We took the train from Nice, and stared at the beauty from the window. 3/29/97: "I just love listening to good music and being on the road. I'm so happy. We snapped photos out of the train. I'm in Italy! I only know how to say the names of pasta and 'ciao' and 'si.' Maybe Ash can be the official asker of this country, since I have made a fool of myself so far."
We spent a lot of time in Italy, seeing a lot of sights and eating a lot of good food. We moved from francs to lira, and only got pick-pocketed once. Yes Jules. I found myself wishing that I could speak another language, but we got by. Americans stick out enough already (our fleeces didn't help), so we tried a few words. Prego. Binario. Bigletto. Or was that bigletti?
We started Italy off the right way, with the five villages of Cinque Terre. All the guidebooks said that it was the best secret in Italy, but there you have it--there were people everywhere. We managed to find a place to stay because Jules recognized a guy he knew from Wesleyan. We were psyched to be able to stay, instead of bumming on the beach or backtracking to LaSpezia.
| 3/30/97: "We walked from Monterosso to Vernazza, and it was absolutely beautiful. Every time we turned the corner, we'd exclaim something about the water or being on a boat. We climbed up and up on the cliffs, up stairs, through terraced lemon and olive groves. The green leaves against the turquoise sea, the sun beating down on our backs..." | |
"...I love the different colors of the buildings, all with green shutters and clothes hanging on lines. We went to Manarola and had gelato. I love this place. It is one huge brochure, and we were in it!" |
Another random encounter: I was talking on the phone with my brother to wish him a happy birthday, and noticed a guy with a Williams hat waiting for me. His name is Jeremy Wilmer, he's in my class, and he stayed with us that night.
| We stopped by Pisa on the way to Florence, but the train was so crowded that we couldn't sit down. 3/31/97: "We went to Pisa and saw the leaning tower, and that was strange--I had seen it so many times as a tourist picture, as an icon of Italy, that we just saw it, like, 'there it is.' We debated about what made it lean; I guess the engineers didn't realize that the soil couldn't support the weight of the tower. So it leaned! Oops."
Everyone there did the dumb leaning-tower pose, as if they were holding the thing up. We resisted the temptation. We were learning. And we didn't stick around--there isn't much in Pisa except the expected. |
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Florence promised me a lot of excuses to recall things that I have learned at Williams. For example: 3/31/97: "I saw Ghiberti's doors to the Baptistry, and tried to talk about Brunellschi's Duomo. I pretty much failed..."
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From Florence, we took a day trip to visit San Gimignano. My housemate, Amy, told me I had to go there. It is a little town on a hill in Tuscany, but there were a lot of tourists there. 4/3/97: "It was neat, and very old, but there were a lot of tourists there." Did you catch the fact that there were a lot of tourists there? "The stores alternated between vino, porcelain, wilb boar sausage and salami, and cheesy souvenirs. It's really hot out here and the sun is beating me into the ground. We're going to Siena because we have nothing better to do..."
Little did we know, Siena turned out to be one of my favorite places. The most random stops often turn out to be the most rewarding.
"...My mind keeps wandering from future to future--Greece, Prague, 60 Spring Street, Becky and Sarah, graduation, Rome, back in London, the summer. Now tell me this--why have I been craving a can of baked beans?"
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4/3/97: "I'm in the Duomo in Siena right now. It is amazing, with striped black-and-white marble on every column. Faces line the clerestory. The dome is coffered in dark blue, with eight-pointed stars. The floor is elaborate. We just stumbled into this place, and everywhere I look it is striped, carved, gilded, painted, detailed. Even the pulpit is amazing. I love it when we have no idea what we're doing and we just end up in a place like this. It makes me spiritual to be in here--not religious, just contemplative and in awe." | I love this cathedral! |
I think that Rome had a church every ten steps. We walked a lot, from 8 am to 10 pm one day, stumbling upon ruin after ruin, barely avoiding being killed by taxes and scooters. Here is a quick guide to what we saw in Rome. Those of you who took Art History 101 should appreciate this...
| Site | Description and Comments |
|---|---|
| Santa Maria Maggiore | Elaborate gold ceiling, rich marble tomb, bring a skirt and avoid putting it on right in front of the church entrance. |
| San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane | Barromini, a Baroque one with wavy front and an oval dome. |
| San Andrea al Quirinale | Bernini, short axis of oval to altar, drama, round steps. Right down the block from San Carlo. |
| Santa Maria della Vittoria | Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa. Awesome. |
| Spanish Steps | Crowded. People flirting everywhere. |
| Trevi Fountain | You're supposed to throw the coin over which shoulder? |
| Vatican Museums | Apollo Belevedere, Laocoon, Raphael's Transfiguration and rooms, Caravaggio's Deposition, and...oh yes, the Sistine Ceiling. |
| St. Peter's | Micahelangelo's Pieta, Bernini's Baldocchino and Tomb of Alexander VII, St. Peter's rubbed-off toe, the dome. |
| Vatican guards | nice outfits |
| Castel sant'Angelo | "A little hideout for the popey as he ran along his wall." |
| Pantheon | Arches within the outer walls to hold up the weight of the dome. Really old. |
| Coliseum | Four marriages, and a lot of cool places to store animals and men. |
| Arch of Constantine | With all kinds of stuff ripped from everywhere else. I guess it demonstrated his ties to the glory of ancient Rome. |
| San Pietro in Vincoli | Michelangelo's Moses. Lots of people flashing pictures. |
| Tempietto | Bramante's cute and harmonious little temple. |
| Campo dei' Fiori | yummy market! |
| Capitoline Hill | It was covered in huge sheets. Might have been cool. |
| Ashley's leather bag | She bought it in Florence, and it smelled horrible. |
| 4/5/97: "Random awe-inspiring moment--the Sistine Ceiling. It would have been wonderful to see it all by myself, to lie on the ground and look up. I wonder if the Pope ever does that when all the tour groups clear out?" | |
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4/6/97: "We became bread detectives. We kept seeing people with loaf-shaped packages emerging from back alleys. We wanted some bread. We needed some bread. And we found it--in a dark bakery. We brought it out next to the river and I stuffed it....When I came to, out of my bread coma, we walked to St. Peter's piazza and watched the pidgeons fly and the hreds of nuns stroll by, arm in arm." |
| 4/6/97: "We made our way over to the Trevi Fountain, but ended up having tea in front of the Pantheon. It was funny, sitting in front of a 200-year-old structure, chatting and getting ripped off. L6000! We also saw some other fountain today, and I envisioned the Pope shooting out of one of the openings from his private network of waterslides." |  |
And here is one last shot in Rome, before you take off to the next destination...Ash and Ev at the Coliseum, in awe.
Jules had been obsessing about Venice for the entire trip because he had studied it in his theater class. We stayed in Padova, and had an interesting conversation with a guy on the train on the way there. 4/16/97: "A guy named Will from Florida started talking to us. He is stationed as an Air Force weatherperson in Brindisi. We chatted about what the military is like, and he said, 'laid back.' He did it to get out of his hick-town. He'd never been on a train before; he didn't know what a hostel was."
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4/17/97: "I like Venice because there aren't any cars anywhere--all the 'streets' are quiet, with only the chatter of people and the random string quartets playing 'Imagine' by John Lennon." We wandered around, "enjoying getting lost," as the book said we should do. We saw the Piazza San Marco, the Duchal Palace, the Bridge of Sighs, Palladio's San Giorgio Maggiore, and the Accademia, which had a lot of Tintoretto, Veronese, Carapaccio, and Titian.
In Padova, we stayed at the local hostel, and stopped by the Capella della Scrovegni to check out Giotto's frescoes. They were amazing, but I couldn't remember all those stories...I'm just not into the Bible, I guess. |
We all called Brindisi "the technical butt of Rome." It consisted of ferry agencies to lure people to Greece, the former Yugoslavia, Albania, and other safe and appealing places. WARNING: DO NOT eat at the Cafe Riviera. We were cautioned, but we forgot. Brindisi sucks. But we did have an adventure on the way there!
I got kicked out of my seat three times because I didn't make reservations. We barely had the money to pay the supplement for being on a fast train, the the lady across from us scolded us. The server spilled OJ all over Jules, and then tried to placate him by giving him piles of nasty marzipan candy. The lady across from us was named Benedetta, and she made me right it down.
Now, let's go to Greece. Time for a hellish ferry ride!
Or, you could just follow your interest in Italy into the world of the Internet!