to the Chiesa di Frari, which was beautiful. It's where the tombs of Monteverdi (a composer), Titian (Renaissance painter) and Canova (sculpter) are, so it as really cool to see their tombs- Canova's was beautiful and apparently originally built for Titian. Crazy. Anyway funny story- I couldn't remember who Canova was at first (I recognized the name) but then I realized that he did one of my favorite sculptures and that I've used it in one of my photoshop thingies.
Silly, huh?
Anyway after the Chiesa we got dinner, which was really good if not expensive. It was pretty late by this point so we headed back to the hostel, which took quite some time becasue it's Venice nd nearly impossible to navigate. Anyway that was day one.
Day two (Saturday) meant early morning wake-up and class. We took a vaporetto (water taxi) over to Giudecca, which is an island next to Venice that is infinitely less toursity- like, people actually live there and don't depend on tourists to make money. Class was cool- it was really nice to be in a different space, which I think brought a different energy to the group. After that a few of us hopped on a nother vaporetto witht he intentions of going to the cemetary but, alas, the cemetary was closed so we ended up on Murano, which is famous for it's glass industry. We didn't stay there long, only long enough to go in a few shops and eat some gelato. After that we heded back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. Vanessa and I decided we didn't want to go out with a big group, so instead we had girl date, which was fun. We jut kind of walked around and ended up at various toursity poitns (mainly the Rialto and St. Mark's). Then we sat on the steps that led down into the canals and had a relly nice chat about life. Yay for girl dates.
Sunday meant semi-early wake-ups and trudging over to St. Mark's with the eexpectations that we wouldn't be able to go in due to Mass being held. Much to our surprise, there was a line of people outside, so we jumped on the line too and realized that it was the line for the museum, which is located on the upper levels of the Basilica. It was a really wonderful experience, because not only could we go out on the balcony, which gave us a really great view of the Square, but since Mss was going on we coul dhear the choir singing too. It was really beautiful to be able to hear the choir and stand there in awe of the mosaics that cover the ceiling of the Basilica- that memory will definitly stay with me for the rest of my life.
Later that night we took a train over the Padua, where we spent the night and went to the Mask Museum the next day, which was pretty snazzy since it's filled with masks made by Sartori, who was like THE mask-maker of all mask-makers. I just wish that we had been more time to walk around and actually enjoy the masks rather than having to listen to some woman talk about them(in Italian, which half the group doesn't understand) for two hours. Anyway the masks were still pretty cool but I was ready to get home after that. The only thing I was really upset about was that I didn't get the chance to go to the Basilica di San Antonio, which I really wanted to go to because 1) it's pretty and 2) half of my family is named after him. Anyway suffice it to say I was really glad to get back on the train and sleep for a little bit on the way home.
Other than Venice not much has happened inthe past week. Marathon Commedia has been fun if not really frustrating, but I just keep telling myself it's something to work towards. Additionally, I just posted a LOT of pictures so here are the links.
Facebook: Florence1, Florence2, Florence with Pete & Zach, Scavenger Hunt
Webshots: Florence with Pete&Zach, Venice (only half of which are currently up- I am now in the process of uploading the rest).
Additionally, my death rattle of a cough is finally starting to go away. And it only took about four weeks.
I went to Venice last weekend, which was pretty gosh dern awesome. First of all, it was organized by the Accademia, which means it was free-tastic (and by free-tastic I mean transportation and housing was free, which isn't too bad). The only thing I had to pay for was food, which I surprisingly didn't spend too much on. Let's recap- we left really early Friday morning and got there around midday. It took us awhile to find our hostel because 1) Venice is rather difficult to navigate and 2) Kevin was leading us. After we checked in we had the majority of the afternoon off, so some friends and I wandered around, got some panini, and window shopped for masks. We wandrered right on over to St. Mark's Square, which is huge and amazing and the Basillica is even more astounding. Venice was part of the Byzantine Empire, so the architecture in completely different than anything I had ever seen before. San Marco is beautiful, but we didn't have time to go inside because we had to meet up with the rest of the group to go to the Goldoni Museum. Hence more trekking around the island of trekkers.
We (finally) found the rest of the group at the Chiesa dei Frari and headed over to the Goldoni Museum, which was okay. It was small (it used to be his house) and I guess only interesting if you do theatre (Goldoni wrote plays for Commedia troupes). Anyway after that Liza, Ann Marie, adn I went to the Chiesa di Frari, which was beautiful. It's where the tombs of Monteverdi (a composer), Titian (Renaissance painter) and Canova (sculpter) are, so it as really cool to see their tombs- Canova's was beautiful and apparently originally built for Titian. Crazy. Anyway funny story- I couldn't remember who Canova was at first (I recognized the name) but then I realized that he did one of my favorite sculptures and that I've used it in one of my photoshop thingies.
Silly, huh?Anyway after the Chiesa we got dinner, which was really good if not expensive. It was pretty late by this point so we headed back to the hostel, which took quite some time becasue it's Venice nd nearly impossible to navigate. Anyway that was day one.
Day two (Saturday) meant early morning wake-up and class. We took a vaporetto (water taxi) over to Giudecca, which is an island next to Venice that is infinitely less toursity- like, people actually live there and don't depend on tourists to make money. Class was cool- it was really nice to be in a different space, which I think brought a different energy to the group. After that a few of us hopped on a nother vaporetto witht he intentions of going to the cemetary but, alas, the cemetary was closed so we ended up on Murano, which is famous for it's glass industry. We didn't stay there long, only long enough to go in a few shops and eat some gelato. After that we heded back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. Vanessa and I decided we didn't want to go out with a big group, so instead we had girl date, which was fun. We jut kind of walked around and ended up at various toursity poitns (mainly the Rialto and St. Mark's). Then we sat on the steps that led down into the canals and had a relly nice chat about life. Yay for girl dates.
Sunday meant semi-early wake-ups and trudging over to St. Mark's with the eexpectations that we wouldn't be able to go in due to Mass being held. Much to our surprise, there was a line of people outside, so we jumped on the line too and realized that it was the line for the museum, which is located on the upper levels of the Basilica. It was a really wonderful experience, because not only could we go out on the balcony, which gave us a really great view of the Square, but since Mss was going on we coul dhear the choir singing too. It was really beautiful to be able to hear the choir and stand there in awe of the mosaics that cover the ceiling of the Basilica- that memory will definitly stay with me for the rest of my life.
Later that night we took a train over the Padua, where we spent the night and went to the Mask Museum the next day, which was pretty snazzy since it's filled with masks made by Sartori, who was like THE mask-maker of all mask-makers. I just wish that we had been more time to walk around and actually enjoy the masks rather than having to listen to some woman talk about them(in Italian, which half the group doesn't understand) for two hours. Anyway the masks were still pretty cool but I was ready to get home after that. The only thing I was really upset about was that I didn't get the chance to go to the Basilica di San Antonio, which I really wanted to go to because 1) it's pretty and 2) half of my family is named after him. Anyway suffice it to say I was really glad to get back on the train and sleep for a little bit on the way home.
Other than Venice not much has happened inthe past week. Marathon Commedia has been fun if not really frustrating, but I just keep telling myself it's something to work towards. Additionally, I just posted a LOT of pictures so here are the links.
Facebook: Florence1, Florence2, Florence with Pete & Zach, Scavenger Hunt
Webshots: Florence with Pete&Zach, Venice (only half of which are currently up- I am now in the process of uploading the rest).
Additionally, my death rattle of a cough is finally starting to go away. And it only took about four weeks.
---
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
~ Thomas Jefferson
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
~ Thomas Jefferson
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