Fierenze, Arezzo & Orovietto

This weekend a couple of us travelled up to Firenze (Florence) to see the sights before classes begin. The trip, although short, was fantastic. The Duomo was the main site for the first day as the lines can be pretty intense to get into the church and to the top of the cupola. The real treat of the the cupola was the climb to it, in my opinion. Winding staircases literally in the wall of the church take you up to the base of the dome, where you get a closeup view of the frescoes on the interior of the dome. More winding slanted staircases take you through the dome where there are many sights to see such as old cages and cells for god knows what and interesting situations with too many tourists to go through small openings. The view from the top is most definitely worth the hour-plus wait and the refreshing breeze cools you off while you watch tourists take panoramas with their iPads.

Climbing the cupola.

At the top!

That night we took a walk to Piazzale Michelangelo which has a beautiful panoramic of Firenze. We ate a local pizza shop / hole in the wall which was very authentic feeling - much nicer than all the overpriced american-italian restaurants that line the piazzas. That night we grabbed a drink in Piazza San Spirito and sat on the church steps. The next day we started off with the Uffizi Gallery, home of the Birth of Venus, the Primavera and hundreds of other paintings and sculpture housed in an old Palazzo right next to the Ponte Vecchio. Speaking of the Ponte Vecchio, this was probably my least favorite part of Firenze. In three words, overcrowded, expensive and underwhelming - at least it looks good from far away. We spent the rest of our hours in Florence checking out churches, the Medici Palace and after a debacle at the train station headed towards Rome. On our trip back we stopped in two towns on the way. First stop was Arezzo which is a small hill town in Tuscany which included a few medieval churches and a large castle. The second stop was Orvieto which was the highlight of the day for me. Orvieto is an entire town perched on a large butte in Umbria known for a massive medieval Duomo which was beautiful. Some of the windows were made of thin onyx and when looked at from the outside they looked like stone but from the inside glowed veins of amber. We walked the entire length of the butte to a beautiful lookout right at sunset. The highlight of Orvieto was the Pozzo di San Patrizio which is a double helix well built by the order of Pope Clement VII when he took refuge in Orvieto in 1527. It's carved straight down through the bedrock - it's one of the cooler things i've ever seen. ORvieto was just about an hour train ride from Rome, so we'll be looking into other close-by towns that we can ride a train to! Italy has so much to offer - there's not enough time in the world.

Pozzo di San Patrizio from the Top.

Duomo in Orvieto

After being in the city for a couple of tourist-frenzy days, we began our two week Italian seminar. 12 of my peers and myself are in the beginners italian class - since we will not be continuing our italian studies after these two weeks. The other classes are broken up into their respective levels of speaking and we meet for about 6 hours a day. We begin with simple phrases, numbers and vocabulary. What I thought would be a rather bland class ended up being very entertaining. We have two teachers - one in the morning and on in the afternoon - and they are simultaneously instructive and extremely entertaining. We create conversations, play simple language games and review exercises and recordings. We have even walked around Rome from time to time to use our new-found italian speaking skills. Overall it has been a great experience and I feel that I am learning a lot - even for a two week seminar.

We have also been introduced to our language companions who are college students from Rome that take us around the city and show us great things to do. We go drinking with them, visit sites and gardens and in general get a better understanding of our roman surroundings. It has been a nice surprise to have locals here helping us get our bearings in a brand new (although quite historic) locale. 

Ciao dalla città eterna!

I’ve only been in Rome for one week but it feels like much longer. I am beginning to recognize the little alleyways and streets that meander in every direction. I didn’t really fully appreciate the nickname “the eternal city” until I spent some time walking around Rome. It’s absolutely awesome to see so many layers of history converging in a romantically haphazard way. The first day seemed more like a dream, and the heat made it equally as unbelievable. Being from Texas, I am used to the heat. That being said, Rome in august is a completely different animal, and being without AC will definitely make the next few weeks here memorable to say the least. Fortunately there is so much to do and see that it is very easy to forget about the heat every so often - and some late afternoon gelato does the trick as well. 

Our apartment is perfectly situated between Piazza Navona and the Tiber River. We are quite literally two blocks from Castel Sant’Angelo, and the Vatican City is just another stone’s throw away. Living here for the coming months will literally be like nothing I have ever experienced before and I can hardly hold back my anticipation. It is serious tourist season in Rome currently and it’s almost impossible to find a single roman on the streets because they are all off on vacation or at the beach. It will be nice to see the city in it’s normal state come September when everyone settles back down for the winter. 

I am looking forward to the next two weeks so that I can see as much of the city as possible before the work form Studio begins to pile on. Already I’ve seen countless churches and basilicas - so many that they almost begin to run together. We sit in each for awhile to try and really take it all in, which is virtually impossible as every single corner of these churches or detailed and polished. Every single one is a masterwork. St. Peter’s Basilica being the masterwork of all of the masterworks. I was never expecting to be so completely awestruck by St. Peter’s since I thought I knew what to expect - but I really didn’t. That basilica is so magnificently large and detailed that it would take months to really see and understand everything that has been painted, tiled, carved or constructed within it’s massive marble walls. Needless to say I will be visiting it again a couple more times, and that goes for a lot of the churches I’ve already seen. I don’t think I’ll ever be completely satisfied with how much I will see while I am in Rome for the next couple of months but that just excites me even more for what is to come.