A weekend in Venice

Venice! One of the smaller canals- 12 June 2010

Venice was, all in all, a pretty magical place to visit. It was very different from Rome or Florence, although there were a lot of similar things. There were lots of tourists, gelato shops and stores full of scarves and earrings. Still, though, there was such much Murano glass and so many Venetian masks everywhere you looked.

We got there on Friday afternoon, to discover that there was a transportation strike and the vaporetti (water buses) only went from the Rialto Bridge and back again. The few boats that did go were packed full, and it was one of the hottest days since we've been here. Luckily, our hotel was relatively close to the Rialto, and we got there at more or less the same time we would have anyway.

My parents under the loggia in front of the Doge's Palace. 11 June 2010.

We went to the Doge's Palace on Friday afternoon, where we looked at lots and lots of weapons and paintings and preserved clothing. After the Palace, we walked across town to a recommended restaurant named Il Nono Risorto. I think it was the best pizza I've ever had. Delicious! Before dinner, while waiting for the restaurant to open, we looked at a glass shop across the street- lamps and earrings and necklaces and earrings. It was beautiful.

After dinner, we walked back to our hotel. I think one of the biggest differences between Venice and the other cities we've visited is the lack of cars. Venice is made up of dozens of different islands, all connected by bridges, and everything is done by boat or walking- the taxis and buses are boats, the police and medics and even the trash service all arrive by water when needed. The "roads" on the islands are almost all skinny and winding, and you don't necessarily know that you're on a dead end road until you arrive at the dead end. I read in one of the guide books that you don't have to worry too much about getting lost, since you're an island... and while we found that to be true, it was certainly possible to take a much longer time getting places than intended, and to have to turn around when you ended up in a courtyard or at a canal without a bridge across to the other side.

On Saturday morning, we visited the cathedral, and then took a boat to the island of Murano. We watched a glassmaker blow a vase, then a horse-- some of the most graceful, beautiful glassworking I've ever seen. We also went to the Murano Glass Museum, but seeing the glass actually being made was even better. Saturday afternoon was full of browsing the many shops, both on Murano and in Venice. Souvenirs, hooray!

Glass in a shop on Murano. 12 June 2010.

For dinner, Lindi and I went back to Il Nono Risorto, while Emily and my parents went to get seafood. We took a vaporetto to Il Salute, the cathedral on the seafront, and then went to Piazza San Marco to listen to the music. Various orchestral quartets and quintets play in front of each restaurant, and we just walked around listening to a little of each.

On Sunday, we went to the Correr Museum just off the Piazza, and headed back to Florence after lunch. I loved Venice, and I'm glad we went.

I can't believe we only have a week left! Daddy is heading home tomorrow, and we leave for Milan next Friday to fly out on Saturday. I have one more test and a paper for my Italian class, and then my final next Friday. Our time here has gone so quickly!

Love,
Helen

Thursday in Firenze

This is the view at sunset from our living room over the Arno. Isn't it beautiful?

Today the weather here has been like Oklahoma...hot and muggy. Must be trying to make us feel like home. Steven and I went to the Pitti Palace this morning to look at the Argentine museum-- a lot of amazing jewelry, cut and engraved glass, gems, etc. Of course this was in a tiny portion of the palace. Steven thought this was Florence's solution to the Louvre. Helen and Lindi went to the palace this afternoon to visit the costume exhibit. They looked out at the Boboli Gardens but did not walk out in it because of the heat.

This afternoon we have been laying around like jellyfish and have finally turned on the air conditioner. Gluttons that we are...

Tonight we are having a typical Tuscan dinner: cool rice, basil, and tomato salad and Fagoli beans with garlic and rosemary. Of course, we have Tuscan bread from the bakery a block away, as well. When will Walmart catch on?

Miss you all. xoxoxoxo Shivani

Roman Holiday!

(The Colosseum, Rome, 2010).

We just arrived back from our weekend in Rome. Emily, Helen, and I took a train after Helen's Italian class in Florence and met up with their parents at the station later that afternoon. After dropping off our things at the hotel, we went straight to the Colosseum where our passes allowed us to skip the line and go right on inside. It was pretty spectacular. It was easy to stand there and imagine that you were waiting for the well-armed gladiators to start battling lions and, of course, one another.

From there we made a mad dash to the Pantheon, which was even better than the Colosseum, in my opinion. There is hardly any point in trying to explain how beautiful, as words just wouldn't do it justice. Thankfully, I took photos. A whole lot of photos.

After the Pantheon, we ate dinner at beneath white, outstretched umbrellas. The food was good, but the wait staff, and even the owner, were incredibly rude. Startlingly rude, even. We enjoyed the food though and spent the last part of the day at the Trevi Fountain. We all threw in a penny and wished for a second visit, as local custom suggests to tourists.

The next day, we woke up early and went to the Borghese gallery. The Borghese was, without question, my favorite gallery yet. The statue's were phenomenal; my favorite being Apollo and Daphne by Bernini. Helen and I went back several times to look at it. I don't think I've ever seen a statue that... perfect. Daphne's fingers were turning into leaves and her toes into roots. And Apollo's cloth seemed weightless, as though it were blowing in the wind. Of course, all the Bernini's were brilliant. The Rape of Proserpina brought tears to your eyes. Pluto's hand against Proserpina's skin seemed so real, creasing her flesh and her mouth was dropped open as if caught mid-scream. It nearly hurt to look at it, but you couldn't look away.

After lunch at a fantastic panini shop, we walked to Vatican City. Having been raised Catholic, it was a place I heard about all my life. The line wasn't long, thank goodness, and we managed to get inside pretty quickly and out of the heat. Once in, we made our way down hallways full of religious tapestries, beneath ceilings of gold and enormous paintings of bible stories we all knew: Noah and the flood, Adam and Eve. We ended up in the Sistine Chapel, which was so full you could hardly breathe. But it was all worth it to look up and see the paintings overhead.

At some point during our day, and perhaps one of the most frightening parts, Helen became trapped off a bus. She had stepped out of the bus ahead of us and the door was quickly snapped shut, nearly taking my arm with it. She was pounding against the glass as the bus began to move, leaving her standing alone on the sidewalk. We all started screaming at the bus driver to stop and I managed to hit the red 'stop' button on the bus hard enough to hurt. Thankfully, the bus came to a jolting stop and we all exited this time around. Helen's knuckles might still be red.

Helen later got stuck in an elevator, which left before the rest of us could get on. Oy.

Our last day in Rome, we went to the forum, which was also one of my favorite parts. I suppose I have a thing for ruins. We wandered around broken pillars, some of them wider than I am tall and made out the former foundations of what were once magnificent buildings.

It was all sort of surreal. Rome seems like the sort of place that devours you; full of good food, loud people, and beauty. I don't know if there would ever be enough days to see it all.

With Love,
Lindi

My first few classes!

A church in the Chianti region of Italy, 28 May 2010.

Well, I said on Facebook that this would be a blog in which Lindi, Emily and I would all post (I did ask them first...) but no matter how much I look at them meaningfully, then at the blogger website, then back at them, apparently I am the only one doing so at the moment. Lindi just protested that she IS going to do it, but we'll just have to see about that.

Today was our second day of classes. I have four hours in the morning of Italian, while Emily has a printmaking class in the morning and a fashion illustration class in the afternoon. Lindi, on the other hand, is just a bum, and gets to spend all that time sketching, writing, editing photos and sleeping in. Lucky!

Unfortunately, last night I set an alarm on a cell phone that was keeping the wrong time. Aren't they supposed to update by satellite? It was close enough, though, that I didn't notice... and was therefore quite unhappy and confused when I woke up this morning to (what I thought was) 7:30 a.m. in a colder, darker sort of way than yesterday. It turns out it was significantly earlier. Emily was groggy and annoyed when I woke her up and said, "Emily! We have to leave in half an hour! Why aren't you awake yet!" She said, "My alarm didn't even go off!" ...Of course, it just hadn't gone off -yet-. Ergh. I went back to bed for an hour.

I am enjoying my Italian class, even with the long class periods. We have thus far learned basic conversational skills, the months, the days, the seasons, numbers, some random vocabulary and several verbs with their conjugations. It's a relatively small class- only 10 students- which is nice. Although the things we're learning are pretty rudimentary, I can tell that I'm already picking up on the Italian around me more than a few days ago, and can at least have simple conversations. I could, for instance, say good evening and how are you to the man at the gelateria downstairs from our apartment... and then ask him how old he is or what language he speaks. Basic, indeed.

Anyway, we have a school holiday tomorrow in honor of the founding of the Republic. We were going to visit Lucca, but all the things we wanted to see there will be closed! Ah, well. I think we'll go to the Uffizi and climb Giotto's Bell Tower-- both of which we were going to do last weekend before the Great Stomach Flu Plague hit our apartment. It should be fun. :)

<3,
Helen

Our first week in Italy

At Montecchio vineyard in Chianti, Italy, 28 May 2010.

It's amazing-- I can't believe we've been here for a whole week already! The last few days have been a sort of icky haze, as Lindi and then I were both sick, but it all works out. We're both feeling (mostly) better, so we can get back to being excited.

Our 28-hour trip here was followed by a lovely few days in Stresa, which is in the north of Italy in the Lake District, near the Swiss border. We toured the islands on Lago Maggiore, took a cable car up the nearest mountain, and spent lots of time walking along the water and eating gelato (at least once a day, and sometimes twice...) It was good to have some time in the country to recover from jet lag.

We left Stresa on Wednesday and took a train to Milan, then another to Florence. We shared our train compartment with a girl named Rossella, a law student in Rome, which was actually pretty lucky-- our train stopped for about twenty minutes in a tunnel, and then pulled out into the next station to wait for another half an hour, and without Rosella we would never have known that the reason for the delay was that our train had hit some sort of large animal (most likely a cow, or perhaps a deer). Lovely. Anyway, we made it to Florence unscathed (except for the deer/cow incident), and made the trek from the train station to our apartment.

The apartment is beautiful-- we live on the sixth and seventh floors of a building overlooking the Ponte Vecchio, one of the bridges across the River Arno. When we have the windows open (which we often do to get a breeze, since electricity is ridiculously expensive in the center of the city) the sounds of the city fill our apartment. This is mostly acceptable (the babble of the voices of pedestrians below, street musicians and the woosh of traffic) but occasionally really annoying (as in the ambulances and police cars which often wail past our windows-- HOW can there be THIS many emergencies RIGHT BY OUR APARTMENT in the MIDDLE of the NIGHT?!-- and the loud laughter of drunk people on the rooftop bar across the street). All in all, though, it's a rather gorgeous place with hardwood floors and antique furniture. Right now, Emily and I are sitting on the couch in the living room, and Lindi is sitting on a chair by the window overlooking the river, sketching and likely enjoying the smell of the popular waffles with nutella that are sold at several creperies on the street. Basically, they smell like cake.

We went on a tour of Chianti on Thursday, which was mostly very beautiful, but ended somewhat disastrously when Lindi got sick during the ride home. I followed soon after, and both of us spent the majority of the last several days in bed. I did drag myself out of the apartment to go to orientation with Emily on Friday morning, where they told us important things such as how to replace our passport if it is lost and that it is illegal to buy counterfeit purses and watches on the street.

Finally, today, we both got up (feeling at least mostly human again) and went for a walk through the city. We went to a small grocery store, gazed up at the Duomo, visited a free exhibition of paper art, and walked through the market, where we bought a few scarves and magnets and Lindi got a new sundress. I'm still not feeling spectacular, but it was really nice to be out of bed and walking around in the sun.

Emily and I start classes in the morning. I'm taking intensive Italian (four hours a day, five days a week!) and Emily is taking Fashion Illustration and Printmaking. It should be interesting. :)

I'm going to go take a shower and head to bed now, but hopefully one of us will write every day or two!

<3,
Helen