Vita è Bella!

Wow. I really don't know where to start! This has been one tumultuous, amazing, EXHAUSTING weekend and I don't know if I can do it justice in this post, but I'll try. To start off on a happy note, I've finally figured out how to put pictures into my posts! I've been trying from time to time, but all the webpages are in Italian, so I usually end up clicking the wrong things and trying to get it right through trial and error. But now, for your viewing pleasure, I'll be able to share a few of my favorite pictures from this incredible weekend.

Seven girls. Four cities. Three days.

At 5:02 AM our alarm went off, and I immediately rolled over to face the wall and ignored it. Janelle hit snooze and got up right away, leaving Lauren and I in a surreal state of half-consciousness in our respective beds. Somewhere within the next five minutes, I had one of the best dreams of my life, and it filled me with a surge of happiness that I couldn't even explain. But when 5:07 rolled around and the alarm tolled again, I woke up instantly with a huge smile on my face. I don't know if I've ever woken up so happy in my life! I floated around the room for a while, making sure I had all my things packed, and munched on some crackers and an apple. I packed everything the night before, actually! Family (especially Kristy!), you would be proud. :-) The bus was leaving at exactly 6 AM, so we scrambled down the stairs at about 5:55 and hopped onto the buses. Everyone on the program was taking a scheduled trip up to Sienna, but seven of us were going to go on straight from Sienna to Florence. (Side note -- When you take trips on the weekend, you need to sign out in a red book in case someone calls the Hotel looking for you. Unfortunately, in our haste to get to the bus, most of our group forgot to sign it... Portia, our program director, wasn't very pleased. But she wasn't very mad either... so it worked out alright. Oops!)

As you can imagine, everyone else was very groggy and crabby at 6 in the morning, but I was still in remarkably good spirits! As we set out into the countryside and my classmates began to sleep, I sat and chatted with Lisa, my seat buddy, and watched the world around me slowly come into focus as the sun rose. At first it was pitch black, but then everything began to take on a bluish haze, matching the ever-lightening tone of the sky. Gradually, some streaks of lavendar and pale pink began to emerge on the horizon, and as the sky grew more golden, the scenery grew more beautiful. We reached what seemed to be the heart of the Tuscan hillside right as the sun started to peek up, and I witnessed one of the most beautiful sunrises of my life. On both sides of us, fogs clung to the rolling hills and drifted over us, and grass beneath was rich and vibrant. Little houses and towns were speckled throughout the land, and as the trip went on we began to pass more and more vineyards and flocks of grazing sheep. Eventually the sun rose high enough to stretch through the fogs, golden and hazy. I wish I could have gotten a good picture, but I was on the other side of the bus and nothing seemed to turn out very clearly. Basically, it was beautiful in every way.

It seemed even more unreal, too, because I've always dreamed of visiting Tuscany. Every time I passed a calendar or book in Barnes and Noble, I would stop to page through it and sigh. Yet there I was, right in the heart of it... unbelievable.

Once we arrived, we parked the buses and walked a ways to the first cathedral, where we saw the head of St. Catherine of Sienna, as well as her thumb and some relics from her life. I'll admit, the head creeped me out a little bit. Until now, I haven't actually seen any relics of Saints' bodies, but since I've arrived I've seen quite a few and I'm not sure how I feel about that yet. Maybe I'll dedicate a post to that later. Either way, it was powerful to be there in St. Catherine's home city, and to think of all that she had done during her lifetime. (She was a key figure in the return of the papacy to Rome after the Great Schism, among other things.)

From there, we walked through the steep, hilly streets of the city to the main cathedral, the Duomo. I had to give an oral presentation for Art History there, and was actually the first person to present, which was nice. It was a relief to get it over with right away! I presented a comparison of two bronze reliefs on the Baptistery in the Cathedral, "The Feast of Herod" by Donatello and "The Baptism of Christ" by Lorenzo Ghiberti, both of which were completed in 1427. I could tell you quite a bit about these two works, because they're actually quite interesting, but the for the sake of space, I shall not. The presentation went great though! A few people later told me that they think I should be a teacher. I really had fun with it, and it was a rush, in a way, to be standing there looking at something that I'd seen so many times online right before me. It gave me goosebumps!

We saw the rest of the Duomo, a couple more Museums, and then were set free for lunch at the main Piazza of Sienna. We had our usual (a sandwich and gelato), and just sat relaxing on the square, enjoying the sun and watching the crowds of people scattered around. After exploring a little and buying some fabulous fruit, we headed back to the bus to pick up our backpacks. The seven of us then left the group (at which time Portia, the director, gave a farewell of, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do girls! That gives you lots of leeway!") and hopped onto a bus for Florence. We arrived around dusk, and set off in search of our hotel, which turned out to be in the northeast corner of the city, and kind of a hike. But as we were walking through the streets, I felt exhilirated. I was (literally) backpacking through Europe! And we had no idea where we were going, or what was in store for us, or if we'd even have rooms ready for us! It was an awesome feeling. Incidentally, there was some confusion about the rooms, but we got it all taken care of and just crashed in the rooms. We got split into a room of four and a room of three, unfortunately, and decided to just stay in those groups as we went around Florence. I wish we could have all been together, but it's just too hard with that big of a group. You live and learn.

Kelly, Kelly, and I were actually out the door by 7:45 AM! We were proud of ourselves. We grabbed some breakfast from an Al Fornaio sandwich bar (for me, a scone and some peach juice. Which reminds me, we really should have better juice available in America! The peach and pear juice here is phenomenal. That also reminds me, I haven't been taking pictures of food yet! I'll work on that, Uncle Mike! Mi dispiace.) We went straight to the Uffizi Gallery, and got in right as it was opening at 8:15. Thank God we went so early! That place is amazing, and was completely packed by the time we left around midday. We weren't allowed to take pictures in there, so it's all at the mercy of my memory, but the Uffizi was... incredible. We walked into the very first room and I stood there for a little while, mouth slightly agape, then turned to Kelly and said, "I think we've learned about four of these in Art History!" It was like that throughout the whole thing! We would mosy into room after room, only to discover more works that we've discussed in class or seen in books. My favorite room, by far, was the Botticelli. "The Birth of Venus"!! And my personal favorite, "La Primavera"!!!!!!! We went back to that room three times, I loved it so much. I could sit in front of La Primavera for hours. We saw works by Caravaggio, Donatello, Tiziano, Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael... and more. It was fabulous.

After that, we wandered over to Santa Croce, where we saw the actual graves of Michelangelo, Machiavelli (who wrote, "The Prince" which is what we're studying in-depth in Philosophy right now) and Galileo! I felt odd taking pictures of gravestones, but the monuments were really cool. Santa Croce had a lot of different tombs and a really interesting museum as well. But by this point in the day we were starving, so we went to get some lunch and some gelato.

Which leads me to one of the most horrific experiences of the trip. As many of you know, I have a strange fear of ordering food. Not a phobia in any way, but I get nervous a lot when I have to order food somewhere, simply because of the pressure I feel. It's hard to explain, and seems like something so mundane and unimportant... but I just strongly dislike the moment when the cashier/waitress looks at you expectantly and you still have no idea what you want. So as you can well percieve, attempting to order food here in Italy has been a stretch. But it's good for me! I'm learning to overcome this minor apprehension.

Anyway. So there we stood in the gelato store, surrounded by a swell of people pushing up to the counter... I asked for a cone of gelato, forgetting to ask for a SMALL cone of gelato. This, I now know, is a grave mistake. Once that I will NEVER make again! I picked out my flavors then breathed a sigh of relief, and kind of hummed to myself while idly watching the people around me. The young woman handed me the cone, and I stared down at it in confusion. It was huge!! I haven't seen a cone that big in all of Italy. It was probably 10 inches long, no lie. Most unexpected! I didn't know what to do, because I most definitely didn't want a cone that big, but she couldn't just put the ice cream back... so my mind went completely blank. When the cashier gave me my total (NINE EURO! Or about $10!) I just looked at her with wide, bewildered eyes and a blank stare. I felt frozen and trapped, and like a person stretching out their arms to get handcuffed, I handed her a 10 euro bill. She gave me a euro in change, and I stumbled out the door, stunned. I immediately began to cry, much to the chagrin of the two Kelly's, who began to comfort me. In retrospect, the situation was kind of humorous, but at the time I felt miserable! I stood there holding that massive gelato, tears running down my face, for a couple minutes. I didn't even want to eat that darn thing! But out of spite, I ate the whole thing on the way to the David. It wasn't even that good, but I got my money's worth, dang it! Never again.

But moving on... the David was amazing! He's huge!! I'm glad I got to see him, finally. You can't turn a corner here without seeing David boxers at some corner kiosk! After David, we went to the Duomo, the main cathedral of Florence, which was beautiful. We headed down through Ponte Vecchio, a bridge with tons of gorgeous jewelry shops, then over to Piazzale Michelangelo, where tourists go for the best view of the city. We met up with the other girls and arrived at dusk, and I felt like I was looking in on someone else's dream, or into a movie screen. I can't even convey how beautiful it was... Florence was on my right, and a sunset behind the hills was to my left.

We stood enjoying the view for a while, then went back into the city for some dinner. We ended up eating at a Mexican restaurant, because the girls were craving it. How ironic that I got to eat some of the best nachos I've ever had in the heart of Florence! We went right back to the hotel to get some sleep for the morning. We were completely exhausted... sooo much walking! I've decided that traveling in new cities is the best workout in the world, and being a poor college student is the best diet in the world, so all in all it was a good, healthy outing.

I loved Florence. SO much. I want to go back, and wish I could have stayed longer!

But I know this post is really long, so I'm going to cut it off and do a second part right now.